History of Tech Prep

If you have a Tech Prep program at your school, you've likely heard of articulation. However, unless you participated in the articulation process, you may not be aware of the benefits to your students and why they should be a part of Tech Prep.

Tech Prep is a national initiative linking career and technical education programs offered at the high school level to degree and certificate programs at the post-secondary level. In the Tech Prep Education Act of 1990, this initiative was implemented to strengthen education programs for youth who might not earn a four-year post-secondary degree.

At the national level, the goals of Tech Prep legislation were to (1) prepare students for promising careers, (2) to improve the quality of both academic and career and technical education and enhance effectiveness of preparing students for careers by more closely integrating them, and (3) to improve education for the "neglected majority," those students in the middle quartiles who would most likely finish high school but were unlikely to complete a four-year post-secondary education program.

Employers were concerned that young people lacked both the social and technical skills required to succeed in even entry-level jobs. Increasingly, employees in many fields do not require a four-year degree, but do require specific technical training.