Are Kentucky's teens workforce ready?

This week, lawmakers heard from some of the state's educational institutes on how well students are making the jump from high school to the job market.

McKinsey Fink tells us about the state's big wins and big challenges in workforce readiness.

The Kentucky Community and Technical College System, or CTCs, is an open access institution, meaning that anyone is welcome to enroll as a student.

Even those whose test scores designate them unprepared for college.

CTCs says its student body faces more obstacles, on average, to reaching their educational goals compared to public four year schools.

Our students specifically, 41% report being housing insecure, 45% report being food insecure and nearly one out of every three reports being a parent.

Students in rural areas can face their own set of accessibility challenges.

By far or biggest challenges continue to be thematically.

Both childcare and transportation, particularly in rural areas.

And I would also add in some pockets access still in 2026 to Wi-Fi.

Despite these barriers, CTCs says student achievement has increased over time in the last 25 years.

CTCs moved from the bottom ten to the top five community colleges in the country for graduation rates.

CTCs ranks number one in the country on credentials conferred per capita, and I want to revisit that particular point for just a moment.

There are many states around the country, East coast to West coast, north or south, that have bigger populations than Kentucky.

By sheer volume, they could out produce credentials, but still we rank in the top ten despite the population changes.

But when you adjust that on a per capita basis, we ranked number one in the country.

More Kentucky high schoolers are taking advantage of career and technical education opportunities, according to the Kentucky Department of Education, or CD.

Over the last three years, the number of students taking dual credit, registered apprenticeships and industry certification classes has increased.

The number of students graduating with more than one post-secondary credential grew by more than 8000 students from the 2223 school year to 2425, leading directly to additional employment opportunities.

Their post high school graduation resumes are competitive with adults who are already sitting in the industry.

The career and Technical Education Office faces some of the same challenges seen in the traditional school system, like teacher shortages and chronic absenteeism.

However, Katie finds that students who attend area technology centers, which are state operated vocational training centers, are absent at a rate three times lower than the statewide average.

We believe this indicates the need for greater research and greater data collection on our part, but we believe that it will.

Overall, it's going to demonstrate that when you get a student in career and technical education, then they're going to they're going to come to school to be able to participate.

Katie offers over 120 different career and technical education pathways to high school students.

For Kentucky edition, I'm Mackenzie Spink.

Guys, I can say that.

Yeah.

According to the Kentucky Office for Career and Technical Education, the most common program students are choosing are in management, entrepreneurship, health, and free nursing and animal science systems.