The Board of Education of the Cleveland Municipal School District on Monday began monthly progress monitoring of its board-approved goals and guardrails, with Interim CEO Dr. Morgan reporting that only a little over 3% of the district's 2025 graduating cohort were proficient on the CTE (Career and Technical Education) assessment.

The board is monitoring opportunity and access — a guardrail the board defined as: "The CEO shall not implement an academic program that fails to provide access to artistic, athletic and career preparation opportunities for all students." Dr. Morgan told the board the CTE proficiency measure feeds into the state report card's new College, Career, Workforce and Military Readiness (CCWMR) metric, which will be measured this year and "could impact whether we go down our star rating."

Why this matters: CCWMR is a new, high-stakes indicator on the state report card. Low participation and proficiency on CTE assessments can reduce the district's measured readiness and limit students' options reflected on the state metric. Dr. Morgan said the presentation establishes baseline data and that the district will set KPIs this year to track improvement.

Key facts and figures reported
- Proficiency on CTE assessment: class of 2023 just over 1%; class of 2024 over 2%; class of 2025 a little over 3%, according to Dr. Morgan. He emphasized most students are not taking the assessment.
- Participation: In the class of 2025, about 5.3% of students attempted three or more CTE assessments, roughly 17% took one to two assessments, and the largest category did not attempt an assessment.
- High-school access: "Only 59% of our high schools offer career pathways," Dr. Morgan said.
- Internships: The district counted 502 students who completed internships this summer; the largest sector was IT. Partner placements included Cleveland State University (152 students), Magnet (85), Argonaut (21) and Newbridge (19), Dr. Morgan said.

What the board heard about causes and gaps
Dr. Morgan and staff attributed the low proficiency to a combination of factors: low test-taking rates, misalignment between CTE course curricula and assessment standards, decentralized monitoring of CTE pathways, and insufficient emphasis on CTE in prior reporting cycles because CCWMR is new. A staff member noted that measures not on the state report card "usually get pushed to the side until someone says, 'We're actually going to monitor this and you're going to get a score for it.'"

Strategies and next steps presented
Dr. Morgan outlined improvement strategies the district will pursue this year:
- Align CTE curriculum and pacing guides to the standards on the WebEx CTE assessments and provide teachers with pacing guides and data-driven instructional protocols, similar to work done in ELA and math.
- Increase the number of students taking WebEx CTE exams and improve average scores; slides cited targets to improve WebEx take rates from about 58% to 85% and to raise average WebEx scores from about 37% to 43% as examples of monitoring targets the district is considering.
- Use a new non-evaluative walk-through tool and cohort CTE meetings so school leaders and teachers can identify bright spots and scale effective practice.
- Expand internship alignment so work placements match students' CTE pathways and target high-growth, high-demand industries; leverage pre-apprenticeship programs where appropriate to count toward CCWMR readiness.
- Use School Links, a new college- and career-readiness platform, to document student plans and help counselors and families track pathways beginning in middle school.
- Provide targeted supports for multilingual/ELL students and Hispanic students where data show access and completion gaps; staff identified site-level recruitment and partner supports as distinct needs.
- Employ AI tools to assist student interest matching and, where appropriate, require IT worksite placements to include AI and data-application experiences.

Counselors and implementation
Mr. Dean, executive director of college and career readiness, told the board the district is treating the year as a "reset" and is providing monthly professional development for counselors so they can support students and families, use School Links, and implement plans such as pre-apprenticeship placements that allow seniors to graduate after completing industry-aligned programs.

Board reaction and governance
Board members asked about school leadership's role in driving improvement. Chair Ellicott and others said the new, regular monitoring is a deliberate governance change: the board will receive data monthly and has required materials be posted at least 10 days in advance so members can ask questions and remove items from consent if they want in-meeting discussion. The board adopted the evening's consent agenda earlier in the meeting by roll call, with six yes votes.

Limitations and outstanding questions
Dr. Morgan said the district will set specific KPIs this year; at present the presentation provides baseline counts but not finalized, districtwide proficiency targets. The district also flagged implementation dependencies, including partner capacity, transportation and potential funding for paid internships.

What's next
Dr. Morgan said the district will return with monthly updates on goals and guardrails and that the Building Brighter Futures initiative will be a longer-term vehicle for scaling career pathways across more schools.

Speakers quoted or cited: "The CEO shall not implement an academic program that fails to provide access to artistic, athletic and career preparation opportunities for all students," Dr. Morgan said. He also told the board, "we have a lot of work to do."