For Families

PCD provides presentations and consultations with parent groups to bring current and relevant career and workforce readiness information to the public. Contact us for more information about scheduling a consultation.

An excellent starting place for your own research is CareerOneStop a US Department of Labor (USDOL) resource that includes many helpful topics for you to explore, as well as timeworthy online assessments.

Throughout the career development process, parents and students will come across many terms and acronyms that are new to them. This starting list may help make sense of this work.
Some Common Terms and Acronyms for Career Awareness & Preparation:

Articulation — Articulated credit is earned when a student completes a majority of the competencies in a secondary program to receive credit in a similar post secondary program. The goal is to avoid duplication of curriculum content. Articulated credit can be academic or technical and is not assigned a letter or numeric grade. Articulated credit is generally not transferrable to other post secondary institutions.
Career Pathways — A system for allowing students to select a career that best suits their interests and abilities. In PA, the career pathways are arranged into 16 career clusters. Each cluster represents groups of related industries and occupations in the American economy.
Career Education and Work Standards (CEW) — What PA students should be able to know and do in four grade levels (3, 5, 8 and 11) in four areas: Career Awareness and Preparation, Career Acquisition, Career Retention and Advancement, and Entrepreneurship — to succeed in the changing workplace.
CTE — Career and Technical Education
Dual enrollment — Students are concurrently enrolled at both a secondary and post secondary institution. Dual enrollment allows students to gain both secondary and post secondary credit for the same coursework. Dual enrollment credit will record a numeric or letter grade on the college transcript and may be transferrable to other post secondary institutions.
High Priority Occupation (HPO) — An occupation which leads to a job that is in high demand by employers, has high skill needs, and provides family sustaining wages.
Job shadow — A program for high school (or middle school, in some cases) students to find out what it is like to be in a specific profession. This helps the student to choose the postsecondary program (higher education/training) and subsequently the profession that they would like to choose.
STEM — Science Technology Engineering and Math (sometimes called "STEAM" the "A" referring to Arts) - An educational effort to support and foster the teaching of Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics in US schools. STEM also encourages students to consider careers that align with STEM skills.
WIB/WDB — Workforce Investment Board or Workforce Development Board - The Pennsylvania Workforce Investment Board (PA WIB) is the governor’s principal private sector policy advisor on building a strong workforce development system that is aligned with state education policies and economic development goals.
Work Based Learning (WBL) — Experiences that are based on or in a work setting or simulated work setting, I.E., apprenticeships, co-op, on-the-job training, school based enterprises or job-simulation-labs, and are used to supplement formal classroom learning.

*Special Thanks to the South Central Pennsylvania Tech Prep Consortium for providing this glossary of terms.