Yet in many education systems, language learning remains disconnected from career preparation. Students are often asked to choose between building technical skills and developing language proficiency, even though the workforce needs both. Career and technical education (CTE) offers a powerful and often underused framework for aligning these priorities.
CTE pathways are built around career-connected learning. They link classroom instruction to industry standards, employer partnerships, and work-based learning experiences. This makes CTE an ideal setting not only for developing technical competencies, but also for applying and validating communication skills in real workplace contexts. When language learning is embedded within career pathways, it becomes relevant, practical, and directly connected to future opportunities.
In the regional CTE system at Upper Bucks County Technical School in Pennsylvania, where Michael Herrera serves as director, this connection is especially clear in the healthcare pathways. Students preparing for roles such as medical assistants, patient care technicians, dental assistants, and emergency medical responders regularly encounter situations where communication is essential. Interacting with patients and families, explaining procedures, and working as part of clinical teams all require more than technical knowledge alone.
This connection continues as students move on to higher education. Digital Promise works closely with community college faculty to help them integrate global content into their teaching. Many faculty members emphasize the importance of cultural competence due to the diversity of their classrooms, including multilingual learners. As one example, Kristin Andersen, an adjunct professor of nursing at Harper College in Illinois, created an assignment to demonstrate the value of learning other languages to students in her medical terminology course. Students must choose a medical term, define it in English, and then translate it into two different languages, identifying differences in meaning, word construction, or use across cultures. In addition, they have to share one cultural insight into how the condition is perceived or treated in another country to help them understand how other cultures view and treat diseases.
Many students enter CTE programs already able to communicate across languages because of experiences in their families, communities, and part-time jobs. When those abilities are formally recognized alongside technical credentials, students present to employers as more than entry-level candidates. They bring immediate, practical value to workplace communication, customer service, and team coordination.
This is where credentialing becomes essential. Industry and language credentials provide trusted, portable validation of what students know and can do. For multilingual learners in particular, credentials help translate lived experiences into recognized workforce readiness. For employers, they provide clearer signals about candidates’ capabilities and reduce reliance on informal assumptions during hiring and advancement decisions.
One way to formally recognize these skills is through ACTFL language assessments. ACTFL assessments measure what learners can actually do with language in real-world contexts—regardless of how, where, or when they acquired it. When integrated into CTE pathways, ACTFL credentials allow students to demonstrate language proficiency that complements technical certifications and reflects workplace communication demands, also known as “double credentialing.” For employers, they provide trusted, legally-defensible, and nationally-recognized credentials for language abilities.
More broadly, students can demonstrate their global career-ready skills in communication, collaboration, and research via Digital Promise’s low-cost micro-credentials.
Embedding language credentialing within CTE pathways also strengthens career mobility. Too often, students with strong communication skills are not given structured opportunities to leverage those strengths as part of their career development. When education systems intentionally align language learning, technical preparation, and career advancement, they create pathways that recognize talent and support long-term growth.
As states, districts, and institutions work to strengthen career preparation, language should be viewed as part of the solution, not as an add-on. By embedding language learning and credentialing within CTE pathways and connecting them to career-connected learning frameworks, education systems can better prepare students for mobility and leadership, not just entry into the workforce.
When education, employers, and policy align around this approach, students do not simply graduate with certificates. They enter careers with confidence, validated skills, and a clearer sense of how their abilities contribute to a strong, competitive, and resilient workforce.
