Kansas parents appear to be more positive than they were five years ago about their children’s pursuit of career and technical education during high school according to the parent perception survey conducted by HirePaths, a career exploration company based in Manhattan.

“I think this is a pat on everybody’s back here,” Kristin Brighton, founder of HirePaths, told members of the Kansas State Board of Education during their August meeting. “I think that is an exciting thing to celebrate.”

Brighton said the survey, sent to all Kansas school districts and disseminated to families, showed parents would be “very happy” if their child pursued CTE opportunities while still in high school. This reflects a 9-percentage point increase in positivity from when the survey was first conducted in 2019 to when it was done again in 2024.

The parent perception survey also saw a “huge jump,” an increase of 11.6-percentage points, in the satisfaction of parents with their children attending a technical college, Brighton said.

“There’s much more acceptance and support from parents for their children going that path after high school graduation,” she said.

Brighton said almost 75% of the parents who participated in the survey remain concerned about their children incurring student loan debt, adding the high cost of college deters another 34% of parents from wanting their children to pursue a college degree.

Brighton told the state board members as a small business owner and mother of two teenagers several years ago, she became increasingly interested in what was going on in the K-12 arena when it came to what parents knew about their child’s postsecondary opportunities. She said she convened a task force in 2016 of education and business professionals who started the discussion around the programs that were being offered to Kansas students after graduating from high school and how those programs impact the state’s workforce and economy. She said there was agreement that parents needed to be more informed about the career and technical education programs that were being offered in the state’s high schools.

“We’re doing all these things to revamp our CTE programs,” Brighton recalled of the discussions more than eight years ago. “If we don’t get parents tuned in to all these new opportunities and change that public perception that the only way to be successful in the United States and in Kansas is to have a four-year college degree, then all of these new efforts were never going to be successful.”

Fueled with the desire for parents to know more about postsecondary opportunities for their children, Brighton said she started gathering information in 2018 from several state agencies, including the Kansas State Department of Education, that laid the groundwork for the 2019 survey that would measure parents’ knowledge and awareness of postgraduation career programs available to their children in Kansas.  

She said HirePaths was able to start a Cool Careers video series and promote other initiatives aimed at educating students and parents about postsecondary options.

Brighton said the push from the state’s business community to have K-12 students begin to develop career skills earlier along with the CTE programs offered before high school graduation, has created a variety of avenues Kansas students can choose from to be successful after earning their high school diploma.

“We try to show that there are so many different options and we’re trying to erase the stigma that one might have over another,” she said. “That is ultimately our goal and that children and their families have to work together to find what’s the best match.”

For more information, go to www.hirepaths.com.