Education DCL: EAGER: Career Kickstart: High School Pathway to a Thriving Cybersecurity Career

The number of open positions requesting cybersecurity-related skills continues to grow, while employers struggle to find skilled workers. As the cyber workforce demand rises, the talent pipeline is limited; only 15% of high schools offer a cybersecurity course (cybersupply.org). Though multiple organizations have developed cybersecurity standards, curricula, and teacher training, implementing national-scale solutions that are acknowledged by higher education and industry remains a challenge. The Career Kickstart (CK) project aspires to expand the Advanced Placement (AP) model to the career and technical education space. Like AP courses, CK courses will offer opportunities for students to earn college credit and will provide a course framework, professional learning opportunities, and instructional resources that support high-quality teaching and college-level work for all students. The project is supporting the groundwork (Phase I) for developing the CK Cybersecurity Pathway, which leads to a nationally recognized pathway, so all students – not just those who attend schools with the resources to launch a cyber program - leave high school with the motivation and skills to pursue advanced training, certification, and a career in cybersecurity. The project advances knowledge within the career and technical education space – specifically in developing high-quality resources for high school cybersecurity coursework. Similar to designing AP courses and exams, the CK program is crafted by college faculty and experienced teachers who serve on an Advisory Committee. Industry experts are also involved to ensure the program is aligned to workforce needs. The CK project is utilizing the Advisory Committee to refine the program’s design, the coursework and assessments, the teacher preparation model, and the suite of resources to ensure easy implementation. Through three in-person sessions, the group is creating and rapidly prototyping the pathway’s key learning objectives (LOs) a student must master and demonstrate in an assessment to obtain college credit. This includes LOs aligned to meet the needs of cybersecurity entry-level jobs. In addition, the project team is prototyping and piloting CK professional development – a training model that follows other AP trainings and builds a strong teacher community. This is yielding a blueprint for professional learning that’s effective, scalable, sustainable, and dynamic. To evaluate dimensions of Phase I, the CK team is utilizing a range of tools including surveys (industry, committee members, teachers, students, and administrators), assessments administered both to high school students and college students, and classroom observations. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.