7 Things Florida High School Parents Should Know About Careers, College Credit, and What Comes Next
Florida is investing in career education. At The Barrett School at Destin, our vision is to prepare each student for college, a career, or a combination of both.
By Dr. Matthew Weinberg | Founder and Head of School | October 2026
A fourteen-year-old should not have to decide what they will do for the next fifty years. But they should begin to discover what they enjoy, what they can do well, and what they might become. That is a very different purpose for high school than simply collecting enough credits to graduate.
Florida's growing investment in career and technical education is changing the conversation. The state's 2026-27 budget includes $732 million for workforce education, while Florida reported more than 818,000 K-12 career and technical education students in 2024-25. For families, the important question is no longer simply 'college or career?' It is whether a school can help a student build a credible, flexible plan for both.
At The Barrett School at Destin, we are rethinking the high school experience around that idea. Our existing relationship with Arizona State University's Accelerate ASU program provides an important foundation, and our next step is to connect college coursework, career exploration, relevant certifications, and individual student development more deliberately. Here are seven things Florida high school parents should know.
1. Florida is backing career education with serious funding.
The state's fiscal year 2026-27 budget includes $473.5 million in operational funding for career and technical education, $20 million for the Pathways to Career Opportunities Grant Program supporting apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeships, and $130 million for nursing education, all within the broader $732 million workforce-education investment. The Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) organizes career and technical education across 17 career clusters, from health science and engineering to business, information technology, and hospitality.
Florida also maintains an annual Career and Professional Education (CAPE) Industry Certification Funding List and a Workforce Development Capitalization Incentive Grant program to expand qualifying programs. These are not automatic payments to individual students or every private school: the state's capital-grant program, for example, is directed to school districts and Florida College System institutions. At Barrett, we see the public investment as a signal about the skills and opportunities families should be asking schools to address, not as a promise of government funding for our own program.
2. The most popular career programs may surprise you.
In FLDOE's 2023-24 secondary career education summary, some of the largest program-enrollment totals were Culinary Arts (66,823), Digital Design (58,576), Integrated Technology Studies (28,787), Allied Health Assisting (27,043), and Coding Fundamentals (19,832). In the same reporting year, students earned 34,140 Entrepreneurship and Small Business certifications, 11,102 ServSafe food-protection manager certifications, 9,695 Adobe Certified Professional in Visual Design certifications, 5,507 PMI Project Manager Ready certifications, and 4,847 Autodesk Fusion 360 user certifications.
Those figures represent enrollments or credentials earned, not necessarily distinct students or a ranking of future salaries. Still, they challenge the outdated notion that career education means one narrow kind of trade. In the Destin area, health care, technology, entrepreneurship, digital media, and hospitality can each become a serious academic interest, a practical skill, or the first step toward a professional degree.
3. College preparation and career preparation can belong in the same plan.
Florida has offered a career and technical education pathway to a standard high school diploma since the 2019-20 school year. It includes core academic requirements along with completion of a qualifying CTE program and an industry certification. That matters because career education is not supposed to replace reading, writing, mathematics, science, or critical thinking; it should give those subjects additional purpose.
Some students will pursue a four-year university immediately. Others may prefer an industry credential, an apprenticeship, or paid employment before deciding on further study. Many will benefit from combining college credits with practical training. At Barrett, our goal is not to sort young people permanently into 'academic' and 'vocational' categories. It is to preserve a strong college-preparatory foundation while adding carefully chosen options that make students more capable and more informed.
4. An industry certification should mean more than a piece of paper.
Not every certificate has the same value. Parents should ask who awards a credential, whether it is recognized by employers, what exam or performance standard it requires, whether the student is old enough to qualify, how much it costs, and whether it may articulate into college credit. Florida's 2026-27 CAPE list is a useful starting point for identifying state-recognized industry certifications, but individual offerings and eligibility must still be checked.
That is why Barrett is reviewing potential certifications by student need and pathway rather than simply promising a large catalog. A design-oriented student might explore a recognized visual-design assessment, while an engineering student might build toward a technical-design credential. A future health professional could explore introductory health coursework before deciding whether a clinical career is right for them. A meaningful credential should document competence, not just attendance.
5. College should be something students can try before they commit.
Through our existing Accelerate ASU relationship, Barrett students have access to a model of college learning that is different from relying only on a local dual-enrollment schedule. ASU advertises more than 70 first- and second-year college courses across fields such as mathematics, science, social science, and business, including on-demand options and structured eight- or sixteen-week sessions. Students can experience university-level work, including during the summer, while they are still in high school.
A particularly valuable feature is the ability to decide whether to convert eligible completed coursework into an official ASU transcript after seeing the grade. ASU explains that students generally need a C or better to earn credit under this model. Once recorded, the credit comes from Arizona State University, but the receiving college decides how it transfers and applies toward a degree; taking ASU courses does not guarantee admission to ASU or another institution.
We want to deepen our work with ASU beyond individual courses. Accelerate ASU now describes career-aligned certificate sequences in areas such as Health Education, General Business, Engineering, Computer Science, and Behavioral Sciences. These typically involve four to six college courses totaling twelve to eighteen credit hours. They are ASU academic certificate pathways, not automatically the same as Florida CAPE industry certifications. Our plan is to explore which sequences can be supported responsibly at Barrett and which provide opportunities not readily available through every local-college partnership.
6. A student's high school plan should begin by eighth grade.
The most important part of our redesign happens before ninth grade begins. Our plan is to develop an individual high school pathway conversation in eighth grade—or before a new student enters ninth grade—drawing on an academic portfolio, examples of actual work, performance and growth data, student interests, and carefully selected aptitude and career-interest assessments. Students and families should participate in interpreting the results, and learning differences, accommodations, and emerging strengths must be part of the discussion.
An interest inventory is not a verdict, and a thirteen-year-old's current ambitions should never become a permanent label. The point is to identify promising areas to explore, possible gaps to address, and sensible next steps. We envision revisiting each plan annually so a student who discovers a passion for engineering, journalism, psychology, medicine, music, or business has room to change direction as evidence and interests develop.
7. The best high school record will show what a student can actually do.
We are developing a more individualized Barrett high school structure around several broad areas of exploration: health and human sciences; technology, engineering, and robotics; business and entrepreneurship; and journalism, media, communications, and hospitality. These are intended as flexible directions for students, not rigid majors or a limit on the arts, humanities, classical languages, or other academic interests.
Our vision is to connect those interests with substantial projects, portfolio evidence, guided work experiences or internships where feasible, college-credit coursework, and appropriate industry credentials where a qualified provider and student eligibility permit them. One student might pair biology with a health-focused ASU course; another might pair robotics with mathematics and a design project; a third could produce journalism or media work while learning business fundamentals. We will phase in particular offerings as partnerships, staffing, and credential requirements are confirmed rather than suggest every option is available immediately.
The question for families should be simple: by graduation, what has my child learned, what have they built, what have they tried, and what doors remain open? A high school should help students answer all four.
A more personal future for high school
The Barrett School's purpose is not to produce identical graduates with identical plans. It is to help each student develop the judgment, knowledge, confidence, and practical experience to take a thoughtful next step. We want students prepared for the academic demands of college, the realities of professional life, and the possibility that their ambitions may change as they learn more about the world and themselves.
At Barrett, career readiness and college readiness are not rival destinations. They are complementary parts of a more complete education.
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