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Cooperative Education

The Cooperative Education program is a structured component of the Career Technical Education curriculum that integrates classroom instruction and learning with productive, supervised work-based experiences in fields related to students' career objectives. 

Students eligible for participation in the Career Technical Cooperative Education program must meet one of the following criteria:

• The student has achieved concentrator status, indicating completion of two Career/Technical Education credits in a sequenced program of study related to the student’s career objective or the student is concurrently pursuing concentrator status while enrolled in Coordinated Studies.  (A student must achieve concentrator status prior to participation in the work-based component of cooperative education.)

• The student has earned two Career/Technical Education credits (one credit from two different programs of study).  Both credits must be related to the student’s career objective.

• The student has earned one Career/Technical Education credit and has earned one academic credit at a higher level than the minimum core course requirements specified for the Alabama High School Diploma; for example, Advanced English 11 or Calculus.  Both courses must be related to the student’s career objective.

To successfully complete the Community Co-op program, students must demonstrate all of the following:

• Achievement of work-based experience related to a selected career field

• Achievement of regular and continuing current employment

• Achievement of a progression of increasingly difficult work-based tasks

Career/Technical Cooperative Education is a required component of the Alabama Occupational Diploma Program. (AOD)  Students will participate in Career/Technical Cooperative Education in the twelfth or exiting year of school.  Students must complete a minimum of 270 hours of documented, successful, independent, paid employment to meet the requirement for the AOD. 

Students eligible for participation in cooperative education must meet one of the following criteria:

• Advanced Cooperative Education - Concentrator (2 credits in sequenced program of study)

• Structured Work Study - One or more C/T courses in any Occupational Program Area