They make for great slogans and, on the surface, sound pretty good: “Computer Science for All!” “College for All!” Let’s give every kid what they need to go to college or get a tech job someday!

But both movements had tough transitions from ideas into action. To achieve Computer Science for All, schools needed to recruit teachers with the expertise to create and teach those courses or help staff acquire specialized knowledge and embed Computer Science concepts in their regular classes. In a society where computer science expertise is highly compensated outside of teaching, and about 60 percent of teachers say they are stressed and burned out, this movement stalled because of supply.

College for All has struggled on the demand side. Not all students want—or need—to go to college. And many students stumble on this singular pathway—nearly 37 million Americans under the age of 65 attended college but stopped before earning any credential.

Now there’s another “for All” on the rise that has the potential to help more students, not to mention serve as a corrective to the limiting college-for-all narrative: CTE for All. Career and technical education can avoid the problems that plagued its historical antecedent, vocational education, by including both career and postsecondary educational pathways. Rather than tracking students to work in a narrow set of trades, an effective CTE movement must focus on helping young people discover how their interests and abilities fit within a broad understanding of successful adulthood. CTE should help students learn what energizes them, how different kinds of work are valued, and how they can contribute so they can carve out a pathway after high school that fits their unique goals. That might be college, or it could be something else.