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From Classroom to Career: Why QuantHub’s CRI Pathway Gives Alabama CTE Students a New Option
For Alabama CTE students, earning a Career Readiness Indicator (CRI) is an important step toward graduation and demonstrates skills that can help prepare them for college and the workforce. Choosing the right CRI can also give students meaningful exposure to career pathways and skills they can use beyond the classroom.
QuantHub’s CRI pathway combines credentialing with practical data and AI skills connected to today’s in-demand careers. Students build workforce-ready skills, while educators gain an easy-to-implement pathway and opportunities to strengthen their own AI knowledge and earn professional development credit.
In this article, we’ll explore the advantages of QuantHub’s CRI pathway through the real-world experience of Paula Hughes, an Alabama public school teacher who used QuantHub to give her students exposure to modern careers and build practical AI and data skills. Paula also shares the benefits for educators, from easy classroom implementation to professional development opportunities.
A CRI Opportunity That Can Start With Intro-Level Students
For CTE educators, one major advantage of QuantHub’s CRI pathway is that students can begin working toward a credential earlier. Hughes said her traditional upper-level engineering CRI can require roughly two years of preparation, while QuantHub gives her intro-level students the opportunity to work toward a CRI within a single school year.
The pathway is available at no cost to ALSDE schools, making it easier for teachers to implement without adding another program expense. Students who complete every required module at 100% are eligible to sit for the end-of-pathway CRI credentialing exam, which is also offered at no cost and provides multiple attempts to earn the credential.
For Hughes, removing the exam cost can open the opportunity to more students. With other certifications, she explained, other CRI pathway exams can cost around $90 per student, making teachers hesitant to let a student test unless they are confident they will pass. However, the QuantHub CRI pathway exam is offered for free to all students.
The process still requires commitment. Students must complete the full pathway before taking the exam, helping them practice managing a longer-term goal rather than simply completing individual assignments.
“It’s not just the grade that matters,” Hughes said. “It’s the actual completion, you know, of this big, long process.”
For Students: A Credential Connected to the Skills Employers Want
For Hughes, earning the credential is only part of the value. The content itself exposes students to skills they may not encounter elsewhere in their existing curriculum—particularly AI, data, and emerging technology.
“Whether that’s college or whether that’s career, you know, especially AI, they are going to have to know how to work with that and with the technology in order to really get good and valuable jobs,” Hughes said.
She has made those connections tangible by showing students actual career opportunities in the Birmingham area that call for skills related to what they are learning through QuantHub.
Hughes said she showed her students examples ranging from jobs accessible with a high school diploma and relevant skills paying as much as $50 per hour, to opportunities for recent college graduates paying around $80,000 per year. She also showed them examples of positions paying more than $100,000 annually with additional experience. The exercise changed how students viewed the material.
“Once we started looking at those jobs and what they pay, I had a lot of students saying, ‘Oh my gosh, I didn’t know this was an opportunity,’ and especially in Birmingham,” Hughes said.
That real-world connection also extends beyond the CRI itself. Hughes discusses resumes with her students and shows them how QuantHub badges can be added to LinkedIn profiles. She has also seen growing student interest in internship opportunities connected to these skills.
For students who are not pursuing an AI or data-specific career, the learning can still be valuable. Hughes has older students complete AI literacy content alongside their project-based coursework, and she said students were particularly interested to learn that similar AI literacy material is being used at the college level.
For CTE Teachers: A CRI That Fits Into the Classroom
Adding another credential can sound daunting when teachers already have a full curriculum to cover. Hughes has found that QuantHub does not have to take over her class schedule.
“It’s also just so easy to integrate into the classroom because, you know, I have a full curriculum, and I’m sure most teachers do as well,” Hughes said.
Her solution is simple: five to 10 minutes at a time. Hughes uses QuantHub as a bell ringer. Students enter class, open their computers, and begin the assigned QuantHub work. She typically gives them five minutes—and sometimes 10—depending on the week. By following the pacing she has established, students can steadily work through the pathway without sacrificing an entire class period each day.
She can also designate occasional full “QuantHub days” when students need additional time to progress.
For her beginning students, Hughes uses QuantHub’s Schoology integration to assign the pathway step by step. “This way, they can just click on the assignment in Schoology, and it takes them exactly to the module I want them to do,” she explained.
For educators, the integration can also simplify classroom management. Hughes said teachers can roster students through Schoology, assign lessons, collect grades when desired, and monitor student progress without requiring students to manage another set of login credentials.
“It is very easy for a teacher to go through Schoology and assign these lessons,” Hughes said. “It’s integrated, it’s easy, it’ll grade it. You know, it’s just a very easy way to keep track of what your students are doing.”
Removing a Major Barrier: The Cost of Credentialing
Cost can be another consideration when choosing a CRI.
Hughes estimates that the exam associated with her upper-level Inventor certification costs around $90 per student, although she noted that the exact amount should be verified. While the state can reimburse those costs, the exam still has to be paid for.
That expense inevitably affects how educators think about who is ready to test. “You would never allow a student to take that exam unless you were a hundred percent sure they could pass it, you know, because it’s expensive,” Hughes explained.
The QuantHub CRI exam, by contrast, is offered at no cost to participating ALSDE schools. For Hughes, that creates an important opportunity for students who might otherwise be overlooked. “Since it’s free, it gives some students an opportunity that maybe wouldn’t get that opportunity because, you know, maybe they’re not a top-performing student in the classroom, but they can take this CRI because they get that opportunity to take it.”
The financial advantage extends beyond the exam itself. Hughes said her county coordinator appreciates avoiding the reimbursement process associated with paid credentialing options.
Professional Development That Benefits Teachers, Too
The learning does not stop with students. Hughes has completed QuantHub learning herself, and she said doing so has strengthened both her ability to help students and her own understanding of AI.
“I was shocked at how little I knew when I got in this platform and started doing my own PD,” she said. “I feel like I’ve learned a lot because, again, this is information I did not know myself.”
She now uses AI outside of the classroom for everything from researching major purchases and reviewing contracts to troubleshooting things that break. “I use it a lot and I did not even know what all it could do before I got myself educated through QuantHub on some of these AI things,” Hughes said. “So I just think it’s valuable for everyone.”
For CTE educators specifically, there is another potential benefit: professional development. Hughes explained that career tech teachers are required to complete annual technical update hours, and she has been able to use her QuantHub professional development toward those requirements.
That means the same platform can help educators build their own AI and data fluency, become more confident supporting students, and work toward professional learning requirements—all while preparing to implement the CRI pathway in their classroom.
Why CTE Teachers Should Consider QuantHub’s CRI Pathway
For CTE educators evaluating CRI options, the question is not simply whether a credential meets a requirement. It is also what students have to gain from the process of earning it.
QuantHub gives educators a way to introduce an industry-recognized credential opportunity to students earlier in their CTE journey while building AI and data skills tied to a rapidly changing workforce. The pathway can be incorporated into an existing classroom routine in small increments, supported through LMS integration, and offered without adding a credentialing exam cost for students or schools.
Hughes sees that combination as something her students simply did not have before. “This is why we are doing it, because it’s information that’s so valuable and so applicable to, you know, the real world and especially their next phase of life,” she said.
For Alabama CTE teachers deciding which CRI opportunity to bring into their classrooms, that creates a compelling proposition: a credential students need, built around skills they will actually use, delivered in a way teachers can realistically implement.
Not sure where to get started?
QuantHub is here to help! Schedule a support call with a QuantHub team member to walk you through the free onboarding process and get started using QuantHub’s CRI pathway in your classroom HERE at QuantHub Support Center.
OR reach out to a team member directly at: support@quanthub.com