Downriver Career Technical Consortium

Our History

The Downriver Career Technical Consortium (DCTC) was founded in 1965 by the districts of Flat Rock, Gibraltar and Grosse Ile when changes in the state law allowed local districts to share resources.  Under the law, we are defined as a "decentralized area center" allowing us to operate the same as the more familiar career centers, but giving us the ability to offer high need programs at more than one site.  Since then, the Huron School District joined in 1967, Airport (in Monroe County) in 1968, Woodhaven in 1972, Riverview in 1978, Trenton in 1994 and Southgate in 1995.

These districts were originally refered to as the Downriver Area Vocational Cooperation. During August of 1978, the Cooperative was approved for Area Center Designation, providing a long term agreement to allow the organization to funection as a single district relative to vocational eduction operations.  It was in the fall of 1991 that the Consortium's name was changed to DCTC to better reflect the evolving organization.

Today, DCTC is recognized as one of the largest CTE consortium's in the State of Michigan consisting of nine local school districts in partnerships with four colleges that collaborate to allow each schools to focus on exemplary programming and offer that to the students of the Consortium.  This allows each school to focus on quality -vs- quantity for their students, while still offering many more opportunities than any one school could offer on their own.

DCTC has expanded our role in the schools to include the following opportunities:

• An academic consortium that shares high level and unique classes
• Articulated college credit for most programs; direct college credit for some programs
• Professional development for teachers

No two students have exactly the same skills or learning style. Your student’s learning plan will combine direct instruction, small-group work, and one-on-one tutoring in a way that works for your student.

Opportunities

If your child attends school in one of the following districts, they can choose from 33 Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs:

Why CTE?

The objective of a career technical program is to provide a very sophisticated training experience for the student while they are still in high school, so upon graduation they might directly enter the labor market or continue on for advanced training in the chosen career area. Toward this end, the CTE programs have adopted the curriculum developed by the State of Michigan, which provides for training that has been identified as being necessary for each specific occupational area