To engage all learners, schools must offer career-pathway courses that combine academics and deeper learning. Gene Bottoms, until recently head of the Southern Regional Education Board, describes a transformation he believes must happen in US high schools--adopting curriculums that include intellectual rigor in career and technical education (CTE) courses and structures to link learning in academic and related CTE courses. Project-based assignments that meet SREB's criteria for rigorous work (work that includes both high-level thinking and career skills businesses now value) must be part of the change. Bottoms provides an example such an assignment, plus guidance on how to convert existing assignments to powerful project-based ones and with better link academic and CTE content.