Career and technical education is one of the few bipartisan ideas in American K-12 schooling. Governors and legislators of both parties champion it. Parents, employers, and voters say they value it.
Enrollment bears this out. The number of high school students taking CTE courses rose 10% between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, from 7.8 million to 8.6 million, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
That’s good news. For decades, career preparation took a back seat to “college for all.” That debate is largely over. Now’s the time to ask a harder question. Is the CTE expansion well designed, backed by research and linked to employers and further education?
Several recent studies suggest the answer is not yet.
The strongest CTE research comes from specialized technical high schools. In Connecticut, young men who attended one earned about 32% more in their first years of work than similar applicants who just missed admission, according to a review of research by Hannah Kistler and Shaun Dougherty. About a fifth of that gain traced to work experience related to what students studied. These schools have clear course sequences, cohorts of students who move through together and strong ties to local employers.
Most students, however, take CTE courses in regular high schools. A study by Yerin Yoon and Dougherty looks at Massachusetts high schools that added state-approved CTE programs. These are demanding programs, with 900 hours of instruction, licensed teachers and student placements with employers.
The results are mixed. Compared with similar students who lacked access, those exposed to the new programs earned about 9% more a year after graduation and worked more through age 23. But they were less likely to enroll in a four-year college by about 2.4 percentage points, and the earnings edge faded by age 23, about when college graduates enter the labor market.
Averages hide the real story. Programs linked to further education — such as health, information technology and teaching — raised employment with only a small drop in college-going. Programs with weaker links to college, such as construction and transportation, produced a sharper drop.
Schools that upgraded existing CTE programs appeared to do better than schools that started new programs, probably because they had experienced teachers and working arrangements in place.
The payoff also differs by sex. In Connecticut, researchers found little effect on young women’s earnings. In Massachusetts, the early earnings boost was largest for young men. One likely reason is who enrolls in what.
An Ohio study of industry credentials earned in high school found that the earnings advantage for young men with credentials grew over time, while the advantage for young women shrank and then turned negative. The report notes that men earn far more of the credentials in higher-paying fields like construction, manufacturing and transportation.
The lesson isn’t that CTE fails outside specialized schools. It’s that CTE isn’t one thing. Its payoff depends on design choices.
Three matter most. Call them the three Ss. Sequencing means courses that build on one another and end in real work experience. Stackability means every program connects to further learning, so that a first credential is never a last one. Signaling means the credential a student earns is one employers actually value.
A 2020 analysis by ExcelinEd and Burning Glass found that only 18% of the credentials high school students earned were ones employers sought.
Getting the three Ss right is a local decision. Congress anticipated this when it rewrote federal law in 2018, requiring every district that takes federal dollars to conduct a local needs assessment every two years.
The idea was sound. Before choosing programs, sit down with employers, colleges, workforce boards, parents and students to look at the local labor market together. In effect, Congress tried to write civic infrastructure into law.
A new evaluation shows how that’s gone. In 2022-23, more than a third of districts didn’t closely involve any outside group in the assessment. Only 37% closely involved employers.
Among districts that found they needed to change their programs, just a third said the assessment helped much in reaching that conclusion. Nearly half the states said the process was so burdensome that it kept some districts from applying.
The pattern shows up in how programs come and go. Six in 10 districts lean heavily on labor market information when adding a program. Only about two in 10 weigh their state’s definition of a high-skill, high-wage or in-demand job when deciding whether to end one. Districts know how to add but are less practiced at subtracting.
A RAND survey looks beyond CTE to how schools connect students to work. Two-thirds of high school seniors said they planned to do an internship or apprenticeship. By spring of senior year, 22% had.
Student interest, RAND concludes, is not the limiting factor. Opportunity is. Only 37% of districts offer internships, and 21% offer apprenticeships.
Schools also have little way of knowing what’s working. Most high schools set numeric targets for things like counselor meetings. Only 15% track whether graduates find a job. In the federal evaluation, 29% of districts didn’t know if they were expected to meet performance targets for their CTE programs.
Taken together, the evidence suggests design choices determine whether CTE pays off. The process that informs those choices is thin. And the feedback that would show whether the choices were right is mostly missing.
Here are six suggestions for state and district leaders.
- Make the local needs assessment simpler and more useful. States should supply labor market data and common definitions so that local time goes to conversation, not compliance. Only 30 states have a full set of definitions for high-skill, high-wage and in-demand jobs.
- Build on what exists. Districts should upgrade current CTE programs before opening new ones without teachers and partners in place.
- Keep doors open. Districts and community colleges should ensure every program, including in the trades, offers a clear path to further education, so an early paycheck doesn’t come at the cost of later mobility.
- Fund the connectors. Chambers of commerce, community colleges and workforce boards can broker placements between schools and employers. States should pay for this work.
- Count what happens after graduation. States should link school and wage records and report results to districts in usable form.
- Prune as well as plant. Districts should review programs against local demand and graduate outcomes and close those that lead nowhere.
CTE has earned its popularity. The research behind it is real, especially for young men who have been drifting away from school and work.
But enrollment is not the goal. Opportunity is. Getting there will depend less on how many programs schools open than on whether a community’s adults do the patient work of building them together.