Career and Technical Education (CTE) in the 21st Century: Do Different Fields of CTE Reduce, Reproduce, or Exacerbate Socioeconomic Inequality?

Meissner, Lynn

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-kbxk-dy74

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Career and Technical Education (CTE) in the 21st Century: Do Different Fields of CTE Reduce, Reproduce, or Exacerbate Socioeconomic Inequality?

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From its inception in the early 1900s, vocational education in American high schools was designed to prepare students for jobs that did not require any formal postsecondary education. In the last decades of the 20th century, growing concern about how separating students into “college” and “non-college” tracks often perpetuated racial and socioeconomic inequalities and a sharp rise in demand for postsecondary credentials across many industries led to a series of reforms that aimed to transform vocational education from an alternative to college into a pathway to postsecondary credentials and promising careers. Proponents of the new “Career and Technical Education” or CTE argue that high-quality CTE has the potential to increase the educational attainment and occupational success of all students and provide an avenue for upward mobility for students from low-income backgrounds (Newman & Winston, 2016; Schwartz, 2016). One crucial but often undiscussed aspect of this optimistic promise, however, is that the different fields of CTE are connected to industries with vastly different education requirements and career prospects. Some fields, like Computer Science and Engineering, have high demand for 4-year degrees and relatively high earning potential at all levels of educational attainment (Georgetown CEW, 2011). Meanwhile fields like Human Services and Hospitality & Tourism have much lower demand for postsecondary credentials and often offer lower pay at every level of educational attainment (Georgetown CEW, 2011). The three studies in this dissertation were designed to evaluate whether modern CTE reduces, reproduces, or intensifies socioeconomic inequality by looking at associations between school-level characteristics and the fields of CTE they emphasize (Study 1), student characteristics and the fields of CTE they participate in (Study 2), and relationships between credits in different CTE fields and post-high-school education and employment outcomes (Study 3). To explore these relationships I used nationally representative data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09), which included the course catalogs for nearly 700 public high schools and the high school transcripts and multiple waves of survey responses for over 10,000 students from the graduating class of 2013.At the school level, measures of the local employment landscape were more strongly related to the emphasis schools placed on some fields of CTE over others than the associations with the racial or socioeconomic composition of the student body. At the student level, 9th grade occupational aspirations were strong predictors of participation in every CTE field and participation in each field was strongly related to the odds of studying the same field in college and continuing to aspire to a career in the same field at age 21. Across all 3 studies the clearest patterns emerged for the four “skilled trade” CTE fields – Manufacturing; Architecture & Construction; Agriculture; and Transportation, Distribution, & Logistics (TDL) – which offer many middle-class career paths that do not require a 4-year degree (Georgetown CEW, 2018). Study 1 showed that schools in counties with more employment in these fields offered more CTE in these fields as a share of all their CTE classes. These schools were much more likely to be rural and to have a greater proportion of White students and low-income students compared to schools in counties with low employment in these fields. Study 2 showed that White students, male students, lower-SES students, and students with below-average 9th grade GPAs were much more likely to participate in these CTE fields than their nonwhite, female, higher-SES, and higher-GPA peers. Study 3 showed that earning more credits in these fields was associated with higher odds of attending a 2-year postsecondary institution (PSI) instead of a 4-year PSI, higher odds of earning a sub-baccalaureate credential, higher odds of working full-time, and higher odds of earning over $15K or over $30K at age 20. Taken together, these patterns suggest that CTE may be effectively helping students who aspire to careers in the skilled trades gain valuable experience in high school that prepares them to reach their postsecondary education and career goals, but these benefits may be largely concentrated among lower-SES and lower-achieving White male students. Human Services was the only field in which increased participation was associated with lower odds of attending any postsecondary education, lower odds of working full-time, and lower odds of earning over $30K at age 20. Many of the entry-level jobs in Human Services are low-paying service jobs in personal care services and education support and Study 2 showed that like these industries overall, the students who participated in Human Services CTE were overwhelmingly female and had below-average GPAs. There are important discussions to be had about whether schools should invest their limited resources in preparing students for relatively low-paying career paths and great need for broader discussions about poverty-sustaining wages and the undervaluing of critical service and care roles in our country. The results for Health Science were complex and while I discuss some possible explanations, there is a pressing need for more research on Health Science CTE in particular, especially given the rapid growth of the healthcare industry (Carnevale et al., 2012). Other than gender and occupational aspirations, there were few significant results for 6 of the 12 fields: Computer Science; Communications; Engineering; Business & Marketing; Public, Protective, & Government Services; and Hospitality & Tourism. This is notable because it underscores the importance of considering each field separately instead of lumping them all together under the umbrella of CTE and may also help explain why so much of the existing research on CTE has found mixed or null results (U.S. Dept of Ed., 2014). Overall, my results suggest that we still have a long way to go to fulfill the goals of modern CTE as a way to help all students embark on promising career paths and ultimately narrow longstanding inequalities in education and employment outcomes along lines of gender, race, and socioeconomic class.

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