Impact of a Statewide CTE Dual-Enrollment Pathway

• In Event: New Evidence on the Effectiveness of Career and Technical Education

Abstract

Career and College Promise (CCP) is North Carolina’s dual enrollment program, which includes three pathways: 1) College Transfer; 2) Career and Technical Education (CTE); and 3) Cooperative Innovative High Schools. This study focuses on the impact of the CTE Pathway, which consists of different sequences of CTE-focused college courses that lead to a technical credential or a workforce-based major at a postsecondary institution. Students typically enroll in college-level courses starting in 11th or 12th grade. Courses are offered by the community colleges with no tuition costs for the students.

This paper addresses three research questions:
1. What is the impact of CTE Pathway participation on high school outcomes including GPA, college credits earned in high school, and high school graduation?
2. What is the impact of CTE Pathway participation on enrollment in postsecondary education?
3. Do results differ by students’ gender; race/ethnicity; and economically disadvantaged status?

The paper presents results from a quasi-experimental study using a propensity score weighting methodology in which CTE Pathway participants are compared to non-participants. Non-participants are weighted to closely resemble participating students on rich sets of pre-treatment covariates, including demographic characteristics, engagement (absences, suspensions), and academic readiness (exam scores, advanced course-taking, and GPA).

We estimate propensity scores using generalized boosted modeling (GBM; McCaffrey et al., 2013). GBM is data adaptive and nonparametric; it automatically selects which covariates should be included and the best functional form. We estimate the impact of CTE participation using weighted multivariate models that control for covariates included in GBM. All analyses cluster standard errors at the high school level.

For our data sources, we use linked administrative data from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, University of North Carolina System, and North Carolina Community College System. Our sample includes 530,000 students who entered 11th grade between 2012-2013 and 2017-18 in North Carolina. The treatment group includes CTE pathway participants; the comparison group includes all other students excluding those participating in the other CCP pathways. The weighing procedure yielded tightly balanced treatment and comparison groups.

The results of the research are that CTE participants were statistically significantly more likely to graduate from high school than non-participants (98% vs. 96%). CTE students earned an average of 5.7 college CTE credits compared to no credits for the comparison group. There was also a significant 11 percentage point impact on enrollment in a NC community college within one year. Subgroup analyses show that impacts are generally positive for most subgroups.

This research contributes to the evidence base on multiple topics – CTE, dual enrollment, college and career readiness, and the high school to college transition – in providing a rigorous analysis of the impact of participating in a statewide CTE dual enrollment pathway program. The results show that it has positive impacts on multiple high school and early postsecondary outcomes. It not only informs the policymakers and practitioners in the CTE field but it also expands the literature on the impact of dual enrollment pathways.

Authors

• Fatih Unlu, RAND Corporation

• Julie A. Edmunds, University of North Carolina - Greensboro

• Brian Phillips, RAND Corporation