Understanding the Long-Run Effects of Career and Technical Education: An Examination of Impact, Mechanism, and Implementation

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Career and Technical Education (CTE) has become an increasingly prominent policy strategy for developing students’ workforce skills and promoting long-run economic mobility. Emerging causal evidence suggests that CTE can generate lasting effects on important labor-market outcomes (Brunner et al., 2023). Yet important questions remain about how diverse CTE models operate in practice, which students they reach, and when and how they generate long-run, equity-enhancing effects. Certainly, the field also stands to benefit from additional causal evidence on the long-run effects of modern CTE programs as the current evidence base is limited (Lindsay et al., 2024).

This panel brings together three papers that offer new evidence on the long-run effects of CTE, the mechanisms that may underlie those effects, and the implementation dynamics that shape students’ access to and experiences within CTE pathways. Reflecting the diversity of CTE programming, the papers examine three distinct models serving high school students in three different states using three different methods: a workforce development program in Chicago assessed using a randomized controlled trial, whole-school CTE in Connecticut assessed using a regression discontinuity design, and career-oriented dual enrollment in Tennessee examined using mixed methods.

The first paper uses a randomized controlled trial to estimate the effects of Genesys Works, a workforce development program serving low-income high school seniors in Chicago, on longer-run educational and labor-market outcomes. The study contributes to a limited body of causal evidence on the long-term effects of CTE-related programming.

The second paper examines the mechanisms that may drive CTE’s long-run effects. Using data from the Connecticut Technical High School System, this study estimates short- and long-run effects of whole-school CTE at the school-by-cohort cluster level and tests whether short-run effects on achievement, attendance, and high school graduation forecast longer-run impacts on educational and labor-market outcomes.

The third paper uses mixed methods to examine implementation dynamics in a career-oriented dual enrollment program in Tennessee. Drawing on student and counselor perspectives, it investigates barriers to participation, as well as the recruitment, advising, enrollment, and completion processes that shape students’ experiences in technical dual enrollment.

Discussant comments on these three papers will be provided by an education policy scholar with expertise in CTE and CTE program evaluation. The discussant is well-suited to provide critical commentary on the study methods given their methodological and statistical expertise in causal inference.

Policy Area

• Education

Chair

• Shaun M Dougherty, Boston College

Discussant

• Jay Plasman, Johns Hopkins University

Organizer

• Emma Hart, Boston College

Individual Presentations

• Long-Term Effects of a Workforce Development Program during High School: Experimental Evidence from Genesys Works - Presenting Author: Salman Khan, The University of Chicago

• What Mechanisms Drive the Long-run Effects of Career and Technical Education? Evidence from Connecticut - Presenting Author: Emma Hart, Boston College

• Career-Oriented Dual Enrollment in Tennessee: Counselor and Student Perspectives on Technical College Dual Enrollment - Presenting Author: Easton Stone Dawson, Vanderbilt University