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Career and technical education
When Demand Outpaces Supply: Flexible Staffing and the Making of Maryland's High School CS Teacher Workforce
U.S. high schools have rapidly expanded computer science (CS) education over the past decade, resulting in increased pressure to staff classrooms with qualified teachers. This study examines how Maryland high schools responded to rising CS enrollment from school year 2012-13 through 2023-24,… more →
Cheapskin Effects? The Heterogeneous Value of Industry-Recognized Certificates Earned by High School Students
Topics: Student LearningHuman capital theory and signaling models posit that educational credentials convey information about workers’ skills, producing discrete labor market returns beyond years of schooling. While extensive evidence documents these “sheepskin effects” for degrees, far less is known about industry-… more →
Landscape Analysis of the Teaching Profession
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentThe following report represents our attempt both to synthesize the current landscape of the teaching profession in the United States and to identify areas of research, policy, and practice which show promise in strengthening the profession. To guide our development of this landscape analysis, we… more →
Labor Market Strength and Declining Community College Enrollment
Tags: Career and technical education, College readiness, Higher education, Human capital, Returns to education and skillsDeclining U.S. college enrollments have triggered questions about the health of the postsecondary sector. Using institution-level data, we make four points. First, such declines are driven not by the four-year sector but by two-year community colleges, which have apparently shrunk by over 30%… more →
Running a Business in High School: Selection into the Virtual Enterprises Program
To better prepare high school students for the workforce, many schools and districts are building career and technical education coursework that provides students with the opportunity to deeply engage in work-based learning. Virtual Enterprises (VE) is a program where students open school-based… more →
Does Expanding Access to High Quality Technical Education Induce Participation and Improve Outcomes?
Over the last 15 years, Career and Technical Education (CTE) has been changing as schools have aimed to better meet workforce needs and diversify pathways into higher education and the workforce. This study provides the first known causal evidence on the impact of CTE program expansion in U.S.… more →
Increasing Applied STEM Curricular Opportunities in High School and Impacts on Early Post-Secondary Outcomes: The Effect of Project Lead the Way
Project Lead the Way (PLTW) is an applied STEM Career Technical Education program that has been adopted widely across the country. Using data from Missouri, we investigate the impact of PLTW course expansion on program participation and early post-secondary outcomes. Our identification… more →
Cosmetology Gets a Trim: The Impact of Reducing Licensing Hours on Colleges and Students
In the United States, licenses are required for entry into many different occupations. Requirements vary by state and occupation, but many licenses require a minimum number of training or instructional hours. We consider the impact of these hours requirements on students and postsecondary… more →
The Effects of High School Remediation on Long-Run Educational Attainment
Tags: Ability grouping, Career and technical education, College readiness, Curriculum, High schools, Human capitalThis study examines the effects of remedial courses in high school on postsecondary outcomes using a regression discontinuity design and explores the mechanisms behind these effects. I find that being placed in the remedial schedule and taking an additional remedial course in high school reduces… more →
Get a Skill, Get a Job, Get Ahead? Evaluating the Effects of Virginia's Workforce-Targeted Free College Program
Tuition-free college programs are gaining momentum as policymakers address rising college costs and workforce readiness. Despite their growing adoption, limited research examines how workforce-focused eligibility criteria impact student outcomes beyond enrollment. This pre-registered study… more →
Curricular-Credential Decoupling: How Schools Respond to Career and Technical Education Policy
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThis study examines College and Career Readiness (CCR) policy implementation through the lens of decoupling. We investigate how high schools have jointly implemented Career and Technical Education (CTE) and Industry-Based Certifications (IBCs), and whether there is evidence of curricular-… more →
Do Human Capital Adjustments Protect Youths from Structural Change?
Structural changes to labor demand can have lasting consequences on the employment and earnings of workers in affected industries and geographies. However, individuals coming of age may avoid similar fates if they internalize salient changes to the returns to education and adjust their human… more →
The Architecture of Expected Wage Gaps: Between- and Within-School Sources of Career Education Inequality
This study investigates how school-level variation contributes to social stratification even before labor market entry by examining Career and Technical Education (CTE) as a key mechanism for sorting students into pathways with unequal economic returns. Using Delaware administrative data and… more →
Technology Apprenticeships and Labor Market Outcomes: Mixed-Methods Evidence from the LaunchCode Program
We leverage employment and earnings data from a large credit bureau, program data from LaunchCode—a free technology education, and in-depth interviews with applicants and instructors to examine if the LaunchCode program leads to economic benefits, who is most likely to experience these benefits… more →
Does Course Structure Increase STEM Employment for Women and Underrepresented Minorities in Technology Training Programs? Evidence from LaunchCode
We examine three coding bootcamps offered by LaunchCode (LC101, Women+, and CodeCamp) to understand if tailored structures within coding bootcamp programs—designed for underrepresented groups in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM)—lead to increased program persistence for women,… more →
High School Career and Technical Education Finance: Impact of State-Level Policy Changes
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceStates are increasingly adopting changes to K-12 funding systems in order to promote and encourage student engagement in secondary-level career and technical education (CTE). Two of the most prevalent reforms include: a) establishing tiered weights for CTE in school funding formulas based on the… more →
Are Community College Students Increasingly Choosing High-Paying Fields of Study? Evidence from Massachusetts
The labor-market payoff to workers with associate degrees in healthcare and STEM occupations is very high in Massachusetts. We examine whether this induced a growing proportion of students in MA community colleges (MACCs) to earn an associate degree (AD) in one of these fields. We do this by… more →
Implementation and Impacts of Career-Focused Advising
Recent policies have expanded the availability of career-focused advising in high schools, including for students pursuing career and technical education (CTE) courses of study who might not have been adequately served by traditional college-focused advising. However, there is limited research… more →
Project Lead the Way: Impacts of a High School Applied STEM Program on Early Post-Secondary Outcomes
Project Lead the Way (PLTW) is an applied STEM program first introduced nearly three decades ago to enhance the STEM content of Career Technical Education (CTE). Currently, more than 12,000 US high schools offer the program. Using data from three cohorts of public high school freshmen in… more →
Pathways into the CTE Teaching Profession: A Descriptive Analysis of Degrees, Licenses, and Race in Maryland
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentDespite substantial interest in Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses in U.S. high schools—and associated scholarship on this topic—very little is known about characteristics of CTE teachers who are a critical resource for program implementation and expansion. Using eight years of… more →