There is a long-recognized connection between what you learn in school and what your lifelong opportunities are in the workforce. Giving students the chance to build foundational technical skills in specific industries alongside their learning in core subjects like English and math has been a valuable educational option for millions of students spanning generations here in the United States. Whether focused on healthcare, technology, engineering, or other trades, “vocational” or “career technical” education has helped students build practical, hands-on skills and earn industry certifications that are immediately recognized and prized in the modern job market.
The Evolution and Impact of Career Technical Education
Career technical education (CTE) helps students learn concepts and skills using real-world industry scenarios where learning happens predominantly through projects, collaborative work, and various hands-on activities. Research on the benefits of CTE over the years shows that it positively impacts students’ rates of high school graduation, academic engagement, coursework selection, and future earnings potential. However, CTE has a bit of a nuanced history, as early efforts took a deeply flawed approach to an otherwise compelling idea.
Recognizing the public interest in boosting productivity and employment, the United States government first allocated federal funding for states’ vocational skills programs in 1917 through the Smith-Hughes Act. The funding focused on educational programs in agriculture, home economics, as well as trade and industries. But when first introduced, vocational education was structured as a distinct pathway separate from general education. As the programs grew and evolved over the century, the public began to sound the alarm on credible evidence of racism and class bias, seeing how students from particular socio-economic backgrounds and lower academic performance levels were pushed away from college and toward this differentiated track. Concerns emerged that vocational education was intentionally excluding certain groups of students from the benefits of the college-preparatory, general education track offering more defined pathways to innovative and higher-paying careers.
Thankfully, the public education system adjusted, and in 2006 the term “vocational education” was rebranded as “career and technical education” through the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act. In the years since, modern CTE efforts have been deliberately focused on expanding future opportunities for all students, not narrowing them based on a student’s race, class, or presumed inability to meet high academic expectations. Today, after many studies that prove its benefits, CTE is widely regarded as a necessary and promising option for everyone, not just those who historically would have been written off as kids who simply “wouldn’t cut it” in college. Students from all walks of life benefit from having a variety of pathway options, mentorships and apprenticeships, and workplace-transferable skills as parts of their toolkit for adulthood—in fact, studies have shown that students who participate in real-world connected CTE are more likely to graduate from high school and become college-ready than similarly situated peers who do not participate in CTE programming.
Here at EnCorps, where our mission is to advocate for STEM educational equity for students who are traditionally under-represented in the sector, we couldn’t be more excited by the changes we have observed in CTE and what this progress means for the future of our nation’s classrooms, industries, and goals to advance STEM equity for all.