The federal Department of Education has released national and state-level enrollment information, including disaggregated information as available, for CTE students during the 2019-20 school year. The data is now available through a set of 2020 State Profiles available on the Perkins Collaborative Resource Network. The updated profiles also include nationwide data on the FY 2020 Perkins funding distribution. The resource also continues to provide individual state summaries of Perkins funding distribution, enrollment information, and state determined performance levels for core Perkins V indicators.
From the findings, the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE) highlighted several key national trends:
- In 2019-20 there were 11.1 million CTE participants; 7.6 million at the secondary level and 3.5 million at the postsecondary level.
- There were 3 million secondary and 1.9 million postsecondary career and technical education concentrators nationwide.
- The top four career clusters among secondary CTE concentrators were Business Management & Administration, Health Science, Arts, A/V Technology and Communications, and Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources.
- The top four career clusters among postsecondary CTE concentrators were Health Science, Business Management and Administration, Law, Public Safety, Corrections and Security, and Information Technology.
Notably, compared to the 2018-19 school year, nationwide secondary CTE participation decreased from 8.9 million to 7.6 million in 2019-20. Postsecondary CTE participation remained the same from the previous year at 3.5 million. It is unclear whether the COVID-19 pandemic had any impact on the enrollment numbers reported for this school year, which was almost complete when the pandemic began.
OCTAE is still in the process of updating the Perkins State Plans and Data Explorer, a resource that generates customized reports for enrollment and performance data, and has indicated that it will be released soon.
Comments