The following reports, released by researchers who are part of the CTE Research Network (CTERN), seek to help educators and administrators better understand how the design and implementation of CTE programs affect learner outcomes. ACTE is proud to be one of the Network leads, focused on supporting and disseminating causal research into how CTE impacts students.
Equity Framework for CTE Research: CTERN’s Equity in CTE Workgroup recently released a framework to help researchers infuse an equity approach into CTE research from start to finish. The framework addresses equity at six stages of the research life cycle — project management, research design, measurement and data collection, data analysis, cost and resource equity, and reporting and dissemination — and includes real and hypothetical examples from CTE research.
Incremental Costs in CTE: A recent brief developed by CTERN’s Workgroup on CTE Cost Analysis explores and analyzes the incremental costs of CTE in classrooms across America. The brief aims to be a guide for researchers, evaluators and administrators in documenting the resources needed to provide CTE experiences for students on the secondary and postsecondary levels. It identifies specific resources used in CTE programs that are generally not used in a standard classroom. The authors emphasize the importance of cost analysis as a crucial step in creating an effective system of career exposure and preparation for students as they journey toward further education and employment and in identifying disparities in resources dedicated to different learner groups.
Relatedly, a recent paper authored by CTERN-affiliated researchers for the Annenberg Institute at Brown University looked at cost data in Connecticut and Massachusetts CTE-dedicated high schools and found clear, positive expected returns on investment in Massachusetts and smaller returns in Connecticut.
CTE Concentration Rates at the Start of COVID-19: CTERN-affiliated researchers participated recently in a multi-state analysis of trends in CTE in Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Tennessee and Washington, which sought to look at the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on students concentrating in CTE. The analysis looked at three cohorts of students across all the states — ninth graders in SY 2014-15, ninth graders in SY 2015-16 and ninth graders in SY 2016-17 — as well as SY 2017-18 in Michigan and Montana only. Researchers focused on how the disruptions of the pandemic affected students by gender, race and ethnicity as well as by rural vs. urban populations. The following list includes key findings from the study:
- Across all five states, students who concentrated in CTE were more likely to graduate from high school than those who did not, both before and after the start of the pandemic.
- At the start of the pandemic, no changes in concentration rates occurred across gender, race or ethnicity. Additionally, there were no major changes in concentration rates across clusters except in Montana, which saw large swings one year into the pandemic.
- One year into the pandemic, concentration rates had fallen for students with disabilities in Michigan and Montana.
- Montana and Tennessee witnessed changes in their rural-urban CTE concentration rates one year into the pandemic.
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