Research

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. comprehensive high schools on student participation and postsecondary outcomes. Using administrative data from Massachusetts, we leverage variation from the staggered rollout of high-quality CTE program offerings across high schools and examine overall effects as well as heterogeneity by student and program characteristics. Our findings show that access to a new CTE program induces 11.5 percent of prior non-participants to take-up the program. CTE exposure increases the number of quarters with earnings by 2 percent, with larger effects for students with disabilities and Black or Hispanic students. Conditional on employment, exposure increases earnings one year after high school graduation, particularly among male students, but these gains fade from age 23 onward. We also find suggestive evidence that exposure to Education programs for female students and IT programs for Black or Hispanic students increase four-year college enrollment and completion by 5 percent.

Catholic schools have seen more than a 30 percent decline in enrollment over the past 20 years. While some of the decline in enrollment may have been spurred by secular trends or the clergy sex-abuse scandal, the increase in free schools of choice, principally public charter schools, may explain at least some of this decline. In this paper we estimate the effect of the opening of charter schools in proximity to Catholic schools across the entire U.S. We find that the opening of a nearby charter school has a negative impact on Catholic school enrollment and increases the likelihood that the school will close. We also find that charter openings induce greater racial isolation. Findings are especially pronounced in K8 schools, rather than high schools.

Connecticut expanded interdistrict magnet schools (IMS) intending to reduce racial and socioeconomic segregation across districts, yet the potential unintended effects on student composition in nearby schools remains unclear. Leveraging the staggered rollout of IMS openings, this study finds that IMS openings reduce enrollment by about 5 percent in nearby private K8 and traditional public high schools (TPHS). In private K8, the share of White students declines, increasing racial isolation of Black and Hispanic students, with effects driven by Catholic schools. In TPHS, higher-income students are more likely to exit, with larger effects in a region under court-ordered desegregation. These findings suggest that policies designed to reduce segregation may unintentionally generate new forms of isolation within local education markets.

In many states, including Massachusetts, demand for high-quality Career and Technical Education (CTE) has grown faster than program supply, raising concerns about equitable access. Using fifteen cohorts of administrative data, this brief examines how participation and concentration in high-quality CTE have changed across students’ demographic groups. Overall participation has increased, but gains were unbalanced: female, White, and Black/African American students have become more represented, while Hispanic/Latino students and English language learners (ELL) have not. Hispanic/Latino underrepresentation appears tied to high school access and choice, whereas ELL disparities persist even when comparing students within the same schools and towns.

In this report, we draw on a decade of administrative data from four states (school years 2013-14 to 2023-24) to produce the first multi-state portrait of CTE teacher attrition during the COVID-19 era. Specifically, we document annual attrition for CTE teachers and their non-CTE peers, compare patterns across three distinct COVID-19 phases, and identify the states where losses were most acute. This analysis lays the foundation for our future research on this topic, which will examine which career clusters were hardest hit and what state, district, and labor market factors predict higher attrition.

Ensuring that lower-achieving students remain engaged in school and connected to the labor market is critical for both individual mobility and broader social equality. With its recent expansion across comprehensive high schools, Career and Technical Education (CTE) has strengthened as a potential pathway to support these students. Leveraging the Massachusetts high school graduation exam threshold, I show that barely receiving a lower performance signal on required state test scores induces students to pursue CTE in later grades, particularly in high-quality programs. Using a Difference-in-Discontinuities design that compares the impact of this signal on postsecondary outcomes between students with and without access to CTE, I also find that access at this academic margin raises on-time graduation by 2 percent and four-year college enrollment by 6 percent, mitigating the negative effects of the low signal in 10th grade. Impacts are especially pronounced among Black or Hispanic students, with those who enter the workforce after graduation experiencing a 12 percent increase in earnings in the first year. These findings highlight how performance signals shape students’ educational pathways and underscore the value of expanding CTE access in comprehensive schools for students at risk of falling behind.