Georgia Policy Labs Reports
Engagement with Career and Technical Education in Tennessee High Schools: Interim Report
Author ORCID Identifier
Celeste K. Carruthers: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5112-3364
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Document Type
Report
Publication Date
4-20-2020
Abstract
Throughout much of the United States, career and technical education (CTE) is offered as one or more elective sequences within comprehensive high schools. We know very little about why students select into CTE in such systems, or more generally, whether the labor market affects students’ choice of coursework in high school. We test whether changes in the local labor market align with and affect course enrollments in three “in-demand” CTE career clusters in Tennessee: advanced manufacturing, information technology, and health science. We find evidence of roughly proportionate alignment between changes in advanced manufacturing CTE course-taking and changes in local manufacturing employment in recent years. Instrumental variable estimates, however, suggest that this is not necessarily due to students responding to local employment dynamics. We do not detect evidence of alignment, causal or otherwise, for health science or information technology CTE.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.57709/30728956
Recommended Citation
Wu, G., & Carruthers, C. (2020). Engagement with Career and Technical Education in Tennessee High Schools: Interim Report. Georgia Policy Labs. https://doi.org/10.57709/30728956