Earlier work demonstrates that career and technical education (CTE) can provide long-term financial benefits to participants, yet few have explored potential academic impacts, with none in the era of high-stakes accountability. This paper investigates the causal impact of participating in a specialized high school-based CTE delivery system on high…

Until the late 1990s, "vocational education" in traditional trades such as carpentry, cosmetology, and auto mechanics was often the presumptive high school placement for low-performing students considered ill-suited for college. However, in the past two decades, policymakers and educators have reconsidered what is now referred to as…

The second annual implementation report for the Accelerating Opportunity (AO) initiative in four states finds that: (1) colleges aligned pathways and supports with local needs; (2) students were satisfied with AO; (3) AO instructors grew more adept at team teaching; (4) colleges struggled to recruit adult education students; (5) states and…

In an American economy where the advancement of technology and globalization means that a high school diploma alone is no longer able to provide family-sustaining earnings to many, certificates represent one piece of a multi-pronged solution on the road to a workforce with 60 percent postsecondary attainment. Though certificates currently aren't…

A tuition-free, vocational, English as a second language (ESL) program offered at a large community college suffers from high attrition as well as student dissatisfaction with curriculum. The purpose of this quasi-experimental, longitudinal study was to assess the effectiveness of a specific ESL curriculum supplement as an intervention to…

This book examines the capacity of the career academy--one of the initiatives spawned by the school-to-work movement--to address academic reform in terms of increased education and workplace skills. Qualitative data collected as part of a 7-year local evaluation of career academies and a data set that contains transcript data on a population of…

A longitudinal study examined the college and career transitions of graduates of the Lansing Area Manufacturing Partnership (LAMP) program, which is a school-to-career (STC) program sponsored by the United Auto Workers, General Motors Corporation, and Michigan's Ingham County Intermediate School District. The progress of three cohorts of LAMP…