# ►►►►►Earning, Learning, and Choice

## *Career and Technical Education* 

## *Works for Students and Employers*

> *Report of the*
>
> *NAVE Independent Advisory Panel*

### June 2004

> ►►►*National Assessment of*
>
> *Vocational Education*

June 2004

To obtain copies of this report,

**write to:** Paul Cole, c/o New York State AFL-CIO, 100 S. Swan Street,
Albany, NY 12210-1939;

or **fax** your request to: 518-436-8470;

or **e-mail** your request to: Paulfcole@aol.com

or **call** 518-436-8516

This report is also available on the U.S. Department of Education's
National Assessment of Vocational Education Web site at:
<http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/sectech/nave/index.html>

# Preface

This report of the NAVE Independent Advisory Panel fulfills an important
obligation under the 1998 Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical
Education Act (Perkins III). Perkins III directed the Secretary of
Education to complete an "independent evaluation and assessment of
vocational and technical education programs under this Act" (Section
114(c)(3)). The law also directed the Secretary to appoint an
Independent Advisory Panel to provide advice on conducting this National
Assessment of Vocational Education (NAVE). Such a panel was selected in
mid-1999 and included employers, secondary school and district
administrators, representatives of postsecondary institutions, state
directors of vocational education at both the secondary and
postsecondary levels, union representatives, education and workforce
development policy experts, and researchers with experience in relevant
fields.

The panel met on seven occasions to (1) identify the key policy and
research questions NAVE was to address, (2) review the analytic
framework and study designs, and (3) receive and help interpret results
from NAVE analyses, including those described in the NAVE final report
already transmitted to Congress. Perkins III required the panel to
submit to Congress and the Secretary of Education its own independent
analysis of NAVE findings and recommendations. This report contains that
independent analysis, and the judgments expressed in it are solely those
of the panel and do not represent the views of the NAVE authors or the
U.S. Department of Education.

# Independent Advisory Panel

Karl A. Anderson

Workforce Development Team Leader

Saturn Corporation

June S. Atkinson

Director of Instructional Services

North Carolina Department of Public Instruction

John H. Bishop

Professor of Human Resource Studies

Cornell University

Gene Bottoms

Senior Vice President

Southern Regional Education Board

Betsy Brand

Co-Director

American Youth Policy Forum

Paul F. Cole\*

Secretary-Treasurer

New York State AFL-CIO

Jay Cummings

Dean of the College of Education

Texas Southern University

Philip R. Day, Jr.

Chancellor

City College of San Francisco

James H. Folkening

Director of the Office of Postsecondary Services

Michigan Department of Career Development

Stephen F. Hamilton

Professor of Human Development

Cornell University

James Jacobs

Director, Center for Workforce Development and Policy

Macomb Community College

Jack Jennings

Director

Center on Education Policy

Dale Kalkofen

Assistant Superintendent of Instruction

Chesterfield County Public Schools

Christopher T. King

Director of the Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources

University of Texas at Austin

Joanna Kister

State Director of Career-Technical and Adult Education (Retired)

Ohio Department of Education

Russ McCampbell\*

Assistant Commissioner for Vocational and Adult Education (Retired)

Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

Mark D. Milliron

President

League for Innovation in the Community College

Naomi Nightingale\*

Principal

Nightingale & Associates

Katharine M. Oliver

Assistant State Superintendent

Maryland State Department of Education

Robert A. Runkle

Administrative Director

Berks Career & Technology Center

Ellen O'Brien Saunders

Executive Director

Washington State Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board

# Earning, Learning, and Choice

## *Career and Technical Education Works for Students and Employers*

Twenty years ago, *A Nation at Risk* called upon schools to turn back
the rising tide of educational mediocrity threatening American
competitiveness and living standards. Arguing that access to well-paying
jobs increasingly would depend on strong academic and technical skills,
the report recommended that all teachers expect more of their students
and that **all** high school students take the New Basics curriculum of
at least four credits in English, three credits each in mathematics,
science, and social studies, and a half credit in computer science.
Responding to the report, many states increased academic course
graduation requirements and introduced a minimum competency test
requirement for receiving the high school diploma.

Career and technical education, which was also subject to criticism for
not providing sufficient academic fundamentals, had to respond as well.
The Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Act of 1990 focused on
integrating academic and vocational proficiencies, and the 1998 Perkins
Act made rigorous academic standards and accountability additional
priorities for career and technical education.

Career and technical education (CTE), a formal part of American
education since the first federal vocational education law was passed in
1917, has changed not only in response to the education reform movement
but also to changes in our nation's economy. CTE now is increasingly
linked to high academic standards as well as particularly responsive to
our nation's need for a labor force better prepared with the diverse
skills required for our knowledge-based economy. In addition to
significantly enhancing students' earnings, CTE expands their
opportunities for learning, careers, and further education.

These are the key messages we wish to convey as the congressionally
mandated Independent Advisory Panel to the National Assessment of
Vocational Education (NAVE). Our 22-member panel includes state and
local career and technical education leaders at the secondary and
postsecondary levels, business and labor leaders, academics, and
workforce development professionals. The panel was charged by the 1998
Carl D. Perkins legislation with providing independent advice to the
secretary of education on implementing NAVE and reporting to the
Congress on " . . . the issues addressed, the methodology of the studies
involved, and the findings and recommendations resulting" from it
\[Section 114 (c)(2)\]. The panel has met seven times since it was
selected in 1999 and has drawn on the findings of NAVE, as well as other
research and its members' own experience and expertise, in articulating
the ideas and recommendations presented in this paper.

We are united around three large and important conclusions: First, CTE
"works" by increasing earnings for students. Second, the changes that
have been initiated under the Perkins Act are aligning CTE with the
school reform movement and raising academic standards for CTE students.
And third, CTE provides students with choices for how to learn and which
careers and postsecondary education options to pursue.

## CTE Increases Earnings

High school career and technical education helps students develop
technical skills that are highly valued by employers. The most
significant effect of secondary school CTE is the boost in earnings and
wages that students get from even a handful of courses. Analysis of
nationally representative data for NAVE found that taking four high
school CTE courses increases a student's average earnings by \$1,200
immediately after graduation and by \$1,800 seven years later. Because
the instructional cost of a high school CTE program is less than
\$6,000, this amounts to a rate of return of more than 20 percent per
year.[^1] Rates of return on the investment in CTE are equally high when
students take only two or three courses. Millions of high school
students who take several career and technical courses reap this short-
and medium-term benefit. In addition, given the fact that 37 percent of
America's three million annual high school graduates go directly to work
after receiving their diplomas, it is critical that they be prepared for
the labor market.

Since most students work to put themselves through college, the skills
learned in CTE courses can help them pay for their higher education.
This is one reason why more than 50 percent of those who complete a CTE
concentration in high school are able to attend college and persist long
enough to obtain at least a two-year degree or certificate. In addition,
because CTE is more likely to benefit those students who are less well
served by strictly academic classes, these students are more likely to
stay in school learning productive skills than to drop out and
potentially burden the welfare or criminal justice systems.

Economic benefits also accrue to the millions of students who
participate in career and technical education at the postsecondary
level. NAVE reports that for each year of postsecondary vocational
education, participants earn between 5 and 15 percent more than high
school graduates with similar characteristics. Earnings for women who
receive an associate degree in a CTE field are on average 47 percent
higher than those for females with only a high school diploma, whereas
CTE associate degrees for men raise average earnings by 30 percent over
similar high school graduates. These earnings gains for women help to
close the gender gap in earnings. They are particularly impressive given
the fact that more than one-fifth of these students are from
economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Thus, at both the secondary and postsecondary levels, CTE plays an
important role in advancing economic opportunity and social equity. In
contrast to the mixed results of many other initiatives intended to
improve earnings and well-being among disadvantaged populations in the
United States---including short-term adult training programs---CTE
stands virtually alone in having an unambiguously positive economic
effect.

## CTE Improves Learning

Learning among CTE students has undergone a major transformation during
the last two decades: Students have demonstrated significant increases
in academic course taking, test score results, and college
matriculation. Prompted by congressional direction, the CTE system has
responded.

Indeed, CTE students have been closing the gap with academic students.
CTE programs have led the way toward increasing the number and rigor of
academic courses required. As a result, the number of academic courses
taken by occupational concentrators increased by nearly 30 percent from
1982 to 1998 without a corresponding decline in the number of CTE
courses taken. During the same period, the number of CTE students
completing the New Basics curriculum has risen from 5 percent to 46
percent. Today, 26 percent of CTE concentrators take trigonometry,
pre-calculus, and other advanced math courses, compared to 42 percent of
other students. The proportion of U.S. students successfully completing
both college prep and vocational concentrations in high school has risen
from 1 percent in 1982 to 7 percent in 1998.

The types of CTE courses that students are taking are also changing in
response to employers' growing knowledge and skill demands. Since 1982,
enrollments in traditional fields such as auto mechanics have been
declining, while health-care courses have more than tripled their
enrollment, and communications and information technology have nearly
quintupled their enrollment. Rather than a low road to a high school
diploma, CTE is now a rigorous and rewarding means of acquiring the
academic and technical learning that meets the high standards required
for both productive employment and further education.

This greater emphasis on academics has produced quantifiable results.
The test score gap between CTE concentrators and other students is
closing. For example, reading scores of CTE concentrators rose by nearly
a grade equivalent on the National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP) scale[^2] between 1994 and 1998, according to NAVE.

CTE keeps students engaged in learning, as data show that the option of
taking CTE courses reduces the probability of dropping out of high
school. Without this option, more young people would be left behind.

Another sign of the increased academic proficiency of CTE students is
the fact that college attendance among CTE students increased by 32
percent between 1982 and 1992, keeping pace with increases in
postsecondary attendance among all students. Nearly half of vocational
concentrators go on to college, compared to 64 percent of college prep
students. The articulation agreements linking high schools and community
colleges that were encouraged by tech prep and other initiatives have
made CTE a bridge between secondary and postsecondary education. In
fact, high school CTE programs increasingly serve as a pipeline to
community colleges.

In short, CTE students have opted for more academic rigor in their
studies and have remained engaged in their learning.

## CTE Provides Choices

Career and technical education empowers students by providing a range of
learning opportunities that serve different learning styles. CTE relies
on a powerful mode of teaching and learning that cognitive scientists
call "contextual" or "situated" learning, both in classrooms and in
workplaces. For many students, applying academic and technical skills to
real-world activities, using computers and other tools, and being able
to see how their learning is related to the world of work make CTE
classes more interesting and motivating, and more educationally
powerful, than standard academic classes. A career focus often gives
students a sense of direction and motivates them to achieve and to stay
in school. Practically inclined students can become hooked on academic
learning through CTE study. This is especially important for young
people who learn best by doing, a group that includes disproportionate
numbers of disadvantaged and special education students. Just having the
option of being able to concentrate in CTE in high school results in
more young people staying in school because more individually relevant
choices are available to them.

Academically inclined students taking CTE courses also benefit from
getting different kinds of learning experiences that can complement
their academic learning to give them a richer, more rounded education
and help them identify and refine their education and career goals.

Most European countries offer a very broad range of CTE programs that
attract a majority of upper secondary school students. Because of the
greater number of CTE options offered there, secondary school graduation
rates and proportions of 15- to 19-year-olds attending school or college
are higher in Europe than in the United States.

CTE also allows students to explore career options and clarify career
goals. CTE promotes learning in workplaces through internships, job
shadowing, cooperative education, and apprenticeships. More students now
gain some work experience as part of their high school program---31.6
percent in 1998 compared to 28.3 percent in 1990, NAVE reports. High
school seniors describe CTE classes and related work experience as very
helpful to them in clarifying their career goals.

At both the secondary and postsecondary levels, CTE courses enable
students to develop marketable skills that meet industry-recognized
skill standards. As a result, students can earn credentials or
certificates that are valuable for career placement and advancement.
Youths and adults gain occupational skills through secondary and
postsecondary education more efficiently and without the stigma often
attached to remedial employment training programs. As a result, high
school CTE has a much higher rate of return than second-chance programs
such as Jobs Corps.

In short, CTE prepares students for a variety of postsecondary options,
including higher education, skilled employment, and lifelong learning.
For the 1.25 million high school graduates who go directly to work after
graduating each year, and for many of those who have not yet completed
high school, CTE provides skills that are critical in first jobs. And
for the millions who do not attain a four-year college degree, an
associate degree provides a recognized credential for countless career
options.

## Recommendations

While today's career and technical education is clearly providing
meaningful benefits to millions of American students, it can be improved
so that our education system successfully prepares our young people for
rewarding careers and helps our nation's workforce be the best trained
and most productive in the world.

Approved, high-quality programs of study should become a central feature
of future CTE legislation at the federal level.

What would such programs look like? A CTE program of study is a
multi-year sequence of courses that integrates core academic knowledge
with technical and occupational knowledge leading to higher levels of
skill attainment and whose curriculum is organized around a unifying
career theme. Such a program of study provides students with a pathway
to postsecondary education and a career by detailing academic and
occupational competencies needed for advancement and by providing a
series of related courses. Programs of study must provide articulated
pathways between the high school and postsecondary curricula and help
students move efficiently into college and careers.[^3]

Programs of study can take several forms. They resemble or are found in
career clusters, career academies, tech prep programs, small learning
communities, and small schools. Secondary students in CTE programs of
study take a core academic curriculum that is strong in literacy
development, numeracy, and science, together with a concentration of
electives in a broad career area.

In addition, career-themed programs of study must provide comprehensive
career exploration and counseling. Partnerships with employers and the
community are needed to help provide information about careers and the
workplace to students and their parents, to expand the roles of mentors
or advisers, and to help relieve the burden on school counselors.

The federal government is well positioned to support the development of
programs of study by creating, evaluating, and disseminating effective
practices. It should continue to play a leadership role by funding
strategically designed programs and sharing information on best
practices, thus promoting the continuous improvement of CTE in our
schools and colleges. The federal government should invest in research
to determine how young people best learn skills and acquire knowledge.
This will have significant payoff for our nation in the years ahead.

Continuous improvement and greater accountability for outcomes, in line
with the school reform movement and the No Child Left Behind Act,
require rigorous research, with targeted evaluations, technical skills
assessments, and better tracking of employment and earnings outcomes.

Rigor cannot be assured when there is limited accountability for CTE
program outcomes. As NAVE indicates, there is considerable inconsistency
of measurement across and within states, and measurements often are not
tied to outcomes of interest. Overarching assessments such as NAVE are
important to get a national picture, but CTE has suffered from a dearth
of research that evaluates local promising practices aimed at the
broader goal of developing well-educated, highly trained citizens and
workers.

We need to bring a meaningful and consistent standards and assessment
strategy to career and technical education. Outcomes---such as college
matriculation and completion rates, skills attainment, attainment of
industry-recognized credentials, employment, and earnings---need to be
better measured, and schools need to be held accountable for these
outcomes. Student achievement would benefit from investments in
assessment systems that take into account more than just academic
skills, for example, skills that will be important for young people's
future employability. In addition, given current problems in measuring
and comparing outcomes across and within states, the federal government
should support states in developing meaningful data collection systems
for career and technical education that are coordinated with the
accountability systems required by No Child Left Behind. One way to do
this would be to develop means by which income gains can be measured and
linked to specific degrees earned.

Consistent with this, the federal government needs to step up its
support for programs and activities that explicitly, and successfully,
integrate academic and career and technical education. Since there is
basic agreement that young people need both good academic skills and
higher-order career competencies, federal dollars should go to CTE
programs that emphasize these academic connections, evaluations that
measure this learning, and efforts to replicate programs that succeed.
While federal policy and funding for CTE clearly must be aligned with No
Child Left Behind and broader efforts to improve student achievement,
these funds should focus on the goals of continuing to prepare students
for careers and lifelong learning, but with a greater academic focus.
One of the goals should be to prepare students to succeed in
postsecondary education even if they do not choose to enter
postsecondary education right after high school or if they choose to
pursue education and work at the same time.

To further enhance academic achievement among CTE students, in addition
to supporting changes in the CTE curriculum, the federal government
needs to support improved CTE teacher preparation and development.
Despite some promising changes, a profound pedagogical disconnect exists
between most academic and CTE teachers, with few interested or able to
venture onto the instructional turf of the other. Many CTE teachers lack
the mathematics and other academic knowledge to be able to integrate
these subjects into their curricula, and they have few opportunities for
professional development in which to gain these skills, as NAVE reports.

Because teachers are such a vital part of the learning process, federal
funding and policy should foster the improvement of CTE teachers'
academic skills. CTE teacher training in math, science, English, and
other subjects, as well as the integration of academic teachers into
contextual CTE foundation skills programs, would go a long way to
enhance the academic rigor of career and technical education.
Professional development should ensure depth of content knowledge;
provide a strong foundation in pedagogy; be rooted in best available
practices; contribute to measurable improvement in student achievement;
provide sufficient time, support, and resources to enable teachers to
master new content and pedagogy, and integrate these into their
practice; and provide opportunities for CTE and academic teachers to
plan jointly.

The federal role should be to support state and local CTE leaders as
they develop, institute, and promote the improvements called for in this
paper and in the NAVE report itself. Because previous NAVE reports and
other research have demonstrated the importance of effective state
leadership in promoting curriculum integration, secondary-postsecondary
articulation, and other Perkins reforms, states should have considerable
latitude in designing systems and initiatives that meet the
legislation's goals. Thus, the federal government should reinforce and
support the states' role in reforming CTE, as long as states are held
accountable for making these reforms.

The federal government can also help CTE programs improve their
connections to employers through support of industry-endorsed skill
standards and assessments and by providing better, more updated labor
market demand data.

In addition, because students consistently report that college and
career planning activities in high school are helpful, the federal
government should support efforts to improve career guidance and
counseling services.

Clearly, if we want at least 14 years of education to be the norm in
America, we must do much more to make the transition from high school to
college more seamless to enable more of the two-thirds of young adults
who do not receive a bachelor's degree to earn a postsecondary degree.
Limited federal funds for postsecondary career and technical education
need to be targeted to efforts that get secondary and postsecondary CTE
programs to work together so that career and technical students can
follow more clearly delineated pathways from high school to community
college. In well-coordinated programs, community colleges can enhance
the quality of vocational learning at the secondary level. The federal
investment also should be used to improve career information and
linkages to employers for secondary school students. In a new version of
the federal law, well-marked pathways through various educational levels
and into the labor market should be a main feature of all state plans.

## Conclusion

By promoting a new, more rigorous vision for career and technical
education, the federal government can have a profound influence on how
state and local funds are spent and how millions of students are
educated.

The federal government is involved in career and technical education to
enhance the well-being of the American people. Our nation needs, and
will continue to need, highly skilled workers with strong academic,
occupational, and technical skills. Although the federal government,
through the Perkins Act, provides only a small fraction of the total
resources devoted to CTE in the United States, its investment is
strategic and essential.

Federal support for CTE signals the priorities that national
policy-makers want for career and technical education. Legislation can
specify that funded programs should not only develop students'
occupational skills to meet challenging standards but also contribute to
students' academic improvement. In addition, federal legislation can
direct secondary school CTE programs to encourage students to pursue
postsecondary education or training and can focus on increasing
disadvantaged students' access to high-quality CTE programs.

The federal government is also able to distance itself from state and
local policies that inhibit reform and to help promote equal access by
providing funding targeted to low-income communities. National leaders
can play a vital role in coordinating policies and funding among the
many federal initiatives designed to improve our people's skills and
well-being---ranging from the No Child Left Behind Act and the Higher
Education Act to the Workforce Investment Act and Temporary Assistance
to Needy Families. Federal funding is also important for ensuring a
focus on results because accountability requirements mean that federally
funded CTE programs must demonstrate continuous improvement if they are
to continue to receive federal support.

If we truly want to leave no child behind academically or economically,
we need to combine our humanistic values with an awareness of
educational and labor force realities and a recognition that
one-size-does-not-fit-all. We need young people who are able to gain the
very best academic skills. While 65 to 70 percent of American youths do
not go on to receive four-year degrees, and a commensurate number of
jobs do not require such degrees, we do not do as well in ensuring that
our millions of students are literate, numerate, civic-minded, and
prepared for careers after 12 or 14 years of education. Finally, the
hundreds of thousands of young people who do not graduate from high
school or are at risk of dropping out are at risk of being excluded from
the American Dream unless we concentrate our efforts to engage them in
their education. As we look ahead to new federal CTE legislation, it is
this vision of a reformed career and technical education that we hold
up. It is one in which academic rigor and real-world relevance,
buttressed by strong accountability, combine to provide expanded
opportunity for millions of young Americans.

[^1]: Rates of return describe the annual payoff, usually over a number
    of years, of an investment or one-time cost. Because they compare
    benefits to costs, rates of return characterize the payoff of CTE in
    a way that is independent of how many courses a student takes.

[^2]: National Assessment of Educational Progress, the test that is
    popularly known as "the Nation's Report Card."

[^3]: See Brand, Betsy, "Rigor and Relevance: A New Vision for Career
    and Technical Education" (American Youth Policy Forum, 2003).