If vocational students were similar to academic students in aptitude and took the same number of advanced courses in core subjects, the achievement gap between academic and vocational students would be no more than 0.1 standard deviations. Thus, an additional 10 percent of the achievement gap is due to the different number of advanced courses taken by academic and vocational students. The remaining 10 percent of the gap is due to other curricular and program factors. Statistical analysis shows that general and vocational programs have roughly the same effects on student achievement. General and vocational students score at nearly identical levels on standardized achievement tests given both at the beginning and at the end of high school.
Regression analyses suggest that program effects are trivial.
If the same students enrolled in general and vocational programs, their test scores would differ by less than 0.1 standard deviation, a trivial amount, at the end of high school. I draw two implications from these regression analyses of test-score data. First, test-score performance would go up slightly if vocational students were to switch to academic programs or if they were to increase their load of advanced courses in basic subject areas. Second, shifting vocational students to general programs would have no effect on test scores. Their performance on standardized tests in core subjects would not go up or down.