Postsecondary and Labor Force Transitions among Public High School Career and Technical Education Participants. Issue Tables. NCES 2011-234
Author: Bersudskaya, Vera
Date: 2011-01-00
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: Vocational Education,Secondary Education,Skilled Workers,Employment Opportunities,Labor Market,Tables (Data),Graduation,High School Graduates,Postsecondary Education,Education Work Relationship,Occupations,Consumer Science,Job Skills,Job Training,Credits

Career and technical education (CTE) is a significant component of high school education. For the last several decades, more than 90 percent of public high school graduates have earned at least some credits in CTE, with graduates from the class of 2005 earning an average of 4.0 CTE credits (Hudson and Laird 2009; Levesque 2003; Levesque et al. 2008; Tuma 1996). As demand for a high-skill workforce has increased, reforms have focused on changing high school CTE from an alternative to the college preparatory curriculum to an educational pathway for all students that connects high schools, colleges, and the workforce (Kazis 2005; Lekes et al. 2007; Silverberg et al. 2004). This set of Issue Tables provides information on the transition of CTE participants into postsecondary education and the labor market during the first 2 years after their high school graduation. In these tables, CTE participants are identified based on the courses they took in high school. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) classifies the courses listed in high school transcripts into various subject areas (mathematics, science, social studies, and so on) using the Secondary School Taxonomy (SST) (Bradby and Hudson 2007). The SST divides CTE into three major categories--family and consumer sciences education, general labor market preparation, and occupational education, with occupational education further divided into 21 specific occupational areas (business management, marketing, manufacturing, and so on). To ensure adequate samples for the analysis presented here, the 21 occupational program areas in the SST are aggregated into the following 12 broad areas: (1) agriculture and natural resources; (2) business; (3) communications and design; (4) computer and information sciences; (5) construction and architecture; (6) consumer and culinary services; (7) engineering technologies; (8) health sciences; (9) manufacturing; (10) marketing; (11) public services; and (12) repair and transportation. The Issue Tables focus on occupational coursetaking because this is the part of the CTE curriculum that provides students with the technical skills necessary for entering the labor market, and it is also the largest of the three CTE curricular areas. The tables include information on graduates who earned different numbers of occupational credits, and on occupational concentrators. Occupational concentrators are defined in two ways: students who earned at least 2.0 credits in any one of the 12 occupational areas listed above, and students who earned at least 3.0 credits in any one of the 12 occupational areas. Table 1 presents the percentage of students from the class of 2004 who concentrated in occupational education during high school and who earned different numbers of occupational credits. Table 2 displays data on the transition of CTE students into postsecondary education and the labor force within 2 years after high school graduation. Tables 3 through 6 provide information about students who enrolled in postsecondary education, with a focus on their enrollment characteristics, persistence, and undergraduate major. Tables 7 through 10 present data on CTE students' employment, including their labor force status, average hourly wage, and occupation. Table 11 shows the percentage of CTE concentrators who were pursuing a major or an occupation related to their high school CTE concentration area. A glossary is included. (Contains 13 tables, 1 exhibit, and 4 endnotes.)