Putting Career and Technical Education to Work for Students. A Playbook for State Policymakers

Overview & Synopsis

Once dubbed Vocational Education, Career and Technical Education (CTE) celebrated its centennial anniversary in 2017. The federal Smith-Hughes National Vocational Education Act signed in 1917 marked the first nationwide investment in career training at the secondary level. That initial investment has continued through the Vocational Education Act, authorized in 1963 (since renamed the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act) and reauthorized most recently in 2006. In 2017, the federal investment in CTE topped $1.4 billion (for secondary and postsecondary). Currently, CTE programs represent the primary provider and funding source for workforce preparation in high schools across the nation. The first part of this report focuses on the "why" of CTE reform. The second part seeks to provide policymakers with clear guidance about "how" to accomplish it. It provides a series of practical, if not easy, measures that states can undertake to improve both the alignment and quality of existing CTE programs. They assume only existing funding, in many cases, and they are borne of real-world efforts taking place in leading states like Tennessee, Delaware and Florida.