Career and Technical Education

Eleanor Hearst Blowe,Ted Price

doi:10.1177/2158244012455437

Abstract

The No Child Left Behind legislation was signed into law to ensure children in the United States receive quality education and learn the skills needed to be successful. Career and technical education (CTE) is not mentioned in the legislation, which suggests that more CTE courses may be dropped from high school master schedules, which makes the topic a concern for educational leaders. The purpose of this study was to investigate the academic performance of CTE completers and non-CTE completers in the Commonwealth of Virginia on the standards of learning English reading and mathematics assessments as well as cohort graduation rates. Findings indicate that statistically ( p < .05), CTE completers had higher mathematics and Grade 11 English reading pass rates as well as higher cohort graduation rates than those of non-CTE completers.

Highlights

Today our nation’s schools are faced with the growing and evolving pressures of increasing the academic achievement of students
There are growing concerns among career and technical education (CTE) leaders based on the fact that no program area of CTE is mentioned in the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, and there could be a significant impact on CTE programs in the future (Martin, Fritzsche, & Ball, 2006)
The purpose of this study was to investigate the academic performance of CTE completers and non-CTE completers in the Commonwealth of Virginia on the standards of learning (SOL) English reading and mathematics assessments as well as cohort graduation rates

Summary

Introduction

Today our nation’s schools are faced with the growing and evolving pressures of increasing the academic achievement of students. With the increasing pressures to improve educational programs, states have implemented standards and performance assessments (high-stakes tests) to measure student achievement, including increased graduation requirements. As CTE establishes and maintains itself as a viable component of the comprehensive school program, there is a need to determine how students who have completed a CTE concentration of sequenced courses perform on the state-mandated high-stakes Virginia standards of learning (SOL) tests. CTE courses will continue to lose enrollment and be removed from high school course offerings unless educational leaders can clearly demonstrate how these programs (a) contribute to the academic success of students as measured by state academic tests and (b) serve as motivation for students to stay in school and perform better in academic courses (Daggett, 2009). After development of the crosswalks, VDOE made this information available on the state’s CTE state website with the student competency task for each of the courses offered in Virginia (Virginia’s CTE Resource Center, 2009)

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Conclusion