ABSTRACT

Vocational Education and Training (or Career and Technical Education, CTE, as is known in the United States) is a viable educational option to increase student engagement, and recent research shows that CTE helps reduce the risk of dropping out among high school students. In the context of changes in the high school curriculum and CTE at the beginning of the 21st century, advocates for secondary career and technical education have argued that CTE provides many benefits to high school participants. The current study was designed to test one claim, that CTE can reduce the likelihood of students leaving high school prematurely.

We analyzed how enrolling in different levels of CTE credit-taking affected students’ risk of dropping out of high school when focusing on specific occupational areas. Our approach departed from the traditional classification where students were considered either vocational or academic. Two types of CTE participation were tested: cumulative credits in CTE and fulfilling the requirements in a CTE occupational program by taking three or more credits. Hazard ratios from our survival analysis showed a decreased risk of dropping high school for students taking three or more CTE credits, regardless of whether those credits were taken in an occupational area or not. We also found that while, overall, gender was not a predictor of dropping out, male students who took three or more credits in an occupational area had a reduced risk of dropping out. Also, a higher 9th-grade GPA reduced the risk of dropping out, but older students would see an increase in their risk of dropping out. This study was conducted using restricted data from the Education Longitudinal Study.

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