Florida High School Students' Participation in Career and Technical Education and Expected Economic Returns: The Case of Broward County Public Schools

• Other Authors: Wang, Aihua (author)
• Format: Others
• Language: English; English
• Published: Florida State University
• Subjects: Education and state; Educational evaluation; Educational sociology
• Online Access: http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/2019_Fall_Wang_fsu_0071E_15555

Career and technical education (CTE) has been a contested area with mixed study results and conflicting theories. Adding to the controversy is the fact that various types of CTE programs are implemented in diverse ways, which creates challenges for researchers to conduct empirical studies and program evaluations about CTE policies and programs on a large scale. In order to contribute to the current understanding of CTE, this study focuses on students’ participation in career education in one of the largest school districts in Florida. It examines the quantity and the types of CTE courses that students take. It also explores potential factors that can possibly influence students’ CTE course-taking pattern and their concentration on career clusters with different expected economic returns. Results from descriptive statistics and regression analysis indicate that students take increasingly smaller proportion of high school credits in CTE courses, but more and more students take significant amount of CTE credits from one career cluster as CTE concentrators. Disadvantaged students are less likely to be CTE concentrators, but if they do, they all tend to concentrate on occupations with better payment than their counterparts. More studies are needed that track students into labor market and examine how different CTE course-taking can potentially lead to different employment opportunities and incomes. === A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. === 2019 === November 12, 2019. === Career and Technical Education, Career Clusters, CTE Course-taking === Includes bibliographical references. === Patrice Iatarola, Professor Directing Dissertation; Anastasia Semykina, University Representative; Jeffrey Milligan, Committee Member; Stacey Rutledge, Committee Member.