Is Career and Technical Education Just Enjoying Its 15 Minutes of Fame?

Over the past couple years, career and technical education has garnered a lot of attention. Politico reported that 49 states and Washington, DC, enacted 241 career and technical education–related laws, executive actions, and budget provisions in 2017.1 The National Governors Association has tagged career and technical education as one of its 12 priorities, and Jobs for the Future has observed that career and technical education “has become the ‘next best thing’ in high school reform.” This report examines the media attention devoted to career and technical education over the past two decades—and how that compares to the attention devoted to other popular 21st-century education reforms.