Who is the modern CTE student? A descriptive portrait of career and technical education students in Texas

Vocational education was once synonymous with tracking—the systematic funneling of low-income, underrepresented minority, limited English proficient, and low-achieving students into technical pathways with limited educational and economic benefit. But more recent research has found that students who concentrate in career and technical education (CTE) may actually be more likely to go to college than otherwise equivalent students who do not. Have CTE programs become more rigorous, or has the population of students who concentrate in CTE evolved? Who is the modern CTE student? To address this question, this report uses statewide administrative data housed in Texas’ Educational Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. The data repository contains detailed information on students’ demographic and academic backgrounds, including transcript data of every course they completed in high school.