Career and technical education (CTE), known as vocational education throughout most of the 20th century, has existed in some form in U.S. public schools since the 1870s (Barlow, 1976). In 1917, Congress passed the Smith-Hughes National Vocational Education Act to “fit [students] for useful employment,” including “farm, trade, and industrial work.” Before to the civil rights movement, the overriding purpose of vocational education was to respond to the “needs of the economy and the political pressures of the times,” including two world wars (Epperson, 2012).
In the 1950s, though, a different purpose emerged. In Bolling v. Sharpe (U.S. Sup. Ct., 1954), the U.S. Supreme Court held that the District of Columbia’s racially segregated public school system violated the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. (This case has long been overshadowed by its more famous companion case, Brown v. Board of Education.)
Two years later, the District of Columbia Public Schools established a “tracking” system to provide different levels of education for students, based on their academic ability. The basic or special academic track, the lowest level, consisted largely of slow-paced, low-skill vocational courses, while the honors track, intended for “gifted” students, consisted of intense and challenging academic courses. A student on the basic/special academic track was not only physically separated from students in other tracks but also locked into a different life trajectory altogether — one suited for “vocational assignments” rather than college or “higher ranking jobs.” The percentage of Black students enrolled in the lowest track was disproportionately high and the percentage of white students disproportionately low.
Superintendent Carl Hansen, who created this tracking system, made the startling admission that this system was a response to desegregation:
[T]o describe the origin of the [tracking] system without reference to desegregation in the District of Columbia Public Schools would be to bypass one of the most significant causes of its being. Desegregation was a precipitant of the [tracking] development in the District’s high schools. (as cited in Hobson v. Hansen, D.D.C., 1967)
In Hobson v. Hansen (D.D.C., 1967), a federal court abolished the district’s tracking system after concluding that it was “designed . . . as a means of protecting the school system against the ill effects of integrating with white children the Negro victims of de jure separate but unequal education.”
Increasing attention to nondiscrimination
Efforts to curb segregation and discrimination in vocational education programs picked up in the years following the civil rights movement. In Adams v. Richardson (D.D.C., 1973), the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) was sued for its failure to enforce civil rights laws in a number of areas, including vocational education. The court ordered HEW to establish an enforcement program to ensure vocational (and other) schools remained in compliance with civil rights laws.
Spurred by the Adams ruling, over the next several years, HEW’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) investigated vocational schools around the country and consistently found evidence of discrimination, segregation, and barriers to access for students based on their race, sex, ability, and English proficiency. OCR’s findings were consistent with studies showing discrimination and segregation in vocational education. For example, one study based on data collected in 1977 revealed that substantive differences both between and within schools’ vocational programs resulted in “marked differences” in the vocational experiences of white and nonwhite secondary students, whereby nonwhite students were enrolled earlier and more extensively than white students in nonacademic, off-campus training programs intended to prepare students for “low-status occupations” (see Oakes, 1983).
In 1979, HEW reported that “many vocational education administrators engage in unlawfully discriminatory practices” and issued legal guidance outlining states’ obligation to eliminate discrimination and denial of services in vocational education on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, and disability status (Office for Civil Rights, 1979). The agency also established a Methods of Administration (MOA) program — which continues to this day — to ensure states provide equal access to high-quality CTE programs.
Congress acted to expand and improve vocational education nationwide by passing the Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act (Perkins Act) in 1984. One of the statute’s core stated purposes is to ensure all students, especially those who are “disadvantaged,” have access to quality vocational education programs.
The government’s commitment to this purpose has waxed and waned. Over the next two decades, and consistent with trends in school accountability overall, the law was amended to increase states’ accountability for academic and post-academic outcomes among “special” student populations in vocational schools. But in a 2004 federal report on the status of vocational education, the U.S. Department of Education, while acknowledging disproportionate representation among student subgroups and lingering “gender differences” in CTE programs, didn’t see fit to include equity or nondiscrimination as a significant goal moving forward (Silverberg et al., 2004).
To enforce equity in CTE programs effectively, government agencies and advocates must improve their understanding of CTE students and offerings, as they exist today.
In 2018, in its latest reauthorization of the Perkins Act (Perkins V), Congress pushed further on the equity front. It required states to report annually on graduation rates, proficiency, placements, and other indicators of program quality and to disaggregate the performance of students by gender, race/ethnicity, ability, English learner status, income, and other categories. And in 2020, the federal government issued new guidance and procedures related to CTE civil rights compliance to reflect these legislative developments (U.S. Department of Education, 2020). That same year, though, it also rescinded guidance issued by the Obama administration addressing gender equity in CTE programs (see OCR, 2016).
Today, according to the Association for Career and Technical Education (2022), most high school, college, and adult students enroll in CTE courses, and there is evidence that CTE students have better high school graduation, postsecondary enrollment, and employment outcomes than non-CTE students (See Shaun Dougherty’s article in this issue of Kappan for an overview of the research.). In recent times, CTE has produced positive outcomes among students from historically marginalized backgrounds (see Ecton & Dougherty, 2021). For these reasons, “broad generalizations about the relationship between CTE and race and ethnicity” may no longer be relevant (see Carruthers et al., 2021).
Still, given the legacy of vocational education as a means of segregation and stratification, we must remain vigilant to avoid replicating the negative effects of vocational education systems of yore (Hodge, Dougherty, & Burris, 2020; Oakes, 2005). Even today, despite the positive trends, barriers to accessing high-quality CTE programs persist (Kim et al., 2021).
Fostering equity in CTE in the future
CTE is an ever-changing field. While traditional vocational education programs remain, many CTE programs now emphasize preparing students for postsecondary education and careers in high-demand, high-wage areas. CTE offerings vary significantly from one state or district to the next, as do the demographics of the CTE student populations (Ecton & Dougherty, 2021). Blatant attempts to segregate marginalized students into low-pay, low-status vocational tracks may no longer be as prevalent. But discrimination still exists in CTE programs. To enforce equity in CTE programs effectively, government agencies and advocates must improve their understanding of CTE students and offerings, as they exist today.
They could start by revisiting what equity in CTE means. Both the research community and legal advocates have developed standards of equity that include measures of adequacy, equal treatment, and equal educational opportunity (see Kim, 2022; Kim et al., 2021; York, Welner, & Kelley, 2023). Applying these standards to CTE would require asking more refined questions:
- How adequate are CTE programs, as measured by their facilities, safe and inclusive school climates, teacher workforce, and the extent to which they prepare students to engage actively in citizenship and succeed in the modern economy?
- How equitable are they, as measured by the number and quality of CTE programs available to different student populations?
- And how much opportunity do they afford CTE students, as measured by their attainment of not only academic or career milestones but also the social-emotional skills they need to navigate life successfully?
As the education and legal communities apply these equity standards to CTE programs in the future, it will be interesting to note what shortcomings they’ll uncover, and what changes they’ll demand, as a matter of practice, policy, or law.
References
Association for Career and Technical Education. (2022). What is career and technical education?
Barlow, M.L. (1976). 200 years of vocational education, 1776-1976: The vocational education age emerges, 1876-1926. American Vocational Journal, 51 (5), 45-58.
Carruthers, C.K., Dougherty, S., Kreisman, D., & Theobald, R. (2021). A multistate study of equity in career and technical education. Georgia Policy Labs.
Dougherty, S.M. (2023). Putting evidence on CTE to work. Phi Delta Kappan, 104 (6), 6-11.
Ecton, W.G. & Dougherty, S.M. (2021). Heterogeneity in high school career and technical education outcomes (Ed Working Paper 21-492). Annenberg Institute at Brown University.
Epperson, L. (2012). Bringing the market to students: School choice and vocational education in the twenty-first century. Notre Dame Law Review, 87 (5), 1861-1890.
Hodge, E., Dougherty, S., & Burris, C. (2020). Tracking and the future of career and technical education: How efforts to connect school and work can avoid the past mistakes of vocational education. National Education Policy Center.
Kim, R. (2022). School accountability: Lessons from the courts. Phi Delta Kappan, 104 (3), 58-60.
Kim, E., Flack, C.B., Parham, K., & Wohlstetter, P. (2021). Equity in secondary career and technical education in the United States: A theoretical framework and systematic literature review. Review of Educational Research.
Oakes, J. (1983). Limiting opportunity: Student race and curricular differences in secondary vocational education. American Journal of Education, 91 (3), 328-355.
Oakes, J. (2005). Keeping track: How schools structure inequality (2nd ed.). Yale University Press.
Office for Civil Rights. (1979, March 21). Guidelines for vocational education programs. U.S. Department of Education.
Office for Civil Rights. (2016). Dear colleague letter on gender equity in career and technical education. U.S. Department of Education.
Silverberg, M., Warner, E., Fong, M., & Goodwin, D. (2004). National assessment of vocational education: Final report to Congress. U.S. Department of Education.
U.S. Department of Education. (2004). National assessment of vocational education: Final Report to Congress.
U.S. Department of Education. (2020, February 6). Updated procedures for preparing the methods of administration (MOA) described in the vocational/career and technical education guidelines.
York, A., Welner, K., & Kelley, L.M. (2023). Schools of opportunity: 10 research-based models of equity in action. Teachers College Press.
This article appears in the March 2023 issue of Kappan, Vol. 104, No. 6, pp. 58-60.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert Kim
Robert Kim is the executive director of the Education Law Center, based in Newark, NJ. His most recent book is Education and the Law, 6th ed.
