| 摘要 | Key Points
This report examines how much media attention toward career and technical education has grown and how that compares to other prominent 21st-century education reforms over the past two decades.
Since 1998, the number of articles mentioning career and technical education has increased more than a hundredfold. Since 2012, media mentions have doubled.
This heightened interest in career and technical education is part of a larger trend entailing increased attention to skills training. For example, media mentions of workforce development increased by a factor of 13 in the past two decades.
Career and technical education’s rise has been unusually long-running when compared to other 21st-century education reforms—such as No Child Left Behind and Common Core—and is especially notable for an idea that generates little controversy.
Read the full PDF.
Introduction
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.”2 A 2018 AEI study found that career and technical education was the only education issue a majority of gubernatorial candidates supported.3 Meanwhile, a 2018 analysis reported that the number of high school students concentrating in career education rose 22 percent, to 3.6 million, during the past decade.4
All this raises a big question, given education’s long experience with fads and shifting sentiment: Is the boom in career and technical education one more fad, or does it reflect something more substantial? That answer matters for how much attention this push deserves from educators, parents, and policymakers.
In a stab at addressing this question, we examined 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.
Read the full report.
Notes 1.Kimberly Hefling, “States Embrace New Career and Technical Education Policies,” Politico, January 26, 2018, https://www. politico.com/newsletters/morning-education/2018/01/26/states-embrace-new-career-and-technical-education-policies-084330.↩ 2.National Governors Association, “Policy Positions,” https://www.nga.org/policy-positions/; and Jobs for the Future, “10 Equity Questions to Ask About Career and Technical Education,” February 13, 2018, https://www.jff.org/points-of-view/10-equity-questions-ask-about-career-and-technical-education/.↩ 3.Frederick M. Hess and Sofia Gallo, “What Do Would-Be Governors Have to Say About Education,” American Enterprise Institute, February 21, 2018, https://www.aei.org/publication/what-would-be-governors-say-about-education/.↩ 4.Michelle Hackman, “Vocational Training Is Back as Firms Pair with High Schools to Groom Workers,” Wall Street Journal, August 13, 2018, https://www.wsj.com/articles/vocational-training-is-back-as-firms-pair-with-high-schools-to-groom-workers-1534161601.↩ |
