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Last week, an audit of Baltimore City Public Schools’ (BCPS) career and technical education (CTE) programs found that those with real potential to help students obtain lucrative jobs after high school are concentrated in the district’s highest-performing schools, while low-performing schools are stuck with programs that lead students into low-paying jobs.
For example, promising tracks like computer science were found at the high-performing Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, while at the district’s lowest-rated school, Excel Academy, “students have access to a vague, two-course pathway called Career Research and Development.” Just one in ten of the district’s industry-credential programs leads students to jobs that pay a family sustaining wage, and six years after graduating, students who went through the district’s CTE program earned an annual median income of $13,000 — less than half of what’s needed to provide for a single adult in Baltimore.
BCPS CEO, Sonja Santelises, in a now-headlining reaction to the audit, said the findings show that the district’s CTE programs “are merely a reflection of a caste system of education.” She is right, but in this case what that means is not your usual educational inequity fare. We are familiar with the idea that urban school systems like BCPS face more concentrated student disadvantage and more limited access to resources than more advantaged districts. But the “caste system” Santelises refers to isn’t between districts, it’s between schools — and CTE pathways — within a district.
This divide within Baltimore’s CTE pathways is noteworthy. The familiar, historic take is that CTE-related inequities fall between a “vocational track” and an “academic track” in high school. Undoubtedly, the “voc-ed” of the 1980s and 1990s received well-deserved criticism for disproportionately funneling disadvantaged students away from academic tracks and into many dismal-quality, dead-end programs. But the issue in Baltimore isn’t between academic and vocational tracks; it’s between different CTE programs. Today’s CTE evolved out of vocational education, but includes a broader set of occupational areas than it once did. Baltimore’s best CTE programs serve relatively advantaged students, and despite the labor market advantage they could deliver for academically struggling students, the schools with more struggling students get the weaker programs.
Baltimore’s audit reflects patterns in CTE that extend beyond BCPS. In districts across the nation, different programs under the CTE umbrellas serve very different students, and on the surface, show very different outcomes.
In a recent report, I show how CTE has evolved from the stigmatized and low-quality “voc-ed” of the 1980s into a much broader set of programs. During this evolution, the share of CTE concentrators (graduates with at least three courses in the same CTE occupational area) in traditional voc-ed fields — like manufacturing, construction or transportation — stayed relatively constant. But the share of concentrators in “new era” occupational areas that don’t fit the traditional voc-ed mold — like health care, communications, and IT — grew substantially.
Average CTE outcomes improved over this period, as the share new-era concentrators — who look like average high school students on everything from test scores to college attendance — swelled. In contrast, the profile of traditional vocational concentrators stayed remarkably level. Relative to other high school students, these students’ test scores stayed low, around the 38th percentile, for 30 years.
Of course, the situation in Baltimore tells us nothing about CTE programs writ large, nor do the national patterns give proscriptions for fixing Baltimore’s challenges. However, both illustrate that CTE can easily become bifurcated, with different programs serving more and less disadvantaged students. That problem is particularly important because CTE programs have the potential to create opportunities for the students who are less likely to find them in higher education. CTE programs don’t need to only focus on academically disinclined students, but these students should remain their substantial focus because CTE may be the last-best hope to deliver vocational opportunities for students who might not find it elsewhere.
Wherever we allow CTE programs in schools with more struggling kids to be second-rate, as appears the case in Baltimore, we will withhold sorely needed help from those who need it most. It’s a betrayal, which is clearly reflected in Santelises’ frankest comments on the Baltimore audit: “All we have done is replicated the same young people, having the same access, in the same schools, under the cover of CTE programming, which . . . is supposed to open up opportunities.”
Wherever we allow career and technical education programs in schools with more struggling kids to be second-rate, as appears the case in Baltimore, we will withhold sorely needed help from those who need it most.
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