Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) oversees the largest and most diverse system of urban career and technical education (CTE) programs in the country. After several decades of limited growth in its CTE programs, the NYC DOE undertook a major expansion beginning in 2003. The number of high schools offering CTE programs more than doubled over a 10 year period (Jacoby & Dougherty, 2016). In the 2013-2014 school year, the NYC DOE offered nearly 100 CTE programs that carried a New York State Education Department (NYSED) endorsement; CTE programs were offered in 145 of the City’s nearly 400 high schools, with 47 of those high schools dedicated exclusively to CTE.

The impact study uses natural lotteries that result from the NYC High School Admissions Process (HSAP) to generate causal estimates of CTE impacts on both high school graduation and diploma receipt as well as on college enrollment and persistence. This paper will draw on a total sample of 20,832 students that competed in lotteries for one of 79 unique CTE programs between 2007 and 2013. For this sample we will first explore the contrast in services induced by winning a CTE lottery. The impact analysis for this paper will then address the following four research questions:

1. What is the impact of being assigned to a CTE program on the likelihood of graduating from high school in four years with a New York State Regents Diploma?
2. What is the impact of being assigned to a CTE program on the likelihood of enrolling in a two- or four-year college in the year following on-time graduation from high school?
3. What is the impact of being assigned to a CTE program on the likelihood of remaining enrolled in college for two consecutive years following on-time graduation from high school?
4. What is the impact of being assigned to a CTE program on the likelihood of completing college within four years following on-time graduation from high school?

The data available for this paper will enable us to estimate impacts on on-time high school graduation rates for the full sample of 20,832 students. For the earlier student cohorts, we will present impacts on college enrollment, persistence and completion over the four years following on-time high school graduation.

Prior research shows that approximately 30 percent of New York City 9^th graders earn a college degree within 10 years of entering high school. By far, the largest leak in this educational pipeline occurs at high school graduation when fully 30 percent of 9^th graders fail to graduate within four years (Black and Coca, 2017). For this reason, we designate high school graduation as a primary outcome for this paper. Our work further shows that, while 80 percent of on-time high school graduates enroll in college, nearly a quarter of these students discontinued or ended their education within two years. Thus, we designate college persistence or completion over the four years follow high school graduation our second primary outcome for this paper.