Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Taking Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs during high school can enhance academic experiences and lead to improvements in workforce preparation, including higher rates of high school graduation, college enrollment, and wages. Yet little is known about the factors that drive the utilization and quality of high-school CTE programs. In this paper, we examine the effect of a change in the state CTE funding formula in Michigan that was designed to help districts place students in high skill, high wage, and high demand careers. Before 2015, the funding formula was based on the number of students enrolled, the type of program, and the length of training as measured by student minutes in a program. After the change, the formula prioritized student advancement, program cost, and job openings, placements, and wages. We use student-level longitudinal data from over 190,000 students who entered high school between 2008 and 2014 and enrolled in a CTE course, and we use an interrupted time series approach along with a series of descriptive analyses. Our research questions center on the extent to which higher program completion reflected additional learning, for which we proxy using the number of courses, hours, and student assessment scores, and whether completion rates or learning increased more in programs that experienced a larger increase in funding. We find that the probability of ever completing a program rose by about 15 percent, with students taking about 4 percent more coursework. The rise in completion rates persists after controlling for a rich set of student covariates and home school by CTE program fixed effects. Our results shed light on how the structure of CTE funding affects the behavioral responses of CTE providers and participants while enrolled in CTE and beyond.