Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Currently, career technical education (CTE) programs and their funders do not have large scale (regional or national) data driven guidance to identify what factors of a CTE education contribute to student success in terms of employment, earnings, and student satisfaction with the educational experience. The research examines the 2016 Adult Education Training and Education Survey (ATES) conducted by the Department of Education to assess the possible key factors for success. The interest is to identify the most relevant ones based off of statistically significant substantive impact for the aforementioned indicators of success. The method to derive such is to conduct data analytics of the ATES survey results via ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions.

The goal is to utilize the data analytics results to inform CTE programs and their funders of expectations management student success performance. This would be for the intention of crafting a program that meets reasonable metrics of CTE based life improvement as well as resource management expectations to support those that the past data would project to be at risk. It should be specifically noted that in order to avoid any pretense of utilizing this research for unlawful discrimination, both gender and race will not be factors under consideration.

As this research is still underway, the intent to is build three sets of deliverables:

1. Personas of:

a: likely CTE career high performers

b: likely students that need additional support

1. Return on investment guidance (based upon fiduciary metrics for student success)
2. Predictive modeling guidance