CTE Benefits

If there was a choice, one single choice that could have extraordinary benefits to both your life now and far into the future, benefits ranging from decrease stress and personal pride in school all the way to increased salary in the career of your choice. This choice is simple, take CTE classes or don't. CTE classes are taken by 14 million students in 1,300 high schools and 1,700 colleges across the country, and many schools are overhauling their old CTE or vocational classes so they too can increase the career readiness of their students, but it still isn’t enough. There are still so many jobs available for student with the skills provided by these classes. The US economy is based on the strength and skill of the workforce, which means employers
are willing to pay people with CTE based skills more. Even more so, students in enrolled in CTE classes tend to develop not only technical skills for their field they also learn critical thinking, time management and research skills needed later in life. CTE education while being expensive has shown to have so many benefits that it far outweighs the cost, such as it curbs unemployment, leads to success in and out of school, and decreases dropout rates
Career Technical Education or CTE is a group of classes focused on providing students with technical skills to make them more prepared and competitive in the global marketplace. These classes include everything from carpentry to HOSA (Health and Occupational Students of America). The classes available to individual students are decided by the school in that area, the choices are generally based on jobs and economic opportunities in their region. If a town's economy calls for a large quantity of welders and farmers the classes mosts likely offered in those schools will relate to them. Currently the nation's unemployment rate is 8.7% which doesn't seem like much, but when applied to the US population it means almost 28 million people are unemployed. While a major cause of this drastic unemployment is a lack of overall jobs, another cause is a lack of skilled workers to take the jobs that are available. Companies need students who are able to take positions that require them to have some skills. Also technical literacy, which once was more of a luxury, is required for almosts any job. 14% of employers are having serious difficulties trying to find skilled workers (Regan). Studies have shown that there are more than 800,000 jobs available in trades and transportation and almost 300,000 more in manufacturing jobs. The jobs are available there just isn’t anyone skilled enough to take them. CTE classes make students who can take these jobs, the classes give them the on the job training that employers look for. If you compare two student equal in academic performance in high school but one took some form of CTE classes that student has a much higher chance of succeeding in the workforce, because they come out of school not just prepared for college but also prepared for a career (ACTE). Career Technical Education classes have been proven on many occasions to have enormous benefits for students both while they are in school and their careers following.
While still in high school CTE classes have been shown to greatly improve a student's motivation in all classes not just CTE. Also students in CTE concentrations show improved grades, academic engagement and an overall improvement in a student's efficiency. Students also have a chance to explore many career paths to see what they like or are good at before being forced into a difficult work force. Even for student who know what they would like to do CTE classes that specialize in that area can help you discover what discipline within a career they want to purse. A great example of this is a student ,who has chosen to keep their name discreet, who was inspired to become a nurse. The student had witness the Red Cross and decided to pursue nursing but was unsure of which type of nursing to undertake, but thanks to the CTE classes they took they were able to narrow down the choices, and eventually settled on going to college to be a labor and delivery nurse (TeGrotenhuis). Once out of school CTE education continues to improve the life of those who took advantage of it. A person with either an CTE- associate's degree or a CTE credential earn between 4,000- 19,000 more than their peers with a humanities associate’s degree. In addition 27% of people without an associates with CTE training make more than the average bachelor degree recipient (ACTE). CTE classes not only increase the amount of money that can be earned by a person it improves their chances of success both in high school and in their
career. “For today’s students, the experience of going to school can feel like flying in an airplane, minus the excitement of travel. Students enter a world cut off from their own where they are asked to turn off all electronic devices. They can feel trapped, simply staring straight ahead for hours. Without a clear sense of where they are going, many U.S. students simply opt to get off the plane” This quote from an article written by Bob Regan is an sadly accurate description of the American educational system and is the main reason that now almost 25% of students don't graduate(Regan). In more densely populated areas this number increases to almost 50%. Many students drop out because in school they cannot see any use for the information they are learning, many ask themselves, when will I use this in life, and for many of them the answer is never. 81% of dropouts claim that classes that they could see a clear real world relationship would have kept them in school. That is a huge number of students who are now stuck working in minimum wage jobs or struggling to earn a GED. CTE education has an unmistakable clear connection to the real world and could have helped prevent these dropouts. Studies show that student who concentrate in CTE classes have a 93% graduation rate that is almost 20% higher than the national average, and 75% of these graduates go onto some form of postsecondary education (ACTE). If CTE education has so many benefits why has it been so grossly underused and underappreciated? Well, for starters it is extremely costly, especially for schools without some preexisting vocational education setup (Duncan). While CTE class requirement vary widely they almost all require the tools of the trade to be learned. For a carpentry class this could mean saws, hammers, lumber etc. for a marketing class the tools may be computers and software to run business simulators. In addition, these classes need space. This often requires construction of new workshops and classrooms which add even more cost. All of this can be overwhelming for any school administration, they put forth all of this and still if the programs are not executed properly they can become faulty if not useless all together. In addition, in school there is a set number of classes that a student can take before graduation. So if they take CTE classes it limits the number of additional core classes that can be taken. With these pretty major consequences it is no surprise that some schools are hesitant to embrace CTE(TeGrotenhuis). Even with the massive cost related to starting CTE programs the benefits listed in the paragraphs above clearly outweigh the costs.