BusinessTech Academy BusinessTech Academy Santa Fe High School
The Academy cohort on the Getty overlook, the Los Angeles basin behind them

The cohort, at the overlook

BusinessTech Academy seal Structured evidence synthesis

Career academies: what the research shows

This is the technical companion to the plain-language summary. It states each study’s method, what its comparison group actually received, and how much weight the finding can carry.

Conflict of interest. This review was compiled by a school that operates a California Partnership Academy.
How to read this

The method decides how much a finding can carry

Every study below names its method, so the list runs strongest first. None of these words is doing anything clever — each one describes how the researchers found something to compare against.

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The 2024 evaluation

What a lottery of this size can resolve

MDRC’s lottery-based evaluation reported no significant effect on graduation, college readiness or enrolment. These are its seven estimates.

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Every band crosses zero, so nothing is statistically significant. Every band also reaches past +10 points, an effect that would be educationally large. The study cannot distinguish those two cases. With 241 students in the comparison group, that is a question of power, not of evidence for absence.

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Findings by outcome

Grouped by what was measured, never pooled

The studies estimate different quantities against different comparison groups, so an average across them would not describe anything. Direction is carried by shape and words, not colour alone.

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Read these with them

Study notes

One note per study, stated once rather than repeated under every outcome it touches.

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Certainty by outcome

Every downgrade named

Low certainty does not mean a finding is wrong. It means the evidence cannot yet carry the weight placed on it.

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Where the evidence fights itself

Four places the studies disagree

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Excluded

Ten numeric claims, zero citations

Career Technical Education facts for school leaders · cde.ca.gov

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Not yet read

Named so the gaps are visible rather than silent.

The Effect of Career and Technical Education on Human Capital Accumulation: Causal Evidence from Massachusetts
Shaun Dougherty · Education Finance and Policy 13(2):119–148, 2018 · quasi-experimental admissions cutoff

Not yet read at source. Reported to raise on-time graduation at Massachusetts regional vocational technical high schools by roughly 7 to 10 percentage points, with larger effects for low-income students. A second separate-institution counterfactual alongside Connecticut.

Method

A structured synthesis, not a systematic review

No pre-registered protocol and no exhaustive search. The initial searches were seeded with studies expected to support our case, which biases what was found, and we state it rather than let the format imply otherwise.

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Sources
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Compiled by BusinessTech Academy, Santa Fe High School. Corrections are welcome and will be made in public.

When the 2028 and 2032 results arrive, they go on this page either way

Interest