Library
Sources
Every document behind our evidence review, stored on this site rather than linked away. Research disappears from the internet — we found that out looking for these — so we keep our own copies. Open any of them and check our reading against the original.
Assessment of the Strong Workforce Program
California Legislative Analyst’s Office
Kept because it argues against the case. Earnings improved for CTE students — and at similar rates for everyone else, which the analyst reads as the labour market rather than the programme.
Open PDF · 919 KB
An Evaluation of California Partnership Academies
MDRC
The lottery-based evaluation. Interim results on graduation, college readiness and enrolment; earnings follow in 2028 and 2032.
Open PDF · 2,231 KB
The Effects of Career and Technical Education: Evidence from the Connecticut Technical High School System
Eric Brunner, Shaun Dougherty & Stephen L. Ross — Review of Economics and Statistics; NBER working paper
The strongest modern evidence. Compares applicants just above and just below an admissions cutoff, with earnings from state wage records. Male students: 10 points more likely to graduate, 32% higher quarterly earnings. Little evidence of any effect for female students.
Open PDF · 564 KB
P-TECH 9-14 Pathways to Success
Rachel Rosen and colleagues, MDRC
A New York City admissions lottery. Seven years in, 5 points more likely to have finished an associate’s degree — 13% of young men against 3%.
Open PDF · 1,610 KB
Heterogeneity in High School Career and Technical Education Outcomes
Walter Ecton & Shaun Dougherty
Concentrators earn more — $1,792 in year one, $3,359 by year seven — but the authors write ASSOCIATED WITH, not caused by, and outcomes differ sharply by sector.
Open PDF · 2,040 KB
Linked Learning Student Outcomes
SRI Education, funded by the James Irvine Foundation
Nine California districts over nine years, pathway students matched to similar peers. Graduation up 3.1 points overall and 7.6 points for students with low prior achievement.
Open PDF · 9,767 KB
The Dropout Effects of Career Pathways: Evidence from California
Sade Bonilla, Economics of Education Review
California, and causal. Districts that narrowly won Career Pathways Trust grants against districts that narrowly lost: dropout rates fell 23 percent, more pronounced for female students.
Open PDF · 2,197 KB
Career Technical Education and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from California Community Colleges
Stevens, Kurlaender & Grosz — Journal of Human Resources; NBER working paper
Returns of 14 to 45 percent to CTE certificates and degrees, largest in healthcare. POSTSECONDARY community college, not high school — it is not a completer premium.
Open PDF · 958 KB
Career Technical Education in California
Sarah Bohn, Niu Gao & Shannon McConville, Public Policy Institute of California
Enrollment counts by industry sector, with its data sources stated.
Open PDF · 88 KB
Taking Stock of the California Linked Learning District Initiative: Seventh-Year Evaluation Report
SRI International for the James Irvine Foundation
164 pages, nine California districts. Carries both halves of the employment picture: pathway students were less likely to be working a year out, and those who were had jobs with paid vacation and health insurance.
Open PDF · 2,277 KB
California Career Technical Education Model Curriculum Standards: Business and Finance
California Department of Education
The state standards for this academy’s own sector.
Open PDF · 1,131 KB
Comparing Students in Each California Partnership Academy with Non-Academy Students at the Same High School
David Stern, Phil Saroyan & Candace Hamilton Hester, CASN, UC Berkeley
Per-school regressions controlling for prior test scores. Most academy coefficients were not significant; some positive, some negative.
Open PDF · 3,606 KB
Profile of the California Partnership Academies 2009-2010
Charles Dayton, Candace Hamilton Hester & David Stern, CASN, UC Berkeley
The origin of the widely quoted 95% graduation and 57% a-g figures. Both are self-reported by academies, and the graduation rate counts only students who reached senior year.
Open PDF · 4,497 KB
Career Academies: A Proven Strategy to Prepare High School Students for College and Careers
David Stern, Charles Dayton & Marilyn Raby, Career Academy Support Network, UC Berkeley
The movement’s own synthesis. Carries the Kemple earnings figures with their sources, and the finding that the same trial saw no effect on graduation.
Open PDF · 1,563 KB
What Works Clearinghouse Intervention Report: AVID
Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education
The federal review. Of 66 studies of AVID it examined, one met its evidence standards with reservations — a quasi-experimental study of 96 students in a single Colorado district, which reported too little for an effect size to be computed. Scoped to adolescent literacy, so it is a statement about the research base rather than about AVID’s college claims.
Open PDF · 224 KB
A Profile of the California Partnership Academies 2004-2005
Denise Bradby, Charles Dayton, Tom Hanna & Amy Malloy, ConnectEd and CASN
The earlier Profile in the same series, with the same descriptive structure.
Open PDF · 1,591 KB
The Quality of Vocational Education (National Assessment of Vocational Education background papers)
Adam Gamoran (ed.), including Rasinski & Pedlow — U.S. Department of Education
The origin of the “8 to 10 times less likely to drop out” claim, at volume p.182 — and the page after it, where the authors call the comparison a transcript-classification artefact and redo the analysis, getting about a 12 percent reduction instead.
Open PDF · 2,326 KB
Grouped by what a document can support, not by how much we like it. Only the first group can carry a claim that the academy caused anything; the counts are the ones most often quoted at us, and they cannot.
One we cannot host
The California Department of Education’s “CTE facts for school leaders” page carries ten statistics and no citations. We checked its archived versions back to February 2015: the same ten claims, uncited, for eleven years. Two of them we traced ourselves to the 2009-10 Profile above. It is a live page rather than a document, so there is nothing to keep a copy of.