Study of Perkins V Accountability Changes: Defining Career and Technical Education (CTE) Concentrators

A major workforce challenge in the United States is the shortage of skilled workers particularly in critical industries such as health care and information technology. CTE—intended to create pathways for students to gain the academic and technical skills needed for in-demand careers—has long been a focus of federal support. To help ensure that federal support for CTE is paying off, Congress mandated states to report on a core group of students, referred to as CTE “concentrators,” for whom CTE educators are responsible for improving key skills and workforce outcomes. Under the previous Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006 (Perkins IV), states could define a CTE concentrator as they preferred. To increase consistency and improve comparability so that annual state reporting could provide a national picture of CTE participation and performance, the most recent Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21^st Century Act of 2018 (Perkins V) established a definition of a CTE concentrator. Because Perkin V’s definition may lead states to classify as a concentrator students with more or less investment in CTE than the state had done previously, it may alter in important ways which students states include in their reporting and are ultimately accountable for. For instance, concentrators under Perkins IV and V may differ on background characteristics as well as on measures such as academic proficiency and advanced course-taking. The study was planning to carefully document the implications of this modest change to the law, which still left some flexibility to states, to help policymakers better understand performance under Perkins V and judge the potential consequences of the definition of a CTE concentrator before the next Perkins reauthorization.