Balancing Career and Technical Education With Academic Coursework: The Consequences for Mathematics Achievement in High School

RTI International Federal legislation has attempted to move career and technical education (CTE) from a segregated component of the high school curriculum to an integrated element that jointly improves both aca-demic and career readiness. However, concerns remain about the ability of CTE to improve aca-demic learning. Using a nationally representative sample of high school students, we examine the relationship between CTE coursework and mathematics achievement in high school. Accounting for observed and unobserved characteristics of students, we find that CTE courses neither limit overall gains in mathematics learning nor the acquisition of basic and intermediate mathematics skills. Additionally, engineering and technology courses, a subset of CTE courses that incorporate quanti-tative reasoning, logic, and problem solving, are unrelated with math achievement