Are Texas Students Career-Ready?
Written By: Jorge Borrego, Erin Valdez
Key points
– Technical education is focused on college-bound programs such as Health Sciences and STEM, corresponding with a shortage of workers in traditional vocational occupations and Information Technology. Texas cannot prosper without people to build and maintain its physical and technological infrastructure.
– Annual career and technical education (CTE) spending in Texas exceeds that of the federal government by nearly $2 billion.
– Despite billions in government spending, Texas students are not leaving high school career-ready.
– Traditional CTE programs are being crowded out by new-era CTE courses, exacerbating the middle skills gap in the state.