Can Technical Education in High School Smooth Postsecondary Transitions for Students with Disabilities?
Career Technical Education (CTE) programs have been proposed as a valuable strategy for supporting transition to independence among students with disabilities. We exploit a discontinuity created by admissions thresholds to estimate the causal impact of attending a CTE high school on the short- and long-term outcomes of students with disabilities. Our findings suggest attending CTE high schools has large positive effects on completing high school on time, employment, and earnings. Attending CTE schools also results in more time spent with non-disabled peers and higher 10th grade test scores. These results appear concentrated among male students, but the sample of female students is too small to support strong conclusions about outcomes. Notably, these estimated effects appear broad based over disability type, time spent with non-disabled peers in 8th grade, and previous academic performance.
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