Career and Technical Education in Michigan: Students with Disabilities
Career and Technical Education (CTE) could offer one way of bolstering educational attainment among and providing valuable job skills to students with disabilities (SWD). These programs cultivate work readiness and can help students prepare to transition to life after high school. This brief provides a summary of CTE participation among SWD in Michigan. We also present descriptive findings showing that SWD who enroll in CTE graduate high school at higher rates compared to observably similar students who do not.
Key findings
- Students with disabilities (SWD) participate in Career and Technical Education (CTE) at roughly the same rate as other students. Students with specific learning disabilities and speech or language impairments are most likely to enroll among all SWD. Girls with disabilities are less likely to participate compared to observably similar girls without disabilities.
- Both boys and girls with disabilities are more likely to participate in agriculture and skilled trades programs and less likely to enroll in business and communications programs. That said, the skilled trades offer promising labor market prospects in Michigan.
- SWD are less likely to complete CTE programs compared to students without disabilities. Approximately half of this gap can be explained by other characteristics like socioeconomic status and prior academic achievement.
- SWD who complete a CTE program are 48% more likely to graduate high school relative to observably similarSWD who never enroll in a CTE program. This trend holds across sexes and most disability types. These benefits appear greater for SWD than students without disabilities.
