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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Thanks very much to the editorial team and reviewers at @tcrecord.bsky.social!

Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

3. More CTE-DE courses on high school campuses, plus transportation support and schedule coordination 4. Clearer, earlier, and more proactive information about CTE-DE – not just websites and brochures

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

We identify four ways to expand access to CTE-DE even more: 1. Career exploration & course pathway planning as early as middle school 2. Funding & accountability rules that don't create incentives for schools to prioritize other advanced courses over DE

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

While minimizing cost barriers for CTE-focused dual enrollment can help expand access to college-level coursework for students who may not enroll in academic DE, we find that making CTE-DE "free" is not enough on its own.

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

These barriers also varied across school contexts. Students at lower-SES schools often had fewer school & family resources to help overcome barriers, while AP culture & incentives and 4-year college-going norms were more salient at some moderate and higher-SES schools.

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

ADVISING BARRIERS: Protective gatekeeping around students' academic readiness & maturity for college classes, along w/ institutional incentives, shaped student advising. When students take off-campus DE, schools can lose funding - one admin noted: "I lose a ton of FTE over it."

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

INFORMATIONAL BARRIERS: Outreach about DE often centered on academic DE, CTE-DE was not prominently featured by school materials, & stigma about CTE persists. Late awareness of CTE-DE limited students' ability to plan coherent course sequences.

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

LOGISTICAL BARRIERS: Several factors constrained access, even for informed & interested students: -Scheduling conflicts, with CTE-DE programs often meeting 4–8 hours/day -Transportation challenges for off-campus courses -Multistep enrollment processes -Limited seat availability

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

We examine a Florida school district where DE is tuition-free and instructional materials are provided at no cost. Drawing on opportunity structure theory and interviews with 63 educators, we identify three interrelated categories of barriers. 👇

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Prior research on CTE Dual Enrollment is promising. CTE-DE reaches more low-income, Black, male and mid-achieving students than academic DE. CTE-DE can also have less restrictive eligibility: in the district we studied, it required a 2.0 GPA, compared w/3.0 for academic DE.

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

New research from Christine Mokher, CM Metcalfe & me in Teachers College Record! Dual enrollment reaches ~2.8 million students/year but is mostly already college-bound students. CTE-focused DE may reach a broader group, but what barriers remain even when there's no cost to students?🧵

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Come join a dynamic, collaborative, & collegial group of faculty, an excellent, ambitious student body, and a college and university community (including policy scholars at the Ford School) full of people working to advance higher education research. Feel free to reach with questions!

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

The Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education @ Michigan is hiring for an associate or full professor of higher education policy, with expertise in quantitative methods! careers.umich.edu/job_detail/2...

careers.umich.edu

Associate or Full Professor of Higher Education with Tenure | U-M Careers

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Despite headlines about culture-war battles over higher ed, only 17% of college skeptics in our survey cited "colleges are too politically biased" as their main reason. The two big reasons were cost (53%) and the opportunity cost of not working instead (31%).

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Demographics are less predictive than two key factors about respondents' own experience thinking about college: (1) how much education they expect to get themselves & (2) whether they felt they had enough information to make good decisions about their own post-high-school plans.

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Some of our most interesting findings: upper-class, white-collar, and Democratic respondents are all significantly more supportive of college for "most people" than for their own kids. The opposite of the old "college is for my kids but not other people's kids" take!

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

When people think about their own children, we find almost no gap by self-described class category. But ask about "most people," and a big gap opens up: 68.9% of lower-class respondents said most people should attend college vs. 82.9% of upper-class respondents we surveyed.

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Black respondents also showed one of the largest gaps between supporting college for "most people" (70.2%) vs. their own kids (64.5%). Cost barriers and lower completion rates for Black students may both play a role in shaping these attitudes.

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

One of our most striking findings: Black respondents were significantly less likely to want their own kids to attend college (64.5%) than White, Latina/o, and Asian respondents — gaps that hold even after accounting for income, parental education, and other factors.

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Support varies meaningfully across demographic groups, and the pattern also differs depending on whether respondents are asked about "most people" or about their own children.

Bar graph showing differences by demographic groups for wanting "own kids" and "most kids" to attend college.

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Despite constant media coverage about young people "souring" on college: 73.3% of respondents said most people their age should attend college, and almost the same share (73.1%) said they want their own kids to go. Skepticism is real, but it's not the majority view.

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

New paper in Innovative Higher Ed! We surveyed 19–25 year olds across the US about whether they think college is worth it — both for "most people" & for their own future kids. The headline: young Americans are way more pro-college than the doom-and-gloom headlines suggest. 🧵

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Read the full paper in the Journal of Education Human Resources: doi.org/10.3138/jehr...

doi.org

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

3 takeaways from this: ✅ CTE teacher recruitment/retention/preparation needs much more attention, ✅ Increasing racial diversity in the CTE teacher workforce deserves focused effort, ✅ We need to invest in induction & mentorship for the growing share of novice CTE teachers.

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

CTE teachers are increasingly teaching in majority-minority schools — by 2018, significantly more so than non-CTE teachers (~10 pp gap). Given the diversity of students CTE serves, continued progress on diversifying the CTE teacher workforce is worth policymakers' attention.

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Factors predicting CTE teacher turnover: novice status (+7.9 pp), holding a grad degree (+3.9 pp), lower salary, & non-union status. Worth noting: grad degree requirements may create barriers to entry for some prospective CTE teachers, while evidence on the benefits is mixed.

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Contrary to popular belief, we find that CTE teachers do NOT turn over at higher rates than other teachers nationally -they stay at slightly higher rates year-over-year (87.3% vs. 86.3%). The real retention risk? Novice CTE teachers, at 14% of the workforce, up from 10% in 2004.

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Good news on qualifications: CTE teachers with a CTE-specific credential rose from 72% → 84% between 2004–2018. Only ~2% of CTE teachers lack any certification — challenging the stereotype of the uncredentialed voc-ed teacher.

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Who teaches CTE? The workforce is becoming more female (56% as of 2018), more racially diverse & more credentialed. But racial diversity of CTE teachers still dramatically lags behind the students CTE serves —83% of CTE teachers are White, compared to 45% of students nationally.

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Most prior research on CTE teachers draws on single-state data. We use five waves of the Schools and Staffing Survey & National Teacher and Principal Survey (SASS/NTPS) — giving us a nationally representative picture of who teaches CTE and how that's changed over time.

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

New paper out in the Journal of Education Resources! We use nationally representative data to profile the U.S. Career and Technical education (CTE) teacher workforce from 2004–2018- one of the 1st studies to do so at this scale.🧵 w/ @edutuan.bsky.social, Andrew Diemer, & @cameronanglum.bsky.social

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

I enjoyed speaking with @edweek.org about Advance CTE's new vision & priorities for CTE over the next 5 years. Long story short - this is a very strong list of goals to focus on, though achieving success will require investment & support from government actors. www.edweek.org/teaching-lea...

edweek.org

The Job Market Is Changing. How Career and Technical Education Can Keep Up

A new vision from Advance CTE imagines what the future of career education should look like.

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

I said it's great to be a Michigan Wolverine! 💙💛💙💛

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Last, I'm very proud to be a co-author with Kevin Ganus, an outstanding Ph.D. candidate at @fsu_elps If you're hiring next cycle - keep an out for Kevin, a thoughtful, kind person, a former teacher, and scholar with expertise in teacher policy, CTE, and more. (7/7, end 🧵)

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

This article does not examine student outcomes (we hope someone answers these questions in future work!), but we hope this article helps explain the landscape of statewide CTE articulation agreements for those with interests in CTE, workforce dev, & community/tech college. (6/7)

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

3. Statewide CTE articulation agreements are especially common in IT and Architecture and Construction, though there's agreements across different career fields. (5/7)

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

2. Statewide agreements are more common in states w/ lower educational attainment & higher rates of unemployment. It's an especially appealing policy to states focused on increasing their attainment rate with students who would otherwise be unlikely to enroll in college. (4/7)

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

We examined policies across all 50 states, and found a few patterns: 1. Statewide agreements exist in 13 states, w/ Florida, West Virginia and Michigan leading the way. Republican-led states, in particular, have leaned into this policy (as well as some Democratic-led states). 3/7

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

CTE Articulation Agreements are meant to provide college credit for prior learning, including certification exams, work experience, or CTE coursework in high school. Why do advocates say they work? See this chart (2/7):

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Walt Ecton @waltecton.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Proud to co-author this new article in CTER with FSU Ph.D. candidate Kevin Ganus, "An Overview of the Landscape of Statewide CTE Articulation Agreements". This is an increasingly common policy & the article provides an overview of what to know. A🧵: www.ingentaconnect.com/content/acte...

ingentaconnect.com

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