Analysis: Racial inequity in who takes career, tech courses
Alphina Kamara wonders what might have happened if she’d been introduced to science and engineering careers at her high school in Wilmington, Del.
Kamara, who is Black, was enrolled in an “audio engineering” course that taught her how to make music tracks and videos instead of a regular engineering course that she recalls was mostly filled with white students.
When she asked an administrator at Mount Pleasant High School about this apparent disparity, she said she was told that the audio engineering course was created for “regular students.”
“They thought we would be more interested in audio engineering than engineering,” said Kamara, now a junior at Wesleyan University studying English and sociology. “That was a hard pill to swallow.”
Historically, career and technical education was seen as a dumping ground for students who weren’t considered college material. A two-tier educational system tracked predominantly low-income students and students of color into career and technical classes, then known as vocational education. But in recent years, schools have revamped these courses to prepare students for higher education and lucrative work in fields such as technology, health care and engineering.
A Hechinger Report/Associated Press analysis of CTE enrollment data from 40 states reveals deep racial disparities in who takes these career-oriented courses. Black and Latino students were often less likely than their white peers to enroll in science, technology, engineering and math and information technology classes, according to the analysis, which was based primarily on 2017-18 data. Meanwhile, they were more likely to enroll in courses in hospitality and, in the case of Black students in particular, human services.
The analysis offers a comprehensive look at data that states will be required to report to the federal government at the end of this year