College access and retention of career and technical education graduates

[In the United States], high school graduates with disabilities have sharply increased their enrollment in the nation's colleges. Between 1987 and 2003 the proportion of high school graduates with a disability who enrolled in a postsecondary educational institution doubled, making students with disabilities among the most rapidly growing sources of new students enrolling in the nation's postsecondary system. Currently, little is known about the actual postsecondary enrollment of graduates from Massachusetts public high schools and less is known about the post secondary outcomes of the subset of high school graduates with disabilities. This policy brief is intended to document the postsecondary access and persistence of career and technical education (CTE) graduates. The findings are based on data about nearly 4,600 high school students from the classes of 2004 through 2006 who graduated from seven vocational-technical high schools in Massachusetts.

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