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ContentsPageExecutive Summary . iiiAcknowledgments . viList of Tables . viiiList of Exhibits . viiiIntroduction.1Revision Rationale and Goals . 2Linking the SST to the Career Clusters . 4Linking the SST to the Postsecondary Taxonomy. 4Linking the SST to Occupational Classification Systems. 6Process of the Revision . 7Interaction with the CTES TRP . 7NCES Priorities. 8Outcomes . 9Major Changes . 12Applying the SST. 16References . 18AppendicesA. Overview of the 1998 SST Structure .B. The 16 Career Clusters .C. Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) at the 2-Digit Level .D. Career/Technical Education Statistics (CTES) Postsecondary Taxonomy.E. Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) Major and Second-Level Categories.F. North American Industry Classification System (2002).G. Members of the SST Work Group .H. 2007 Secondary School Taxonomy (SST), with CSSC Codes .I. Specific Courses From the 1998 Secondary School Taxonomy (SST) That Were MovedInto Different Categories in the 2007 SST.J. Standard Errors for Summary Measures of Public High School Graduates’Participation in Career/Technical Education, Using the 2007 SST: 2005.vii19202328303435366477

List of TablesTablePage1Summary measures of public high school graduates’ participation incareer/technical education, using the 2007 Secondary School Taxonomy(SST): 2005. 16J-1Standard errors for summary measures of public high school graduates’participation in career/technical education, using the 2007 Secondary SchoolTaxonomy (SST): 2005. 77List of ExhibitsExhibitAPageThe 2007 Secondary School Taxonomy (SST) categories for career/technicaleducation (CTE).v1The 2007 Secondary School Taxonomy (SST) categories for career/technicaleducation (CTE). 102Potential linking of the 2007 Secondary School Taxonomy (SST) to the postsecondary taxonomy and to the career clusters . 113Comparison of the 2007 and 1998 Secondary School Taxonomy (SST) categorieswithin the Career/Technical Education (CTE) Specific Labor Market Preparationcategories . 15A-1Overview of the 1998 Secondary School Taxonomy (SST) Structure . 19viii

IntroductionThe National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has a mandate to collect and reportdata on career/technical education (CTE).1 To meet this mandate, NCES consolidatesinformation on CTE from federal surveys that describe the secondary, postsecondary, and adultlearning systems. This consolidated information is called the Career/Technical EducationStatistics (CTES) system. Data sources for the CTES system are primarily education surveysconducted by NCES, but these sources may be supplemented and enhanced by survey data fromother offices within the U.S. Department of Education as well as from the U.S. Departments ofCommerce (Census Bureau) and Labor (Bureau of Labor Statistics).The primary data collection tool for analyzing the participation of high school students inCTE is high school transcripts, which provide an objective, reliable record of students’coursetaking. Analysts can use these data to answer the following questions about studentparticipation in CTE: How many students participate in the CTE curriculum? Which students are more or less likely to participate in CTE? In which parts of the CTE curriculum are students more or less likely to participate? How broad and deep is students’ CTE coursetaking? How does students’ CTE coursetaking relate to their academic coursetaking? What are the trends in the level of students’ CTE coursetaking and in who participatesin CTE? How does students’ CTE coursetaking in high school relate to their coursetaking inpostsecondary education? How does students’ CTE coursetaking in high school relate to their occupations afterthey leave school? Do students who enroll in postsecondary education that is related to their high schoolCTE coursetaking more often complete postsecondary education than do students whoenter without a related background? Do students who enter an occupation that is related to their high school CTEcoursetaking earn a higher salary or show other signs of increased economic successthan do students who enter jobs without a related background?1 The Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Improvement Act of 2006 gives school districts and postsecondaryinstitutions funds to support improvements in their CTE programs and also mandates that NCES collect and report informationon CTE (Section 114(a)(3)).1

THE 2007 REVISION OF THE CAREER/TECHNICAL EDUCATIONPORTION OF THE SECONDARY SCHOOL TAXONOMYTo permit analysis of the high school transcript data, analysts code the courses listed on thetranscripts using the Classification of Secondary School Courses (CSSC), which providesstandardized numeric codes for over 2,200 courses. Most analysts aggregate these CSSC coursesinto broad subject areas (e.g., mathematics, business) in order to make comparisons easier tocomprehend and to create analytically powerful comparison groups. One framework that is usedfor this aggregation is the Secondary School Taxonomy (SST), which was last revised in 1998.(See appendix A for an overview of the entire 1998 SST structure.) Within CTE, the 1998 SSTdivides the curriculum into three broad areas—family and consumer sciences education, generallabor market preparation, and specific labor market preparation (or occupational education). Asseen in appendix A, occupational education is further subdivided into 10 areas—and, for someareas, into even more specific sub-areas.Since the 1998 revision of the SST, CTE has evolved considerably. In 2004, the CTESTechnical Review Panel (TRP), established in 1998 and composed of individuals familiar withCTE at the secondary, postsecondary, and adult education levels to provide input on datacollection and reporting needs with respect to CTE, recommended that it was time to revisit theSST. This report summarizes the resulting revision process. After presenting an overview of therationale and goals of the revision undertaken over the last 3 years, this report reviews eachprimary classification system that might be linked to the CTE portion of the SST (postsecondaryeducation classifications, career clusters, and occupational classifications). Next, the reportpresents the revised CTE portion of the SST, followed by a summary of the major changes thatwere made between the 1998 version and the current version. The report concludes with a tableusing the revised taxonomy and data from the 2005 High School Transcript Study to examine theeffect of the revisions on the reporting of students’ CTE coursetaking.Revision Rationale and GoalsAlthough the last revision of the SST in 1998 was less than 10 years ago, recentdevelopments in CTE led the CTES TRP to conclude that the CTE classification system neededupdating to reflect changing practices concerning the types of courses that schools offer and howthey organize those courses into subjects, sequences, and programs. In particular, the TRPrecommended development of a classification system for CTE that could be linked to the 16career clusters originally developed by the Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE)and currently supported by the National Association of State Directors of Career TechnicalEducation Consortium (NASDCTEc). A state survey conducted in 2005 by the NASDCTEcindicated that most states are using the career clusters (often modified to fit local labor markets)as an organizing framework for instruction; over 30 states have integrated career clusters into2

THE 2007 REVISION OF THE CAREER/TECHNICAL EDUCATIONPORTION OF THE SECONDARY SCHOOL TAXONOMYtheir state plans and/or strategy papers (NASDCTEc, 2006). Because the CTES system relateshigh school students’ coursetaking to their later postsecondary education and work experience,the TRP also recommended that the secondary CTE taxonomy be linked to systems that classifypostsecondary coursetaking and to those used by the U.S. Department of Labor to classifyoccupations and/or industries.Finally, the TRP recommended the development of two taxonomies—one that wouldassign each secondary course uniquely to one occupational area (depending on the occupationalarea for which the course is most relevant), and another that would assign each course to one ormore occupational areas (depending on the occupational areas for which the course could beconsidered relevant). For example, in a single-placement taxonomy based on the career clusters,a child development course might be considered preparation for day care workers and thus placedunder a human services category. In a multiple-placement taxonomy, a child development coursemight be considered relevant for both day care workers and teachers, and thus could be placedunder both human services and education and training categories. The former version would beused to tally unduplicated counts of courses taken or credits earned, while the latter could be usedto identify students who have taken or completed particular patterns of coursework.The CTES TRP suggestion of two versions of the SST is a recognition of the fact that manyoccupations use the same skills, as acknowledged within the career cluster framework (describedbelow). However, incorporating multiple placements into a course taxonomy may result in thedouble-counting of students’ courses, which often runs counter to analysts’ needs to describecoursetaking in a coherent way (so that, for example, the percentage of credits earned in all theSST categories sums to 100 percent).2 Although analysts working on this project developed a fewinitial drafts of a taxonomy with multiple placements, further development of these efforts waspostponed, as it seemed more efficient to focus resources on a single-placement taxonomy thatcan then serve as a starting point for a multiple-placement taxonomy. This document thussummarizes the development of a single-placement taxonomy. An additional adjustment to theTRP’s intent concerns engineering courses. In order to link the SST closely to the career clustersand to the postsecondary taxonomy, engineering courses should be included within CTE.However, changing the academic portion of the SST (where the engineering courses are currentlylocated) would have involved a more extensive process involving a larger community ofcurriculum experts, and NCES was not interested in a revision of that scope.2 Previous versions of the SST have all used the single placement technique. A physics course, for example, falls within thescience category and not the mathematics category, even though a physics course may involve a good deal of mathematics.3

THE 2007 REVISION OF THE CAREER/TECHNICAL EDUCATIONPORTION OF THE SECONDARY SCHOOL TAXONOMYLinking the SST to the Career ClustersThe career clusters were developed to help schools organize their curricula and counselstudents concerning their career choices. The career clusters organize occupations into 16“clusters” that each require common skills and knowledge. (See appendix B for a description ofeach cluster.) These clusters include the full spectrum of occupations, including thosetraditionally considered “vocational” as well as those considered professional and artistic. Itshould be noted that clusters designed for organizing instruction and career advisement do notreadily lend themselves for inclusion in a course taxonomy, at least not in a single-placementtaxonomy. The main difficulty in linking the SST to the career clusters is that the clustersdescribe occupations rather than courses; thus, when different occupational areas involve similarskills, a particular course may appropriately fall within multiple clusters. As mentioned above, achild development course represents one situation in which a course can be linked to multipleclusters, as child care falls within the human services cluster while teaching falls within theeducation and training cluster. The revision process used the career clusters brochures publishedby NASDCTEc and the descriptions that accompany the CSSC codes to determine courseplacements that would link the taxonomy to the career clusters; both of these sources leave roomfor interpretation.Although the task at hand concerned a revision of only the CTE portion of the SST, thecareer cluster framework makes no distinction between academic and career/technicalcoursework. (In fact, the career cluster framework itself makes no reference to coursework at all.)Thus, individual clusters include occupations (and by extension, courses) that are traditionallyconsidered academic, as well as those traditionally considered CTE. For example, fine artscourses, traditionally considered academic, could be categorized under the arts, audio-visual, andcommunications cluster, along with CTE courses in communications technology. Other examplesare science courses, which could be seen as part of the science, technology, engineering, andmathematics cluster. As will be seen below, since this effort focused on the CTE curriculum, therevised SST category names (and contents) reflect only CTE topics.Linking the SST to the Postsecondary TaxonomyNCES currently collects data related to postsecondary coursetaking from several surveys,each providing a different perspective on coursework: postsecondary degree fields, studentmajors or fields of study, and faculty teaching fields.3 These postsecondary measures are3 Postsecondary degree fields are collected through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), studentmajors or fields of study are examined in the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) and in the BeginningPostsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS), and faculty teaching fields are analyzed in the National Study of4

THE 2007 REVISION OF THE CAREER/TECHNICAL EDUCATIONPORTION OF THE SECONDARY SCHOOL TAXONOMYclassified using another NCES coding system, the 2000 Classification of Instructional Programs(CIP). The CIP provides codes for classifying postsecondary instructional programs at threelevels of aggregation. At the 2-digit level, instructional programs are aggregated into 49occupational and academic program categories (listed in appendix C). The 4-digit level providesmore information on programs within these 49 areas, and the 6-digit level supplies even morespecific instructional detail. For example, CIP code 13 encompasses all education programs,code 13.10 includes all special education and teaching programs, and code 13.1013 includes allprograms related to education/teaching of individuals with autism. Currently, NCESpostsecondary data collections use various levels of CIP coding, which yield different abilities tolink to other classification systems. However, future data collections are planned to collect dataat the more detailed 4- or 6-digit CIP level.NCES developed and recently revised a taxonomy for aggregating the CIP fields into CTEand academic areas, based on: recommendations of a panel of postsecondary experts; reviews ofother postsecondary taxonomies and community college course catalogs; and analyses ofNational Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) data on student majors and degreeexpectations, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data on postsecondarycompletion, and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data on the educational backgrounds of workers.This postsecondary taxonomy revision was completed in 2006 during the SST revision, and ispresented in appendix D.Because it was important to develop an SST that could be linked to both the CIP categoriesand the career clusters, the analysts developed a crosswalk between the CIP instructionalprogram codes (using 2-digit codes) and the career clusters. Although 10 of the 16 career clusterslink fairly well to the CIP categories, problems arose for several clusters, particularly forhospitality and tourism. The CIP does not have a hospitality and tourism category. Instead,related programs are found throughout the CIP, some at the 4-digit level and others at the 6-digitlevel. Examples include the culinary arts category (12.05), the parks, recreation and leisurefacilities management category (31.03), and the hospitality administration/management category(52.09). Other categories of programs, such as tourism promotion operations (52.1906) or foodservice system administration/management (19.0505), can be identified only at the 6-digit level.Similar issues—although to a lesser degree—affected the career clusters of business finance;marketing, sales, and service; human services; and government and public administration.Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF). High school coursetaking will not be analyzed in relation to postsecondary teaching fields, butthe latter is still relevant to the SST revision effort, as the revision is likely to influence how NCES identifies secondary schoolteachers’ teaching fields, and those data may be related to postsecondary teaching fields.5

THE 2007 REVISION OF THE CAREER/TECHNICAL EDUCATIONPORTION OF THE SECONDARY SCHOOL TAXONOMYThese misalignments complicated the revision pro

the 16 career clusters originally developed by the Office of Vocational and Adult Education and . Maryland State Department of Education Dan Petersen, Idaho Division of Professional Technical Education K