Area CTE schools
Area CTE schools provide career/technical education (CTE) part-time to students who receive all or most of their academic instruction at their home high school.
Career academy
Career academy is a multi-year program in which the curriculum integrates academic and career/technical education courses, organized around one or more broad career themes.
Career major or pathway
Career major or pathway specifies the academic and career/technical education courses to be taken by a student.
Career plan
Career plan is a written plan of study based on the student’s career interests.
Career/technical education (CTE) in high school encompasses non-occupational CTE, which includes family and consumer sciences education (i.e., courses that prepare students for roles outside the paid labor market) and general labor market preparation (i.e., courses that teach general employment skills such as word processing and introductory technology skills); and occupational education, which teaches skills required in specific occupations or occupational clusters.
Credit is a standardized measure used to provide a consistent measure of coursetaking from the student transcript data collected in the High School Transcript Study (HSTS). In the HSTS, a credit is equivalent to one Carnegie unit, which is awarded for a class that meets for one period per day for the entire school year, or the equivalent instructional time.
Dual credit
Dual credit refers to a course or program where high school students can earn both high school and postsecondary credits for the same course.
Enrichment/other credits include credits earned in health, physical, and recreational education; religion and theology; and military science.
Individualized Education Program (IEP)
Individualized Education Program (IEP) refers to an education program developed for students with disabilities in order to meet their special needs.
Job shadowing
Job shadowing teaches students about a job by having students follow the schedule of a person who holds that job.
Limited English
Limited English proficient (LEP) refers to students who are in an English as a Second Language instructional program.
Locale
Locale refers to the metropolitan status of the school, assigned using 2000 Decennial Census data. A three-level categorization is used in these tables: Urban (i.e., large or mid-size central city), suburban and town (i.e., large or small town or urban fringe of a large or mid-size city), and rural.
National School Lunch Program (NSLP)
National School Lunch Program (NSLP) is a federal program that provides free or reduced-price lunches to students based on the student's household income.
Occupational area and occupational concentrator are related terms. For data prior to 2005, the occupational education component of the career/technical education curriculum is organized into the following 10 (or 18 disaggregated) occupational areas: agriculture; business (business management, business service); childcare and education; food service and hospitality; health care; marketing and distribution; personal and other services; protective services; technology and communications (communications technology, computer technology, other technology); and trade and industry (construction, mechanics and repair, materials production, print production, other precision production, transportation). For data from 2005 on, occupational education is organized into the following 11 (or 20 disaggregated) occupational areas: agriculture and natural resources; business (business finance, business management, business support); communications and design; computer and information sciences; construction and architecture (architecture, construction); consumer and culinary services (consumer services, culinary arts); engineering technologies; health sciences; manufacturing, repair, and transportation (manufacturing, mechanics and repair, transportation); marketing; and public services (education, library science, protective services, public administration and legal services). The occupational areas used prior to the 2005 data were based on the 1998 Secondary School Taxonomy (SST); the occupational areas used with more recent data were based on the 2007 SST revision. An occupational concentrator is a student who earns a minimum number of credits within a specific area of occupational education. For data prior to 2005, a concentrator is defined as a student who earns 3.0 or more credits in at least one of the 10 broad occupational areas listed above. For data from 2005 on, two definitions of concentrator are used: A student who earns 2.0 or more credits, and a student who earns 3.0 or more credits, in at least one of the 11 broad occupational areas listed above. The new concentrator definitions are designed to better align with the current CTE curriculum, and to provide more flexibility in analysis of student participation in the CTE curriculum.
Occupational programs
Occupational programs consist of one or more courses in the occupational areas defined above. In the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), school administrators reported on occupational programs in the following areas: agriculture; business; childcare and education; communications technology; computer technology; other technology; construction; food service and hospitality; health care; marketing; mechanics and repair; personal services; precision production, public and protective services; transportation; and other (unspecified) occupational programs.
Professional license
Professional license is defined by responses to the following question in the National Education Longitudinal Study, Fourth Follow-up (NELS:88/2000), "Have you received a professional license or professional credential since leaving high school? For example, these might be a real estate or cosmetology license, teacher's certificate or networking engineering credential. Do not consider certificates provided for the completion of academic programs at postsecondary schools."
Region
Region is the geographic region in which the school is located. Northeast includes CT, ME, MA, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI and VT; Midwest includes IL, IN, IA, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, OH, SD, and WI, South includes AL, AR, DC, DE, FL, GA, KY, LA, MD, MS, NC, OK, SC, TN, TX, VA, and WV; and West includes AK, AZ, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, NM, OR, UT, WA, and WY.
School type
School type is determined by the 2003–04 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) question that asks school personnel to pick one of the following definitions to describe their school:
Regular [no definition provided]
School with a special program emphasis (such as a science/math school, performing arts school, talented/gifted school, foreign language immersion school, etc.)
Special education school (primarily serves students with disabilities)
Vocational/technical school (primarily serves students being trained for occupations)
Alternative (offers a curriculum designed to provide alternative or nontraditional education; does not specifically fall into the categories of regular, special program, special education, or vocational school)
Work-based learning
Work-based learning provides supervised learning activities for students that occur in paid or unpaid workplace assignments, and for which course credit is awarded.
