Archived Information

Methodology

The research in this report uses data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) High School Transcript Study to assess the influence of vocational programs and vocational courses on gains in high school achievement in mathematics, science, and reading. The analysis also addresses the effect of vocational education on lowering the dropout rate.

NELS:88, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), is a longitudinal study of a national cohort of 1988 8th graders. A national probability sample of more than 1,000 8th grade-schools and more than 24,000 eighth grade students were selected in 1988; the students, their parents, and their teachers and school administrators were then interviewed. The students were administered achievement tests in mathematics, science, reading and social studies. Students were interviewed and tested again in 1990 and 1992, when most of them were high school sophomores and then seniors. Transcript data spanning the three or four years of high school were collected for students in the NELS:88 second follow-up survey.

Transcripts were collected for 14,625 of the 18,116 students in the NELS:88 10th- to 12th-grade panel sample. Transcript data were available for regular students, dropouts and students in alternative high school programs, and for all early graduates. The transcript data collected from schools included student-level data and complete coursetaking histories. All analyses are conducted using the NELS:88 10th- to 12th-grade panel sample along with a case weight which provides an adjustment for respondents for which transcript data were not available. In addition, all estimates and standard errors were conducted taking into account the clustering and stratification used in the NELS:88 sample design.

[Abstract ]

[Results ]