Exploring the Costs of CTE-Dedicated High Schools in New York City

By Clare Buckley Flack, James J. Kemple, John Sludden, and Shaun Dougherty

With Rebecca Unterman and Samuel Kamin

(December 2025)

Career and Technical Education (CTE) refers to a broad range of programs aiming to prepare students for careers while also teaching them academic skills. With more than 290 CTE programs across 131 high schools, New York City Public Schools (NYCPS) oversees one of the largest and most diverse CTE systems in the country. This report examines the costs of Career and Technical Education programs within the City’s CTE-Dedicated high schools. These public, non-charter high schools were specifically designed to offer the courses, work-based learning opportunities, and employer and post-secondary education partnerships that constitute CTE programs of study as specified by the New York State Department of Education and NYCPS. 

Our study drew upon publicly available School-Based Expenditure Reports corresponding to the four years of high school enrollment expected for a sample of students who entered high school between 2013 and 2016 (meaning we analyzed data from 2013 through 2020). Among our key findings:

• On average, the CTE-Dedicated schools spent 5 percent more per general education pupil than did schools where comparison students enrolled (a smaller difference than that found in studies of CTE costs in other cities and states).
• Both CTE-Dedicated and comparison high schools spent a majority of their funds on personnel. Teacher salaries and benefits accounted for 73 percent of the difference in spending between the two groups of schools. This was likely related to the significantly smaller student-teacher ratio in the CTE-Dedicated schools.
• As schools’ enrollment increased, the incremental cost (or spending gap) between CTE-Dedicated and comparison schools widened.
• There was tremendous variation across CTE-Dedicated schools, both in terms of incremental costs relative to comparison schools and in terms of cost differences among subgroups of CTE-Dedicated high schools. Three factors defined these subgroups: 1) the era of their creation, 2) their size, and 3) the average level of postsecondary training required to enter relevant industries.
• Despite the additional costs associated with being CTE-Dedicated, there was a solid return on investment for one subgroup of schools. Newer, smaller, nonselective schools with college-aligned CTE programming were the least costly and the most effective at producing high school graduates. 

These findings offer important insights for policymakers involved in the ongoing expansion of career-connected learning in NYC and across the country. The report outlines a number of considerations and recommendations for future research and policy, including improvements to data infrastructure and public reporting of expenditures. These improvements are essential to continue deepening our understanding of the impacts, costs, and cost-effectiveness of CTE and other models of career-connected learning.