The Front End of the CTE Teacher Pipeline: Characterizing the Prior Work Experiences of CTE Teachers

Career and technical education (CTE) teachers are unique because they often enter teaching with previous workplace experience in industry. Understanding these prior work experiences and the financial benefits (or losses) they face when entering teaching can offer insight into how to attract and retain these educators, yet very little is known about this “front end” of the CTE teacher pipeline. In this paper, we link employment and earnings data from unemployment insurance records with data on staffing and certifications for incoming CTE teachers in Washington state to provide a descriptive look at CTE teachers’ entry into the profession. We find that CTE teachers come from a wide range of industries, but that the proportion with prior work experience in the most high-demand CTE clusters is relatively low. We also find that previously employed CTE teachers see substantial pay increases, about $13,000 in annual earnings on average, upon first entering teaching. This increase is widely felt, with the median teacher from every industry group receiving increased annual earnings, but earnings increases were particularly large for CTE teachers entering through traditional pathways and, among teachers entering through the state’s Business and Industry pathway, for CTE teachers coming from industries with lower average pay.