Contemporary Career and Technical Education (CTE) models have shifted from isolated courses to sequences of study that integrate academics and skills in high-demand sectors. Providing career pathways to high school students may reduce asymmetries about the available careers and strategies for attaining them but they may also catalyze students' intrinsic motivation by shifting their understanding of their social role and capacity for success. In this study, I estimate the effects of an ambitious $500 million effort to encourage the formation of career pathways in California. Funding supported the formation of tripartite partnerships between K-12 school districts, employers and community colleges to develop career pathway curricula (i.e., articulated course sequences) in high-demand occupations and sectors. I provide causal estimates of implementing this multifaceted intervention by leveraging a natural experiment that occurs at the margin of grant receipt. Using Regression Discontinuity (RD) designs, I provide evidence on the most proximate mechanism, increased CTE spending. Per pupil CTE expenditures increased by 21.7 percent for grant recipients at the assignment threshold relative to the CTE spending of unsuccessful applicants. Furthermore, dropout rates declined by 23 percent in treatment districts but were more pronounced for females than males.

Increased interest in anti-racist education has motivated the rapidly growing but politically contentious adoption of ethnic studies (ES) courses in US public schools. A long-standing rationale for ES courses is that their emphasis on culturally relevant and critically engaged content (e.g., social justice, anti-racism, stereotypes, contemporary social movements) has potent effects on student engagement and outcomes. However, the quantitative evidence supporting this claim is limited. In this preregistered regression-discontinuity study, we examine the longer-run impact of a grade 9 ES course offered in the San Francisco Unified School District. Our key confirmatory finding is that assignment to this course significantly increased the probability of high school graduation among students near the grade 8 2.0 grade point average (GPA) threshold used for assigning students to the course. Our exploratory analyses also indicate that assignment increased measures of engagement throughout high school (e.g., attendance) as well as the probability of postsecondary matriculation.

With developments in technology (e.g., “Web 2.0” sites that allow users to author and create media content) and the removal of publication barriers, the quality of science information online now varies vastly. These changes in the review of published science information, along with increased facility of information distribution, have resulted in the spread of misinformation about science. As such, the role of evaluation when reading scientific claims has become a pressing issue when educating students. While recent studies have examined educational strategies for supporting evaluation of sources and plausibility of claims, there is little extant work on supporting students in critiquing the claims for flawed scientific reasoning. This study tested the efficacy of a structured reading support intervention for evaluation and critique on cultivating a critical awareness of flawed scientific claims in an online setting. We developed and validated a questionnaire to measure epistemic vigilance, implemented a large‐scale (N = 1081) Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) of an original reading activity that elicits evaluation and critique of scientific claims, and measured whether the intervention increased epistemic vigilance of misinformation. Our RCT results suggested a moderate effect in students who complied with the treatment intervention. Furthermore, analyses of heterogeneous effects suggested that the intervention effects were driven by 11th‐grade students and students who self‐reported a moderate trust in science and medicine. Our findings point to the need for additional opportunities and instruction for students on critiquing scientific claims and the nature of specific errors in scientific reasoning.