School-to-career programs and transitions to employment and higher education

The 1994 federal School-to-Work Opportunities Act (STWOA) provided more than $1.5 billion over 5 years to support increased career preparation activities in the country's public schools. A new longitudinal data source with rich information on school-to-career (STC) programs—the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97)—provides previously unparalleled opportunities to study the effectiveness of STC programs. This paper uses the NLSY97 to assess the effects of STC programs on transitions to employment and higher education among youths leaving high school, with a focus on attempting to estimate the causal effects of this participation given possible non-random selection of youths into STC programs.