Improving Equity and Efficiency in Career Technical Education Funding Decisions

Los Angeles Unified School District Mathematics, 2020–21

Liaison(s): Esther Soliman, Seema Puri, Laura Hayes, Michael Flores, Andrew Ekchian
Advisor(s): Darryl Yong ’96
Students(s): Sean Pine (PM-S), Trevor Nogues (PM-F), Fiona Plunkett, Bhavana Bheem, Justin Grant

Career Technical Education (CTE) programs in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) are career-centered, sequenced courses in fields like engineering, arts, media, and medicine. There are two inefficiencies in LAUSD’s current funding allocation process for CTE programs: (1) it can distribute funding inequitably, and (2) its application review process is overly time-consuming. We aim to address these problems by revising the current funding application and introducing a data-driven process for determining how funding is allocated.