Andrew Yang on education: what the evidence says · JRE #1245
“only six percent of american high school students are in technical or vocational training in germany that's 59”
What the evidence says
Yang claimed only 6% of American high school students are in technical or vocational training, compared to 59% in Germany. U.S. Department of Education data show this understates American participation by a wide margin: in the 2016-17 school year, 98% of U.S. public school districts offered career and technical education (CTE) programs at the high school level, and as of 2019, 80% to 92% of U.S. high school graduates (varying by school locale) had earned at least one Carnegie credit in a CTE course before graduating. A single-digit figure like 6% does not match any standard federal measure of CTE access or participation, though it may reflect a narrower definition (such as students in full-time vocational-only high schools or formal CTE "concentrators" completing multi-course sequences), which is a much smaller subset than overall participation. Germany's dual vocational training system is widely recognized as enrolling a substantial share of upper-secondary students, but the commonly cited figure is generally closer to 45-50% rather than 59%, and the specific 59% figure could not be verified against an allowlisted primary source in this review. The broader comparison, that Germany invests more heavily in structured vocational tracks than the United States, is directionally consistent with available data, but the specific percentages cited for both countries appear conflated or overstated relative to standard measures.