CTE is a comparative bright spot in America's education system that raises doubts about whether schools are equipped meet the moment.
, President Trump's vision to revive American manufacturing—a linchpin of his economic and national security strategy—rests on a bold promise: a renaissance of high-tech factories staffed by skilled tradespeople. The White House, defending steep tariffs to incentivize domestic production, argues that decades of trade deficits have "hollowed out" our manufacturing base, resulting in "a lack of incentive to increase advanced domestic manufacturing capacity." This in turn has "undermined critical supply chains; and rendered our defense-industrial base dependent on foreign adversaries." Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick painted a bracing picture of this industrial renaissance. "There's going to be mechanics, there's going to be HVAC specialists, there's going to be electricians—the tradecraft of America," he exclaimed on CBS's Face the Nation earlier this month. "Our high school-educated Americans, the core to our workforce, is (sic)going to have the greatest resurgence of jobs in the history of America, to work on these high-tech factories, which are all coming to America." It's a stirring vision, but it hinges on a question that's been largely ignored amid the political and economic debates over tariffs: Does America's education system have what it takes to produce the workforce needed to staff a manufacturing revival? To put the question bluntly, are we any better at Career and Technical Education (CTE) than teaching kids to read and do math proficiently? The evidence suggests a mixed picture: CTE is a comparative bright spot in America's challenged education system, but serious hurdles, from misaligned training to automation's rising demands, raise doubts about whether schools are equipped meet the moment. Fewer than 40 percent of Americans hold a college degree, so Lutnick is correct to say high school-educated Americans are the "core" of our workforce. But manufacturing is no longer reliably safe terrain for an unskilled worker with minimal education. Even…