Many high school career and technical education (CTE) programs have evolved since the vocational education “wood shop” classes of the 1970s. However, some families and educators remain hesitant to enroll high school students of color in CTE programs, remembering the history in which those students were often tracked into vocational programs that steered them away from college and into jobs that offered few or no opportunities for advancement. In this blog post, MDRC’s Center for Effective CTE speaks with Dr. Eddie Fletcher, an associate professor in workforce development and education at Ohio State University, about how CTE educators, program designers, and other stakeholders can learn from the vocational education programs of the past as they work to build equitable CTE programs for today.