The federal career and technical legislation reauthorized in 2006 required the recipients of its funding to offer at least one Program of Study (POS). All states have developed some components of POS through earlier initiatives, primarily Tech Prep, career pathways, and youth apprenticeship, that attempted to ease the transition of students from high school to careers. Evidence on the effectiveness of these initiatives implies that they had minimal impact upon postsecondary educational outcomes. The academic instruction provided by POS must be better than those in prior initiatives if POS are to produce meaningful impacts on the postsecondary outcomes of career and technical education students. (Contains 5 footnotes.)