Idaho has yet another growing education gap: a CTE chasm.

Yes, career-technical education is booming. But it’s growing unevenly. In bigger districts, and in areas like the Treasure Valley, students have more options, more opportunities. In small towns, CTE offerings are limited.

And that affects rural students and communities alike.

A new state report puts Idaho’s urban-rural CTE gap into sharp focus. Providing additional programs — and pushing these programs into small-town Idaho — won’t be easy. And it won’t be cheap, either.

During a recent legislative hearing, Division of Career Technical Education administrator Peter Risse didn’t sugarcoat the situation. “A student’s ZIP code should not limit their access to the education and training needed to support a successful career in the community of their choice.”

The trouble is, that’s exactly what is happening right now.

And the report from the state’s Office of Performance Evaluations proved it.

The OPE, the Legislature’s research arm, looked at the scope of Idaho’s 1,103 secondary career-technical programs — to see what is offered, and where.

About 40% of the state’s CTE programs are clustered in what researchers called “city” schools — a mere 15 of the 125 districts and charters that offer CTE programs.

Smaller districts and charters offer a limited CTE menu, mostly in agriculture, business and marketing. “(They) are not offering a smaller version of the same CTE programs found in larger districts and urban areas,” according to the report, released Aug. 7. “They are offering a narrower set of options concentrated in the program areas that require the least specialized facilities and equipment.”

Conversely — and of acute concern in a state facing acute rural healthcare shortages — CTE programs in health professions are almost nonexistent in small-town schools. Idaho’s “city” schools, those 15 districts and charters, offer 63 of Idaho’s 98 CTE programs in healthcare fields: a whopping 64% of the total.

“(It) really depends on where you’re going to school and where you live,” Casey Petti, the OPE’s principal evaluator, told lawmakers.

In some ways, Idaho’s CTE portfolio seems to be doing a good job of serving students and employers alike.

Responding to an OPE survey, school officials said their students and local employers most needed training in ag, food and natural resources — no surprise, especially in rural communities. And most districts and charters can readily fund and staff these programs. For one thing, instructors in ag and natural resource programs command lower salaries than their CTE colleagues in engineering or health professions.

In the OPE survey, 68% of district and charter officials said they would like to add career-technical programs, but can’t. And 54% of respondents said they wanted to add offerings in health professions or public safety; 21% specifically listed nursing assistant programs as an area of need.

It’s important here to connect a couple of dots. Idaho is scrambling to spend $186 million in federal grants this summer and fall, phase one in a five-year rural healthcare overhaul. The state could spend some of its money on education programs — including, perhaps, an attack on Idaho’s crisis-level physicians’ shortage. But Idaho isn’t just short on doctors. The state has staffing problems across the healthcare sector, and CTE programs could help Idaho train its next generation of nursing assistants, medical assistants and emergency medical technicians.

If rural schools continue to struggle to offer healthcare CTE programs, rural hospitals and clinics will inevitably feel the side effects.

Part of the challenge comes in attracting CTE teachers, and paying a competitive wage that keeps these professionals in the classroom. That’s a statewide challenge, but it’s more acute in rural Idaho.

On average, CTE teachers tend to make more in larger, more urban districts and schools, compared to their rural colleagues. That might be a chicken-and-egg situation; the wage gap might simply reflect the fact that the larger schools have the resources to offer a broader portfolio of costlier programs.

And ultimately, these school vs. school comparisons tell us only so much.

“The relevant benchmark for many CTE fields is private-industry wages,” according to the Performance Evaluations report. “Nearly 60% of survey respondents rated CTE instructor compensation as not competitive with local industry wages, and only about 7% rated it competitive or highly competitive.”

Here’s one example from the report. An instructor in a nursing assistant’s program (again, one of those CTE programs schools struggle to offer) makes $28,000 less than the median salary for a registered nurse.

Those pay gaps won’t just go away. To an extent, districts and charters will always have to recruit CTE teachers who are motivated by something other than money. Maybe it’s a different work-life balance. Or maybe it’s a calling: a commitment to lift up that next generation of professionals.

Idaho will never erase all of these pay gaps, but hoisting the white flag doesn’t seem like a sound strategy either.

In fairness, the 2026 Legislature passed a law designed to help CTE teachers move more quickly on the career ladder, the state’s teacher salary schedule. And the OPE report suggests several possible policy changes, one that could directly affect salaries.

The state distributes CTE “program added cost funds,” nearly $15 million last year, to help offset the cost of equipment, training, curriculum and supplies. But unlike neighboring states, Idaho forbids schools from using these funds for base salaries.

The OPE report says Idaho could lift that ban, giving a little more salary flexibility to urban and rural schools alike. But when the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee met on Aug. 7 to go over the CTE report, Rep. Steve Berch was tepid to the idea.

“Are you just robbing Peter to pay Paul?” asked Berch, D-Boise.

A fair and timely question. If the 2027 legislative session is anything like the 2026 session, lawmakers will be moving money around, plugging one budget hole while creating another one. Peter might do well to invest in a good Ring alarm.

Like most OPE reviews, this latest report offers deep insight into a state program. The report quantifies the successes of Idaho CTE:  1,103 secondary school programs, at 125 districts, charters and career-technical centers statewide, with a total enrollment of 151,500.

The report also takes an exhaustive look at some complicated problems. The steep startup costs for equipment and facilities. The high price of offering hands-on instruction to small classes. The tall task of luring qualified teachers out of the private sector.

These challenges are that much more daunting for rural schools that operate on small budgets, with no economies of scale. Schools on the other side of Idaho’s CTE gap.

Senior reporter Kevin Richert writes a weekly analysis on education policy and education politics.