Texas has clearly used this to enhance basic skills among students - high stakes accountability in literacy and numeracy gives very strong incentives to schools to improve results. At the same time there are weak incentives to enhance some key aspects of CTE (e.g. career-specific and work-based learning, career advice) so that some of the state’s objectives might not be pursued at local level and risk remaining mere aspirations. In addition to a supportive framework and adequate incentives to local stakeholders, it is also necessary to ensure that schools and districts have sufficient resources to implement the changes intended by the state.