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Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education / Tom Fields
A student at Oklahoma's Ardmore High School works on an assignment for a biotechnical program, which is designed to introduce students to careers in fields like chemistry and microbiology.
SAN DIEGO -- Career and technical education has come a long way since the days when students could be steered from academics into hairstyling, auto repairs or carpentry. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to sell the concept of having all students take courses in CTE, as it is known.
Take what happened this March in La Jolla, Calif. Parents rose in protest after the San Diego Unified School District proposed new high school graduation requirements mandating two years of career and technical education courses — or two to four courses. The district would have been the first in the nation to have such a mandate, experts believe. Parents circulated an online protest petition and school officials spent hours in a meeting to assure hundreds of parents that courses like computerized accounting, child development and website design could be in the best interest of all students.
But afterward, when parent leaders asked the crowd who favored the requirement, every single parent at the meeting voted against it.
District officials were unprepared for the backlash in the affluent neighborhoods north of Interstate 8, the unofficial boundary between the haves and have-nots of the district. Just two years earlier, the school system passed a mandate — supported by the community — to make all students complete a set of courses required for entry to one of the state’s university systems.
They viewed career and technical education courses as a logical extension of their goal to get all students “college and career ready,” said Sid Salazar, the district’s assistant superintendent for instructional support services. Attending college was once the sole way students could prepare for some professions, but opportunities now exist in high school under an expanded definition of career and technical education.
The parents, though, argued that college-bound students wouldn’t be helped by taking career and technical education classes. As one parent wrote on an online petition that garnered 1,326 signatures in 21 days: “If you force the children of … highly intelligent and very academic parents to take less-rigorous VoTech coursework, you will hurt their chances of admission to undergrad and grad school.”
Advocates: It's prep for engineering
As San Diego demonstrated, despite more than a decade of efforts to revamp its image, technical education still battles a negative reputation. While college-prep graduation requirements are spreading rapidly in California, many affluent parents, and low-income parents who fear their child is being sold short, balk at technical education and assume it won’t lead to college.
Advocates are trying to convince people it’s not an either-or situation. They argue that although many career and technical fields do not require more than a certificate or an associate’s degree, CTE courses can be useful even to those on the four-year university path, including students preparing for professions like teaching and engineering.
A statewide program mandates that kids in Georgia choose their career as early as 6th grade, but some say that's too early for children to know what they want to do for a living. NBC's Rehema Ellis reports.
Advocates also point to data from the U.S. Department of Education demonstrating that those who concentrate in career and technical education classes in high school are more likely to graduate from high school: 90 percent earned their diploma in the 2007-2008 school year, compared with about 75 percent overall. And nearly 80 percent of those students enroll in post-secondary education within two years of high school graduation.
“There’s always been a saying in the field that public attitude toward career and technical education — and I think this is accurate — (is) it’s great but for someone else’s kids,” said Kenneth Gray, an emeritus professor of education at Penn State, who has written extensively about the role of career and technical courses in high school. “I’m convinced that for a whole lot of people, they would much rather have their kid go to Yale and turn out to be a bum than go into career and technical education and be successful.”
Gray added, however, that mandating it for all was not a solution. “To say everyone has to take it is as ridiculous in my view as saying everyone has to take calculus,” he said.
Last year, the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium hired an outside communications firm and launched its second major PR move in as many decades. The new publicity campaign aims to demonstrate CTE’s links to college and the workforce. But when Kimberly Green, the consortium’s executive director, performs her personal litmus test—chatting with people on airplanes about her job—she still gets a similar response: “I’m so glad people have a place to go that’s not … college.”
“I wouldn’t say the tide has turned,” she said. “The label is still a barrier.”
It’s not the only issue. Many San Diego parents worried about the limited amount of time in the school day, a problem even the staunchest technical education proponents recognize.
“It’s not that we were against the career technical courses themselves, we were against making them a requirement,” said Fran Shrimp, a parent leader in San Diego who organized the petition against mandating the courses. “Getting accepted into a good college is so competitive that students need to pack their schedules with the most challenging courses available just to be in the running.”
Changing with workforce needs
Vocational education — as it used to be called — was a means of tracking students who were not going to college. A generation ago, that education enabled grads to enter the middle class with just a high school diploma. In the 1970s and ’80s, the economy began requiring more skilled workers and middle-class America became more convinced of the importance of college, said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. By the mid-1980s, the arguments against tracking flourished and the calls of “college for all” began.
About 10 years ago, responding to the changing economy and attempting to shed its bad reputation, vocational education became career and technical education. But advocates are still trying to cement the name change into the American lexicon. “Career and technical education meant something different than vocational education,” Green said. “It’s academics plus technical instruction.”
The quality and availability of the programs vary. At the top end, students in medical courses might spend time at a hospital, learning key vocabulary and technical skills like drawing blood. Students can learn engineering design programs on computers or spend time taking apart electronics to learn how they work. Students in cosmetology programs might study the chemistry behind hair dye.
More from The Hechinger Report
- Can career and technical classes be rigorous too?
- The ‘cash cow’ of U.S. universities: Professional certificates instead of degrees
- In a tough economy, new focus on job-oriented certificates
Information technology, marketing and business management all fall under technical education’s new wide umbrella, as do professions like engineering and architecture. Even the old standards, like auto shop, require a level of academics not needed in the past to keep up with increasingly computerized car engines, Green said.
At Patrick Henry High School in San Diego, if students pass all three pre-engineering courses offered, they’ll be automatically admitted into San Diego State’s engineering program. At the high school’s teaching academy, students work with nursery school children and graduate with just two community college credits shy of earning a preschool teacher’s license.
San Diego district officials held up programs like these as examples and argued that more than 90 percent of students were already taking at least one of the 158 technical education courses the district offered. And 60 of them were approved by the state university systems to count toward college admission.
'Why change it?'
The parents were not swayed, concerned about having time in their children’s schedules for electives and Advanced Placement courses. “If the program is successful on its own, why change it?” Shrimp said. She also noted that the same set of CTE courses are not offered at each high school, meaning students might be relegated to classes that don't interest them.
Within a month of meeting with parents in La Jolla, the San Diego Board of Education voted to rescind the requirements.
Scott Himelstein, director of the University of San Diego’s Center for Education Policy and Law and former deputy secretary of Education for California, viewed the vote as a “major setback.” Policymakers need to gather the political courage to start promoting career and technical education, given that only a quarter of high schoolers in the state will go on to get a four-year degree, he said. Nationally, more than 30 percent of adults have at least a bachelor’s degree, according to census figures.
One compromise, according to Himelstein, is to approve more career and technical courses to count toward the University of California and California State University systems’ so-called “a-g” entry requirements. This list of courses, which San Diego and several other districts have adopted as graduation requirements, spell out what courses students must complete in high school to be eligible for admittance to the universities, including core subjects like math and English, as well as a certain number of electives.
The university systems approve courses on an individual basis, meaning each district’s biology or calculus course must get a separate approval. Ten years ago, no career and technical classes were approved for a-g, according to Gary Hoachlander, president of ConnectEd, a California group that works with nine districts to create career-oriented high school and college trajectories for students. Now, there are some 10,000 a-g courses across all the state’s districts.
The vast majority count as electives. Often career and technical science classes, such as environmental science or agricultural science, won’t count as an a-g science credit. “That’s where I think there’s still a lot of work to do,” Hoachlander said.
This story, "Push for career-technical education meets parent resistance," was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet affiliated with Teachers College, Columbia University.
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Parents are such idiots. My brother went to school for heating and refrigeration and he makes over $100K a year as a corporate heating and air conditioner technician. I know plumbers who make almost $150K per year. The world will always need plumbers, heating and air techs, electricians, etc., but it most likely will never need history majors. Get a grip. Send your kids to a school that is going to get them a job and make them money to live on for the remainder of their lives.
Agreed. By mandating a combination of courses for all (presumably to "level the playing field"), the school district has done a dis-service to both the college-bound kids and the kids who want a technical career.
This is what happens when Parents flaunt their "Rights". Now Parents want a Constitutional Amendment that pretty much takes education decisions out of the School and puts it in the hands of Unqualified Parents. God help us if the parents Alley, the Republican'ts are successful in installing this Parents Rights Amendment.
On another Note. Comcast has yet to fix the 404 page not found errors on their new NBC.com page. Its getting worse everyday. Now NO page will open unless I go through several links and just happen to stumble upon it like I did this article. The fact that Comcast-NBC has NO e-mail address does not help either. What will I have to do? Call my local Comcast center and get them to fix their NBC errors?
The moment they mentioned La Jolla I started laughing. Of course they are going to balk at vocational training. I once knew a woman that lives in La Jolla. She was aghast that she had rats in her million dollar home. Nevermind that it was a 50yr old home, rats should know better than to enter 92037.
The thing with requiring it is that some of these 'higher standard' students have 4.5 GPA due to the college level AP courses they have taken. Now these vocational classes will bring that average down. The same argument was made way back in my high school days when parents opted their kids out of PE so their child could take a 5.0 class in place of the 4.0 PE class that they felt didn't add to their grade.
Requiring it at the high school level to graduate is a bit much. In college you declare a major. Maybe if, upon entering high school, you "declare" a direction of education, i.e. University, med school, etc. And those that declare they have no earthly idea can be required to take the vocational classes. Just a thought.
Yes, I agree. The school system is flawed in a sense. It costs the school to send these kids to vocational/trade schools for half the day or whatever it may be but they shouldn't limit the kids choices. It's not right to tell a kid if he/she goes to vocational school then he/she can't go to college. Because many have done both including myself. If they eliminate that concept everyone will be much better off. They need to broaden the kids opportunities instead of limiting and minimizing them at such a young age because that will just discourage them. I almost left vocational school at one point but my HS wouldn't allow me to because it cost them money and took up a spot. It should never be about the school. It should always be about the students.
When I was a kid, just after buying my first home, I had a plumbing problem, and called the guy to come fix it. I had no idea as to what it would cost, was nervous, and let the plumber know. He just said he'd find the problem, fix it, and would try to keep the cost down as much as possible. He finished, handed me the bill, smiled and said: My father always encouraged me to be a doctor. If I didn't want to be a doctor, be a plumber. While the plumber did take it easy on me that first time, I never did forget what he said. I believe it to be true. Nothing in this world wrong with being a plumber. You'll make a nice living, without all the college loans hanging over your head, like I had.
The parents are the retards with an attitude like that.
Comes at a surprise? NO!!!!!
Every parent wants their kids to be a doctor, lawyer or corporate ceo. Most of the highly successful and happy people I know are owners of trade businesses. HVAC, plumbing..etc.
When I got out of school, I had college debt, the economy sucked and jobs were scarce. I took a job in construction, as a laborer for a framing crew, building homes in a big development. Eventually I became somewhat of a carpenter, able to do a lot of the things needed to frame a house out. What a great job that was. Amazing really. the end of the day, I just stood back and looked at what we had accomplished that day. You could SEE what you did. The only problem was layoffs were frequent due to changes in the economy and people not buying lots of homes sometimes. I went into the business world and took advantage of my degree. Still liked the carpentry job better than any job I've had since.
I went to the state-run public Illinois Math and Science Academy for high school, and they offered many classes like this- providing training that gives you a major edge in terms of robotics, computer programming, biotechnology, investment and entrepreneurship. The edge is not just about the head-start in these subjects; these classes definitely sparked interest and allowed kids to nurture those creative-thinking and problem-solving skills, and created a sense of personal ambition that continued during college. If you have that on your own, that's awesome. But if you don't, that extra push in high school might be enough to overcome this nation's ridiculous emphasis on high school athletics and gear kids towards having a successful career in whatever that may be. The parents who oppose this sound like they don't appreciate the real world, where, you know, skills actually matter.
I was talking to my niece last night, who works for a nationwide employment agency, and she says the biggrest demands are for CNC operators, welders and IT programming workers. These people make as much, or more than engineers. a good CNC operator can easily make $150,000/year. College is not for everybody and even if they are children of academics they may not necessarily have the same skills or inclinations as their parents.
I don't think as much tech as they are trying to include in this instance is the correct thing to do, but I think it would benefit everyone to experience some sort of hands-on tech training. Some kids may have skills or interests that would not be discovered unless they tried something different. My favorite example is a friend of mine that was on his way to the Brooking Institute until he discovered woodworking, fell in love with it and is now the editor of one of the premier woodworking magazines in the country and has never regretted his decision not to go into academia.
As for buddym's comment on history - from my point of view, after 40 succesfull years in business (no college degree), I would say that history is the most important subject in school. I can't tell you how many time a good understanding of history has led me to make the correct decision in crucial situations and the development of long term stratagies.
Did you confer with your local historian when you were making those decisions? Or did you google it or pick up a book? I think that was the point he was trying to make.
My son is entering his sophomore year of high school and will choose a career path-engineering, mechanic, etc. This is a good way to get kids who AREN'T academic and don't want to be in a college career to look at other jobs. He wants to go military or aerospace, and either way is fine with me, but if he finds he can't do either one, a mechanical type job would be good as well. Parents need to let their kids choose (within reason) what path they want to go down.
Back in the stone age when I was in Junior High, everyone during the course of 7th and 8th grade had a half-year introductory class in various shop classes (wood, electrical, metal working and mechanical for the boys, home-ec, typing, etc for the girls), art (painting, drawing, sculpting), and science (biology, physics, chemistry). Of course we also had mandatory classes in English, Literature, Grammar, Math, History, Social Studies, and Phys-ed. We had one elective, Foreign Language (Spanish, French or Latin). All of those introductory classes were available as electives in High School, and you might or might not be encouraged to take one. It's so simple, it's beyond me why similar approaches are not followed everywhere. With the addition of 6th grade to the 'Middle Schools" there is certainly plenty of time to add today's "high--tech" requirements to the mix.
When I was a High School Freshman,in those very same Dark Ages,I took a class titled General Industrial Arts. It was a few weeks each of Wood Shop, Metal Shop and Drafting. We also had Wood Shop for the guys starting in 6th or 7th grade in Elementary School. Those classes don't exist any more. I wonder why.
slodon; During the Reagan years the budgets for vocational training was slashed over 50%. Most of the skilled jobs were contracted out overseas-cheap labor, no benefits or worker safety rules. Also to break the U.S. union work-force.
Pretty much Ditto to everyone here,
I was incredibly surprised when I moved to the city to find out how little my neighbors knew about anything, whether it was fixing something on a car, or in the house, or even working in the yard. People are ignorant.
Growing up on a farm I was exposed to all trades, and I mean everything. So, Why would anyone deny their child the opportunity to learn any thing? Oh that's right! California?...Liberal Academics?... Arrogant Snobs?...A little knowledge is a dangerous thing?...
"Some of the happiest people go home smelling to High Heaven" Bruce Almighty?
Funny thing, is, though, that La Jolla is really conservative! California as a whole isn't as liberal as one would think- Orange County, Sacramento etc are pretty closed-minded about education and conservative. The liberal academics you mention- I suspect they'd be all for a real technical education that involves problem solving or experimental skills, even entrepreneurship. Those are things that serve you well through college and beyond, pretty much in any field, and are often taught in university-affiliated high schools. Here in IL, experimental agriculture is huge and the University of IL does some pretty awesome research with bio- fuels that's quite attractive for kids with farm backgrounds (who are super knowledgeable). Arrogant snobs, however, I'm with you there.
IMO, schools need to offer a variety of courses, for both the academically inclined and for those who are not interested in spending the next four years and thousands of dollars sitting in classrooms. Some kids just don't do well in a classroom setting. To require every student to take college prep courses is just as bad as requiring every student to take wood working.
Having gone through high school in the 60s, something more than auto shop would have been nice.
I was very good in chemistry in college, but then there was only earth, water, fire and air as the basic elements.
Astro-biology sounds like fun, but we didn't know it existed. Maybe I need a Pell Grant and try and start over.
rusty, you are my age and too old to start over, all though it's a great idea. What are all these college grads going to do when their car, toilet, heater/AC, etc. quit? Oh they are living in their parents basement and those are their parents problem. When that plumber or HVAC tech shows up and may look like he does not have two nickels to rub together, he'll laugh all the way to the bank after he fixes your problem. Those vo-tech loosers will more than likely out earn you in your life time. I am not knocking a college degree but not all of us are college material or want to be stuck in an office all day. Think about this when your child doesn't want to go to college.
I hope not. I just made some major life changes today.
Just can't keep on the same track any more.
Yes lets keep turning out history, philosophy, more lawyers and other non employable college grads while the jobs that support our manufacturing base are shipped offshore or filled by immigrants. This makes a lot of sense. And then people complain that their children cant find a job. Parents should realize that the majority of students are not going to be doctors, dentists or other professionals because their grades wont afford them entry into professional schools. Thats a fact that parents cant seem to understand. My son is a machinist and makes 125,000 a year and he didn't have 100,000 in college debt when he started working.
Interesting. My career was in the machining trade and I believed it was one trade where it was guaranteed to never be out of work. Thousands of dollars invested in tools, years of college to keep current including business management. The trade allowed me to own some land, a home, decent lifestyle and raise two incredible sons. There was the satisfaction at the end of the day of taking a piece of metal and turning into something that never existed before, my work included proto-type military, International space station, medical equipment, commercial products, satellites, plastic injection molds and led to management of depts for international corporations in a suit and tie. To excel required working knowledge of metallurgy, fluid dynamics, mechanical engineering, physics, thermodynamics and of course computer savvy and math skills in trigonometry and geometry. California was the one place in the country no one in the trade had to be out of a job unless they wanted to be. Then one day I heard clinton make his speech about his "new economy" and I warned any who would listen hards times were on the horizon the likes of which this nation has never seen, combined with the massive influx of cheap ignorant unskilled 3rd world excess population every single forecast I made has come to pass and now you cant find any work if you paid the employer for it. It just is not there. Meanwhile college education has been dumbed down so an arbitrary quota of whatever group is the fad of the month can apply and possibly pass courses. Most 2 year degrees just mean you are able to learn what used to be a high school level of courses and 4 year courses are not to much beyond that level and does not have the value of the past. Things have to change, but if the jobs dont exist it does not matter what skill you bring to the table. A nation can not excel unless it produces wealth .... a nation of business majors, service techs and liberal arts degrees do not create anything, they can only pass around money they can not create it. I love my chosen ocupation, had a hand in making wonderful things that helped people, saved lives and a better life for everyone. Now those jobs have been ceded to foreign work force with little concern about quality but cheap, all in the cause of redistribution of wealth from the developed world to the third world (paid for by the developed world of course) as part of the U.N.'s end world poverty idiocy. Until there is a major change in the priorities of government and jobs that led to a massive independent working middle-class can be recreated all the education (be as primitive as it may be) and shop clerks imaginable will not be of any use.
The attitude of the parents in the article is disgusting, but not surprising.
Around here, there are only a few CTE (formerly known as Vo-Tech) high schools in the state. When the state started up a county-wide Vo-Tech high school in my area, all the school districts in the county tried to use the program as a dumping ground for their problem students, thus leading to the school being dubbed "Slow Tech".
To combat this, they implemented strict academic requirements to be admitted, just as if it were a college. By the time I reached high school, the Vo-Tech program had gone from running joke, to being the most sought-after path for college-bound students to get a head start on college.
By going there instead of a regular high school, I got a part time position at a local engineering firm during my senior year of high school (which continued through my first year of college), and was able to start college with 1 semester's worth of credits already under my belt.
Do you know of any high school programs (outside of football scholarships) that can do all that?
Excellent article. Ive been advocating this for years. Now, if we can only get the rest of the country on the same page AND get Arnie out of the Dept of Education.
Once again the school "leaders" dictate from on high, not considering the wants of their consumers - the parents. Perhaps, if they took a page from their own textbooks and listened to the parent's concerns instead of dismissing them, they would not have had this problem.
Norman, part of the problem is that American parents have been sold a bill of goods regarding a college education. Not every student is capable of academic achievement at the post-secondary (college) level, and insisting that all children go to college is truly trying to shove a square peg in a round hole. We need to remove the stigma from blue-collar and brown-collar jobs. Many of them pay better than I earn (and I earn a considerable salary) with my four year degree.
Well said!
For years now I have been saying that we do our children a disservice by insisting everyone should attend college. As may posters above have pointed out, not everyone is college material. That doesn't mean that non-collegiate students are toss-aways, only that they need to be guided to an appropriate career path that matches their strengths and interests.
Added to that, we need people to fill the low-paying jobs. We need janitors and dishwashers and lunch-room ladies. Someone needs to stock the shelves and bag our groceries. Should these be "careers" that we steer our children to? Not really, but they are good niche jobs for those who simply have no academic or vocational apptitude.
American parents need to get their heads on straight and stop thinking that college is the only viable choice for a "real" career. My daughter elected to go straight into the workforce after graduating high school, and within a year she was the youngest-ever franchise field consultant for one of the five largest casual dining restaurants in America. At age 19 she was out-earning her father, to which I said good for her!
Problem is, these days if your kid doesn't have a college degree in something, you're looked at as a failure as a parent.
After all, when you need your car fixed you'll take it to a mechanic. After all, that mechanic is one of those lower class people who were always intended to be servants of us educated middle class people.
Never mind that the mechanics of today need almost as much education/training as most college graduates, and probably will make more money over their lifetime.
And are certainly no less intelligent.
Most parents refuse to admit they own the local village idiot, whose shoe size and IQ are about the same.
What's amazing is how school systems will push higher-tech vo-tech, but No Child virtually stops them from putting enough students into traditional vo-tech like auto mechanics, carpentry, masonry, etc. My school system (the nations 36th largest) paid me to look at how it prepared students for out-of-high-school jobs and I spent time with companies in my county at United Airlines at BWI Airport, major auto repair shops, sunroom construction companies, printers, restaurants, etc. You might be amazed at how many six-figure jobs there are for guys or girls in their mid-20's in auto repair and construction (though construction's in a tough situation right now). But, instead of sending kids talented with their hands, schools spend extra money to put them through two math classes at a time in high school (instead of doing more in middle-school as the rest of the world does!) so that kids can learn things like "If two parallel lines are crossed by a transversal, alternate interior angles are equal" instead of how to determine if a car's air conditioner worked properly or how to accurately measure building materials: in one case, one of the construction jobs I checked had built an addition and the new door that arrived was 1/2" too wide for the opening they left, requiring a lot of corrective work and expense.
I don't see anything wrong with bringing in new courses like these to broaden student's minds about the real world and jobs that they might not know of in the general scheme of things. For parents to be against this kind of advanced education is baffling. I can see why one would protest against courses that place a student in one particular direction; I think 6th grade is a bit early for kids to really know what they want and it is the rarest child that knows from the get-go what they want to do. But for parents to go against education that does nothing but expand a child's knowledge is simply amazing.
thank GOD.
there's still some common sense out there.
ObamaConcordia banned, rereg of JamesInSeattle.
Stupid.
I bet most of those parents cann't even replace an o-ring in a leaking faucet, but they are sure they live in Lake Wobegon where all the children are above average
Let the affluent, entitled students focus on academics so that after they graduate from college, they can return home to live off mom and dad's money because they've studied theories instead of practical application. Want to know competition? Try the labor market. Experience counts. Maybe those kids in CTE courses will hire your kids to work at their companies.
So many good points made here about vo-tech classes. But, I can see it being a hard sell to parents who have struggled financially over the last 10 years or so. Throughout this time period more and better education was touted as the golden ticket out of fiscal worries. Many jobless went back to school to make themselves more marketable, for some it helped. On one hand parents are being told that higher education is critical to job success, while on the other hand its OK for their children to not have a degree at all?
My problem with "career technical education" is that it assumes the lone possible purpose for education is to prepare someone to be qualified for a company or corporation to profit from their labor. Shouldn't education be more about shaping responsible adults and training for citizenship than about producing workers??
Without workers to do the jobs, invent, and create wealth, citizenship becomes moot. Sometimes you just have to live and learn. Should people spend the most productive years of their lives fighting over the hidden meanings of things in English literature when they can learn a skill that after working at it for 5-10 years allows them to start their own business and be independent? That was my greatest regret about my high school/college experience, that I sold myself out to be dependent on big companies and population dense areas.
Again, you assume starting a business (i.e., using skills/knowledge acquired through education) to be the the sole possible point to learning something. I disagree.
i for one will be letting my child excel in what he wants to do. for him that is woodworking. our highschool has a great woodworking and vo-ag program and have even gone as far as to purchase a mill and a kiln. for those "college educated" a mill is for cutting logs into usable boards and a kiln is for drying those boards. he will make
more money doing what he loves than for me pushing him into 6 years of college that he hates.