In education and workforce-training circles, there鈥檚 a sentiment one hears so often that it鈥檚 become something of a mantra: Students must graduate from high school prepared for both college and work.
But amid the clarion calls for 鈥渃ollege for all鈥� and the clamor for more-rigorous academics, the 鈥渨ork鈥� part of that imperative tends to get drowned out, business and industry groups say, to the point that high-wage jobs not requiring a bachelor鈥檚 degree often go unfilled.
鈥淚ndustry after industry is going after high-skilled labor[ers] and cannot find them,鈥� said Robert T. Jones, who was an assistant U.S. secretary of labor in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and is now the president of Education and Workforce Policy, an Alexandria, Va.-based consulting company. Even in the current recession, he said, many skilled manufacturing and technician jobs鈥攕uch as for welders and electricians鈥攇o begging.
鈥淭he old voc ed is gone,鈥� Mr. Jones said, referring to the practice of tracking students into separate vocational and academic courses of study, 鈥渂ut we haven鈥檛 replaced it with the idea that people need to be in a core curriculum for the jobs that are there. We need new learning models and academies.鈥�
In his call for melding academics and training, Mr. Jones was preaching to the choir: a small group of career-minded educators and industry representatives that convened in LaSalle, Ill., late last fall for the International Seminar on Occupational Education.
鈥淚t鈥檚 not an either-or; it鈥檚 not 鈥榓cademics for some people and CTE for others,鈥� 鈥� agreed another attendee, Janet B. Bray, the executive director of the Association for Career and Technical Education, also based in Alexandria, Va., using the shorthand for such education. 鈥淲e have to find the right balance.鈥�
Mutual Reinforcement
Ms. Bray, Mr. Jones, and others at the seminar insisted that they don鈥檛 want career training to dilute academic excellence. But is it feasible to simultaneously prepare students for university-level academics and for jobs requiring only a high school diploma or a narrow postsecondary certification without sacrificing either academic rigor or real-world applicability?
Whether that can happen on a mass scale remains an open question.
But experts point to examples showing that high-caliber academics and highly relevant job-skills training can strengthen each other, not only coexist.
Ms. Bray thinks some of the zero-sum thinking鈥攑itting academics against CTE, instead of finding ways to integrate them鈥攕tems from outdated notions of what career education is and what it鈥檚 for.
Back in the old days of vocational education, she said, 鈥渋t used to be very job-specific鈥攚e taught somebody to be an auto mechanic.鈥�
In CTE classes, by contrast, she said, 鈥渕ost of the jobs we are training students for in 2014 don鈥檛 exist today.鈥� As a result, she said, career and technical education emphasizes lifelong learning and so-called 21st-century skills: critical-thinking, communication, technological, and analytical skills.
鈥淓verybody wants to do STEM,鈥� Ms. Bray told the gathering in Illinois, referring to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. American students鈥� proficiency in those fields, which are judged by many policymakers to be of the highest strategic importance, lags on international assessments.
鈥淐TE and STEM are basically one [and] the same,鈥� Ms. Bray said. 鈥淪cience and math are well and good, but unless you鈥檙e going to be a math teacher, if you don鈥檛 know how to apply it, it鈥檚 no good.鈥�
Hans K. Meeder, the president of the Meeder Consulting Group, a Columbia, Md.-based firm that analyzes education and workforce policy, told the group that, considering the background of most policymakers and school counselors, their ignorance of industry-ready education isn鈥檛 surprising.
鈥淔or the people who have driven education policy, a four-year degree is all they鈥檝e ever known,鈥� said Mr. Meeder, a former deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Education鈥檚 office of vocational and adult education under President George W. Bush.
鈥淲hat counseling there is is focused all around a four-year degree,鈥� he said. 鈥淭here鈥檚 this kind of perception that that鈥檚 the one road to success.鈥�
Not that the seminar participants were anti-college, or yearning for the days of student tracking.
鈥淚t doesn鈥檛 behoove us to distinguish between college-bound and noncollege-bound,鈥� Mr. Jones said. 鈥淭his world we鈥檙e walking into demands postsecondary [education]. Now we鈥檙e only arguing about which road you take鈥攖wo-year degrees, or something beyond.鈥�
Apprentices Abroad
The bright-line distinction between technical and academic education frankly puzzles many Europeans, said Burkhart Sellin, a Berlin, Germany-based independent consultant and a former official at the European Union鈥檚 European Center for the Development of Vocational Training, in Thessaloniki, Greece.
鈥淵ou cannot go on with workers who only have technical knowledge,鈥� said Mr. Sellin. 鈥淵ou cannot have a situation where, 鈥榊ou do all the dirty work, and you do the bright work.鈥� You have to combine these things in another manner.鈥�
Such melding is common in Germany, said Udo O.J. Huff, a private consultant based in Whitmore Lake, Mich., who received his training in manufacturing, welding, and diesel-engine technology in that country.
鈥淐ompanies require that the future engineers serve at least a two-year apprenticeship,鈥� he said. The idea, he added, is to ensure that they 鈥渁t least get a sense鈥� of what the actual manufacturing process involves.
Because more than a third of all young Germans enter such apprenticeship programs, secondary schools ramp up their technical training to match, Mr. Huff said.
By contrast, he said, when training new workers in the United States for companies, he found that students were so inadequately prepared by their secondary schools that he had to start from scratch by setting up de facto apprenticeships.
鈥淏osch, Stihl, they鈥檙e producing parts to tolerances of one one-thousandth of an inch,鈥� Mr. Huff said, referring to the German manufacturing companies. 鈥淵ou cannot get this done with someone just going on the job and learning.鈥�
James R. Stone, a professor and the director of the National Research Center for Career and Technical Education, at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, sees no hope that the United States will replicate the European model of an integrated secondary curriculum of academic and technical education, plus postsecondary apprenticeships.
鈥淐ulturally, that will never happen here,鈥� said Mr. Stone, who did not attend the LaSalle seminar.
Study Gauges Impact
But that鈥檚 not to say that academics and technical education can never be successfully fused in high school.
In a study funded by the federal Education Department and conducted during the 2004-05 school year, Mr. Stone and his colleagues at the national CTE-research center鈥攖hen located at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities鈥攕et up a controlled experiment involving 131 CTE teachers around the country.
For the study, 57 CTE teachers were put in an experimental group and paired with math teachers in professional-development sessions that helped them鈥攁nd by extension, their students鈥攖o identify core mathematical principles being applied in practical ways.
For example, said Donna Pearson, the center鈥檚 associate director, CTE teachers had their students design and build a ramp up to a truck, then told them: 鈥淕uess what鈥攖his is the Pythagoream theorem. This is what you鈥檙e doing in your math class.鈥�
On average, students who were in one of the 57 experimental CTE classrooms scored significantly higher on two widely used assessments than students who were in the 74 control CTE classrooms where CTE teachers were not exposed to math concepts in professional-development sessions.
But as anyone who conducts pedagogical research knows, Mr. Stone said, 鈥渢eachers tend to drift back to what they were doing before. We were curious whether this had legs.鈥�
鈥業ntegration Can Work鈥�
So researchers conducted a follow-up survey the following year, and were surprised to find that nearly three-quarters of the experimental CTE teachers were still using math concepts to teach CTE. They also found that two-thirds of the math teachers they worked with were using CTE examples to illustrate math concepts they were teaching.
Since then, Mr. Stone said, the research center has lent technical assistance on integrating math and CTE curricula to three states and two city school districts鈥攏one of which he could identify, because of confidentiality agreements.
Four of those five cases have showed results similar to the 2004-05 national study, he said, and the center is now investigating ways to integrate science and literacy skills into career and technical education.
鈥淐urriculum integration can work,鈥� Ms. Pearson said, 鈥渁nd it can work very powerfully.鈥�
