One of the few - very few - bright spots in an otherwise dismal 2005 legislative session was approval of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's down payment on restoring California's sadly neglected vocational education programs.

Vocational education - which has been renamed "career technical education" (CTE) of late - uses a lot of precious classroom space and requires teachers who both can meet educational licensing standards and are skilled in their fields. It runs counter, moreover, to the popular, if fictional, belief that those who don't obtain four-year college educations are doomed to dead-end, low-paying jobs.

Accordingly, in their zeal to punch up academic test numbers and please parents who universally believe their children are destined for white-collar careers, school boards and administrators have been destroying programs to train carpenters, electricians, auto mechanics and other vital workers.

The slow eradication of CTE, when coupled with the political pressure to raise test scores, surely has had some detrimental effect on California's high school dropout rate, which already is much too high. Indeed, some - CTE teachers, for the most part - have seen it as a conspiracy of sorts to cleanse the schools of students who are vocationally, rather than academically, inclined.

Ironically, California has never had a greater need for workers with mechanical and/or technical abilities, a need so vast that employers are raiding each other and importing skilled workers from other states to fill vacancies.
Schwarzenegger is the first governor, at least in recent decades, to make CTE a public priority, mentioning it during his State of the State address to the Legislature last January and including $20 million to improve CTE at high school and community college levels in his 2005-06 budget.

Although the need for improving CTE should be obvious, nothing happens in the Capitol simply because it's the right thing to do. There's always an angle of some kind. In this case, Democratic lawmakers approved the $20 million contingent on another $20 million being allocated for instructional materials for students who are learning English. Schwarzenegger refused to go along with the ploy and vetoed both appropriations, leaving the issue in limbo.

Finally, just before adjournment in September, a bill was drafted under the authorship of Sen. Jack Scott, D-Pasadena?, a former community college president, to reallocate the $20 million to the state community college system, which is to develop cooperative programs with high schools. Schwarzenegger went to Pasadena City College with Scott, the college's former president, to sign the bill, tour CTE classes, and bring the issue some media attention.

Schwarzenegger described CTE - accurately - as "a first-class ticket to high-paying jobs and a solid career and to California's economy" and added, also accurately, that "for too long this has been neglected, and has been forgotten, and there is no respect for this kind of education." But if his personal support for CTE is to become a long-term commitment, a change of attitude is needed.

Those who denigrate job-oriented education are still powerful in both the education hierarchy and politics. Some school districts are seriously considering, or already have adopted, schemes to compel every student to pursue a college-prep curriculum. That wrong-headed notion has made its way into proposed state legislation.

It is, at its core, another example of how theories of equality may, in practice, treat people unfairly. Those who advocate college-prep-for-everyone and directly or indirectly denigrate CTE contend that they just want every kid to have an equal chance at success. But because students have such wide variations of academic aptitude, such "equal" treatment inadvertently dooms many to failure, denying them the "high-paying jobs" to which Schwarzenegger referred and denying society the workers it needs.

A column published Sunday said that Democrats did not "put up for votes" their demands for more school funding and tax increases. Such a bill was given a pro forma vote in the Assembly - where it failed - in June. The Senate didn't vote on it.

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