The second in a four-part series about preparing students for life after high school

Yes, Virginia, there is still vocational education. You just might not recognize it.
The concept of preparing students in high school for the work they’ll do after graduation is certainly not a new one. It’s actually the natural culmination of 12 years of schooling, putting to practical use the reading, writing and math skills students will use for the rest of their lives.

Nevertheless, vocational education — or career-technical education, as it’s known today — suffers from a bad reputation in many circles. Administrators, teachers and parents remember voc-ed as a low-expectation track for those who weren’t college material, and vocational classes allowed them a way to get a low- to medium-skill job that would still support a family. But the students “tracked” into those classes were usually poor, minorities or those without clear postsecondary plans, and the options were limited. As an achievement gap and economic and racial discrimination became unacceptable to educators, the push for “college for all” has made job training for high schoolers the whipping boy of school reform.

After several decades of deteriorating support for career training programs, however, the tide seems to be slowly turning back. Modern career-technical programs are both practical and academically rigorous, making them an attractive option for all sorts of students. And although the financial commitment to them is still rather tenuous, there now are several options for career-technical education in California, the latest beneficiary of the academic standards movement.

Standardizing CTE
In May, the state Board of Education adopted standards for career-technical education that encompass 15 industries. Frameworks, or blueprints for implementing the standards in each course, are to be adopted by the board in mid-2006.

Frank Pugh is a Santa Rosa City board member and California School Boards Association Director who served on the CTE standards advisory group.
“Career-technical education is a sequenced course of study that provides students with academic and technical knowledge and the skills necessary to prepare them for either further education or for careers in current or emerging employment sectors,” says Pugh, whose work with the advisory group continues in developing the frameworks. “The standards that were developed will bolster California’s standards-based education system by incorporating cutting-edge knowledge about career options, technology and skills required for success in life. I believe this initiative is critical if California is to meet the challenges inherent in its rapidly changing workforce environment.”

Laura’s story
Laura Carson illustrates a typical path through the state’s largest job training option: the regional occupational programs. She found her future in a cosmetology program offered through the San Joaquin County Regional Occupational Program. A two-year, 1,600-hour program with the Career Academy of Cosmetology prepared her to leave high school with a cosmetology license, which enabled her to move to San Diego and support herself at a time when most students are still dependent on their parents.

But talking the counselors at her Tracy high school into approving her ROP program for credit toward graduation wasn’t easy. Carson had heard about the ROP option and thought styling hair sounded like a good way to support herself as she went to college. But since she’d have to leave school each day to take the courses 23 miles away in Stockton, her counselors had their misgivings. “My counselors were very hesitant to give me credit for going through the program,” Carson recalls. “They weren’t really happy about giving me credit until they realized what a great program it was.”

Carson had to do all the research and secure multiple signatures before she was finally allowed to attend the ROP program as part of her graduation requirements.
“I think most counselors in high school just work on getting their students into popular colleges,” Carson says. “They don’t necessarily plan on giving them passion for a career or getting them excited to be an adult. They tend to just push them to go the regular college route.”
Once into her cosmetology program, Carson found an inspiring instructor who helped her build confidence in her abilities. Now 21, she plans to make the industry her career as the eventual owner of a salon and boutique.

From ROCP to academy
The network of vocational education offerings continues to morph, with some being added and others falling by the wayside as the political winds change.
Regional Occupational Centers and Programs, or ROCPs, provide most of the state’s public career training opportunities. ROCP classes are offered both on high school campuses and at regional locations to serve both high school and adult students. ROCPs received $364 million in state funding for 2004-05 — the lion’s share of some $447 million in total support for career-technical programs from state and federal sources. In comparison, high school career-technical programs supported by federal Perkins Act funds received $48 million. Tech Prep (a two- to four-year program combining high school and college level courses) received just $11.5 million in Perkins funding.

The state also contributed $23 million in 2004-05 to support the California Partnership Academies. Since the federal School-to-Work? Opportunities Act was not reauthorized, public funding for local School-to-Career? programs has dried up. Most STC programs still operating rely on monetary and in-kind contributions from their business partners. Noting a growing interest in reviving vocational education options, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently signed a bill that earmarked another $20 million to boost the connection between high school and community college voc-ed programs.

But the lack of investment in vocational education over the years has taken its toll. According to California Department of Education data, enrollment in career-prep courses has dwindled by almost 200,000 since 1997, with a corresponding loss of more than 1,200 teachers.

Jessica’s story
Jessica Rivera is another student whose plans firmed up after taking an ROP class during her senior year.
“Growing up, I just somehow wanted to be a nurse,” she recalls. “I had my parents find me a little doctor’s kit, and I would put my dolls in separate rooms and go and check on all the little dolls. I just kind of grew up saying this was the thing I wanted to do.”
But how she would finally realize her goal wasn’t clear. She didn’t know any nurses and her parents, who immigrated from Mexico as teen-agers, hadn’t gone to college.
So when upperclassmen told her about Kim O’Leary’s? sports medicine class, provided at the school through the Contra Costa County Regional Occupational Program, Rivera knew she had finally found a class that furthered her own goal to be a nurse.
“I figured it would be good experience to see if medicine and taking care of injured people was something I wanted to go into,” she says. “At football games I had seen the athletic trainers on the side, and I thought that would be really cool. So that’s how I got into it.”
Ultimately, Rivera stayed with her original goal of becoming a registered nurse instead of an athletic trainer, but her ROP experience was instrumental in helping her — for the first time — visualize her life as a nurse.
“I think that class and Kim O’Leary? really pushed me to say education is important,” Rivera says. “It really inspired me and motivated me to say this is something I really want to do and can actually do it.”
After that, Rivera pressed herself to do her very best in school, transferring from Los Medanos Community College with a 4.0 grade point average. She’s on track to graduate from Sonoma State in December ready to pass the state exam to become a registered nurse.

Trading in college
Often a career preparation program helps confirm a student’s educational goals, as it did for Rivera. But sometimes the program helps students realize that their particular goals don’t require a four-year college degree. It could be that a shorter certification program is all they need, or an industry apprenticeship may be a better fit for some. Any of a variety of options can help get a student prepared for life after high school.

For a renaissance of career and technical preparation to occur in California high schools, parents, students and educators may need an attitude adjustment, says Rick Cole, coordinator of the Southern California Joint Apprenticeship Committee in San Diego.

The trades are suffering from a misperception, he says. “We need to elevate the perception of the construction industry. In San Diego County in particular, construction is the second-largest employer outside the military. There’s a wide variety of opportunity. I’ve got a son who went through our program. He was a high school graduate, didn’t go to college, and he makes over $50,000 a year. We don’t tell kids that that’s an option.”

Apprenticeship programs are usually limited to adults, but there are some high school programs designed to expose students to careers in the trades and prepare them for the demands of an apprenticeship. A formal apprenticeship is developed and sponsored by the industry according to standards set by the state Division of Apprenticeship Standards. After successfully completing formal, on-the-job training and instruction over three to five years, and often after passing a culminating exam, the apprentice is granted journeyman status in the trade.

K-12 gets into the act
In recent years, pre-apprenticeship programs have emerged that begin as early as elementary school to help students explore a wide variety of career options.
Many career prep programs are linked to a California Partnership Academy, a three-year high school program that partners with a local business to offer academic and career-technical education. Often the partnership provides students with hands-on experience in the field through mentor programs and internships. The academy model got its start in California in the 1980s, and today there are almost 300 academies, which receive about 5 percent of all state funding designated for career-technical education.

At the Stanley E. Foster Construction Tech Academy High School in San Diego, students are exposed to a variety of engineering, architecture and construction careers. The academy’s college-prep and college-level classes involve students in real-world activities that give them a taste of what it’s really like to work in the industry. “This isn’t a shop class you send the flunkies to. This is a real school,” says Cole, who was instrumental in creating the academy and now serves on an advisory board in the partnership between the construction industry and the San Diego Unified School District.

Students graduate ready to work, enter an apprenticeship program or go on to college, if that’s what they desire. The point is, Cole says, students leave knowing their options.
“They’ve used the tools, they know what certain trades do — they’re not going to be afraid to go out and pursue that,” says Cole. “Other students will go with they’re familiar with, like getting a job in the mall or a fast food place, because that’s something they know.”

On the other hand, pre-apprenticeship programs and industry-themed academies expand students’ knowledge of career options. “They won’t be intimidated by less-familiar careers, and more than likely will realize that they do have abilities and talents that they didn’t know they had,” Cole says. “I feel the important thing is to show the young people options, and we don’t usually do that.”
Foster Construction Tech is one of four small, stand-alone academy high schools at the Kearney Educational Complex. There are also schools of Media and Design, International Business, and Science, Connections and Technology on the campus of the former Kearney High School. All have the goal of preparing more students for the world of work or further education.

So far, the strategy seems to be working.
Last spring the construction academy had 1,100 applicants for 100 freshman slots, and daily attendance runs around 99 percent, says Cole. That’s because students have a pressing reason to come to school. Classes are organized around several major projects each year, with students taking turns being the lead on a four-person team that produces a design or engineering project based on actual industry needs. “They have a responsibility to the rest of their crew to hold up their end of the project, because everybody’s grades depend on everybody working together, Cole says. “So they’re excited about going to school.”
Perhaps most impressive is evidence of an experiential program’s ability to close the achievement gap: a greater percentage of Foster’s socio-economically disadvantaged students passed the California High School Exit Exam as 10th graders than the school’s non-disadvantaged students. And Foster’s record on the CAHSEE turns the statewide average on its ear: disadvantaged students at Foster did 12 percent better on the math portion than the more affluent students and 3 percent better in English; whereas, statewide, disadvantaged students trailed the pass rate of non-disadvantaged students by 24 percent in the math portion and 25 percent in English.

School-to-career
At Valencia High School in the William S. Hart Union High School District in Southern California, students can choose from 16 career paths that include journalism, studio art, engineering, video production, hospitality and tourism, medical research and others. This year 130 seniors graduated with certified competency in a career path, but whether they become certified or not, all students leave Valencia with a direction for their future.

“The basic premise that we come from is that school-to-career at Valencia High School is not just a program, it’s an overall emphasis on everything that we do,” says STC advisor Gary Spindt. “Our goal is to help the student find their passion and then be able to turn that into a career.”
There is evidence that focusing on a specific career goal pays off in student achievement. In an informal survey conducted by the high school a few years ago, Spindt says, the grade point averages of students with a career path were consistently higher in all four grades than those who were not pursing a specific career goal.

Freshmen at Valencia complete a portfolio project to help them learn about their interests and talents. In 10th grade, they take computer-based quizzes and then research the possible career matches. Juniors attend a half-day business conference off-site and then return to a job fair, where they can interview with local employers. Because Valencia’s School-to-Career? program has been in place for many years with good support from business partners, juniors can choose one of 1,600 job shadowing experiences in the spring. As seniors, students explore a specific career, often completing a formal internship, and then present a final project to business partners who have volunteered to review them.
“We’ve had a number of really good success stories of students who have gone directly into the workforce,” says Spindt, “but we also want them to know when they leave us that the key to a more successful job is continuing their education — that a high school diploma is not the end. We’re not in any way, shape or form advocating that. But our emphasis is that when you’re done with your high school diploma, you now know how to go about getting that successful job which is going to make you much happier as a person because you’re going with what your passions are.”

Secret to success
Passion — it’s a word heard often from those involved with career preparation programs, and is often inextricably linked to a relationship with a special teacher. It was the personal connection with Alex Sullivan, Laura Carson’s cosmetology teacher, that made the difference for her future.
“He inspired me to go further as a hairstylist than I had planned. He gave me his passion. I was planning on just doing hair through college, but I decided it was something I could do as a life-long career,” says Carson, who now works as a hair designer and educator for the prestigious Elizabeth Arden Red Door Salon in San Francisco, where she trains other stylists about current trends and products. “I would recommend that teachers attain a passion for what they’re teaching and try to inspire every student, even if it means that every student gets inspired in a different way. To try to have a one-on-one relationship with each student and find out their goals and what the passion is in their life.”

Finding their passion
As it did for Rivera and Carson, a career-technical class or program can do a lot to “turn on” a student’s interest in a career and, by extension, motivate him or her to do better in school.
“When I talk to ninth and 10th graders,” says apprentice coordinator Cole, “I try to encourage them to discover what it is they like to do, discover a passion for something, and then find out how people make a living at it. If it takes eight years of college, prepare for eight years of college. If it’s a four-year apprenticeship program or a two-year technical course, you prepare yourself for that. And don’t worry about what it pays. I say, ‘You guys have been in school for nine or 10 years and you think it’s forever, but you’ve got 30 or 40 years of working ahead of you. Find something you enjoy.’”

Taking time to explore careers and find that passion through one of a number of career-tech options may even save money, says Cole. Thousands of community college students already have bachelor’s or master’s degrees but are taking two-year certification courses so they can get a job, he notes. “They could have done that from high school with the same results, but about six or eight years sooner and $50,000 cheaper.”
According to statistics from the California Community College chancellor’s office, 137,000 of the 1.4 million students who took classes in spring 2005 already had a bachelor’s degree; roughly 33,000 of them said their goal was to get a new two-year degree or vocational certificate, or otherwise gain skills they needed to qualify for a job.

What employers want
Along with math and language skills, employers now demand well-rounded workers who think creatively and have developed personal qualities like those outlined in a report by the U.S. Department of Labor Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, or the SCAN skills. Building on a foundation of basic reading and writing skills, thinking skills and personal qualities, SCAN-proficient workers develop competencies in the areas of resources (time, money, materials and human resources), interpersonal (team worker, teacher and leader), information (acquire and evaluate, organize, interpret and communicate information), systems (understanding, monitoring and improving social, organizational and technological systems), and technology (selects and uses the tools and procedures needed to do the job).

What the future holds
The expectations of family, friends, teachers and other educators undoubtedly make a big difference in the plans and preparations students make for life after high school. By making sure students get all the information they need to make informed decisions about their careers, schools play an important role in launching a new generation as productive members of California society.
Growing up with her father and stepmother in Tracy, Laura Carson says it was always acceptable in her family to pursue either college or technical training as she desired. As it turns out, she and her siblings prepared for their careers in technical education programs: Laura completed an associate degree at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, her step-sister went into massage therapy, her brother learned the heating and air conditioning trade, and her step-brother is currently in the Marines. “My parents always encouraged us to find something we loved and do it as a career,” she says.
Now 21, Carson says she feels the associate degree she’s already earned may be all the education she needs to realize her goal as the owner of a salon and boutique in San Francisco. By age 30, she sees herself achieving a slightly better standard of living than her parents.

As for Jessica Rivera, she sees herself at 30 with a master’s degree in nursing, working either as a nurse practitioner or administrator, probably married, with a child or two, living in the same general area where she grew up. Her standard of living at that point? “I see it a little bit better than my parents’,” she says. “I think that through my education and my career plans that I’ll have moved a step forward. And I think that’s what my parents want for me. I feel like it’s going to be a real accomplishment.”
Kristi Garrett (kgarrett@csba.org) is managing editor of California Schools.

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