Career-ready: A process, not a program

Automotive HS seniors like Jeremy Zamora and Leonard Bradley can benefit from programs like Success Via Apprenticeship where they graduate to an apprenticeship in their field, earn an AA degree and teaching certificate while they learn, and return to teach high school CTE students.

As another “cohort” of young people leaves our sheltering arms, teachers might wonder how many of them meet President Obama’s dual goals of “college- and career-ready.” While we’ve spent years trying to make sure our graduates are prepared for college, career-ready may be the tougher challenge.

Young people facing the transition from school to the work force are often unprepared, not because they lack a few credits in a subject, but because they don’t have a clear, structured pathway to follow. In the United States, the worlds of school and work are badly disconnected, and young people — especially those without family supports and networks — are left on their own to make the leap. High school career and technical education programs offer a first leg up for such students. CTE schools in New York City such as Automotive and Aviation high schools link students with adults in those fields who can help place them or refer them to advanced training. Without this kind of guidance, the transition can often resemble a gaping chasm rather than a bridge.

Not starting from scratch

It’s not like no one has ever noticed this.

In the early 1990s, Siemens Stromberg-Carlson, the U.S. arm of the German telecommunications giant, could not find enough installation technicians for its factory in Lake Mary, Fla. Borrowing from a German model, it launched a youth apprenticeship program, teaming with nearby Seminole Community College and the Seminole County public schools. Among its creators was John Tobin, the principal of Brooklyn Tech HS before he joined the Siemens effort.

Eventually, the Siemens apprenticeship program became a widely admired model for something that had been lacking in many places: a genuine school-industry partnership. Siemens and its education partners designed a seamless curriculum for students from high school through job placement. In their last two years of high school, students began to take electronics theory along with core academics. Seniors served unpaid apprenticeships in a specialized lab. If they completed the training and were accepted at the community college, Siemens gave them a scholarship and a yearly stipend to continue training at the plant. If they got their two-year degree and completed the training, they qualified for a full-time job at one of Siemens’ 14 U.S. operating companies.

Unions created similar “school-to-work” programs during those years, including the Communications Workers of America and Bell South in Gainesville, Fla.; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Philadelphia hospitals; and the printers union in Pasadena, Calif. In New York, a program still run by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 3 offers students at Queens Vocational HS a four-year apprenticeship in elevator repair after graduation.

And of course, the UFT’s Success Via Apprenticeship program helps relieve the shortage of career and technical education teachers in the city’s schools by giving selected high school graduates a five-year experience combining tuition-paid college, classroom student teaching and industry work, culminating in an associate degree and teaching license.

Progress stalls

The momentum created by unions, industry and educators led to the 1994 federal School to Work Opportunities Act. Jointly administered by the U.S. Departments of Labor and Education, it awarded $90 million in 1995 to help states and communities build comprehensive systems to prepare students for careers in high-skill, high-wage jobs.

But, unfortunately, there it sat. Education took a sharp turn away from such real-world applications and partnership models, as No Child Left Behind shifted the emphasis to academic achievement and test-based accountability. Evidence that career and technical education programs engaged at-risk students — that attendance rates were higher and dropout rates lower for students in such programs — was brushed aside. All students, “no excuses,” should aim for a four-year college degree.

Career and technical education programs, in New York City and elsewhere, took a direct hit. According to a report by the Center for an Urban Future (May 2008), CTE school and program enrollments declined sharply starting in 2002. Under the Department of Education’s new funding formula, they received less per student than other schools. There was no budget for the automotive diagnostic systems, machine tools, commercial stoves and other equipment that CTE classrooms require. The CTE team at the DOE was cut from 30 to 10, and CTE was subsumed under another office.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew, a tireless champion of CTE, has been at the forefront of its advocacy. He served on the mayor’s task force and helped develop public-private partnerships that lead to career pathways.

Promising signs

Recently, the city has attempted to reverse this pattern of neglect. “After six years of indifference to CTE, the Bloomberg administration hopes to cram for a late A,” as the Center for an Urban Future’s report recounts. In 2009, the city increased CTE funding, opened four CTE demonstration sites and named a new CTE director.

Creating good school-to-work programs is an idea whose time has come — again. Even though the job market is weak, many industries are facing longer-term work force shortages. High schools are looking hard at ways to reverse the dropout trend. Community colleges are seeing surges in enrollment.

But the lesson from the 1990s is that students need something more than “sink or swim,” and career-ready requires more than adding a few tech classes. High schools and community colleges must work with businesses and industries to create new structures. Establishing pathways to help students successfully navigate their way into the work force is the job of our whole city, not just the responsibility of kids.