Testimony of Frank Carucci before New York City Council Education Committee

Jan 12, 2005 10:57 AM

My name is Frank Carucci. I am vice president for vocational and technical high schools of the United Federation of Teachers. Since 1963, I have been involved in career training both as a teacher and creative artist.

On behalf of UFT President Randi Weingarten, I want to thank Chairwoman Eva Moskowitz and the members of the City Council Education Committee for the opportunity to offer our union’s views on the future of career technical education.

I talked with Chairwoman Moskowitz about vocational education two years ago right here at Coop Tech HS, when we took part in the ceremonies following the donation of an ambulance for the school’s EMS program. I look forward to continuing those discussions.

Vocational education is not a problem, but the solution to a problem. It is not dated or inferior or counterpoised to academics. Evidence is conclusive that the state’s Career and Technical Education certification program is one of the New York schools’ success stories.

Under CTE, attendance improves. Attitudes improve. Learning outcomes improve. Dropout rates decline. CTE works for students with disabilities, for special education students and for the mainstreamed student body. Whatever weaknesses are shared by the city school system, this is one area that works.

At the start of the last century, vocational schools were a lifeline for new immigrants and a vehicle for delivering skilled workers who would build and maintain a growing New York City. These schools were safety nets, institutions capable of serving a population that was—for a number of reasons—not ready to pursue higher academic studies. They offered a commercial diploma that was universally accepted as a valid indicator of work readiness.

Over the years, unfortunately, things changed for the worse. Vocational education got stigmatized. There was a fear that some students were being unfairly tracked away from a rich academic education and college opportunities. That was a fear that became wish fulfillment as vocational schools soon filled with special education students and the lowest achievers. Now, bright kids who could benefit from high school career training are told they’re “too smart” to go to vocational school. They are in effect unfairly and ironically “tracked away” from programs that offer valuable options that meet their education needs.

In truth, vocational education is as valid and as relevant as ever. From air conditioning, plumbing, pipefitting and masonry to electrical work and computer-aided design, vocational training leads to jobs that pay well, offer dignity and provide a secure livelihood. These are areas that are necessary to a modern economy, and jobs in them are growing.

Skilled jobs in fields such as automotive service/mechanics, culinary arts, cosmetology and health sciences are in high demand. Jobs such as these, which require hands-on skills, can’t be outsourced. The U.S. Department of labor projects that the fastest growing career fields are in education, health services, computer and information technology and repair, automotive skills, biotech and business sales and promotion.

Even as automation relentlessly wipes out many skilled jobs, it creates others, including jobs in robotics, which challenge schools to keep up their curricula. That’s a challenge worth meeting

Not only are new jobs being created, but existing positions are opening up. With the baby-boom generation reaching retirement age, cities throughout the nation will need a replenished and competently skilled workforce. It’s not enough to say that foreign-trained immigrants can supply the pool of needed labor, or that private apprentice programs and corporate in-house training regimens will do the job. An educated and skilled workforce is our society’s obligation.

In fact, all good high schools would benefit from providing a CTE component for its students. While almost half of all young people ages 18 to 24 receive some college training, the majority of this age cohort do not. And many who drop out are unprepared for the world of work. Yet the bulk of our high schools focus their attention exclusively on the college bound, neglecting a huge part of the public school population.

In this light, the City Council recently allocated $10 million to a work force initiative, a portion of which will be used for helping out-of-work and at-risk youth. That’s a good first step. Plus, yesterday’s announcement by the mayor of a $14 million program that would target drop outs and help them garner a G.E.D. and job training is also a step in the right direction.

While teaching these job skills is invaluable, I must note that these initiatives would not have been necessary if those students were originally provided the opportunity to take vocational classes in high school. Evidence shows CTE keeps kids in school.

For vocational education to work, it must also be flexible and state-of-the-art. Because just as the demands of an industrial society change, vocational education is going through a transition, as it should.

Despite successful efforts to upgrade and redesign vocational education, it remains largely misunderstood and unappreciated by the public and even by some in the Department of Education, where dueling mandates and mixed messages signify a lack of administrative coherence. That must end.

In fact, vocational education programs demand a lot from students. Today, vocational high school students must master both their trade and pass five Regents examinations in order to get their Regents diploma. This is too much! Certainly it’s a diploma worth getting, especially since it includes a Career and Technical Education endorsement showing that the student has completed state-certified training in his or her skill.

But the result? Vocational schools that used to be the least challenging academically are now among the most challenging—perhaps too challenging! And that challenging environment comes at a price. Between the CTE endorsement and the need to pass Regents exams, there is a legitimate fear these young people may actually be overburdened.

We should reduce the number of required Regents exams and give credit for the extra work that is mandated.

Because now these schools—once an invaluable safety net for immigrants and the poor— are pushing some kids out of the system because they cannot pass one or more of the five Regents exams. These kids—part of an enormously diverse student population, perhaps the most diverse in the nation—are not being accommodated; they are being deprived of an option. A New York Times front page story (July 30, 2003) two summers ago reported on 35,000 students who were pushed out of the system the previous year. So, a dynamic program that should be turning out skilled workers is reduced to saying “either you do it all or you get out.”

The UFT, along with our state and national affiliates, is committed to finding ways to maintain vocational education. We participated in the federal school-to-work initiative, which promoted quality vocational programs. We made a point that career and technical education was itself a means to higher academic achievement, not an obstacle. We said what testing companies later confirmed, that if you contextualized academics with career and technical education, kids did better.

The State of New York agreed. It mandated that quality CTE technical programs must be certified by doing the following. Programs had to:

• Create new curricula that contextualizes the technical with the academic;
• Develop technical assessments for the CTE trade subjects that are both rigorous and meaningful;
• Locate industry partners, real-world employers and leading industrial and commercial concerns who would ensure that a curriculum is state-of-the-art.
• Offer apprentice-work experience;
• Create a work-eligibility profile as an addition to the student’s permanent record that endorses and—like a resume—chronicles a student’s work studies and experiences for potential employers; and
• Provide a college or post-secondary education connection, so schooling cannot be assumed to be capped at high school graduation

That’s what the state requires, and the results are impressive.

State data show, as the Board of Regents reported in December, that nearly three out of four students who completed their CTE program in school year 2003-2004 passed all applicable Regents exams. That was a jump from less than one in two who passed the exams just two years earlier. The Regents attributed the gains to “the benefits of implementing a more rigorous and relevant CTE curriculum that is integrated with academics.”

The Regents also found high percentages of CTE program graduates passing both Regents exams and their required technical exams. [ Let me add that the details of the Regents report are appended to copies of my written comments.]

While the results show these programs work well for some, what about all the others who cannot meet all the requirements. They are the ones being forced out.

Let’s be clear. Vocational education should not be confused with taking random elective shop classes, no matter how good the classes, how gifted the teachers, or how modern the shop. Today, a technical endorsement for vocational education students represents a full sequence that can mean an additional 10 to 18 credits of high school requirements—an extra burden that is unfair to CTE students. In fact, the technical endorsement deserves the same prestige that is attached to other enhanced Regents diplomas. And, in the case of Aviation HS and its exhaustive program, garnering a technical endorsement could require taking more than four years to complete high school.

Did I mention “rigorous” often enough? We’re talking about Automotive HS, which partners with Toyota and Mercedes so graduates are trained in the latest technologies. We’re talking about La Guardia HS for the Performing Arts and Music & Art—and, yes, that’s a vocational high school, too, and one with a renowned and excellent program—where aspiring actors, artists, dancers, musicians, vocalist and even set designers are plugged directly into the work life of their culture industries. We’re talking about Fashion HS, from which the best of Seventh Avenue recruits.

In the main, vocational schools feature solid programs. But except for the best known and regarded schools, the system works to undervalue them.

Superintendents and principals who support vocational education don’t get acknowledged for the strides they make and the lives they save. Only academic achievement is prized. Instead of rating principals primarily on academic successes, why not factor into the schools’ success formula the number of graduates who transition into a job or into a union apprentice program in an area they studied?

Why did John F. Kennedy HS dismantle its auto shop and deflect a portion of its student body? Why, for that matter, is Columbus HS about to do the same? Simple. Because the principals and superintendents had no incentive to keep them up and running. A quality auto shop and students benefiting from that training were not part of the assessment of the school. Instead, students will be deprived of an important education option and ensuing employment possibilities.

This is ironic at a time when the auto industry, for example, is desperate to hire competent, skilled craft workers. The Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association sponsors an annual auto-repair competition in order to promote an interest in skilled auto maintenance. The Association also is opening its own school in College Point, Queens, to train skilled workers, even as the DOE is closing down auto shops.

Let me conclude.

The purpose of high school cannot just be to prepare students for college. There’s more to secondary education than filling college seats. Any school’s report card, to be comprehensive, has to reflect the strides school leaders make in the technical area as well, so principals are encouraged to put in the time and the effort and the school space into beefing up vocational programs. Principals and teachers should be recognized when they make students aware of their talents and interests and when they offer students options that develop those interests. Training for work-life matters, too, and is not incompatible with academics. In fact, they belong together.

A good example is the Success Via Apprenticeship program, a collaborative effort between the UFT and the Department of Education, which targets graduates of trade schools who want to become vocational education teachers. The five-year program offers classroom-teaching experience and on-the-job training in technical skills. It may be the single best quality teacher recruitment program in the nation, and it is the source of most of our city schools’ career training teachers.

Here is what the City Council can do to support the quality CTE programs we now have in our schools. It can:

• Support discrete funding in the school budget that guarantee shop upgrades and adequate supplies and material;
• Ensure that vocational education is allowed adequate time in the school schedule to meet the requirements in their certified programs;
• End overcrowding in all schools, which deprives all students of classroom time and space;
• Reduce the number of required Regents exams and give credit to students for the work and assessments they accomplish in their CTE areas. (This is not a compromise or a “dumbing down” of standards. It is an attempt to level the playing field for all students.)
• Use the Council’s bully pulpit to ensure that the city emphasizes the hiring of qualified, certified shop teachers in its recruitment efforts; and
• Join us in demanding that Congress re-authorize and refund the Carl D. Perkins Secondary and Technical Education Excellence Act, which ensures that CTE programs complement the academic mission of “No Child Left Behind” and The Workforce Investment Act.

All education should carry a mix of vocational and academic aspects, and all good high schools should offer an array of relevant technical programs. Increasingly the challenge will be to make all aspects of education serve diverse populations by knowing how best to place the right kids in the right programs, and how best to make good programs available to more students. We owe it to our students to offer —just as New York leaders did 100 years ago—classes that meet manpower needs and all legitimate career goals.

Thank you, and I look forward to answering your questions.