Career Paths
ANTIOCH, Calif. — There was an emergency in Room 14. Three girls injured, one with a broken thighbone and maybe something more serious. Snapping on sterile gloves and kneeling before the worst-off patient, two 17-year-olds went to work.
The pair cut open the girl's pant leg, pinched her toes to see if she had feeling and fit her with a neck brace. Sweat flecked their faces by the time they had the patient — a perfectly healthy classmate — strapped to a back board 12 minutes later.
“You are acting like professionals and you haven't even finished this class yet!” Gretchen Medel, an EMT who oversaw the mock exercise during the first responder course she teaches at a health care-focused high school east of San Francisco, told the students.
Decades after “shop class” became known as a lesser alternative for children deemed unfit for college, vocational education is making a comeback in many of the nation's high schools. States such as California, Colorado and Louisiana are looking to rebranded “career pathways” that combine technical training with academics built around an industry theme as a way to get more young people to pursue some post-secondary education — whether it's a certificate from a two-year school or a four-year degree.
Supporters of the renaissance hope it will keep students engaged and prepare them for the stable, middle-income jobs employers say they can't fill.
“Career and technical education is really the perfect blend of the academic, the technical and the employability skills. Students come out college- and career-ready because they have the skills in all these essential areas,” Association for Career and Technical Education Executive Director LeeAnn Wilson said.
Congress has endorsed the revival of such hands-on learning, at least in concept. An education reform bill adopted last year includes career and technical education in the definition of a well-rounded K-12 education. Over the next year, lawmakers are expected to strengthen the federal law that provides about $1.1 billion a year for job training in grades 7 to 14.The trend represents a course correction from efforts of the past 30 years that assumed exposing all students to the same college prep curriculum would be an antidote for achievement gaps, past inequities and the nation's flagging economic competitiveness, said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.Nowhere has the renewed embrace of work-based learning been stronger than in California, which expects to spend $900 million to reinvigorate career and technical education at high schools by 2019.The money comes on top of another $500 million the state has awarded to partnerships of public school districts, community colleges and employers promising to prepare students for jobs in fields that do not require four years of college.The private James Irvine Foundation also has spent more than $100 million in the last decade to promote “linked learning” — a strategy that weaves technical courses, interaction with industry professionals and practical skills such as public speaking into a career-focused college prep curriculum.“Being in a pathway helps students connect the dots: 'Oh, this is what the math is for,”' Linked Learning Alliance President Christopher Cabaldon said.Elsewhere, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, wants to devote $75 million over five years to equipment that would modernize and expand career and technical education. Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York has pledged $21 million to take a technology high school model that IBM started in Brooklyn statewide in seven years.
