Vocational education's moment in the sun

One of the authors of the Pathways report said something similar. The report’s call for one year of post-secondary education was “kind of a concession” to the idea that students straight out of high school are not mature enough for work, said Robert Schwartz, academic dean of Harvard’s education school, as well as an effort to “ride a bit on Obama’s coattails.” His own long-term vision, Schwartz said, includes more widespread “opportunities for kids to get into the labor market with skills and credentials without having to pass through a higher education institution.”

What counts as time spent learning?

So what are the obstacles to such a goal? One of the biggest is very basic: time.

Since the Nation at Risk report sounded the alarm about academic achievement in high schools, the standard response has been that “if kids aren’t smart enough, make them take more of the stuff they’re not smart in,” said James Stone. That demand for “more” is typically met by adding hours of classroom instruction — or “seat time,” in educational jargon — onto the requirements for high school graduation.

The expansion of academic requirements has done little to boost nationwide test scores. But it has placed pressure on the amount of time high school students can devote to the hands-on instruction that is central to high-quality vocational education; in many places in the U.S., a full vocational program in high school consists of only three or four credits. The result, Stone said, is that secondary career education in America is more “exploratory” than “preparatory.” Added Tucker, “when you look at the training that they get, these kids are not by and large winding up with an employer-recognized certificate.”

The solution, according to Stone, does not lie in the concept of getting each student “career- and college-ready.” While well-meaning, he said, in practice that goal often amounts to “make sure they’re college-ready, and career-ready is almost sort of the same thing.” But there are meaningful differences between what the two tracks require, he said. While a college prep curriculum now typically requires four years of math classes, many well-paying careers require mastery of core skills like numeracy and basic algebra, but no knowledge of more abstract fields like trigonometry and calculus.

On the other hand, students who are preparing for careers need both technical instruction and “employability” skills that are rarely taught in American high schools. Students often can find that instruction in community and technical colleges — but by that time, they are two or three years behind their counterparts in Europe, Stone noted. Meanwhile, they are often out thousands of dollars — as is the education system, which may have paid for years of schooling that provided little value.

The allocation of time in American high schools highlights deeply embedded beliefs about what types of activity count as learning, what types of subjects comprise an essential education, and what students and schools are capable of. Still, alternative approaches are cropping up.

One was advanced in 2007 by Marc Tucker’s group, the National Center on Education and the Economy. The Center-sponsored report, Tough Choices or Tough Times, made much of the need for greater academic rigor. But it was also informed by the belief that a standard four-year high school program “no longer makes sense” for many students, said Susan Sclafani, the former director of state services for NCEE. “The notion that every student has to have Algebra II as it is currently taught as an abstract course is crazy.”

So rather than adding more hours of high school instruction, the report proposes a model like the one employed in Scandinavian countries: students would take a demanding common program through 10th grade, when they would sit for an examination that would measure their competency in that common curriculum.

After passing that test, students could choose a college prep route or a career track. Students who chose the latter path would likely enroll in a community or technical college, which, Tucker said, have replaced secondary trade schools as the site of serious occupational training — though if a strong regional vocational high school in the area offered up-to-date equipment, quality instructors, and the ability to confer credentials with labor market value, that could qualify as well.

NCEE’s model is not yet in effect anywhere. A pilot program focused on academic instruction in ninth and 10th grade will launch this fall, and one state, Arizona, has approved legislation that will allow students to “move on when ready.” The “Grand Canyon Diploma” allows students at participating high schools to exit after 10th grade if they pass board examinations in math, English, and other core subjects; the students are then eligible to enroll in a community college without taking remedial classes, or in a full-time career and technical program.

A reconsideration of how much “seat time” makes sense for students is being weighed elsewhere, too. A consortium of five New England states, for example, has agreed on policies that focus instead on requiring competency measures that different students would achieve over varying periods of time, and is working to establish new models for high school based on that approach.

A different approach, meanwhile, is already in effect in Massachusetts. Alison Fraser, the director of curriculum and resource development at the acclaimed Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational Technical High School, disputed the idea that “college- and career-readiness” is an obstacle to technical education. Every Blackstone Valley student takes four years of math, including at least Algebra II; the school offers Advanced Placement classes in several subjects, and its students score at high levels on state tests.

But they also devote what is, by American standards, a startling amount of time to technical education. After choosing a “shop” halfway through ninth grade — the options include auto repair, culinary arts, health services, IT and more — students alternate between a week in shop and a week in classrooms for the rest of their high school career. The curriculum also includes a common program in workplace and employability skills. And qualifying seniors can get relevant workplace experience through cooperative education agreements with local employers — a rarity for high school students anywhere in the United States.

To fit all this in, Blackstone Valley students take a double block of mathematics and English during each day of the “academic week” throughout their four years in school, so that those subjects account for half of their total classroom time; they also take a double block of science in some years. (In addition, they attend school for 193 days a year, the most in the state.)