Vocational education's moment in the sun

That doesn’t leave much room in the eight-period day for other academic classes: a schedule with double blocks of math, English, and science during the alternating weeks devoted to academics might also include one period of history and one of an elective in those weeks, Fraser said. And while electives and foreign languages are offered, the listings are less extensive than they might be at general high schools.

But upon graduation, Blackstone Valley students — many of whom do choose to go on to college — leave with a certificate of occupational proficiency granted after they demonstrate their technical skills in assessments judged by representatives of local industries. In 2006, a survey of employers in the state found vocational high school graduates are often more “job-ready” than college graduates.

Offering guidance, or forcing a choice?

The opportunity to devote time to technical education, of course, can only pay off if students receive useful guidance about which fields to pursue. But career guidance in many school districts continues to start in high school, and to emphasize college as the default path.

An exception to this rule can be found in South Carolina, whose guidance program has been deemed “exemplary” by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. A state law passed in 2005 created a K-12 rubric for career guidance. Students begin to explore careers in earnest in sixth grade; by eighth grade, they must choose a “career cluster” and map out an individual graduation plan that includes the coursework they will need. The plans are re-evaluated annually, and assessments administered in eighth, 10th, and 12th grades guide that process.

In practice, background assumptions about higher education hang over these discussions, said Janice Jolly, who served for many years as a career development coordinator in Dorchester County. “Every eighth-grade parent wants their child to go to college.”

But the planning process may highlight alternative pathways, such as the industry certifications available to students in the state’s secondary schools — or, for some of the students Jolly has worked with, unique apprenticeships with companies like Bosch, and cooperative programs with BAE Systems. (These opportunities may lead to post-secondary study, she noted.) It can also get them focused on a particular area of study tailored to a particular career. “We no longer need general-level education, because we no longer have general-level jobs,” Jolly said.

That emphasis on specialization echoes the thinking of John Bishop, an economist at Cornell who has studied the economic returns to vocational education. A central flaw of the dominant high school model in the U.S. — and a perverse consequence of the upscaling of common academic requirements — is, Bishop argues, the fact that students are not forced to choose a path earlier. A key to the success of many European models, he says, is that once students are guided into a concentration they spend extensive time with the same set of students and teachers working toward a shared goal; the positive peer pressure that results boosts both academic achievement and technical skill development. (Bishop found fault with Harvard’s Pathways report for not forcing the issue on choice, though he praised it overall.)

But the precise question of when good guidance means forcing students to make a choice — and what the nature of that choice should be — remains a sticking point. Jay W. Ragley, South Carolina’s deputy superintendent for legislative and public affairs, questioned the expectation that all students should go on to college, and said the state should provide more “flexibility” in granting credit for high school experiences outside the classroom. At the same time, he said, a model like the one proposed by Marc Tucker and NCEE runs afoul of what Ragley describes as American values of choice and chances for “late bloomers.”

“We shouldn’t necessarily lock somebody into something in 10th grade,” Ragley said. “Once we graduate from high school is when we can talk about off ramps.” His caution was the inverse of an argument advanced by James Stone: “We’ve evolved into a system that essentially says…our kids aren’t bright enough to begin thinking purposefully about their future selves, so we’re going to make them wait.”

Finding ‘other ways of winning’

The debate about guidance and choice is, of course, informed by an overriding fear: that any pathway that does not include college will degenerate again into low-quality vocational “tracking.” Indeed, the Pathways report — whose vision of universal post-secondary education would actually represent an increase in formal schooling after high school from the status quo — was criticized on these grounds.

Advocates for vocational education acknowledge this concern about tracking. But the alternative to college prep for all students, argues Stone, is not an absence of tracking. “We do track in this country,” he said. “The most pernicious track we have is the dropout track.” (Dropout statistics vary widely according to which measures are used, but perhaps one-quarter of students who start ninth grade will not graduate high school with their class.)

A more fundamental case for vocational education, though, is not that it is a strategy to engage low achievers, but that the careers it can lead to hold real value for a broad set of students.

Sometimes, this case is made in financial terms. Students with technical educations tailored to the local labor market can find themselves “very employable and making money — very good salaries with good benefits — when other students are still taking courses and racking up tens of thousands of dollars of college debt,” said South Carolina’s Ragley. And as more parents realize that, those guidance discussions may take on a different tenor, he said.

More broadly, the debate is cultural. “We’ve come to the notion that college is the only way to win,” said Stone, but there are “other ways of winning.” He added, “For a lot of kids, that advanced auto class that leads to an industry credential is really the same thing as an AP class, really the same thing as college prep. And yet we don’t value it that way.”

Ultimately, it is a reconsideration of those values — not just when students are ready to work, but what sort of work we value — that hangs over the education debate. The conviction that good jobs are “college jobs” may do more than keep people in school longer than necessary and impose a circumscribed sense of what our education system can achieve. It may also prevent people from ever finding the right job for them.

And that, said Janice Jolly, is the true stakes in this debate. She quoted a favorite line, borrowed from a local businessman: “When you find a job that you love, you basically never work another day in your life.”