Employer-School Partnerships:
Role of Education in Workforce and Economic Development

A Forum — July 22, 2005

This forum highlighted two innovative employer-school partnerships that link high school students to postsecondary credentialing/certification and education opportunities in high-demand job sectors. This was the second AYPF forum focused on increasing awareness of effective career preparation and workforce development policy and programs for disadvantaged youth and young adults, sponsored by the GE Foundation.

Jeff Dole is the Administrator for the Lansing Area Manufacturing Partnership (LAMP), a partnership among the United Auto Workers (UAW), General Motors (GM) and the Ingham Intermediate School District located in Lansing, Michigan. LAMP is a career preparation program that includes classroom instruction and work-based experience in the manufacturing industry. High school juniors from 25 high schools in three counties are eligible to apply. About 60 students are accepted each year based primarily on their interest in a career in manufacturing; they spend half their school day in the LAMP classroom at a UAW/GM training facility, earning both high school and college credit.  Their curriculum includes math, science, computer technology, quality and  manufacturing processes, and introductory design process.  Students also learn such employability skills as communication, teamwork, self-direction, systems thinking, problem solving, continuous learning and positive work ethics. 

Dole explained how the LAMP curriculum is rigorous and relevant; the business/labor/education-driven curriculum is based on national technical, academic and employability standards. Classroom learning is applied in an actual GM plant where students can “see and touch” the classroom concepts. Students practice teamwork and engage in job shadowing and mentoring.  Students are responsible for their own learning: student-led conferences and portfolios replace grades and ranking. Just as in a manufacturing plant, student work is measured according to a Quality/Not Yet Quality scale. Students are assigned a Capstone final project in which they must propose a solution to a problem within the plant, then document and defend their proposal in a formal presentation.  After each unit, teachers and students suggest areas to improve in that unit, creating ownership of the learning process.

Connie Thompson is the General Motors Representative of the School-to-Work program at the UAW-GM Center for Human Resources in Detroit, Michigan.  In 1999, UAW hired the Academy for Educational Development to undertake a two-year longitudinal study of LAMP graduates. Thompson discussed the results of this study comparing LAMP and non-LAMP graduates. The study found that LAMP graduates pursued post-secondary education at higher rates, had a greater level of retention in higher education, and worked in automotive-manufacturing industries at twice the rate of their non-LAMP peers.  Thompson said the study also showed that LAMP graduates were better prepared to work collaboratively, interact with faculty, and work effectively in a post-secondary school or a work environment. Thompson also discussed the benefits of LAMP to business, specifically UAW and GM.  Industrial jobs are changing; workers must be able to understand improvements in the production process along with the need for advanced technology and quality systems that produce zero defects. Programs like LAMP provide a new stream of employees who are qualified in academic, technical and employability skills.

The second program highlighted during this forum was the Central Educational Center (CEC), a charter school in Coweta County, Georgia.  Mark Whitlock is the Executive Vice President of F&M Bank in Coweta County, the founding CEO of CEC and chairman of the CEC Board of Directors.  CEC is a non-immersion charter school; students from three public high schools are eligible to take career and technical classes at CEC for half a day while continuing their academic studies at their regular high school. CEC classes are dual enrollment with West Central Technical College, the local community college. Dual enrollment career programs include dental assisting, mechanical and architectural computer-assisted design, manufacturing, customer service, child development, computer repair, website fundamentals, patient care, welding, machine operation, lathe and mill operation, and culinary services. Whitlock says classes include heavy doses of applied academics that apply to each career area.

Whitlock says CEC is Coweta County’s workforce development center, providing customized training for business and industry and also named one of 30 National Model High Schools in 2004.  Three new CEC’s are scheduled to open in Douglas, Whitfield, and Walton counties in Georgia. Community events such as Chamber of Commerce meetings and lifelong learning programs like GED/adult literacy and evening high school classes are also held at CEC, providing regular opportunities to inform the public about its programs.

Whitlock noted that typically, business, labor and education are linked abstractly at the federal level in Congressional committees’ domains and certain federal agencies. CEC, on the other hand, is governed by a “partnership of the whole”, including business and education communities, government and the community at large. An initial needs assessment that included a survey of these businesses pointed to the importance of “soft skills” (such as work ethic) and identified occupational areas in need of particular support such as healthcare. Instructional designs were modeled on the book The Eden Conspiracy: Educating for Accomplished Citizenship by Joe Harless, another member of the founding team, and the ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement and Evaluate) model which allows for data-driven decision making and validation. Whitlock said “We went backwards to identify success, learned what we had to teach to get there and developed content for that.”

In a larger context, Whitlock noted the change in education levels required for the job market from 1968 through 2010. Throughout this time period, only 20% of the jobs available required a college degree. However, in 1968, 65% of the jobs were open to people with only a high school diploma or less. In 2010, the same 20% of jobs will require a college degree but virtually all the remaining 80% will require some training beyond high school.

Don Moore is Vice Chair of the CEC Board of Directors. A retired manufacturing executive and practicing professional engineer, he expanded on CEC’s curriculum design process.  He believes the partnership among the local school system, the technical college and business/industry has been critical to integrating academics with career and technical education, since these groups traditionally operate in their own silos. There are 11 advisory boards telling CEC if its curriculum is on target: students want to know why courses are necessary and community business needs must be taken into account so that students can get jobs when their studies are completed.  The goal is to give graduates credentials or certification in their chosen field. This fall, a Licensed Practical Nurse program will be added to CEC along with an articulation agreement between CEC,  West Central Technical College, and  the University of West Georgia that will allow students to seamlessly transition between the CEC’s nursing certificate, WCTC’s AA in Nursing, and a bachelor’s degree in nursing from University of West Georgia. Five years ago, healthcare facilities in Coweta County were recruiting nurses from South Africa, and now, as Moore said, “ we have developed our own nursing pipeline.”

Moore also discussed the enthusiasm of the business community in Coweta County for CEC. Not only are there 185 business partners, 80 of these companies give students job-shadowing opportunities. One new company located in Coweta County because of CEC’s ability to provided trained workers; that company is creating 300 new jobs with a $75 million dollar economic impact on the local community as well as increased financial support for CEC.  Moore says CEC is enjoying a 98% graduation rate and a 100% placement rate either into post-secondary education or employment. 

Moore outlined the essential elements of CEC’s success, including dual enrollment, work-based learning opportunities in local businesses, project-based instruction, high expectations for students and faculty, regular data collection to track progress, a CEO who leads the partnership with a focus on continuous improvement, a multi-use facility which is used to “sell” the program, legal flexibility through charter school status, and a non-immersion/shared model connected to base high schools.  He also said it is important to have a community-wide steering committee and course offerings that are based on community/employer needs. Moore said student and parent satisfaction ratings with CEC are higher than at traditional high schools. Moore also talked about more traditional measures of success such as the Georgia High School Graduation Tests. There were improvements ranging from 4% to 22% in the first-time pass rate for economically disadvantaged students who participated in the CEC program. Voluntary enrollment in CEC more than doubled between 2000 and 2003 and, most significant to Moore, the drop-out rate in the county dropped from 8.6% in 2000 to 5.0% in 2003 – a 42% improvement. “We’re doing something right,” he concluded.

Questions

Mark Whitlock answered a question about the nature of work-based learning at CEC, indicating that the range includes 3-5 days a week of job shadowing up to formal apprenticeships. There are about 60 apprentices at any one time and 150-200 students above the level of job shadowing. CEC has approximately 900 different students attending in any given semester.

Asked about typical student profiles, Jeff Dole said LAMP is not specifically aimed at at-risk students but tries instead to find students with a sincere interest in manufacturing. Connie Thompson said there has been only a 40% pass rate among young people taking the test for hourly positions in manufacturing. “Our partnership in education,” she said, “came about because these students were not learning the skills we needed in a manufacturing environment. Our concern was for all youth, not just at-risk students.”

At CEC, Whitlock says there is a higher percentage of minority students than the base high schools but about the same percentage of low income students and students with IEPs.

There was a question about the costs of each program. As a charter school, CEC is funded like other public high schools in Coweta County at a rate of about $6000 per year per student. No specific figure was given for LAMP, although Thompson said the cost is high because the business partner is paying salaries for on-site staff as well as stipends for students.

In response to a teacher’s question about teacher qualifications, Whitlock says CEC teachers are highly qualified under NCLB guidelines but not all are certified. He says many of the career tech teachers have backgrounds outside of education (the horticulture teacher was a biology researcher; the video instructor was a training instructor for the airline industry.)  Dole says LAMP teachers are certified in math, science, computers or business, since there is no manufacturing certification for teachers in Michigan.

Both CEC and LAMP said they never have to recruit students. There is a waiting list for LAMP, where enrollment is limited primarily by the need to have a business mentor and space for on-site classes. At CEC, added Whitlock, “Students recruit students.”

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