Career and Technical Education's Role in High School Reform

A Breakfast Forum — May 19, 2006

Background

• High school dropout rates are high. On-time graduation rates (excluding the GED) have been estimated at 71% for all students and about 50% for black and Hispanic students.
• Motivation matters. Six in 10 respondents to a poll of at-risk California 9th and 10th-graders said they are not motivated to succeed in school. But more than 90% of those students said they would be more engaged if classes helped them acquire skills and knowledge relevant to future careers.
• CTE is well-tested. Today, 95% of high school students take at least one career and technical education (CTE) course, and about one-third take a concentration of three or more related CTE courses before they graduate.

National and local professionals in career and technical education (CTE) discussed how CTE can help educators and policymakers decrease the number of students who leave high school before earning diplomas or who graduate without the skills, knowledge, habits and attitudes needed to thrive as postsecondary students, as workers and as citizens. Finding ways to counter those trends is expected to be a central concern of Congress, when it begins the process of reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act next year.

Janet B. Bray, Executive Director of the Association for Career and Technical Education, outlined the national nonprofit association’s key recommendations on how to use CTE to update the nation’s outmoded high schools. She said they are spelled out in detail in Reinventing the American High School for the 21st Century: Strengthening a New Vision for the American High School through the Experiences and Resources of Career and Technical Education. The position paper was issued in January 2006 by ACTE, which represents more than 30,000 CTE professionals in secondary and postsecondary education.

“What we are advocating is that every American high school has the goal of preparing every student for full participation in a spectrum of college opportunities, meaningful work, career advancement, and active citizenship,” Bray said. “The three words that have become the brand of reform are rigor, relevance and relationships, and the way to really provide relevance, in particular, is through CTE.”

The position paper says CTE in high school (1) supports students in the acquisition of rigorous core knowledge, skills, habits, and attitudes needed in postsecondary education and high-skilled workplaces; (2) engages students in specific career-related learning experiences that equip them to make well-informed decisions about further education, training and employment opportunities, and (3) prepares students who may choose to enter the workforce directly after high school with levels of skill and knowledge in a particular career area that will be valued in the workplace.

The position paper offers nine recommendations for federal, state and local contributions to reinvent the American high school:
   1. Establish a clear system of career and college readiness for all students.
   2. Create a positive school culture that stresses personalization in planning and decision-making.
   3. Create a positive school culture that stresses personalization in relationships.
   4. Improve how and where academic content is taught by integrating academic competencies into CTE curricula and integrating CTE’s real-world content and applied methods and examples into traditional academic classes.
   5. Create incentives for students to pursue the core curriculum in an interest-based context around broad themes, such as the fine arts, or specific themes like biotechnology, pre-engineering, hospitality, or finance.
   6. Support high quality teaching in all content areas.
   7. Offer flexible learning opportunities to encourage re-entry and completion.
   8. Create systems incentives and supports for connection of CTE and high school redesign efforts.
   9. Move beyond “seat time” and narrowly defined knowledge and skills.

Thomas Schultz, Superintendent of the Auburn Career Center in Concord Township, Ohio, said that, as the state’s oldest career tech center, Auburn has been a pioneer in using many of the strategies on which the recommendations are based. Organized in 1962 at its campus 30 miles east of Cleveland, Auburn held its first classes in 1965, and today, in addition to courses for adults, the center supports career planning, awareness, and preparation for 28,000 students in 11 school districts in Lake and Geauga counties.

It offers access to career exploration tools to grades K-12 and online courses for grades 6-12 through its Web site, supplies career awareness packets to K-5 teachers, gives presentations to students and teachers at middle and high schools, and offers seven Tech Prep and 13 career training programs in the center’s facilities for some 650 juniors and seniors.

Students at the center earn four credits each year – three in their occupational area and one Carnegie unit in English, math or physics, depending on the program. Each maintains a career portfolio, documenting work completed and plans for further education, which is often helpful for graduates applying for jobs or postsecondary school. Strong professional development programs help attract and retain faculty members who possess industry-backed certifications in their occupational area and state teaching credentials, Schultz said. The average teacher at Auburn has more than 14 years of teaching experience.

Schultz said intense student engagement with their courses and with the center’s faculty and staff helps explain why 99% graduate. Teachers loop from junior-year to senior-year courses with their class. They often join students on password-protected online discussion boards in the evening. “We finally broke down the barrier of 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Monday through Friday,” Schultz said.

To allow time for hands-on and team-based projects, classes can last as long as three hours. Math, science, and technology teachers provide continuity by sharing material – including whiteboard jottings – electronically as the students move from class to class, and they serve as “learning managers” for students who are taking technology courses online, or watching demonstrations, such as surgical procedures streamed live from the Cleveland Clinic, along with running commentary from the surgeons. More than 70% continue their education after graduation, Schultz said.

To be admitted to the Center, students must be at least 16, maintain a minimum grade-point average (varying from program to program) in the first two years of high school, and obtain recommendations from teachers and guidance counselors. Admission is competitive in programs that are over-subscribed, but competition is based on professional judgment as to which students would benefit most, rather than grade point averages, test scores, or quotas for each school district, Schultz stressed.

Another successful, but quite different, example of applying the association’s strategies was described by Suzanne Maxey, Principal of Seneca Valley High School, which serves 1,700 students who live in or near Germantown, Maryland, a fast-growing community 20 miles north of Washington, D.C. “It’s not a magnet school,” Maxey emphasized. “It’s a real school, with an economic mix, and nearly half the students from farm families.” In the 2005-06 school year, enrollment was White, 37.5%; African American, 30.1%; Hispanic, 20.2%, and Asian, 12.1%. The mobility rate was 20.1% .

Since the fall of 2003, her first as principal, she has guided creation of a “wall-to-wall” set of small learning communities built around career clusters, with the help of a $500,000 grant from the federal Small Learning Community Initiative. All students spend ninth grade in a freshman academy that includes participation in a year-long career-related project, and then spend their next three years in an academy of their choice – human services, science, business and finance, technology, and arts & media studies. A sixth, a four-year Academy of Information Technology that will include a paid internship of six to eight weeks, is scheduled to open in the fall of 2006.

Maxey and Sheila MacLeod, Academy Coordinator at Seneca Valley High, said each academy offers a choice of several career pathways. For example, the Academy of Human Services offers justice, law and society, early childhood education, secondary education, Naval Junior ROTC, and psychology & counseling. Each pathway includes 4 to 6 career-related courses, out of the 22 required courses for high school graduation. Each senior must also complete a capstone activity, which can be an internship, a research project, a community project, or a course taught by a college instructor either at a nearby community college or in Seneca Valley High.

Students attend weekly advisory sessions in groups of 17 or less, to which they are assigned alphabetically in ninth grade, and by academy in grades 10-12. The school’s business advisory council, which also includes five officers of the school’s parent-teacher-student association, offers feedback and suggestions, and supports projects, internships, job-shadowing, and mentoring programs. School leaders, teachers, guidance counselors, and academy leaders meet regularly to adjust the model, which Maxey describes as “a work in progress.”

Because the academies are new, and came at a time when other changes – such as new disciplinary rules – were also introduced, the precise impact of the wall-to-wall academies model has yet to be validated. But Maxey and McLeod pointed to several positive developments that have coincided with the changes. Since the fall of 2003, Seneca Valley students have had higher average SAT scores, more enrollments in honors and Advanced Placement classes, much better attendance, and more graduates continuing in a 2-year (34%) or 4-year (49%) college. The percentage of students passing state tests has risen in English, but not in biology, government or algebra.

Presenters' Bios

Janet B. Bray, CAE, serves as the Executive Director of the Association for Career and Technical Education, a not-for-profit association representing over 30,000 professionals across the United States.  As Executive Director, Janet manages the staff and program services of the association.  She is actively involved in the strategic public policy efforts of the association and works on legislative and public awareness issues for the profession.  She also provides leadership and guidance to the ACTE Board of Directors, committees and related associations.  Prior to joining ACTE, Janet was Executive Vice President of the National Association of Enrolled Agents where she oversaw a comprehensive strategic planning process, governance restructure and leadership development program.   During her 28-year tenure in the association management profession, she has provided leadership to a variety of associations in strategic planning, education program development, outreach to related professions and publics and creation of innovative programs and services.  She was instrumental in the development of a Youth Apprenticeship Program for the graphic arts industry in the State of Wisconsin and initiated the industry’s effort to develop national skill standards.  She has been an active participant in the association community serving on the American Society of Association Executives Education Foundation Board of Directors, Greater Washington Society of Association Executives Board of Directors, and numerous association-related committees and councils. She has served as a speaker at numerous association conferences and seminars and has authored articles related to the association field.  Janet holds a Bachelors Degree in History and Government from the University of Maryland and a Masters Degree in Adult Education from the George Washington University.  Janet earned her Certified Association Executive (CAE) credential in 1991 and is a member of the distinguished ASAE Fellows Group.

Suzanne Maxey is a 31 year veteran of public education. She earned a BA in secondary education from the University of Rhode Island and a MA in public administration from the University of Maryland. Mrs. Maxey was a high school social studies classroom teacher for 10 years before moving into instructional leadership positions. She has served as a social studies teacher coordinator and a magnet academic coordinator for the social and behavioral sciences. She became an administrator in 1992 and was the Dean of Academic and Student Affairs at Laurel High School and the principal of Bowie High School in Prince George's County Public Schools. In her current position as principal of Seneca Valley High School in Montgomery County Public Schools she has led the nationally recognized implementation of wall to wall academies.

Thomas Schultz has been Superintendent of Auburn Career Center since 1998 and has been an administrator at Auburn for over twenty years.  Auburn Career Center provides Career and Technical education for eleven school districts in Lake and Geauga County.  The high school enrollment is just over 650 students at the career center and an additional 1,500 students served through programs supported by Auburn Career Center.  Career education and awareness programs are provided to over 28,000 students.  Through the Post-secondary Adult Workforce Education program, Auburn Career Center serves over 3,500 adults annually with career and technical education programs.  Auburn Career Center is recognized nationally as a leader in Information Technology in Education and career-technical programs.

Mr. Schultz serves as Chairperson or the Future Horizons Committee for the Association for Career and Technical Education is Washington, DC and is Past President of the Career & Technical Education Political Action Committee.  He is also a Past Vice President and Board Member for the Association for Career and Technical Education.  Mr. Schultz is a Past President of the Ohio Association for Career and Technical Education and is currently Chairperson for the Ohio Bridges to Opportunity Initiative for the State of Ohio.   Mr. Schultz is a member of Lake County Workforce Investment Board and the Youth Council.  He is also a member of the Geauga County Workforce Development Board and is Chairperson of the Geauga County Tax Incentive Committee.  Mr. Schultz was appointed to the National Governors Association, 2004 National Policy Academy in Washington, DC.

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