My Vocational Ed Problem

By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 10, 2006 6:00 PM

As many of you have learned, some with surprise and some with dismay, I often respond to emails from readers of this column. Most of you, it turns out, are smarter than I am. The back and forth messages can go on for some time as I try to drain you of every last drop of useful information and insight.

This column is one of those e-mail exchanges, between me and Chris Peters, who coordinates AVID, Advancement via Individual Determination, at Cajon High School in San Bernadino, Calif. AVID is a program that aids students whose parents did not attend college in gaining admission to four-year universities. Peters had some things he needed to tell me about vocational education, something I almost never write about. This is a important topic, particularly since red-hot Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate advocates like me have for some time been urging cutbacks in vocational ed to make room for more college preparatory courses. I would like to hear from others on this issue. Here is how Peters went after me:

PETERS:What's the point of high school for the majority of our kids? Even at a school as successful on paper as Cajon, most of the kids I see every day are literally having their time wasted by a curriculum that is at least 80 percent college preparatory. I know that in the last decade the concept of "school-to-work" connections, "career academies" and "smaller learning communities" has been all the rage. But the reality that I've seen is that most of these have been pretty ineffectual due to the counter-trend of steadily beefing up college prep curriculum requirements - to the point that virtually all high school students are required to follow a course of study that will qualify them for a four-year college, even though less than half have any mathematical hope of doing so. In a nutshell, how can you have a successful school-to-work program if there's not enough room in the curriculum for kids to earn any real technical certification?

I haven't seen any education thinkers seriously addressing this fundamental contradiction even though it's what most thoughtful teachers "on the ground" are talking about. Everything I've read in education journals either addresses one side of the equation or the other, i.e. the need for more career prep, or the need for more college prep. But I have not once read anyone addressing the contradiction between the two that clearly stymies secondary ed. Sorry to spew so much at you but it just bugs the hell out of me and a lot of other hard working teachers.

MATHEWS:That's a very good point. Let's talk about this. How would you set up more vocational classes without running the risk of making them what they were a generation ago -- -a dumping ground for minority kids, including many who could have gotten into college? Henry Gradillas, star teacher Jaime Escalante's principal at Garfield High School, grew up in East LA and felt he was treated that way, and delighted in cutting back home ec and shop classes.

PETERS:Your question is definitely the one -- and a very legitimate one -- raised most often when one suggests expanding voc. ed. offerings. In the abstract the answer is that I am not talking about the old, stand-alone, dumping ground shop classes that are slowly but surely -- and rightly- disappearing from the scene. I'm talking about comprehensive, career prep programs that will culminate in actual professional certification in high need areas that offer solid, middle class $15-$20 an hour wages -- licensed nursing, computer systems maintenance, auto mechanics and culinary arts among others.

In the real world I'll give you two illustrations of this distinction from my high school. At Cajon we have an excellent auto shop teacher and an excellent culinary arts teacher. They both work their butts off, are loved by the kids, and kids learn in their classrooms. At the same time, all of their classes are, without question, exactly the type of dumping grounds that you expressed concern about, existing primarily to pad out the graduation credits of low-performing kids. Both teachers will tell you that if they could have a group of kids who really wanted to be there and have them exclusively for their final two years of high school, that they would emerge as fully trained line cooks and certified mechanics who could command $10-$15 an hour right out of high school in high demand fields with good prospects for wage growth.

What would it take to make these teachers' dreams a reality and better serve the majority of high school kids? Reduce social studies and English graduation requirements from four to two years and math and science requirements from three to two years.

What stands in the way of this happening? The full answer is long and historically complex, but I think that what it comes down to is the meritocratic assumptions of educators that establishing anything less than college as the goal of all students is somehow un-democratic. This would be a noble guiding principle were it not for the fact that four-year college is mathematically impossible for most high school graduates. It seems to me that we have to address this contradiction head on. But we are not.

MATHEWS:Here is my problem with your vision: I don't think 15-year-olds should be deciding whether they are going to go to college or not. They are too young and inexperienced and too prone to make the easy choice, which for them would be getting out of those annoying English and math and science and history classes. If you could create a program that would keep them on a track to complete four years of English, four years of social studies, three years of science and three years of math, up through algebra 2, and still have your state of the art vocational program, that would be fine. But taking the pressure off to complete the basic college requirements would be a terrible mistake, because it would create the dumping ground that you have described.

Why are those two great teachers used as a dumping ground? Would giving them better equipment, and kids who only had to go to their classes, change that situation? I would be willing to let a school experiment with such a program on a very limited basis, and see what happened -- maybe recruit 30 kids who clearly were very low performing and had absolutely no shot at AP or college and no desire to try them. But I wager that getting those kids to "want to be there" and do the work will be just as difficult with those teachers having them all day, and better equipment, as it is now getting them to work on science and English and social studies.

They just don't want to be in school, whatever the class, if it requires real effort. Your suggested vocational course would require such effort so they would have trouble being motivated to do it.

It is not the kind of course that is the problem, but the way it is taught. I would argue that you can create good science and math and social studies and English classes for those kids that would keep them motivated, and leave open the possibility that they could still go to college. Although this would be hard, it would keep their options open, unlike your idea.

Have you looked at the Academy programs in some California schools? They were big 10 years ago when I visited Oakland and wrote about them. They had very good vocational programs. At one school it was health sciences, preparing kids for lab or hospital tech work. But they were still getting enough of the math and science and English to quality for the UC or California State systems. The message was: this course will qualify you for part-time lab work while you work your way through college. That doesn't close out options, the way I think your plan would.

And I do not think you would have any larger a dropout rate than you would have with your all-vocational program. I don't think the problem is kids not being interested in college and academics. I think it is kids not wanting to be in school, and having to do what teachers tell them, vocational or otherwise, and I think the way to handle that is a better organized school, and better teaching.

Also, on the vocational side, schools have proved often to be terrible at teaching what industry actually wants, except in those cases where the school is run by the company that is hiring the students. So I doubt, despite your good intentions, that you could produce in a public school the kind of graduate that the company would want. There are too many other players, people who don't understand the industry, who would decide what is being taught, and too many chances for them to mess up your vision.

If you, Chris Peters, a smart guy who would not mess it up, started a charter school based on your vision, it might work. If you are going in that direction, let me know. That might be a story.

PETERS:You seemed to be making five essential points in rebutting my plan. I'll try to fairly summarize each one and then give you my response.

JayPoint 1: Allowing high school students to choose an exclusively vocational track for their last two or three years would cut off their option of going to a four-year college. Staying on a college prep track -- even if they don't like it -- at least keeps the opportunity open.

Your point seems to assume that completing a college prep sequence and succeeding in a college prep sequence are the same or close to the same thing. The vast majority of high school grads now complete a college prep sequence (four years of social studies and English, three years of math and science, two years of foreign language, etc.). Typically two thirds of these kids however do so with either less than a B average or by substituting easy remedial or non-lab math and science classes for the hard stuff like geometry, Algebra 2, chemistry and physics (known as the Big Four College-Killers among AVID coordinators). In other words, they complete the college prep sequence but they don't qualify for college. Aren't these kids having their opportunities "cut off" in the same way that my voc. ed. kids would be -- with the added insult that they are not learning anything useful in the process?

JayPoint 2: 15-year-olds cannot be trusted to make their own curricular choices, being too inclined to take the easy way out.

I'd take it a step further and say none of us are ever qualified to make our own curricular choices and tend to spend most of our lives taking the easy way out. But we've got to start taking a crack at it some time. Fifteen seems to me a far better age to do so than 18 because the 15-year-olds still have a couple of precious years of free education left that they'd prefer not to be legally required to waste. 15 is also better because by that time it is almost always abundantly clear whether or not a student is being successful on the college prep track (most, as I said, aren't) and they should be given the chance to pursue some other meaningful options other than that of limping through an ersatz college prep program that is the educational equivalent of fourth quarter garbage time in a game where they are behind by several touchdowns.

JayPoint 3: Any kid with a "spark" should be in a rigorous college prep program and those that don't have a "spark" probably won't be motivated by voc. ed. anymore than they would by college prep.

If by "spark" we mean an inner-faith in their own specialness and potential to achieve along with a willingness to work hard to realize them both, my experience is that all but the most-alienated and abused kids (and even many of them, miraculously enough) have it. It is mathematically impossible however for most of these kids with spark to go to a four-year college. Even if they all bought into the idea of college and worked . . . to get here, colleges would (and have) just keep raising their standards so that no more 30 to 40 percent at most could make it.

You said you believe that kids are motivated more by good teaching than by programs. I believe that they're motivated primarily by neither. My reading of "Stand and Deliver" (that jibes with my own classroom experience) is that the kids at Garfield were not motivated so much by good teaching as they were by a sense of possibility. It seems to me that Escalante's genius was much more than effective teaching. It was making the seemingly impossible seem possible.

Yes, some gifted teachers have the magical ability to, by the sheer force of their personalities, imbue kids with a sense of beat-the-odds possibility, but that is way too much to expect of most teachers (as it would be in any profession). Kids know full well that by their sophomore years, certainly by their junior years, the winners and losers in the college game have already been chosen and that their last few years on the college prep track are just so much garbage time before they move on to the default settings of 2-year college, trade school or the military. Don't we have an obligation at that point to offer them some other exciting possibilities that don't require them to overcome the overwhelming odds against their making it to a four-year college (or do you believe there aren't any? Isn't it the height of elitism to believe that, short of college, any other life pursuit is just a dreary consolation prize? ).

JayPoint 4: Most high school vocational programs [are bad] and if we have to have them, why can't they be integrated with a college prep program?

The reason that they usually [are bad] is exactly my point. In the bad old days they [were bad] because there was no great social or economic imperative for them to be effective. Throughout the middle of the twentieth century there were relatively abundant middle class career tracks available to the unskilled, non-college bound high school graduates. The true function of high school for most was largely a social one. Beginning about 25 years ago, that situation began to change dramatically. Virtually overnight, unskilled high school graduates began finding themselves in deep doo-doo. Unfortunately, while recognizing this situation, the overwhelming response of the educational elites has been to, in effect, say "lets start preparing everyone to go to college" (kind of like the navy deciding to put every single recruit through SEAL training), completely bypassing the vibrant mid-range of our economy that has a huge appetite for skilled -- but not necessarily college educated -- workers. Yes, in the last decade there has been a strong "school-to-work" movement that has resulted in many "career themed" academies. But these are almost always just a thin gloss over the traditional college prep core. It's an improvement but it doesn't address the core problem.

I'd like to know more about that program in Oakland that you say actually trained some kids for something. Personally, I've never seen a voc. ed. "program" that consisted of more than two or three elective classes, usually not in sequence, which is why our great auto shop and culinary arts teachers are used as dumping grounds. They're a tempting placement for counselors trying to find garbage time placements for seniors who are just filling out their credits. Again, as our auto shop teacher says, if you want to actually prepare a kid for a modern auto tech job right out of high school, you need an intensive two-year program, not one or two classes where the kids tinker with outdated wrecks.

JayPoint 5 (I'm inferring a bit here): Hey Peters, you'd be a lot more interesting if you were actually doing something, like starting a charter school based on your vision, than just yapping to me about it. Theories are just words. People who can effectively put them into practice are stories.

Definitely your strongest point. I'm working very hard with a group of 12 very thoughtful teachers at our school, along with our principal, to put together a plan to break our school into meaningful smaller learning communities that offer alternatives to the standard college prep track. Many schools doing this as "SLC's" (smaller learning communities) are definitely the flavor of the decade in school reform. Our frustration is that the onerous demands of the college prep core leave us with very few options other than to sprinkle a few cute electives around the college prep core. No teacher has the leverage to question that conventional wisdom (as I believe most now do) and be taken seriously.

MATHEWS:Points 1 and 3: This I don't get. I have been writing a lot lately about community colleges that are taking plenty of kids with poor high school grades, some of whom did not even graduate from high school. If high school kids of this sort are getting the message that there is no place in college for them, then the high school is guilty of malpractice, or neglect. Give me an example of a C student who wanted to get into community college and could not, and I will change my mind, and write a story about him, with all the details. Otherwise, this point makes no sense to me, even in this period of budget crises in California.

My impression from talking to such kids is they don't go on to college because they much prefer a work life, even at low wages, to a school life. If indeed they are getting a message that college is not for them, I would love for you to tell me exactly when and how and from whom they are getting that message.

Point 2: A good point for you, although I would argue that the community college system give them lots of opportunity after age 18. It's not free, but it is pretty reasonable, and they can work while they go to school.

Point 4: You haven't addressed my most important complaint, that public schools are simply not set up, and never will be, to create a useful vocational course of the kind you describe. Too many public school people involved in the decision making process don't understand the industries and what they need. This will only work if the school system gives the hiring companies complete control of the program.

Point 5: This, of course, is your strongest point too.

PETERS:Points 1 & 3: I tried to resist the temptation to go off on a tangent on community colleges since that is a whole separate story in itself and, again, an underreported one that I feel very strongly about. But since you asked: community colleges work very well for two groups of people, high achieving kids who use them as a less expensive means to get their general ed. requirements out of the way on their way to a bachelors degree, and older, working adults who use them as a second chance to pursue higher education later in life.

For the 'C' average or below high school graduate, however, they are mostly a cruel illusion. Yes, you're right, they all get accepted to community colleges but the percentage of 18-year-old's that enter them and actually matriculate to either their A.A. (associate of arts degree) or a four-year college transfer is abysmally low -- less than 20 percent in California (much less I imagine if you take out the 'B' average and above kids who go to C.C.'s [community colleges]).

There are many fascinating reasons for this but I won't go into it unless you're interested (I'd also refer you to the best book I've read on the topic, "Ambitious Generation, America's Teenagers, Motivated but Directionless" by Barbara Schnieder and David Stevenson). Suffice it to say that community colleges afford our secondary education system the pretense that they are preparing the majority of kids for some valid form of higher education when they clearly are not. Take away that pretense, look at the real numbers and we see that at least two thirds of our high school students are completely wasting their time on the college prep track in high school.

Point 4:

I agree, public schools are not set up to develop quality vocational programs -- primarily because school administrators and ed school academics are virtually all liberal arts types who tend to view college as the be-all and end-all of a rigorous education and who tend be contemptuous of voc ed., partly for the legitimate historical reasons voiced to you by Mr. Gradillas -- but also because of the narrowness of their experience and at least a touch of elitism.

And doesn't that reinforce my main point anyway? Don't we need to bring people from the community college voc ed. programs, private trade schools and private industry into secondary education? Sounds like something Republicans could get behind that would actually help kids.

MATHEWS:My question is: the community college situation is key, and you have me on the edge of my seat. Why don't those C students get anything out of community college?

My answer: because they have not matured to the point where they see the need of it, but they come back to the community college years later, having become those older, more motivated students that you refer to.

PETERS:I understand your question to be something like, what's the big problem if those C average students mature and just go back to school a few years later and finish up then?

The answer: As I said, a small number do. And that's the group that C.C.'s best serve. Most don't and here's why. Statistically, people who go directly from high school into the work world are much more likely to assume multiple adult responsibilities in their twenties than those who don't; marriage, kids, mortgage etc. Now I'm a fairly hard-working guy. I work a demanding teaching job, and am taking six units a semester towards earning my marriage and family therapy license and I have two young sons at home. Yet even though I have the luxury of a wonderful wife who is a full-time mom, I still feel stretched to my limit. How anyone who is part of a dual-career household or, worse, a single parent, manages to put themselves through school is utterly beyond me. And of course, most can't. That is why those 'C' average kids have got to get those middle class, $20-per-hour vocational credentials by their early twenties before the responsibilities start piling up and they're trapped in sub $10 - $15-per-hour purgatory. Hope that's what your were looking for.

One last point. The reason I sought you out has to do with how much I believe in what has seemed to be the over-arching thesis of your work; that all kids are entitled to a shot at a meaningfully rigorous secondary curriculum. To motivate kids to engage in a rigorous curriculum there must be the notion that their hard work will result in something real. Therefore, no kid should be permitted to say that they have completed high school unless they have earned something real that requires rigorous pursuit, whether it is four-year college admission or legitimate vocational certification. That's all I'm concerned with. Does that make sense? Thanks again for having the conversation.