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Illinois School Board Journal
May/June 2005

Launching success with career-tech ed

by Ginger Wheeler

Ginger Wheeler is a free-lance writer from Glen Ellyn, Illinois, whose work has appeared in national magazines, local newspapers and on the World Wide Web.

Whatever you do, don't call it vocational education.

Career and Technical Education (CTE) teachers, administrators and supporters have said this for 20 years as they struggled to shed their "dumping ground" image of troubled, slow and "tracked" kids. Anyone visiting one of Illinois' 26 regional CTE centers could attest that CTE is now more of a launching pad to highly technical college programs and other post-secondary educational options, as well as a path to higher wages and highly skilled jobs.

But old labels are hard to shake and a new threat is on the horizon.

Despite impressive gains by programs that could prove to be a stopgap for potential high school dropouts as well as a launching pad for the next group of rocket engineers, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) may be the finger that shuts off the lights for good for CTE programs around the country.

In February 2005, the Bush administration presented a budget to Congress that would eliminate funding for the fourth consecutive year from the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act, known as Perkins III. The budget shifts nearly $1.3 billion in funding from Perkins, plus money from 48 other education programs, into a $1.24 billion High School Intervention Initiative to expand testing and other NCLB requirements into high schools.

The Department of Education's Web site says states can use this money to continue CTE programs if they choose. Karen Johnson, acting division administrator for the Illinois State Board of Education's Career Development and Preparation confirms that $49.6 million will flow into Illinois coffers in 2005 for adult and vocational education. But nothing will appear in that line item in 2006 if the Bush changes are enacted. About $8 million will appear in a high school testing line item for the first time, along with just more than $20 million for the High School Intervention program.

Will school boards use that money to continue the tradition of CTE? Or will the money go toward programs that help kids pass tests required by NCLB?

Perkins III is the legislative grandchild of the 1917 Smith-Hughes Act, a bill that provided funds to public schools to help defray the costs of teaching students a trade. The current evolution of the bill came into effect in 2000 and encourages states to extend academic achievement and accountability into vocational education.

Only three states had mandatory vocational content standards as of 2002. That same year, a study conducted by the RAND Corporation for the Department of Education's National Assessment of Vocational Education found that Perkins was "a relatively weak policy instrument for implementing a strong federal vision for vocational education." The conclusion noted the results were gathered for only two years after implementation of the new rules.

The U.S. Department of Education reported that the Bush administration's Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) rated vocational education grants "ineffective because it has produced little or no evidence of improved outcomes for students despite decades of federal investment." (Source: FY2006 ED Budget Summary: Vocational and Adult Education, http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget06/summary/edlite-section2c.html)

The Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) called the president's budget "a crushing blow." Congress has protected Perkins for the past three years, and many in the education field believe it will be spared again. But can it survive much longer?

CTE in Illinois

Illinois' CTE is divided into 60 Education for Employment (EFE) regions. Each region has a system director who oversees the programs in their area. Records indicate 341,340 (57 percent) of Illinois' high school students are enrolled in approved CTE programs.

The cost to Illinois is $37.8 million, including spending for agriculture education program. Illinois matches the federal Perkins grants that come to the state, said ISBE's Johnson. The CTE line item represents about 2 percent of the state's total spending on education in Illinois. About 6,500 educators work in CTE.

The irony, according to Fred Kane, a 30-year CTE educator and current director for the Technology Center of DuPage (formerly Davea Vocational Center), is that Perkins funds are used to enhance academic learning in schools where most of the teachers were hired to teach a skill they had actually earned a living doing. "These are not math and reading teachers," he said.

However, Kane added, academics are interwoven every day into the center's curriculum. As an example, culinary students who develop menus for the school's public restaurant must figure out how many pounds of carrots to order and how many gallons of milk a recipe will need, depending upon how many people plan to attend the next lunch.

Students building a house must calculate how much wood to order, how many nails they will need and what the home will cost to build. They also must answer questions like: What will the tools cost? How do you justify the cost of expensive tools against the cost of workers' salaries?

The benefits for students who take CTE are measurable and immeasurable, Kane said. "A lot of kids learn in different ways, there's no doubt about it.

"When I was teaching, if I lectured, not all kids got the lecture," he said. "If I combined the lecture with a demonstration, and showed them how, even more got it. If I made them do it themselves, I reached most of the kids. Here we do all three."

But even though learning is hands-on in CTE programs, students range from those with special needs to the class valedictorian.

Joanna Weremijewicz is a second-year student at the DuPage center and plans to major in pre-med in college. She will complete a two-year Medical and Health Care Careers program and ranks 17th in her class at Fenton High School in Bensenville, Illinois.

The DuPage center offers19 programs students from 24 area high schools can explore. These include programs like computer information systems, pre-architectural and pre-engineering computer assisted design, graphic design, multimedia and TV production, health care, fire science, automotive repair and machine tooling.

Like the other CTE centers in the state, the DuPage center identifies high-growth careers in the area and then develops curriculum and relationships with employers to meet the growing employment needs. Additionally, students can earn dual high school and college credit for some courses.

Only the most up-to-date machines and tools are used to teach students, Kane said, because employers want employees to be as current as possible. Industries donate equipment to the school, or offer items at a greatly reduced rate.

The automotive industry donated 38 new cars and engines, including many 2005 models, for the students to learn on, including a Mercedes SUV, a Dodge Viper and a Chevrolet Corvette, Kane said.

But Technology Center of DuPage is what some in the industry call the "Cadillac" of CTE centers. Supported by 24 large suburban high schools, it enjoys resources that other CTE centers might not.

Jeannie Kitchens works as a researcher through Southern Illinois University with the Illinois Office of Educational Services (IOES), a non-profit agency funded by grants that interfaces with ISBE to provide technical training, resources and services to CTE programs around the state. Kitchens speculated that the federal government, with its huge deficits, may divert Perkins dollars to the High School Initiative to increase academics.

"CTE uses contextual learning, hands-on learning, so that kids don't have to ask, 'Why am I doing this?' They take the classes and apply what they learn to real life so they can go, 'OK, wow! So this is what it's for.' Also, students can explore, experience, and perform jobs they might not have otherwise had the opportunity to explore or perform," Kitchens said. "They're getting hands-on experience. It could be a big, 'AHA!' Or, it could be, 'Oh, this is something I don't want to do.'"

"The bottom line," said Rebecca Woodhull, IOES executive director, "is that because many administrators are unaware of the research data on the value of CTE programs, they are often targeted for cuts." That would be shortsighted, she added.

Woodhull said research shows CTE keeps students in school, which meets one of the NCLB goals. "Another is that CTE students with a CTE concentration — that is, not just an isolated course, but a program of three or more courses — have a 95 percent graduation rate in Illinois. Therefore, it meets the NCLB goal for higher graduation rates," she said.

Other evidence shows that students in CTE programs with revitalized additional academics perform as well as college prep students on academic tests, therefore meeting the NCLB goal of higher achievement.

About 57 percent of CTE students go onto college, Woodhull said. There they have a lower college dropout rate than students who attend college from traditional high schools, according to IOES and other CTE research.

Curbing dropout rates at all educational levels also has an effect on another state system: corrections.

The high school dropout rate of approximately 57,000 kids in Illinois is equivalent to the state's correctional system intake each year, and the cost to house Illinois' prison population has mushroomed to $1.2 billion. Many inmates are released back into society each year "without employment skills," wrote Mike Lawrence, head of Southern Illinois University's policy institute, in a recent Chicago Tribune op-ed piece. Half of these people, he indicated, will return to prison within three years' time, leaving behind fresh victims and additional costs to society.

Program vulnerability

CTE programs offered in traditional high schools seem to be more vulnerable than cooperative programs at facilities such as the cooperative Technical Center of DuPage. Why? Because CTE programs can be expensive. The machinery, the tools, the space required to teach programs, the computers and the software are expensive and demand constant updating to stay current.

As a result, some schools are scaling back CTE to focus more on classes that prepare students for mandated state tests. Mundelein High School let go an experienced auto-repair instructor last year. The class, with an enrollment of 200 students, was popular. It is still being offered, but now a woodshop instructor teaches a scaled-back version.

"When we were cutting back, we were very tight on space," said Kelley Happ, public information officer for Mundelein High School. "Auto shop took a huge area that we needed for our physical education program."

MHS now sends students who want to make a serious commitment to automotive technology to Lake County Technical High School, where they spend a half-day immersed in the program. "We've cut down to a more basic program (at MHS)," Happ said. "We didn't cut back from what the kids can learn. They were inviting the whole community in to fix their cars and change their oil. That's not what we're here for."

Program advantages

Proponents of CTE say that offering students the chance to explore particular careers in high school offers several advantages. CTE gives the really focused students a jumpstart on what they want to do. It helps the less focused students try on different careers to see if there is an interest in a certain path. Additionally, it helps prepare students to become the workers of tomorrow, according to Katrina Paddick, outgoing president for the Illinois Association of Career and Technical Education.

Amidst the concentration on statewide standards, it's important to remember that CTE curriculum is locally driven, said ISBE's Johnson. "This is very much a local control state, so districts have to make their own decision," in terms of their priorities for career-tech education. However, she added, "NCLB is impacting those priorities."

Many downstate programs offer more agricultural related courses — a natural outcome of ag-related jobs that proliferate in downstate Illinois.

However there are exceptions to the rule. The Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences had 1,250 applications for 150 openings last year. Champaign and Urbana high schools require keyboarding to graduate.

Villa Grove High School, about 40 miles south of Champaign, has built and sold about 50 houses since the mid-1940s as part of its CTE program, said Jim Stubblefield, who will replace Paddick as the CTE association president this spring. Urbana High School had a similar program that has become a victim of budget cuts, he said.

The flip side

The other side of the CTE argument goes like this: All children need to be ready for college with a heavy dose of academic, college-prep curriculum. We don't want to "track" any students into CTE and risk turning potential scholars away from college.

Also, many employers, like Kurt Schiele who runs Elmhurst Toyota and two other car dealerships in Elmhurst, Illinois, say that students coming out of high school CTE programs are still not skilled enough to take on the high skilled jobs being offered, such as technical auto mechanics, computer technicians, and high-wage electrical and contracting jobs. Students still need college to compete, Schiele said.

Elmhurst Toyota, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in Illinois, has a state-of-the-art repair and service facility for some very high-tech automobiles, including the newest energy-saving hybrids. "My workers have a lot of experience before they get here," Schiele said, "and then they get even more training on a regular basis by Toyota."

But the reality is — given a typical high school freshman class — only about one-third will go to college, and only about one-third of those students will actually graduate from college.

"It is very important for students to come out of high school with some type of skills so they can enter the workforce," Stubblefield said, "because not all kids can go to school right away. Some foundation in some career and technical education that includes academics is critical.

"Not everyone is cut out to do the academics without some type of hands-on learning," he said, reiterating that most CTE programs are aligned with Illinois Learning Standards.

What lies ahead

A long-time hairdresser in Chicago's western suburbs, Cheryl McAloon, learned her craft in high school and was able to graduate with a cosmetology license. "I never could have afforded to go to school after high school to learn how to do this," McAloon said. "College wasn't an option for me."

Now a happily married working mom, McAloon and her husband own a home in Elk Grove Village and dote on their two boys, who are avid ice hockey players. How many other productive citizens like her learned their way through Illinois CTE programs? No one really knows.

What will happen if Perkins cuts become permanent? Stubblefield believes CTE will dwindle.

But Kane said he has faith that CTE will survive. "I don't know how someone could come here and see it, and think that it isn't worthwhile," he said.

ISBE's Johnson said it is really up to the state board of education and local school districts.

One state board member, Dean Clark, said the current board has indicated their support for CTE, but if the federal Perkins funds dwindle, it's anybody's guess.

"Whether the board is supportive of the concept, my personal answer is: absolutely," Clark said. "The reality is that money is exceedingly tight and the way things are set up right now with the governor having a substantial amount of control over the agency, I'm not sure there would be a move to do much at all. You'd probably try to reallocate as best as you could.

"But, (if Perkins cuts are enacted) we can't come up with that kind of money to make it partially whole again, so the odds are the program would suffer rather seriously. I don't think we have the wherewithal to find that kind of money," Clark said.

Even so, Johnson said she believes that every child in Illinois does have access to CTE in Illinois.

Stubblefield, like many CTE proponents, refers to a study by Ken Gray of Kent State University to support continuation of CTE programs. The study found that when CTE is cut, dropout rates go up.

"It is documented that in Australia dropout rates doubled with the elimination of high school CTE. CTE is the only thing keeping some kids in school," Stubblefield said.

"CTE is to some, what AP is to others," Joliet's CTE director Waxwieler said. "It all depends on a person's learning style."

Sidebar: Coordinating career/tech with standards raises test scores