Massachusetts and Ohio are a study in contrasts. One gave the country its handsomest president; the other birthed its most corpulent. One is a mecca for athletics, home to storied franchises that have piled on championships over the course of decades; the other’s teams have known defeat so cruel and so persistent that many suspect the influence of a wrathful deity. One has been the setting of cherished cultural touchstones of television and film; the other is not so much like that. (What’s that? I’m from Boston, why do you ask?)
But when it comes to education, the two have more in common that you might imagine. Washington-based advocacy group Achieve recently released detailed profiles of each state’s career and technical education programs. The reports arrive at a turning point in the history of workforce training, as vocational instruction is being embraced as an underutilized tool for spurring upward mobility. Career and Technical Education (CTE) students are just as likely as students on a college preparatory track to pursue postsecondary education; what’s more, their starting salaries after obtaining associate’s degrees and professional certifications are impressive enough to make this liberal arts major weep bitter tears into a French philosophy text.
It wasn’t always this way. For years, students in many career and technical programs were the unlucky recipients of a second-class education. As the report authors write in their Ohio entry, “The schools offered limited programs; put students on separate, narrowly focused tracks; provided only high school-level credit; and trained graduates for a specific occupational skill set.” It has taken about 10 years of commitment to high expectations and challenging coursework to turn the Ohio CTE sector around, including a move in 2012 to begin issuing report cards for each of the state’s 91 career-technical planning districts. New legislation mandates that career-track graduates must either achieve a cumulative passing score on seven end-of-year course assessments, be judged “remediation free” on a nationally recognized college admission exam, or earn an industry credential that will allow them to find rewarding employment without a college degree.
Like its Rust Belt counterpart, the Bay State has taken major steps to transform a benighted vocational system into a wide-ranging network of schools that graduate more of their charges into competitive colleges and fulfilling careers. The paramount feature of Massachusetts CTE is lofty standards: Since 2003, students enrolled its 38 schools have had to pass the rigorous MCAS exams in English and math before earning their diplomas. Top-performing programs like Essex Technical High School now deliver a kind of double-duty curriculum that provides the requisite grounding in traditional subjects while also allowing students to explore their interests in fields like robotics, health sciences, IT, and precision manufacturing. Though the commitment can be daunting for students, the promise of a genuine career path has led to stupefyingly low dropout rates.
Thankfully, CTE has begun to overcome its justifiably dubious reputation. By setting kids up for professional success in atmospheres of academic legitimacy, career and technical programs could become one of the most valuable items in the education reform toolbox.
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