Is High School Career and Technical Education Obsolete?

Abstract

In the face of growing sentiment against career and technical education, Mr. Gray asks us to take a hard look at the advisability of limiting high school students' options. AS IF ORDAINED by some law of applied public policy, the viability of high school vocational education -- now called Career and Technical Education (CTE) -- is once again being questioned. The current federal Administration appears to hold the CTE curriculum in low regard. Its recommendation regarding the reauthorization of the Perkins CTE funding legislation is basically to scrap it. The Administration proposes instead to redirect federal funding for high school CTE, tech prep, and even postsecondary technical education toward high school academic education. Perhaps the real issue is money -- or the lack of it -- for other reform efforts, and not the value of CTE. As Perkins funding is the only pot of federal cash that goes mainly to secondary education, some suggest that the real motivation for eliminating CTE is to free up that money to fund the secondary school portion of the underfunded No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Regardless of the Administration's true motive, almost 100 years of federal assistance for high school CTE could end abruptly. According to the U.S. Department of Education (ED) appointees, all teens want to go to college; therefore, high school should be only about teaching English, math, and science. Proponents of this view argue that the traditional academic curriculum is the best approach; after all, it worked for them, and it will work for all students once we get highly qualified teachers into every classroom and certify the deficient via standardized testing. The implication is that CTE is incompatible with NCLB and, therefore, obsolete. One ED appointee, now retired, went so far as to characterize CTE programs as preparing students for careers as shoe repairers.1 Yet there is cause to question such conclusions. Unlike English, math, and science, CTE is an elective within the high school curriculum. No student has to take it. Yet, according to ED's transcript analysis, virtually every high school graduate takes at least one course in CTE, and about 25% of students are concentrators, taking three or more credits in a labor market (SLM) area.2 Whereas no student has to take CTE, one can assume that those who do, their parents, and the local school boards that finance the lion's share of CTE find it of value. Can they all be making a mistake? Would students elect CTE and their parents agree to it if it offered nothing more than shoemaking? The present levels of student participation in and local financial support of CTE alone suggest that perhaps it is not as obsolete as claimed. Perhaps it is time to reconsider why we have CTE in our high schools in the first place and whether these reasons are less valid today than in the past. Then again, if the goal is really to leave no child behind, curriculum choices are necessary at the high school level. No single program of study will work with all students. CTE is to some students what Advanced Placement and honors courses are to others. As I will argue subsequently, if one includes students who are at risk of dropping out of high school, students who enter the work force directly after high school, and students who aspire to attend college at the pre- baccalaureate technical education level, then CTE is an important complement to the standard academic curriculum for more than half of all high school students -- an alternative these students find more relevant and thus more educationally effective than a purely academic program of study would be. A Curriculum Debate It is fascinating to observe the degree to which the current debate about CTE in high schools is a historical rerun. The main question is whether or not students are best served by a common academic curriculum or by a differentiated curriculum that offers alternatives. …