The Pomp and Circumstance March is echoing from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Universities across the nation have been issuing tens of thousands of parchment diplomas this month while final plans are being made for high school commencements and grad nights. With each newly issued high school and university diploma comes a time for each graduate to ponder the next stage of life.
With the unemployment rate at over 10 percent in California and Silicon Valley, too many newly minted college graduates will not have an easy time in securing a job in the area of their undergraduate course of study. At the same time, high school graduates are having an increasingly difficult time securing student slots at community colleges and public universities due to the state’s economic crisis.
Many of America’s college graduates will be waiting tables in local restaurants or tending bar. Some will stay and work the waitstaff/bartender gig for a lifetime. Why did they go to college in the first place? There’s nothing wrong with becoming a great waitstaff person, but some of these graduates have incurred thousands of dollars of debt from student loans.
We must also consider the fact that at least 30 percent of students that begin high school never graduate. Some of these 30 percent opt for an equivalency certificate by taking the General Education Development test. But the trend in the United States is that the high school drop out rate is actually increasing. This is a very scary development for our future success as the world’s most powerful nation and the trend will continue to drag the economy downward.
Should we be cramming the college experience down every high school student’s throat?
According to recent statistics only 50 percent of those students that began a college career in 2006 will graduate in six years. It is now time, more than ever, for America to turn back the clock to a time when vocational educational programs abounded in high school—we should even begin them in middle school.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the 30 fastest growing jobs only seven will require a college degree. However, there is strong evidence that the higher the degree the more money one makes annually. According to the Census Bureau, the gap between a person with a bachelor’s degree and one with a high school diploma is nearly $23,000 a year in 2004 dollars.
The Santa Clara County Office of Education has been providing local leadership in the area of Career Technical Education during the last year. The SCCOE has established a department and director to nurture this emerging movement. There are 15 identified industry sectors including Building Trades and Construction, Energy and Utilities, Health and Medical Technology to name just 3. Each industry sector has distinct career pathways and programs of study. You can find a treasure trove of information on Career Technical Education on several of the links from the SCCOE.org website.
The 1991 SCANS (Secretary of Labor’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills) report under President George H.W. Bush listed a three-part foundation for workplace success:
Basic Skills: Reads, writes, performs arithmetic and mathematical operations, listens, and speaks with organized ideas,
Thinking Skills: Thinks creatively, makes decisions, solves problems, visualizes, knows how to learn, and reasons,
Personal Qualities: Displays responsibility, esteem, sociability, self-management, integrity and honesty.
Until our school assessment instruments measure much of the above we will always miss the mark when it comes to preparing all our students for success as workers, citizens, and in life. Fill-in-bubble tests and regurgitation of facts will never get us where we need to go. I hope to hear much more about Career Technical Education as we move to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA/NCLB).
The strong leader will see the relationship between the expenditure of monetary resources in CTE, the drop in unemployment, and the commensurate decline of incarceration of juveniles and adults. A robust CTE and vocational education secondary program has the potential over time to put the sails back into the California and American economy. Is there a political leader out there to step up and take the reigns of this movement, shape it and fund it?
The county department has a department and a director. Fine.
Does this mean that vocational education course offerings have also increased? Do we have more students enrolled in voc ed than were enrolled 10 years ago? Are we placing more kids than we did 10 years ago?
If the administrators are succeeding in improving voc ed opportunities for kids, that’s great.
If we only added administration without adding courses, that doesn’t count for much.
The “Education Establishment” these days is all about a superstructure of district & administrative personnel, who ususally get the fatest checks.
Mr. DiSalvo is the perfect example, as one of dozens of leaders of the dozens of school districts in this county alone.
Greg,
I think DiSalvo just unwittingly offered up a great example of the County Office of Education’s approach to education: Spend a bunch of money, create a department (salaries and benefits), and hire a director (bigger salary, super benefits). Then they will spend months pouring over useless reports such as the one DiSalvo referenced, which will not create a single job, and then hire a few former COE employees as consultants to do additional analysis, which will also not create jobs, except at the COE. THEN, when they’ve run out of administrative paper-pushing they just might worry about niceties such as: “Maybe we should add some classes?” only to discover there’s no money left for actual training programs!
Do you think I’m kidding? Wait and see. This is the COE we’re talking about. They fly under the radar, only making news when they fire their Superintendent.
The COE makes the Santa Clara Valley Water District look like a model of good government!
First dissolve the teachers union. THEN bring back the Vo-Tech.
Otherwise, the “cure” will be worse than the disease.
Just to update readers on the grand scheme to crush “white culture/values” in order to close opportunity gaps for county students falling behind academically, you will recall that SJ 2020 was announced on 10/29/09 by the mayor of San Jose and the superintendent of the County Office of Education (COE).
On 4/28/10, the African American/European American coalition met with top management of the COE and learned that, even though six months had passed, there were no benchmarks, goals, or plans in place to guide this ten-year plan to success.
Later we learned that there already was a goal in place that was dictated by a 2002 law (oops, too many white people in Congress to pay attention to that law) and the goal is that by 2014 all students should arrive at proficiency in their studies. (Proficiency is a full step above success measured by simply passing tests.) SJ 2020 pays no attention to that deadline.
And in the meantime, the grandly named “Silicon Valley Community Foundation” conducted three forums on closing opportunity gaps in February, March, and April 2010, and is now engaged in “synthesizing the information from the series into a policy brief that will be shared with all school district superintendents and school boards in the region.” Don’t you love the way these guys & gals talk? But interestingly enough, it appears that neither the mayor’s office nor the COE had any role in the foundation’s gab-fests. Read about the foundation’s exciting ground-breaking forums here:
http://www.siliconvalleycf.org/enews-articles/may-10/may-enews-ed-forum.html
More…
Do you think Career Technical Education and Vocational Education have a role in helping close the “opportunity” or “achievement gap”?
Joseph Di Salvo
We can provide the opportunity, and do in most instances.
The achievement is the province of the student.
You can bring a horse to water, but…
So, Mr. DiSalvo, what opercentage of the dropouts or low achievers are illegal immigrants or the children of illegal immigrants?
What percentage are from poor homes where education is not a priority?
Yes, many students come from families where education is not a priority, either because the parents didn’t have education themselves, or they are too busy to bother, or they are in trouble with the law, etc. There are still things schools can do to help their children succeed. I was in a school today where I learned about their mentoring programs, after school programs offered in the community, and home interviews that help the school learn what extra support is needed. This school has done a great job elevating their achievement despite the lack of home support of many of the children.
The big problem is that often the adults project low expectations on students with home issues. Instead, we need to promote the mindset that any child can succeed. If we expect more, children can achieve more. Giving up on students because their parents do or because they don’t have parents is no way to run a school system or a society.
I happen to be close friends with one of the members of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Would you be interested in meeting him and or do you have any questions you might like him to address?
Can you give me any information on the African American/European American coalition? I’d be interested in hearing what they have to say about these issues. Are you an organizer?
Hi Joe.
My message was intended for “More on SJ 2020”.
I hope all is well. I’m flying to Guatemala next week to teach at one of the schools in Antigua. The adventure continues!
” It is now time, more than ever, for America to turn back the clock to a time when vocational educational programs abounded in high school—we should even begin them in middle school.”
WOW! I never thought I’d see the day when I agreed with Mr. DiSalvo on anything. I’ve been saying for a couple of decades now that we need more mechanics more than we need more lawyers.
Too many employers require a college degree when the work involed doesn’t warrant it. You get out of college in 5-6 years with a mountain of debt and a degree in English or Poli-sci. What does that qualify you to do?
JMO,
Glad we agree. This is a critical issue we all should get behind.
I’m very much in favor of vocational education. It might also be helpful if we’d follow Arizona’s lead, or perhaps have a Federal government that would deport some of the illegal aliens who are willing to do the jobs that a lot of Voc-Ed graduates would like to do themselves, instead of allowing those same illegal aliens to outbid them at $10 per hour (or less). If Voc-Ed graduates are going to be competing with illegal aliens for jobs, then they’re not going to be making a great deal more than minimum wage. They could swing that at Burger King.