What would happen if students in your high school could exchange rigorous graduation requirements preparing them for college for career paths in high school?
Enthusiasm
If you entered a high school at 6:30 a.m. and found students excited to be there and eagerly waiting to learn, what would you think? You'd probably think you were either hallucinating, having a bad reaction to a new medication or were dreaming. This is not the case in a high school in Los Angeles.
Mitchell Landsberg, LATimes Staff Writer, reports that Palmdale High school has "Zero Period" that begins at 6:35 a.m. These students arrive when it is still dark, must provide their own transportation, and give up sleep time. Landsberg reports, "The class is sports medicine, and it is offered by Palmdale's Health Careers Academy, a 15-year-old school-within-a-school that has become a model of what a successful career education program can be. Students in the academy learn such real-world skills as giving injections and reading X-rays and also take college-prep math, English and science with a medical focus."
These high schools do not believe that the only way to success is by taking the traditional prep classes intended for a four year college.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
Vocational education is experiencing great support from non-profit foundations, senators, and the governor who is a product of an Austrian high school that trained students for a vocation. These vocational classes create relevance in the real world for many students who would have otherwise become so bored and probably dropped out.
Research
Presently, there does not seem to be much evidence that this type of high school greatly reduces dropout rates. However, it does send students out into the world of work better prepared and earning more money than if they had gone to a traditional high school.
Health Careers Academy
How does this academy differ from a typical high school curriculum?
Instead of taking English, students take medical English
Instead of history, students take medical U.S. history or medical world history
Instead of general biology, they take kinesiology, forensic biology
The Statistics
How is this school doing academically?
100% graduate and go to college.
98% pass the California High School Exit Exam the first time--double the rate of the school as a whole.
95% attendance rate
But, this must be in an affluent area of Los Angeles where kids have all the advantages, right?
No. Palmdale is a largely poor, predominately Hispanic student body on a campus in the Antelope Valley. This program is being copied all over the United States. Florida, with help from Bill and Melinda Gates, is also developing the Career Academics Concept.
Education is changing quickly. Thomas Frey, of the DaVinci Institute, has his own views of the Future Look of Education.
Copyright article 2007 Barbara Pytel. All Rights Reserved.
The copyright of the article Vocational High Schools in Curriculum Issues is owned by Barbara Pytel. Permission to republish Vocational High Schools in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
Our public school system is not broken; it’s just not addressing the
needs of half of our young people. American schools provide an outstanding
education to half of our student population. The other half are unprepared
to enter the job force in a meaningful trade that provides a living wage.
We must find a way to reach the other half, if we want to have a truly
world class educational system. To accomplish this, we have to rethink how
we educate our young and look to countries like Finland and Germany for a
new model.
By the time students reach the 8th grade here in
America, we can usually identify those that are not benefitting from, nor
interested in, continuing their formal education. 8th grade students can
be broken down into three groups:
1. Students that are
excelling and thriving in the educational environment 2. Students
that are attending and benefitting from the educational environment 3.
Students that are uninterested in continuing their educational
experience
The excelling students usually come from a home with
an enhanced environment. By that I mean, a home that values education,
with a parent or parents that are in touch with teachers, and involved with
the educational process. Students from these homes are receiving help with
homework and are having school progress monitored on a daily basis. These
children know that they are expected to do their best within the classroom,
work respectfully with their teachers, and get along with other students at
school. Attitudes become ingrained, and school becomes important to these
students, largely because it is important in the home.
Students
that are attending and benefitting are much the same as those in the
excelling student group with some differences. Many of these students are
from homes that do not support the educational process, or only marginally
support it. These students must make it on their own or with minimal help
from home. A resilient, self-reliant student will do well in this group,
even without the support at home. Some students from this group however,
have good support systems at home, but lack the natural ability to excel.
They do well with help at home, and at school and are motivated, but have
limited academic ability. Students from this group will achieve a solid
education by the time they graduate from high school through hard work and
taking advantage of the extra help offered at school and at home.
The third group has been behind since elementary school. With little or
no parental support and encouragement, these students start becoming
discipline problems at school, and at home, early on. School work and
homework is rarely done, and teachers often have difficulty getting the
parent or parents to respond to school concerns. Tutoring programs to help
these students at school are often unsuccessful, because there is no
follow-up at home. By the time these students reach the 8th grade, many
have been retained, some multiple times. These students are academically
far behind and not prepared to enter high school.
By now, it’s
difficult for this third group of students to ever catch up and function
at the level that is required to complete the high school work demanded of
them. They fall further and further behind and become more and more
trouble in school.
After a few years, many of these students
drop out of high school, or are expelled, adding to our distressing
statistics.
For the answer to this problem we should be looking
beyond our shores to countries that have successful education systems.
Finland, for example, has consistently had some of the highest
scores worldwide (rated in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) assessment of student performance) for 15 year olds, in
reading, literacy, mathematics and science. Their system has compulsory
education for nine years starting at age 7.
Students enter the
comprehensive school (age 7 – 15) which prepares all children for higher
education. At the end of this period, at age 15, the student will either
move to a vocational school, an upper secondary school, or leave school
with no further education. Students entering the upper secondary school
(age 16-18) will be prepared for university study. Those entering the
vocational school, will be entered into an apprentice program that includes
further trade specific academic study and working several days each week
with a master tradesman, for which they are paid a salary.
Finland, at 72 percent, according to the OECD, maintains a top five
status in terms of entry rates into tertiary education (college). The
United States in comparison is listed as 56 percent by the 2008 OECD.
Isn’t it time to rethink how we educate our young people instead of
casting about for someone to blame?
