President Obama announced a $100-million grant competition on Tuesday to encourage educators and executives to come together to let students earn college and industry credentials while still in high school.
Redesigned, tech-focused schools would produce students “better equipped for the demands of a high-tech economy,” the president said as he announced the new program, called Youth CareerConnect.
Existing career-training schools are widely credited with preparing students for jobs and improving college-completion rates. But they’re not for everyone. Some educators worry, for instance, that the schools channel students too early into narrow technical fields, rather than offering them a broad education.
Still, some career-training schools have become national models. Among them is the Pathways in Technology Early College High School, or P-TECH, developed with the City University of New York and IBM in Brooklyn, N.Y. Mr. Obama visited the school last month after having praised it in his State of the Union address this year.
P-TECH students start in ninth grade and six—or four—years later can graduate with associate degrees in applied science in computer systems technology or electromechanical engineering technology, along with an inside track to an entry-level job at IBM. The school’s first full class will graduate in 2017.
Meanwhile, two similar schools opened in New York City this year, and more are in the works. Five opened in Chicago in partnership with such companies as Verizon and Microsoft and with curricula developed by the City Colleges of Chicago.
But at P-TECH and other schools, boys far outnumber girls, sometimes three to one. Foreign languages and the arts are limited, if offered at all. The school year starts earlier, and days are longer.
Despite such challenges, the model has been spreading rapidly. Similar schools are planned in several states. And Youth CareerConnect, the new grant competition, may lead to the creation of even more.
Starting early next year, the program will distribute 25 to 40 grants, ranging from $2-million to $7-million, with a 25-percent matching requirement from the recipient. The federal funds will come from the Department of Labor.
Recipient schools will be expected to combine “a rigorous academic and career-focused curriculum” with career advice and opportunities for job shadowing, field trips, and mentoring.
Doubts About Logistics
Some lawmakers and school officials said they supported the program’s goals but didn’t think a grant competition was the best way to give incentives for new programs.
The plan was announced as the education committee of the U.S. House of Representatives was taking up the reauthorization of an existing, $1-billion technical-training program, and the plan’s unveiling rankled some lawmakers who accused the president of doing an end run around Congress.
The panel’s chairman, Rep. John P. Kline Jr., a Minnesota Republican, told his colleagues he was discouraged that Mr. Obama was pursuing the program without Congressional input.
“Another program will only further muddle the system at a time when we need to make smart, structural reforms” to improve the career-training programs already supported under federal law, Mr. Kline said.
The biggest point of contention over Mr. Obama’s new program seemed to be how the money would be doled out. Some members of the House committee expressed concern that rural areas and other regions with limited business activity could miss out under the president’s challenge grants.
Those objections were echoed by national associations representing school superintendents and secondary-school principals, whose leaders said the competition favored urban schools and those with the money to hire grant writers.
Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University, agreed. Federal officials “should stop pushing competitive grants,” she wrote in an email, “and instead encourage general support for career and technical education.”
At the House hearing, however, an industry representative expressed frustration with current models, and technical-college officials seemed to favor the creation of more schools like P-TECH.
An IBM executive testified that few of the current crop of technical-training programs were aligned to “real jobs and needed skills.” At a time when more than half of American companies say they cannot find qualified employees, business involvement in career and technical training “is spotty at best,” said Stanley S. Litow, president of the IBM International Foundation.
Students in programs that blend high school and college should be able to earn industry credentials that will provide a direct link between school and work, leaders of technical colleges testified.
The hearing was held as part of the process of renewing the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, the primary law governing vocational-education programs.
Andy Thomason contributed to this report.
