Fred Jones / commentary
January viii, 2014

Fred Jones

Fred Jones

Californians have never seen more systemic reforms of how schools are financed, assessed and held accountable than in the three years since Governor Brown took office. The State Lath of Education, the State Department of Education and the Community College Chancellor's Office officials are scrambling to implement these sweeping statutory and budgetary changes, with anxious districts and stakeholder groups gearing upwards to meet the new challenges and opportunities.

Despite all of the hoopla surrounding these dramatic changes, one thing remains constant: Sacramento's schizophrenic love thing with Career Technical Education.

On the i hand, nearly every elected official in Sacramento has publicly declared their deep and constant love for CTE. Some accept fifty-fifty hailed information technology every bit a silver bullet for broader concerns of dropouts and social injustices.

Showing their fidelity to CTE, more than two-thirds of state legislators voted last summer to establish a one-time, $250 million Career Pathways Trust. These old grants volition exist awarded later this year to schools that are able to package together eye-catching CTE proposals.

But the same politicians who voted for this funding set-aside capitulated to the Dark-brown Administration by agreeing to eliminate all funding for Regional Occupation Centers and Programs (ROCP) by the 2015-xvi fiscal year. RCOPs offer industry-integrated "capstone" courses for high school students completing a sequenced pathway of career-prep courses, whether on their campus of origin or at a nearby regional center. While some may fence whether all Regional Occupation Centers and Programs are every bit effective, this funding stream positively impacts nearly every single CTE program in the state; many on-campus programs are completely dependent on ROCP funds, as they often cover the CTE teacher's bacon and other expenses.

Just in Sacramento can a one-time $250 million grant exist reason for celebration when in the same budget $384 million in ongoing, annual CTE funding will be eliminated following a two-year "maintenance of effort" requirement on districts. (The few CTE-related grant programs remaining in the Country Budget, including the frequently-touted Partnership Academies, barely withstood similar elimination, most likely because their budgets are paltry in comparing to ROCPs and require local and industry matches.)

And if this funding sleight of paw wasn't enough, not one of the other dramatic educational activity reforms now taking shape in Sacramento – the Local Control Funding Formula, the new Common Core standards, assessment reform, and changes to the Bookish Functioning Index – accept even so to provide any substantive, career-prep related functioning criteria. While their governing provisions all give rhetorical lip-service to "college and career readiness,"  the actual implementation of these reforms thus far has ignored the career-prep side altogether. Non a single one requires districts to make CTE programs a priority.

The State Board has decided against recommending whatsoever specific career readiness performance indicators for local accountability plans; Common Core standards are devoid of any substantive, career-oriented curricula; representatives from the Mutual Core test programmer, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, have finally admitted their tests won't be able to measure the career preparation of students; and thus far the Superintendent of Public Instruction's advisory committee working on changes to the API has balked on including CTE in new loftier school API scores. Whether it is the regulator's reticence to define "career readiness" or the psychometrician'southward excuse that such a concept is too baggy to validly measure out, all of the promises that CTE would be included in these sweeping reforms have thus far proven empty.

Worse, these new reforms will likely speed up the ongoing demise of career-oriented programs in our high schools and canton offices, since none of the existing policy drivers provide whatever real incentive to maintain career-prep programs.

That is, unless schools tin can of a sudden pull a bright shiny object out of their hats with novel and heady new ways of delivering marketable skills to their students via Pathway Trust grant proposals. Nosotros in the CTE field have been told in no uncertain terms that this one-time budget appropriation is our last ditch take a chance to prove CTE's worthiness to remain a part of California's comprehensive high school.

Forgive me if all the hype and celebration of dramatic education reform leaves me ambivalent. I have gotten used to politicians patting CTE on the head as they option its pockets and ignore the plight that their policies have placed it. In the tardily 80s, three-quarters of California students enrolled in CTE programs located on their loftier schoolhouse campuses; now, just over a quarter are able to do so. In a land report released just this week, enrollment in CTE courses has dropped past 101,090 students – 12 per centum – and we have lost 19.half-dozen percent of our state's CTE teachers in just the terminal year, lone! This at a time in which our state is seeing an unprecedented skills gap in our workforce.

If policymakers and regulators aren't willing to get serious about incentivizing schools to build and maintain robust CTE programs, California schools volition continue to detach from the real world to focus on those funding, assessment and accountability carrots dangled in front of them past Washington and Sacramento policymakers. More adolescents will vote with their anxiety, seeing little relevance to school. Even the over-achievers will be left wanting, shuffled off to college to receive their promised advantage of intellectual enlightenment without a inkling equally to what they'll practise with that teaching. Employers of highly skilled jobs will proceed to struggle to find competent workers. And California's economic system will lose the productivity of its young citizens, continuing an unhealthy dependence on an aging workforce.

CTE and our land's economy would exercise much meliorate with less public fanfare and more genuine back up that actually encourages schools to offer these life-preparing programs.

The only programs that will survive in 1000-12 schools are those that are required, measured or straight funded by the land. Given CTE is non required or measured, the loss of its defended funding streams – as is happening under LCFF – will be disastrous.

California policymakers who truly care about CTE have to make a choice:

  • They tin require CTE courses (like they have chosen to do with other mandated loftier school courses); OR
  • Include noun career training and preparation in schoolhouse operation measurements (both the local plans under LCFF and whatever future land-reported API); OR
  • But protect the funding streams dedicated to CTE programs (as has been washed for ROPs, PAs, Secondary Schoolhouse Programs, Ag Incentive Grants, and Apprenticeships for 3 decades).

…

Fred Jones represents the California Concern Didactics Association. He has been advocating for Career Technical Education programs in Sacramento for more than than a decade. The Clan is a member of Get REAL, a broad coalition of employer groups, labor organizations and educators concerned about CTE in California schools.

To get more reports like this one, click here to sign up for EdSource'due south no-cost daily email on latest developments in pedagogy.