Educational initiative hopes to jumpstart workforce
29th September 2014 · 0 Comments
By Kari Dequine Harden
Contributing Writer
A group of education administrators, politicians, and business leaders gathered for a luncheon and dialogue at the top of Canal Place agreed on one thing: kids in New Orleans need more vocational educational opportunities.
State Superintendent of Education John White made the trip to the offices of Greater New Orleans, Inc. (GNO, Inc.) on Sept. 22 to exchange thoughts on the state’s Jump Start initiative – aimed at opening career pathways for kids in addition to a four-year degree.
Using a regional approach, the initiative also aims to engage the private sector and match the needs of employers with skills of the young people entering the workforce.
Michael Hecht, chief executive officer of GNO, Inc. said that the need for a skilled workforce is a major issue in the business community. “It’s a huge crisis and a huge opportunity,” Hecht said. “If we don’t’ get it right existing companies won’t be able to expand and new companies won’t come in.”
There’s an unprecedented economic boom, Hecht described, but also an urgent need to ensure local young people have opportunities to acquire the skills and training needed to fill the jobs created by the boom.
A phrase repeated often at the luncheon was the need to change the “culture” of high schools and “remove stigma” of vocational technical educational training in order to better open the avenues to middle class wages and high demand careers in health care, construction, technology, and other industries.
White talked about creating pathways to middle-class jobs and meaningful wages. “High school should open doors and not close doors,” White said.
When the city’s schools were handed to private charter operators, the dominating and myopic focus was on college preparation. While the charter movement was originally intended to bring innovation and diversity in educational options, the opposite happened in New Orleans.
There is essentially only one model of high school in the city – zero tolerance discipline, extreme focus on learning to take standardized tests, and the governing philosophy that a child’s worth is determined by whether or not they attend a four-year university.
Despite the current environment of extremely high and constantly rising tuition costs and crippling student debt as one of the largest financial crises faced by Americans, the charter movement in New Orleans effectively eliminated or at least dramatically reduced vocational programs rather than growing or embracing them.
In 2012, John White himself promised to national media to turn John McDonogh Sr. High School into a “world-class culinary arts school.” Despite $35 million designated for the school and a partnership pledge from local businesses and the Louisiana Restaurant Association – that promise has yet to be fulfilled.
And even within the college-prep model, critics point to a lack of success: the continued low scores of the Recovery School District, the reliance on unqualified teachers, the manipulation of data, and uncertainty about whether kids are being adequately prepared to complete four-year degrees.
Entering college is one thing, but completing it is entirely different. Critics express concern that many kids are returning home after just a semester of college, often after losing their scholarship money due to lack of genuine preparation. And thus returning home prepared neither for a four-year university nor a career.
Doris Voitier, superintendent of St. Bernard Parish Public Schools, described at the luncheon the trend away from vo-tech that goes beyond New Orleans and the privatization of schools.
In the past, Voitier said that St. Bernard produced many master craftsmen. Then, the philosophy became “Let’s send everyone to college,” Voitier said. “Now hopefully it’s coming back to balance.” Voitier stressed the need for a “marketing campaign” to communicate to families a message other than “if your child doesn’t go to a four-year university then you failed.”
It was largely agreed upon that families and students need to be better presented with a catalogue of the vast number of existing career opportunities – both the support positions at the entry level, and the various pathways to higher level positions and wages.
White talked about “restoring dignity” and “prestige” to career and technical education.
Asked about the reality on the ground—a landscape of all college prep high schools—being the opposite of the culture he pushed for at the Sept. 22 meeting, White said it was a valid concern.
But the explanation did not relate to the massive experiment in privatization.
Rather, he alluded to historical elements of the notion of attending a four-year-university as being established as every parent’s “American dream.” White also noted the state’s role in judging schools almost entirely based on their academic scores and not their vocational offerings.
He also talked about the need to change the perception of a career path as lesser. One change White lauded toward this goal was eliminating the long practice of labeling kids in 8th grade as either bound for college or career. This labeling disproportionately affected African Americans, he said, and created unfair stigma around career training.
White also said that schools are also now being better financially supported and rewarded for their career offerings. And funding has been doubled for the more expensive programs, White said, such as nursing, plumbing, and welding.
When statistics show that only about one in five students in the state will graduate from a four-year university, “It’s crazy not to have a plan for the other four,” White said.
Dr. Marilyn Payne, who has spent more than 40 years as an educator in New Orleans, with most of that time spent supervising counselors and social workers, said that prior to Hurricane Katrina, there were career and technical offerings at about 19 of the city’s 21 high schools.
She described courses in carpentry, health care, sheet metal, automotive, shoemaking, masonry, horticulture, cosmetology, and culinary arts.
Payne described Booker T. Washington as the uptown career center, and George Washington Carver as the downtown career center.
Payne listed other schools scattered throughout the city with programs teaching early childhood education, technology, electrical, plumbing, welding, and marketing. She described students graduating from high school and going right into jobs as administrative assistants.
Partnerships with major downtown hotels trained students in hotel, travel, and tourism – programs she recalls as very successful. “There was a lot going on pre-Katrina,” Payne said. “A lot of students entered the workforce as a result of their participation in those programs.”
Today, Booker doesn’t exist, and Carver is managed by a charter operator — Collegiate Academics—with some of the most extreme discipline practices in the city and where academics are everything.
After Katrina, Payne described, the RSD came in and pushed every child into the “Core 4 Curriculum.”
“We live here, we were born and raised here, and we know that every kid didn’t qualify for college,” Payne said. Kids were sent to college who weren’t prepared, and now the RSD has “seen the light,” she described, and sees that “college is not for everyone.”
“If they had asked us instead of making assumptions, we would have told them college is not for everyone,” Payne said.
But Payne is very encouraged by the Jump Start program in bringing some of that back, and improving on it with the addition of state-certified credentials and increased engagement of the business community.
It’s okay for kids to pursue multiple paths at the same time, Payne noted – they can take the core curriculum and then go to college if they so choose, while also graduating with a skill that can help them immediately enter the workforce or a two-year program.
“Young people are still exploring,” Payne said. “They are unsure about what to do with their lives, and giving them opportunities to explore different pathways as adolescents gives them the information they need to make better decisions later in life.”
A student might start out working in medical billing, Payne gave as an example, thus making a living while learning more about the industry and potentially down the road, earning their medical degree and becoming a doctor. Or starting out as a pharmacy technician, earning a decent salary, and “make money and prepare for the career—perhaps as a pharmacist—they ultimately want.”
“Jumpstart is a beautiful program,” she said, “If done right.”
Through partnerships with post-secondary institutions, kids will be “exposed to college long before they get out of high school,” which Payne said could help kids stay in college and complete their degree or certification.
“The business partners being a part of Jump Start is the key,” Payne said. “The teacher in the classroom can’t do it alone – they have to have that hands-on workplace experience.”
This is also a crucial element of White’s plan. “We can’t ask high schools to go it alone,” he said. The private sector can help provide the supplemental resources, he noted.
Payne also noted the need to adapt to an always-changing job market. “There are so many careers that have come about since the beginning of the technology age. There are new careers being created every day.”
If Jump Start is done right, she said, kids can graduate high school both with a diploma that will open the door to a four-year degree, and the foundational knowledge and credentials to immediately enter the skilled workforce or complete an associate’s degree.
This article originally published in the September 29, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
