SkillsUSA—Arizona Goes for the Gold at National Conference (PDF)

Summary of Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Improvement Act of 2006 (Word)

SENATE VOTES 99 – 0 TO REAUTHORIZE PERKINS (Word)

High school to focus on health careers

Josh Kelley
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 3, 2007 05:22 PM

Any students interested in becoming a pharmacy tech, nurse or even a doctor?

Beginning in August, Mesa school officials plan to enroll the first class of freshman students in Health Science High School.

Over the next four years, the plan is to turn what is currently known as the East Valley Academy into a training ground for students interested in healthcare professions.

The school transformation is a response to the large demand for medical workers, particularly those that support doctors such as nurses or medical techs, said Paul Wright, development director for Mesa Public Schools.

Health Science High, whose maximum enrollment will be around 500, plans to partner with East Valley Institute of Technology, where a $12million, 60,000-square-foot building under construction will be used to train students pursing medical careers.

The Health Sciences Center at EVIT includes 11 classrooms, a lecture hall and an operating room for use by students training to become surgical technicians, one of a handful of courses of study in health sciences that will be offered by the institute next fall for the first time. Others include pharmacy tech, respiratory tech and medical assistant, said Lynn Strang, EVIT spokeswoman.

The medical technician jobs will require two semesters of college classes after high school before students can be certified, Strang said.

The institute, which received accreditation in the summer as a nursing school, trains students to become licensed practical nurses upon graduation, pending passage of a certification test. Those students also earn many of the credits necessary to become a registered nurse.

About 300 students are now taking health science-related classes at the institute, up from a few dozen five years ago, Strang said.

Students from the Southeast Valley, east Phoenix and Scottsdale fall within EVIT's district boundaries and can attend free.

Adult education classes in health sciences are also available in the evening and require tuition for high school graduates and adults over 22.

East Valley Academy students currently pursuing courses of study not related to health sciences can remain until graduation.

Students in Grades 9-12 may attend the school and can earn licenses to practice in a medical profession upon graduation. They can also take courses to prepare for pursuing two- and four-year college degrees in health sciences.

In August, the goal is to enroll at least 100 freshmen interested in becoming medical professionals, according to a report presented by Wright to school district administrators.

In his report, Wright emphasized the need for medical workers by citing the shortage of registered nurses in hospitals and U.S. Department of Labor statistics that indicate an aging population of health care professionals that by 2014 will require the replacement of more than 1.2million RNs.

In ninth grade, students at Health Science High would focus on regular academic course work. In Grades 10 and 11, they would split time between the high school and EVIT, which would offer elective course work. Health Science High, like EVA does now, would offer core academic classes.

In students' senior year, they would take courses at both schools while also conducting clinical work off campus. Students would pursue one of seven medical career paths that are still being developed, the report says. Those careers would likely include pharmacy techs, respiratory techs and various stages of nursing from a certified nursing assistant to a registered nurse.

More information

The East Valley Academy is becoming Health Science High and will be offering medical career training in conjunction with the East Valley Institute of Technology. For more information on the institute's course offerings, (480) 461-4000 or www.evit.com.

Students from the Southeast Valley, east Phoenix and Scottsdale are eligible to attend the public school. Examples of professions EVIT plans to offer in fall 2007 to train students for medical professions:


• Practical nursing.


• Pharmacy technician.


• Surgical technician.


• Respiratory technician.


• Medical assistant.

An informational meeting for parents interested in Health Science High will be at 7p.m. Feb.22, in the governing board room at 549 N.Stapley Drive. For more information on that school, call (480) 472-9362.

To become a success in life, students need to have drive

Sept. 13, 2006 12:00 AM

There has been a lot of discussion lately about the high number of dropouts in Arizona, and what we can do to keep kids in school.

I believe it comes down to one thing: Motivation.

There are two kinds of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. Both can be quite powerful, but the one that inevitably tops the other, when both are in effect, is intrinsic motivation.

The first thing that needs to be done when discussing kids and the need to stay in school is to acknowledge that we are talking about young adults, not kids. Kids are 5, 8, even 13 years old. When a person turns 16, they are entering the realm of young adulthood.

It is said if you ever need to find someone that knows everything, seek out any 16-year-old, as they are certain they know it all.

Gov. Napolitano recently proposed enacting a law, the very definition of an extrinsic, or external, motivator to make attendance at school compulsory until age 18.

There are numerous problems with requiring attendance by law until 18. First, this does not take into account the many students who are compelled to leave school in order to help their families survive.

As the principal of a charter school in Mesa, I have had countless conversations with young men and women who have come into my office to tell me, often through tears, that they have to "drop out for a while to help my (fill in the blank with applicable needy family member)."

Some unenforceable law would not prevent this.

But most students who drop out are not the ones pushed by their families to quit.

They are young adults who, at some point in their educational experience, lost (or never obtained) their internal motivation to succeed at school.

They see no use for it at the ripe old age of 16 or 17, and their parents or single parent or grandparent or aunt or guardian no longer have (probably never really had) any influence over what they do.

Enacting a law to require attendance will not be successful.

So somehow, we need to get across to these omniscient, headstrong, unmotivated young adults that to succeed in life, you need to have drive.

Finding the combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivators is the key to guiding young adults, especially those that feel they need no assistance.

There are two forces constantly weighing on teenagers during every waking hour, and sometimes even during the non-waking hours. The first, and most powerful, has been around since the advent of time, and I will gladly stay away from the sex education debate at this point.

The second, and only slightly less powerful force, is the ability to drive a car. It is freedom, it is status, it is mobility and it is cool.

There are internal and external pressures to get a driver's license, get a car, and get yourself out there.

A driver's license is a huge carrot at the end of the stick.

How can we tie this motivator of a driver's license into keeping students in school?

Education is compulsory up until the age of 16, right around the time students are able to get their (queue suspenseful music here) driver's licenses.

It is diabolical in its simplicity. Tie in the requirement of school enrollment and passing grades with the ability to get a driver's license.

Good parents have been doing it for years: "If you want a license, and think you are going to drive my car, you'd better be getting at least a 3.0." Or, "An 'F' in physical education? That's it, no more driving privileges until the next report card comes out."

In a nutshell: Be enrolled in school, attend, and maintain a 2.0 (C) average, or you will not be allowed to get your driver's license until you turn 18.

At that point, they can join the military and are considered adults in the eyes of the law, so we really can't legislate against stupidity at that point.

But, while they are 16 and 17, we can sure still guide them in a way that is win-win for everyone involved.



Ric Borom of Gilbert is a former Gilbert police officer and the principal of Pinnacle/WestMark Charter High Schools. Visit his blog at seblogs.azcentral.com

As the high school attracts renewed attention as a focus of school reform, it’s an opportune time to ask some hard questions about the role vocational education, now more commonly called career and technical education, or CTE, should play in secondary education. The Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act (Perkins III) is currently up for reauthorization, but President Bush has proposed a different approach, one that would allow, but not require, states to spend federal funds on career and technical education.

Current national and state school reform efforts are dominated, and rightly so, by the goal of boosting academic achievement for all students. High schools, however, have long had an additional goal: preparing students for success in the workforce. These two aims are not mutually exclusive-academics are, of course, essential in the workplace-but nor are they exactly the same. Given the academic emphasis of current reform efforts, as well as the dramatic changes in the world economy and labor markets, can we expect high schools to do both well?

We can start by examining what we know about career and technical education’s effectiveness, no simple task given the many expectations placed on career and technical education in policy and in practice. Besides charging CTE with strengthening students’ technical skills, preparing them for work, and improving their earnings, Perkins III established the premise that CTE must be accountable for academic achievement as well.

The legislation clearly indicates that career and technical education’s success should be measured, in large part, by its contribution to improved achievement levels, as well as higher rates of high school graduation and enrollment in, and completion of, postsecondary education. Commissioned by Congress to provide guidance for the Perkins reauthorization, the recent National Assessment of Vocational Education, or NAVE, report looks broadly at the effectiveness of career and technical education over the past 10 years. Its findings suggest that we may want to reconsider some of our expectations.

The NAVE report found career and technical education to be highly successful in improving earnings, for both students who enter the workforce right out of high school and those who work while going to college. The more CTE courses students took, the more their earnings increased. These benefits accrued across many groups, including students who are economically and educationally disadvantaged, those with disabilities, and both men and women. Students who took both a core academic curriculum and CTE courses reaped the greatest earnings benefits of all. Seven years after high school graduation, students earned about 2 percent more annually for each vocational course they took, or about $450 per course, based on average annual earnings of about $24,000. By this measure, career and technical education works.

One of the great ironies in the high school reform debate is that we criticize academic instruction for failing to do what it is supposed to do, while we condemn career and technical education for succeeding in doing what it was designed to do.

Critics of such education have long worried that vocational courses would lure students away from more rigorous academic study and doom them to stagnation in low-paying jobs. The NAVE report shows otherwise. Nearly all students (96.6 percent) choose (vocational courses are electives) to take some CTE courses in high school. About one-fourth of all high school seniors are vocational “concentrators” (students earning at least three credits in a single vocational program area). While it is true that lower-achieving students are more likely to be concentrators than higher-achieving students, fully 15 percent of all high school seniors with a grade point average of 3.5 or higher were concentrators in 2000.

Moreover, the 1990s saw vocational concentrators taking more-and more rigorous-academic courses. Some 50 percent of concentrators completed the “New Basics” academic core curriculum in 2000, up from about 19 percent in 1990, while the number completing a college-preparatory curriculum nearly tripled. They also improved academically. On 12th grade tests for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, vocational concentrators boosted their reading scores by about 8 scale points between 1994 and 1998, and their math scores by about 11 scale points between 1990 and 2000.

More vocational concentrators enrolled in postsecondary education immediately after high school during the 1990s than did in the 1980s (54.7 percent and 41.5 percent, respectively). It turns out that many enrolled later, so that by seven years after graduating from high school, nearly three-fourths of CTE concentrators had participated in postsecondary education or training to some extent. Eighteen percent eventually earned a bachelor’s degree, and by eight years after high school graduation, 53 percent of concentrators had earned a postsecondary degree or certificate.

What do these findings tell us? Participation in career and technical education has clear labor-market benefits, and these increase with greater participation. CTE has continuing appeal to students, and to a broader range of students than previously. By adding a heavier academic load to their CTE programs, many students are choosing to work harder rather than withdraw from career and technical education. There is some evidence that this coursework helps keep students who might otherwise drop out engaged in school and inspires more students to enter college. The coursework is certainly compatible with more rigorous academic study, improved academic achievement, and postsecondary enrollment.

But compatibility may not be enough. The crux of the matter for some high school reformers is whether or not career and technical education can contribute directly to improved academic achievement. From the NAVE report, the fairest assessment of this is that, although CTE does not detract from this goal, it does not necessarily aid in its realization. This despite a series of innovations ranging from tech-prep programs of study to career academies to efforts to incorporate more academic content into vocational courses.

Policymakers need to take these findings seriously and do some careful thinking about the role of career and technical education in high school. We can begin by asking how much we value the employment advantages that participation in such programs produces. Do these gains matter-for students who do not go to college, as well as for those who do and need to support themselves while in school? If we do care about these outcomes, we should be careful about adopting policies that, by design or by default, squeeze career and technical education out of the high school curriculum. We should also be wary of strategies that restructure CTE to produce greater academic achievement, but may jeopardize the earnings gains it now produces.

Can we have it both ways? Can we create in high schools a CTE curriculum that preserves real gains in earnings and employment while also promoting greater academic knowledge and skills? Perhaps. But the truth is that we don’t yet know. There are at least two major obstacles to finding out.

Even where CTE supposedly has been redesigned to promote such learning, such as in career academies, there is little evidence that this objective has been achieved.

First, most vocational curricula and instruction in high schools are not currently designed to produce academic learning. Career and technical education generally has been formulated to produce the very outcomes we observe: employment gains resulting from specific occupational preparation emphasizing basic technical and employability skills. One of the great ironies in the high school reform debate is that we criticize academic instruction for failing to do what it is supposed to do, while we condemn career and technical education for succeeding in doing what it was designed to do.

If we are really serious about expecting career and technical education to produce both academic and employment gains, there is a great deal of work to do on redesigning curriculum and teaching to accomplish these dual aims. Relatively little work has been done on the tedious but essential tasks of specifying clearly how to upgrade the academic and technical content of career and technical programs and courses.

Most CTE teachers have not been trained to exploit the academic content in technical instruction; most academic teachers know little about how their disciplinary knowledge is used in industries and workplaces. Other than exhorting educators to “integrate” and “articulate,” public policy has said very little about how this is to be accomplished.

Second, we don’t currently have measures that can appropriately assess career and technical education’s contributions to academic learning. Even where CTE supposedly has been redesigned to promote such learning, such as in career academies, there is little evidence that this objective has been achieved. It is possible that these reforms have simply failed. But it is also possible that we are using the wrong metric to evaluate them. So far, the only gauge of these efforts’ academic results has been standardized achievement tests. And, by that measure, these efforts have performed no better (or worse) than the conventional academic curriculum. Standardized tests are vital to our efforts to improve student performance, but the fact is that they assess very narrow definitions of academic achievement. For the most part, they do not measure students’ diagnostic abilities, capacities for bringing interdisciplinary knowledge to bear on complex problems, understanding of systems, or facility in applying abstract knowledge and academic skills to authentic, real-life situations.

Are the new forms of vocational education that are emerging in some high schools around the country producing this kind of learning? They purport to be, but we don’t really know because we do not have valid, reliable assessment instruments to tell us whether or not this learning is occurring. It would be a good idea to find out. Public policy could help by clarifying the kind of academic and technical learning outcomes we seek from restructured career and technical education, and by supporting the substantial research-and- development effort needed to create good assessments.

Is there a role for career and technical education, as conventionally practiced or substantially restructured, in high school reform? It depends. If our only objective is academic achievement, especially as measured by existing standardized assessments, the answer is probably no. There is very little evidence that career and technical education, in its traditional or emergent forms, will produce this result. However, if we believe that the earnings and employment advantages resulting from CTE are important, in tandem with academic achievement, we should be careful about casually casting career and technical education aside. A policy of benign neglect is always hazardous.

If we believe that career and technical education could play a significant role in high school improvement if it is refashioned to produce not only earnings gains but also increased academic mastery, then we have considerable work to do.

Federal policy could lead this effort. But to achieve significant progress, the legislative agenda needs to address more squarely the difficult challenges posed by curriculum redesign, professional development, and expanded assessment. Anything less will squander an important opportunity to make both employment and higher academic achievement accessible to the large numbers of high school students left behind in our current system.

Gary Hoachlander is the president of MPR Associates Inc., an education research and consulting firm with offices in Berkeley, Calif., and Washington. MPR Associates was one of several firms conducting research for the recent National Assessment of Vocational Education.

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