October 2003

Featured stories from this issue:

Cover Story: Career programs under construction

Program lets students take college courses and earn credit

Umoja blends counseling, academics, real-world experience

What are the jobs of the future?

Boston pioneers school partnership

From the Editors

Up Close

Research

Updates

Comings & Goings

Eye on Education

by Maureen Kelleher

For Latifah Pierce, a senior at Prosser High School, a metalworking course in machine shop is opening the door to an array of career options. The program offers Pierce an opportunity to earn one of seven certification credentials created by the National Institute for Metalworking Skills. Prosser launched its technical certification program two years ago, and it is gaining the attention of employers, some of whom pay certified entry-level machinists an additional $5.25 an hour on top of base pay.

“I was going to transfer, but I liked my shop so much I stayed,” says Pierce. “With this, you can go out and get a job.”

Good jobs for graduates is exactly what new Education-to-Careers Chief Jill Wine-Banks wants for more Chicago Public Schools students. But it won’t be easy.

When the district phased out traditional vocational programs, it failed to replace them with curricula that integrated higher academic requirements with career and technical skills. While some career programs have clear connections to real jobs—information technology, construction and health, for instance—others, such as travel and tourism, are tied to fading industries.

Compounding the challenge is an inadequate tracking system that is unable to keep tabs on what high school students do after graduation. Meanwhile, Wine-Banks is just beginning to establish cooperative relationships with the business and industry groups that can connect students with jobs.

About 30 percent of the more than 100,000 students in CPS high schools are enrolled in career and technical education courses. More than half of them attend one of the city’s 11 career academies, one of which is Simeon High in Chatham, which opened a new $40 million building in September.

This is the third time since 1990 that CPS has tried to shake up vocational education. In 1990, the district was spurred to action by the federal Carl Perkins Act, which required schools to beef up the academic component of vocational programs and prepare students for postsecondary training in community colleges.

In 1997, former CEO Paul Vallas closed the door on dead-end vocational courses and opened up other ones through joint programs with area colleges. Notable was College Excel, a program that allows average high school students to enroll in technical college courses and earn dual credits. (See related article.)

He also beefed up high school graduation course requirements, mandating that all students pass three years of math and three years of laboratory science.

High school reformers say tough graduation standards pave a path to college for students in career education programs. “Career and technical students must take a real academic core,” says Gene Bottoms, director of High Schools that Work, a reform model that requires four years of math.

Now CEO Arne Duncan has put education-to-careers, the new moniker, on the drafting board once again. In April, he hired Wine-Banks, a lawyer and former business executive, and charged her with ensuring that every CPS career education graduate walk out of high school with the credentials that employers are seeking for entry-level jobs.

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Click on the thumbnail for a full-size image.

Prosser machine shop

Jill Wine-Banks

Chart: Career academies at a glance

Chart: Industry categories

Sidebar: Student internships

Cover photo: Adelade Akisanya, a 2003 graduate of Manley High School, got practical experience in the construction trades through the Umoja Student Development Corp., a nonprofit agency based at Manley that leads students into college and careers. Akisanya is now enrolled at Columbia College.

Catalyst: Independent coverage of Chicago school reform since 1989.