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Proud to be CTE!!

by Mickey Wircenski

happy graduateI am incredibly proud to be a part of the “CTE Family” for many reasons. Recently I read a report from America’s Promise Alliance (2008) which stated the following facts:

  • In nearly 2,000 high schools in the U.S., 40 percent of typical freshman class students drop out by their senior year.
  • Nearly one-third of all public high school students fail to graduate with their class.
  • The dropout epidemic disproportionately affects young people who are low-income, children of single parents, or certain minorities-nearly one-half of all African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans in public school will not graduate with their class.
  • Dropouts are more likely than high school graduates to be unemployed, in poor health, living in poverty, on public assistance, and single parents of children who drop out of high school.
  • Dropouts are more than twice as likely as high school graduates to slip into poverty in a single year and three times more likely than college graduates to be unemployed.
  • Dropouts are more than eight times as likely to be in jail or in prison than are high school graduates.
  • Dropouts are four times less likely to volunteer than are graduates from post secondary programs and half as likely to vote or participate in community projects, and they represent only 3 percent of actively engaged citizens in the U.S. today.
  • Even with a diploma, only half of graduates leave high school prepared to succeed in college, career, and life.

Why, you ask, would I find anything in the above statistics to feel proud about? Let me tell you why.  The Association for Career and Technical Education (2007) recently provided evidence from a variety of national reports and studies that CTE has a great role in helping the dropout dilemma:

  1. Dropping Out of High School and the Place of Career and Technical Education, an October 2005 report by the National Research Center for Career and Technical Education, found that students who entered high school at a normal or younger age had a decreased risk of dropping out of high school as they added CTE courses to their curriculum, up to a point at which they were taking one CTE course for every two academic courses.
  2. The report suggested that this mix of CTE and academic courses lowers the dropout rate for students because the course balance offers them a broader array of experiences that can identify and encourage pathways to success.
  3. Not only does The Dropout Prevention Center/Network note CTE specifically as one of its 15 strategies for success, but many of the other strategies are important components of CTE programs, such as individualized instruction, service-learning, active learning, and educational technology.
  4. CTE was identified to have five potential benefits to at-risk students by Schargel and Smink in Strategies to Help Solve Our School Dropout Problem.  These benefits include enhancement of students’ motivation and academic achievement; increased personal and social competence related to work in general; a broad understanding of an occupation or industry; career exploration and planning; and acquisition of knowledge or skills related to employment in particular occupations or more generic work competencies.
  5. Students appear more likely to stay in school if they can grow attached to a pathway to acceptance and success that meets their interests. CTE increases student engagement, builds positive relationships, and provides innovative delivery methods for students who have failed, or are in danger of failing, to complete a high school diploma.

We should ALL BE PROUD!!! Share this information with your colleagues…and give yourself a huge “pat on the back” from all of your students.

Contact the author, Mickey Wircenski at mickey@unt.edu

References

Association for Career and Technical Education. (2007, June). Career and technical education’s role in dropout prevention and recovery. Issue Brief.  Alexandria, VA.

Balfanz, R., Fox, J., Bridgeland, J., & McNaught, M. (2008, November). Grad nation.  America’s Promise Alliance. http://www.americaspromise.org/GradNation