Will Education Reform Leave Vocational Arts Students Out in the Cold?

The ideal high school proposed by U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett could leave students like Kearny High School seniors Hoa Tran, Walter Stegeman and Mui Su out in the cold.

Tran, Stegeman, Su and thousands of other students throughout San Diego County are enrolled in courses in the practical arts, which include business education, industrial education, consumer and family studies, journalism and yearbook.

In the view of many practical arts teachers, the nationwide movement for education reform either ignores or downplays the practical arts in advocating that high school students take more English, more foreign language, more mathematics and more science courses in order to graduate.

Core Curriculum

The San Diego Unified School District within the next two months is likely to pass a common core curriculum with a multiyear goal to require all students to take college-preparatory courses, leaving less time for electives such as business computing, electronics or consumer education.

“If the (core) passes, then I believe this program is all gone,” said Bill Strong, electronics instructor in the industrial arts magnet program at Kearny, which draws students from all city high schools to its electronics, building trades, machine shop and other courses. “The (school district) keeps telling us that it supports us yet shop teachers are getting squeezed out the door.” This year, Memorial Junior High eliminated its industrial arts offerings when it instituted a rigorous international education and writing magnet for all students.

The core curriculum will undergo intense scrutiny from Strong and his colleagues countywide despite assurances from its supporters who say that practical arts courses will still be available. Practical arts teachers fear that other school boards will follow up on the proposal from the San Diego district, the nation’s eighth largest.

Majority Not College Bound

In the view of vocational educators, the reform movement regards their programs as “second-class” offerings that should not be part of the educational mission of schools.

“But nationally, 75% of high school kids do not go on to college,” said Orlando Malanga, director of career, vocational and adult education for the Poway Unified School District. Malanga was one of several North County officials who last week voiced concern over the reform trend during a monthly meeting of vocational administrators.

“So because high school is the last step for the majority, vocational education is vitally important,” Malanga said. “I don’t disagree that all students need basic (reading and writing) skills” but such skills are part of vocational education as well, he said.

“The curriculum needs to meet the needs of kids, not the other way around,” added Robert Williamson, who oversees career and vocational programs for the Oceanside Unified School District. Williamson and his colleagues want districts to require a year of vocational education for graduation as integral to a well-rounded high school career.

Kearny High School teachers point to their magnet as evidence that industrial and other practical arts are not incompatible with the reform emphasis on improved course content and stronger instruction.

“A lot of students need to know a skill since they are not going to go to college but instead are going to go to work,” Carrie Palmer, a Kearny High counselor, said. Palmer works with a large group of Indochinese students who face pressure to earn money for their large extended families.

“With the (vocational) programs, they are able to stay in school and graduate and have a skill,” Palmer said. “These kids find out early that fast-food, Jack in The Box-type of jobs aren’t the way to a good career.” Numerous electronics companies in the San Diego area work with the Kearny school to give students on-the-job experiences.

“To require a demanding core curriculum will simply prove too discouraging to a lot of kids,” Palmer said. “Some are still struggling to learn English. The core sets up a utopian ideal and tries to fit all kids into the mold.”

Courses Are Demanding

Not that Palmer or electronics teacher Strong believe that the industrial magnet courses are not demanding in their own way.

“There is a lot more to the (electronics lab technician) course than just practical stuff,” Strong said. “It includes a lot of theory and in fact satisfies part of the basic (district’s) high school science credit. We do as much math as most math courses . . . almost daily, the blackboard is full of math problems.”

Mike Lorch, principal of Correia Junior High and a supporter of continued practical arts offerings, said that vocational educators for many years hurt their cause by watering down many of the courses so that they contained little or no academic content.

“It bothers me because a lot of kids desperately need vocational education, but I find that some textbooks I have that were printed in the 1930s (about woodworking) have a more difficult reading level than our 12th-grade texts for any subject.”

Many of the magnet students today say they are not losing out academically by taking practical arts courses.

Senior Hoa Tran signed up for electronics “because I have to learn this skill for my future.” But Tran will attend Mesa College following graduation in June to earn an associate arts degree in electronics.

“Then I’ll be able to find a good job,” Tran said. “If I didn’t have this class, I’d have to go to Mesa (for the basic course) at night and that would be much harder” in terms of time.

Looking Ahead

Walter Stegeman is taking electronics assembly as well as government, English, Spanish and physical education. “I’m getting a very well-rounded education and I’m going to graduate and go to college. But I need to work at least part time, and this is a lot better than getting stuck flipping burgers.”

Mui Su is in her second year of electronics and plans a career as an engineer.

“We’ve covered a lot of math, physics, and have to know English well in order to read the books and understand the teacher’s vocabulary,” she said.

Strong said he stresses that the students learn as much English as possible. “This is a practical course and because of the ethnic diversity, they must speak English in order to talk to the other students. I find that they (respond well) especially because at the end of the year, they know that at (the job fair) that personnel directors are going to talk with them about their English skills.”

Alan Welch of Julian Union High said that educators “need to change their attitude” in treating students who may not want or have the ability to attend college “as second-rate citizens” and in treating the vocational courses they choose to take as “second-rate education.”

“I had a student a couple of years ago who could easily have gone to college but wanted to be a backhoe operator,” Welch said. “And he is doing well today.”

Chuck Pulcrano of the Ramona Unified district said the same attitude has caused the number of college-bound students in vocational courses to drop by more than one-third in Ramona by making such students think they should avoid “non-academic” courses and take additional college-prep offerings. Auto shop teacher Michael Jordan of Ramona was one of three finalists statewide for California teacher of the year yet his courses could be in jeopardy, Pulcrano said.

“There’s the attitude that vocational teachers are not recognized as academically strong or as sound as teachers in other areas,” Williamson of Oceanside said.

Strong Motivators

“For years counselors put ‘problem’ kids in shop classes because they thought the teachers had the ability to discipline them,” Marilyn Miller, principal of the Vista Adult Education Center. “But they refused to admit that maybe those teachers were better teachers because they can motivate such students.”

Adrianne Hakes, Escondido’s vocational education chief, recounted the story of the district’s agricultural teacher who was asked to teach a math proficiency course last year, where students are tutored in how to pass the state’s minimum requirement for mathematics knowledge.

“His class passed at the semester where most classes usually take the entire year,” Hakes said. “He taught them the way he teaches his agriculture courses: using real-life examples, such as numbers of sprinklers, etc. But the administration wanted to know if he had slipped the students the answers ahead of time!”

Such arguments and anecdotes will be made to San Diego Unified board members during public meetings this spring concerning the core curriculum. But Poway’s Malanga summed up the overriding hope for the practical arts.

“What would really help would be for (State Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill) Honig and others to put us on the same level with everyone else,” Malanga said.