Successful Program Shows Difficulty of Job Training

In an electronics laboratory in the heart of Watts, Gilbert Ybarra and his classmates are learning the difference between analog sound and digital hi-fi stereo and figuring out how to take VCRs apart and put them back together.

They are mastering college applications and collaborating on new classroom rules when the old ones don’t work.

There are no backward baseball caps or beepers here at the Pioneer Academy of Electronics, no tensions between black and brown, as there are at some of the high schools from which these teenagers come.

And there is genuine affection for the teacher, Jeff Creamer, who describes himself as a “major white boy” with a ‘50s haircut.

The Pioneer Academy, the creation of consumer products giant Pioneer Electronics, was one of dozens of local job training programs that corporations created in the wake of the 1992 riots.

The academy’s evolution is a sobering lesson in how difficult it is to prepare unskilled and undisciplined young people for meaningful work, how expensive and labor-intensive job training programs can be, and how minimal the payoff seems to all but the most fervent believers.

In this two-year program for inner-city high school juniors and seniors, almost everything has gone right. And yet, after a corporate commitment of nearly a half-million dollars, only 10 high school students a year have graduated and the attrition rate is 50%.

Stacked against the disappointing numbers are the appreciative voices of people like Gilbert Ybarra, 17, whose friends were mostly gang members until he signed up for the academy, mainly as a way to shorten his regular school day at South Gate High.

Today Gilbert is a class leader, a medalist in a national competition for vocational students, a poised speaker at recruitment assemblies and the first in his family to be college-bound. “Now,” he says, “I pretty much know I can do what I set my mind to.”

Formula Stirs Interest

Pioneer is exceptional because it appears to have stumbled onto a formula that is stirring new interest in job training circles, according to Gordon Berlin, one of the nation’s leading authorities on job training for disadvantaged youth and a senior vice president at Manpower Research Development Corp.

For years, job training programs yielded dismal results, Berlin said. Those subjected to rigorous review showed no effect on employability or wages and only a slight reduction in criminal activity.

But lately a handful of programs have shown promise in changing work habits, encouraging higher education and deterring teen pregnancy and substance abuse.

These programs, Berlin said, have five components in common: academic rigor, real work opportunities, decision-making responsibilities, a teacher who serves as mentor and a peer group that reinforces positive behavior.

Pioneer Academy, which initially pledged $500,000 over five years and recently extended its commitment indefinitely, fits the bill on all counts--though far more by accident than design.

The academy’s good-hearted but ignorant organizers, moving furiously in the days following the riots, read no manuals and consulted no studies. Rather, they began with the vague plan of putting young people to work and then fumbled their way to a successful formula.

Other well-meaning firms--including Arco, Chevron, Toyota and Hyundai--were doing the same, persuaded by post-riot arguments that blamed a lack of job opportunities for the severity of looting and violence.

Altogether, these corporations spent an estimated $10 million on job training programs, churning out perhaps 1,000 aspiring auto mechanics, grocery clerks, smog check technicians and the like, according to officials at RLA, the post-riot rebuilding organization.

After a time, however, RLA stopped tracking the performance of these programs, and there is no reliable data about how many of the trainees wound up employed or how many of the corporations remain involved.

Pioneer’s journey began in the summer of 1992, when executives at the North American corporate headquarters in Long Beach contacted the Los Angeles Unified School District. The district offered a classroom in one of its continuing education facilities on Central Avenue and 108th Street, bus transportation for students after their regular morning classes, partial teacher’s salaries and high school credit.

“We started out with an empty room,” said Larry Tinkler, a Pioneer vice president. “We had no instructor, no curriculum, no textbooks, no equipment, no students--nothing. It takes a million small things. And there was so much we didn’t know--about the school bureaucracy, about the deficiencies of the students. So we scrambled.”

First, Pioneer bought some rudimentary equipment--workbenches, brooms, digital training kits from the Electronic Industry Assn., a trade group. The association also posted a job listing in its publications and at its events. But with the school year about to begin there were few takers.

One was Creamer, 41, who ran the electronic technology department at Yavapai Community College in Prescott, Ariz., hardly a breeding ground for inner-city crusaders. But the idealistic teacher had a degree in psychology from Princeton, along with one in audio engineering, some volunteer experience at a Presbyterian center for delinquent boys and the desire to make a difference.

“I had to decide if I would do more good here or in Arizona,” he said. “How many students would I help and in what way?”

He chose the caldron of Los Angeles, where he was given a $50,000 salary and the 14-hour-a-day task of designing the curriculum, choosing the students and tinkering with a program until he got it right.

Despite a background that makes him the unlikeliest of ghetto crusaders, Creamer has won over his once-distrustful pupils, earned their respect and become the undisputed soul of the academy.

Pioneer’s only reservation about Creamer is its total dependence on him. “It’s scary to us to think what would happen if he left,” said Joni Saphir, the manager of corporate public relations.

Students in the first class were recommended by teachers or counselors and had little idea what they were getting into, which may account for the high attrition. Now there are recruitment assemblies for high school sophomores and entrance exams (including an elementary math test that the vast majority of applicants fail) and an orientation that requires attendance at three Saturday classes.

The students who are accepted, about 25 a year, are bused from 14 high schools in South-Central for three hours of daily instruction in a high-tech classroom decorated with “Star Trek” posters and inspirational slogans. The long hours, 1:30 to 4:30, and the two-year curriculum, more demanding than most job training programs, prevent participation in athletics or other after-school activities and contribute to the dropout rate.

Looking at the Results

Rather than count the dropouts or calculate the cost of each diploma, Pioneer looks at where its successful students wind up.

Some are in jobs in consumer electronics, like Socorro Arellano from Locke High School, who works at a Sears Service Center in Lakewood, or Noely Garcia Velasquez from Manuel Arts High, a customer service representative at Pioneer in Carson and one of five academy graduates with a full-time job at one of the company’s Southern California facilities.

Others have joined the military, like Antoine Bell, a Locke graduate who is now a Marine radio operator at Camp Pendleton. Many are studying advanced electronics at community and four-year colleges. Those degrees can boost their earning capacity from $20,000 a year to $40,000. And some are in school to fulfill other dreams, like Raashan Bernard of Washington High, who is now at El Camino Community College preparing to be a sign-language interpreter.

“We thought it would be a traditional vocational education program,” said Pioneer’s Tinkler. “We’d get them into jobs, maybe lifetime jobs, in repair, manufacturing or inspection. But it hasn’t turned out that way at all. Most of them are going on to different things than we expected. This has opened their eyes to other, bigger possibilities.

“Because of the lacks in the schools, they get something here that’s a whole different world. Camaraderie. An honest environment. One-on-one instruction. Life skills. Reinforcement. They are treated as adults and their character changes.”

Changing a Student’s Direction

Gilbert Ybarra, like most of his Pioneer classmates, says he was on a fast track to nowhere when he signed up. His grades were poor, his attendance ragged and his preference was to spend his afternoons playing football. But he reconsidered.

“How many students wind up in the NFL?” he asked. “Here, if I do good, maybe I can start a business.”

Between junior and senior year, students are guaranteed an internship at Pioneer, where they earn from $6.50 to $8.50 an hour, significantly more than the usual $4.25 that comes with flipping hamburgers. Gilbert spent last summer as a quality-control inspector in video manufacturing, checking laser discs for skipping and audio cracking. Internship salaries are based not on the nature of the job but on academic performance at the academy.

Each Pioneer department pays its interns from its budget, one of many expenses that is not reflected in the corporation’s $100,000-a-year commitment.

Tinkler said Pioneer has never tallied the actual cost and doesn’t want to.

“You can’t look at it as a return on investment,” he said. “What’s it worth to get someone to be a productive person?”

The electronic instruction is part lecture, part lab--relying as little as possible on reading, which the students shun.

Recently, the subject was VCRs. Creamer lectured on band widths, frequencies, tuners and other electronic arcana. Then he distributed new VCRs, blank tapes, movie cassettes, cables and adapters.

Gilbert and his partner, Jaime Vallejo, drew a cassette and labeled its parts, assembled their VCR and mastered its functions, answering questions such as “From how far away does the remote control work?” Then there were hypothetical customer complaints: “Help! Pressing the record button makes the tape come out!”

They toggled back and forth between “Oprah,” “Back to the Future” and an instruction menu in three languages. They programmed the remote control, switched the menu from French to English. Mostly they worked in silence, preferring pressing buttons at random to consulting the manual. Occasionally they summoned the teacher, who promptly answers each cry of, “Jeff! Jeff!”

Individual Attention

The environment is a stunning departure from an overcrowded public school classroom, the students say.

“I always figured if they didn’t pay attention to me, why should I pay attention to them?” Gilbert said. “But Jeff, he stays with you till you get it.”

Even those youngsters who have dropped out of the academy marvel at Creamer’s motivational power.

“He was like my own personal teacher,” said Nixon Escobar, who quit three-quarters of the way through the academy, exhausted by going to school and working at night at McDonald’s to help support his family.

Since leaving, Nixon has graduated from Manual Arts High, applied to college and succeeded at a demanding temporary job, moving up from receiving clerk to the computer entry department at Electronic Data Systems.

“Jeff gave me the sense that the more you work the more you get,” he said.

Supplementing the electronic curriculum at Pioneer Academy are basic employment skills.

Irene Melena, one of 11 siblings, recently labored at a computer writing a letter requesting college financial aid.

“When I graduate I want to work in the career that I major in, to put all my knowledge that I can make a difference in this world,” she wrote.

Creamer peered over her shoulder.

“This sounds too general,” he said gently. “It’s what we call a platitude. Replace it with something about wanting to teach.”

Nearby, Miguel Mendoza practiced a speech for a recruitment assembly at his alma mater, Jordan High. Miguel had never spoken in public before and was anticipating a tough audience.

A few days later, Miguel found himself at the front of a dim auditorium pockmarked with broken seats and crowded with catcalling and gum-chewing students.

“Over there,” he told the Jordan students above the din, “they treat you like an adult.”

Afterward, students who had seemed inattentive approached him with questions. Miguel said he felt like a celebrity.

Public speaking and parliamentary procedure are two of the categories in which Pioneer students compete at the Skill Olympics, sponsored by the Vocational Industrial Clubs of America.

The company has flown them to state meets in Sacramento and to the nationals in Kansas City, where they stayed in a hotel, wore spiffy red jackets and enjoyed the roar of the crowd. Gilbert Ybarra’s father keeps his medals on the mantle, next to a picture of Jesus.

Creamer also teaches citizenship by seeking the students’ help in governing the classroom, which has an elaborate set of rules about everything from answering the telephone (“Pioneer Academy. This is James. May I help you?”) to bringing so-called nuisance items to school. (No skateboards, Silly String or Green Slime.)

One recent afternoon, Creamer canceled a lecture to hold a meeting about increasingly poor attendance. The class created a new protocol of notifying parents after two absences in a two-week period, and decided that chronic truants would lose their right to purchase Pioneer products at cost.

After the meeting, Gilbert mused about the confidence he’s gained at the academy and the optimism that now animates his life.

“A lot of people think kids like us have no ideas, no future,” he said. “This program shows we’re not as stupid as they think we are. It also shows that some Anglos, like Jeff, actually want to help us. All the stereotypes--it proves them wrong.”