Career and technical Education is for everyone

The month of February is special for those of us who work in CTE, because February is CTE month.

What is CTE you might ask? It is Career and Technical Education (CTE), and it has a strong backstory as well as a bright future for our community.

As an educator, I have always marveled at the accomplishments of Career Education in our public schools.

Many people remember what is now CTE to be called VoTech or Vocational Education.

The term CTE has been the main terminology for over 20 years but, like most things, the old moniker of VoTech has persisted with some misconceptions that prevent today’s youth from exploring the avenues available to them and experiencing the marvel that is modern CTE.

Today’s CTE is shedding old and ill-conceived notions by producing some of the following results: Students in CTE are graduating at a higher rate than their peers. The five-year average for the Poplar Bluff School District is 97.8 percent while, for the consortium (which includes eight schools), it is 97.88 percent. In addition, these students are getting placed (placed = Additional Schooling or further Education, enter the workforce, or join the military), Poplar Bluff has a five-year average on its placement rate of 88.614 percent, the consortium as a whole is 90.884 percent over the past five years.

Those points were made because an unfortunate side effect of the college-for-all push was the assumption that Technical Schools or VoTech is for those who weren’t college material, which led to people to believe VoTech students were not as smart as their peers. Nothing is further from the truth.

According to the CTE Works Research document (January 2018 edition), the caliber of students who attend and complete career and technical programs are on par with college entry students in terms of their ability. In addition, these completers have higher earnings resulting in a 3.2 percent wage increase over their non-CTE peers.

CTE is delivering real-world skills for students with the potential to jump-start a student’s career as well as make a major financial impact for the remainder of that student’s life.

CTE doesn’t have to be limited to career-focused students. It is also a valid way for students to dabble in career training to develop much-needed skills that can be used for a lifetime. Building trades and HVAC come to mind (who wouldn’t want to be able to be more handy around the house and avoid those repair bills!). In fact, most of our programs are developed with lifelong skills in mind.

CTE students, as a result of the project based learning curriculum, are more likely to develop critical problem-solving skills and be better versed in working through complex problems that they will likely be faced with in today’s modern workforce.

I’ll conclude with the following statements: CTE is for everyone (not just non-college bound students), and it provides a pathway to postsecondary education for many students who might otherwise not consider educational opportunities after secondary school. CTE is designed and purposely carried out to empower learners to explore multiple career options while in secondary school (thus taking some of those student loan concerns out of the equation by exploring while it’s free in high school).

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Charles Kinsey is the director of the Poplar Bluff Technical Career Center.