Show Students Why They’re Learning:
School-to-Career Teaching Offers Context for Those ‘Boring’ Subjects

By Caprice Young
President of the Board of the Los Angeles Unified School District

Thursday, December 5, 2002

In the United States, there is a debate over whether to prepare high school students for entrance to college vs. direct entrance to the work force that has prohibited educators, parents and even students from thinking about a more expansive set of educational opportunities. It is time to move beyond this limited and generally polarizing discussion to the broader focus of preparing all students for life success, by giving students greater authentic choices so they can make more informed decisions about their academic and professional futures.

In California, this question is often examined in the following extremes:  high school students should either be on a college/university track or have a career and technical education option.  This is an unnecessary and damaging way to define the question that inevitably leads to a polarized discussion poorly serving youth. In addition, mandating to students that they must take a set of college-preparatory courses is no insurance that they will want to learn, take these courses or go on to further studies. Increasingly, the University of California requirements have been used as the basis for college preparation for all students.  However, the current course development and approval process tends to have the unintended impact of suggesting that students cannot or should not take the necessary required academic courses simultaneously with courses in career and technical areas.

Some people voice a legitimate concern that college education proponents often unfairly discount technical careers as being less important and dignified pursuits than white-collar professions.  There is a compelling argument to be made that those who become skilled in various crafts and technologies need to have a basic knowledge of the arts, history and other liberal arts curricula if they are to understand the world in which they live and work.  They must become the educated, informed citizens that America’s representative democracy relies on as voters.  It is the voter in whose hands lay the privileges, rights and powers granted by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

High schools need to improve the integration of academic and applied instruction and the rigor of career and technical education. The University of California requirements should acknowledge the value of rigorous career and technical academy courses for credit. Students should be enabled to take courses that encourage learning, broaden their education and satisfy high school and college requirements.  This combination would provide additional options to motivate students and drive home the importance, value and application of academic subjects in the real world of work, where all students hope to eventually succeed.

School-to-Career is based on the simple but powerful idea that students are more motivated to learn when they see relevance to what they are asked to learn.  Rather than allowing the “tracking” dichotomy to define the way we look at high school education, school-to-career is one strategy that prepares all students for both post-secondary education and a career.  School-to-career motivates students to want to learn and become excited about their career dreams and their potential for accomplishment through job shadowing and internship experiences.  In fact, a survey of Los Angeles students in the fall following their high school senior year revealed that 75 percent of school-to-career students were enrolled in some form of post-secondary education, compared with 57 percent of their peers.

We have discovered through initiatives such as school-to-career, small learning communities, career academies, integrated academic and vocational education, as well as other similar educational strategies, that all youths can be offered a rich, engaging and rigorous education that maximizes academic preparation, fosters students’ “desire” to seek post-secondary education and ensures that they can successfully transition into a career whenever they exit the education system.  We have also learned that an educational experience that nurtures a love of learning increases the likelihood that a student becomes a lifelong learner with greater career and personal success.

Currently, a large number of students are dropping out of inner-city high schools, with most students believing that math and science are boring and useless.  To make learning more relevant and exciting to students, the school-to-career instructional strategy uses career context and application of knowledge as tools to teach academic subjects.  Many high schools and career academies use fields such as law and justice, heath care and media as themes to teach math, science, literature, history and the arts.  By using the context of these careers, students can see an example of why they need to learn these subjects.

Parents, like students, know that it is important to have both knowledge and the skills to apply that knowledge in a variety of contexts. It is often assumed and reported that most parents want their children to go to college and complete a bachelor’s degree, even though Los Angeles County statistics suggest that the majority do not. When parents are asked whether they want the whole K-university educational system to be aimed at academic and career preparation, they always answer, “of course.”  A survey of parents throughout California revealed that they overwhelmingly support school-to-career for their own children.  For example, 89.3 percent of parents think school-to-career would help students prepare for college and focus their attention on a career goal. Parents and students recognize the potential for school-to-career to ultimately provide lifelong success.

By providing all students with a strong blend of academically rigorous courses that utilize integrated instructional strategies, they become more inspired to learn and achieve a lifetime of success.