Barriers: How P-Tech Schools Create a Pathway From High School to College to Career.
In the last two decades we have witnessed improvement in high school graduation rates, and even with the controversy over the Common Core, most states have implemented higher academic standards. There has been some progress, just not nearly enough especially given the fact that skills required in the workforce continue to increase. And yet, in the shadow of Covid and stronger demands in the workplace for higher education and skill levels, the bar continues to be raised significantly. Many believe our nation’s schools need now more than ever a real national focus. A national education summit meeting could provide it.
On two occasions in the latter part of the 20th century, America’s political, educational, and business leadership came together, despite many distractions, to organize national education summits. In the George H.W. Bush administration, education leaders organized a summit led by the president with a bipartisan group of governors, including political competitors, to focus on the need to address stagnating high school graduation rates and a growing achievement gap.
In 1996, in the Clinton administration, IBM CEO Lou Gerstner in tandem with a bipartisan group of governors and CEOs organized a national summit attended by the president, 47 of 50 governors, a key CEO from every state, and the head of the teachers union, focused on the lack of academic standards across a majority of U.S. states. I was privileged to help organize the session, and several follow up sessions that resulted. Both summit meetings took place at points in time where many other issues could have diverted attention, but they didn’t. Arguably neither effort totally solved the problems they set out to address, but they did initiate progress, and achieved a level of bipartisanship.
Why is this urgent now? It isn’t one issue, but a convergence of many. Covid has caused a disruption in the upward tilt of high school graduation rates and resulted in a decline in college enrollment rates. The population most in decline is low-income students and those of color. Meanwhile, the solutions are becoming more difficult. We are witnessing a dip in both teacher recruitment and teacher retention rates, along with a dip in student achievement levels in a host of grade and curriculum areas. And yet, especially as we gear up for the 2022 midterms, the national focus has been issues like the teaching of critical race theory and mandatory vaccination and masks policies. These issues deserve our attention but are not nearly as critical as responding effectively to the dip in student achievement linked directly to career success and economic stability. We can’t simply take a pass at the national and state levels and allow the educational achievement crisis to continue unabated. We need to look back to the end of the 20th century and convene all the key players in a national education summit, to shine a laser focus on the potential solutions. We need a clear focus on only the most substantive issues.
A national summit can address the challenge of high school graduation rates coupled with college enrollment and completion levels connected to career success. It can focus on successful efforts to break down the barriers that a siloed education system has created and provide a clear and effective pathway approach, integrating all key education elements. The P-Tech program is one example. An independent evaluation released recently provided by MDRC, a nationally recognized educational research organization, demonstrated that a P-Tech’s approach to breaking down the silos between K-12, higher education, and industry, resulted in a staggering 30% increase in the number of students likely to enroll in college by the end of four years of high school. The high schoolers were better prepared because they had accumulated significant amounts of college credits while still on the high school register. The students were also more likely to take and pass higher levels of statewide exams. The findings were particularly significant, according to MDRC, because the students in these programs were largely low-income and students of color.
P-Tech is but one example of the success of a pathways approach. Support at the national and state level is growing. President Biden’s proposed budget allocates $200 million at the U.S. Department of Education for grants that would incentivize states to develop and expand the pathways approach. In California, a state that has launched successful P-Tech schools, Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed in his budget $1.5 billion for high school career pathways linked to good paying jobs in fields like computer science and “green jobs.” It includes another $500 million to expand dual-enrollment, allowing more high school students to take college courses, advancing the pathways approach. But these examples of success, even those that have spread across multiple schools, districts, and states, aren’t nearly enough. We need to bring these examples of success to scale and make them sustainable for millions of students in the next generation.
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