Vocational Education Helps Build 21st Century

By Jeffrey C. Pratt

WE need to be careful when talking about the dropout rate in West Virginia, or even closer to home, Kanawha and Putnam counties. Raising the legal dropout age to 18 will not work. Making all students take Algebra II or an equivalent course will not work. And applying “rigor” in certain areas will also not work.

I am a teacher. I see the need for getting our students ready for the demands and expectations of the 21st century. But this is not Lake Wobegon, and all students are not above normal in intelligence. Do the former teachers who sit behind the desks at the West Virginia Department of Education and at our board offices remember the bell curve? What is normal, above normal and below normal in intelligence? Have you looked at the statistics that show WVU and Marshall graduation rates? After six years, only about 50 percent of the students who entered as freshmen are graduating. Houston, we have a problem! And this problem is not just at the upper end of the academic bell curve.

Yes, I believe in the “rigor” that is being preached, and I believe that 21st-century skills are needed. But I also believe that when more than 24,000 students enter our high schools as freshmen and four years later only 17,000 or so graduate as seniors, we have a problem. The rhetoric for 21st-century skills and “rigor” should be matched with rhetoric that is just as strong for a solid vocational education system that helps prepare our students for the 21st century.

Students should be exposed to the vocational schools as soon as they enter middle school, not just in high school. We will always need well-trained individuals to run heavy equipment, build houses and skyscrapers, construct dams and build roads, work on cars and trucks, lay pipe and run electrical cable and a myriad of jobs too numerous to mention. Getting these potential dropouts to stay in school and learn skills that will truly benefit society will provide us with the manpower to build the 21st century, and it should not hurt the tax base either. We need these students to stay in school and we need the State Department of Education to promote vocational education as much as they promote rigor and 21st-century skills and learning.

One of my good friends is a “handyman” on the side. He is constantly in demand for the odd jobs and the roofing jobs and the fence-mending jobs and the plumbing jobs and electrical jobs that everyone needs help with at some time.

Push vocational education as hard as you push the “rigor,” and Putnam County might not have 200-plus and Kanawha County might not have 600-plus dropouts each year.

Focus the same amount of energy on vocational education as you do regular education or you will not have the workers to build your 21st-century infrastructure.

Pratt is a teacher who lives in Poca.

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