In a historic bipartisan vote this week, the U.S. House of Representatives agreed to reshape what we used to call vocational education. The bill would change how funds are distributed and provides incentives to prepare students for 21st century careers — linking school to college and career. Now the Senate needs to act.
It’s both encouraging and depressing that the vote took place during a contentious presidential campaign in which education has taken a back seat. Candidates have focused on college affordability and pre-K, but everything in between has been missing. Trashing of the Common Core standards without recognizing that standards need to be raised, or diverting public funding to private schools, are counterproductive.
We ignore pragmatic plans to improve elementary and secondary education at our peril. College affordability is important to our future, but college readiness and completion are more so.
A 2015 University of Pennsylvania study found that the percentage of students from the poorest families earning college degrees has barely moved in over 40 years — rising from 6% to 9%.
Low completion rates — especially for low-income students and students of color — are a sign that something remains seriously wrong. According to IBM’s 2012 data analysis of dropout rates at one City University of New York community college, 99% of all the college freshmen who required two remedial courses, one being math, were gone before the end of their first semester.
Nationwide, non-credit, remedial college courses cost over $2 billion each year.
Virtually all 10 million jobs created after 2008 require a college degree or credential. With neither, young people have little hope of earning more than minimum wage.
The root problem here is a broken system where most low-income students lack the academic skills or support to graduate.
A model underway since 2011 has remarkable results and costs no more than any other high school. P-TECH, which began in Brooklyn, has grown from one to 60 schools across six U.S. states and Australia in five short years. New York has the largest number of these schools thanks to Gov. Cuomo’s leadership.
IBM, working with the New York City public schools and CUNY, launched the first P-TECH. The open-admissions grade 9-to-14 school offers a high school diploma plus an associate degree through City Tech, and overwhelmingly serves low-income students of color. Achievements have been remarkable.
– 36 P-TECH scholars finished their six-year program one to two years early, matriculated at four-year colleges, took jobs with IBM at salaries of $50,000-plus, or both — with virtually no dropouts.
– The projected on-time completion rate for those not graduating early is more than 60% — over five times the national average.
– No P-TECH graduates have required remedial courses. Those still in high school have earned grades of A, B or C in 86% of their college courses.
Factors contributing to this success include mentoring, paid internships, and rigorous academics and workplace skills. P-TECH students take college courses beginning in grade 10, and graduates are first in line for available positions with IBM and other companies.
Other P-TECH schools deliver similarly impressive results. Nearly 40% of 10th graders in Newburgh already have passed college courses. Fifty percent of Norwalk students have passed college courses and are on honor roll. And on Chicago’s South Side, the four-year high school graduation rate is 98%.
Now, we must have the wisdom to make P-TECH schools the rule, not the exception, and elevate education reform to the top of the nation’s agenda.
Litow is IBM’s vice president for corporate citizenship and corporate affairs and a former deputy chancellor of the New York City schools.
