[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
EXAMINING SUCCESS IN VOCATIONAL EDUCATION
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATION REFORM
of the
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
AND THE WORKFORCE
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
April 27, 2004
__________
Serial No. 108-53
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and the Workforce
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/
house
or
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______
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COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE
JOHN A. BOEHNER, Ohio, Chairman
Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin, Vice George Miller, California
Chairman Dale E. Kildee, Michigan
Cass Ballenger, North Carolina Major R. Owens, New York
Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Donald M. Payne, New Jersey
Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon, Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey
California Lynn C. Woolsey, California
Michael N. Castle, Delaware Ruben Hinojosa, Texas
Sam Johnson, Texas Carolyn McCarthy, New York
James C. Greenwood, Pennsylvania John F. Tierney, Massachusetts
Charlie Norwood, Georgia Ron Kind, Wisconsin
Fred Upton, Michigan Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio
Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan David Wu, Oregon
Jim DeMint, South Carolina Rush D. Holt, New Jersey
Johnny Isakson, Georgia Susan A. Davis, California
Judy Biggert, Illinois Betty McCollum, Minnesota
Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania Danny K. Davis, Illinois
Patrick J. Tiberi, Ohio Ed Case, Hawaii
Ric Keller, Florida Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona
Tom Osborne, Nebraska Denise L. Majette, Georgia
Joe Wilson, South Carolina Chris Van Hollen, Maryland
Tom Cole, Oklahoma Tim Ryan, Ohio
Jon C. Porter, Nevada Timothy H. Bishop, New York
John Kline, Minnesota
John R. Carter, Texas
Marilyn N. Musgrave, Colorado
Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee
Phil Gingrey, Georgia
Max Burns, Georgia
Paula Nowakowski, Staff Director
John Lawrence, Minority Staff Director
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATION REFORM
MICHAEL N. CASTLE, Delaware, Chairman
Tom Osborne, Nebraska, Vice Lynn C. Woolsey, California
Chairman Susan A. Davis, California
James C. Greenwood, Pennsylvania Danny K. Davis, Illinois
Fred Upton, Michigan Ed Case, Hawaii
Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona
Jim DeMint, South Carolina Ron Kind, Wisconsin
Judy Biggert, Illinois Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio
Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania Chris Van Hollen, Maryland
Ric Keller, Florida Denise L. Majette, Georgia
Joe Wilson, South Carolina George Miller, California, ex
Marilyn N. Musgrave, Colorado officio
John A. Boehner, Ohio, ex officio
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C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on April 27, 2004................................... 1
Statement of Members:
Castle, Hon. Michael N., Chairman, Subcommittee on Education
Reform, Committee on Education and the Workforce........... 1
Prepared statement of.................................... 3
Woolsey, Hon. Lynn C., Ranking Member, Subcommittee on
Education Reform, Committee on Education and the Workforce. 3
Prepared statement of.................................... 5
Statement of Witnesses:
Barton, Dr. Thomas E., Jr., President, Greenville Technical
and Community College, Greenville, South Carolina.......... 17
Prepared statement of.................................... 20
Walls-Culotta, Sandra, Principal, Sussex Technical High
School, Georgetown, Delaware............................... 7
Prepared statement of.................................... 10
White, Dr. Roberta, President/CEO, Great Oaks Institute of
Technology and Career Development, Cincinnati, Ohio........ 12
Prepared statement of.................................... 14
Wong, Dr. Carl, Superintendent of Schools, Sonoma County
Office of Education, Santa Rosa, California................ 15
Prepared statement of.................................... 17
Zwickert, Marie, Area Academy Manager for NE and OH Valley,
CISCO Systems, Columbia, Maryland.......................... 23
Prepared statement of.................................... 26
EXAMINING SUCCESS IN VOCATIONAL EDUCATION
----------
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
U.S. House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Education Reform
Committee on Education and the Workforce
Washington, DC
----------
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:07 p.m., in
room 2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Mike Castle
[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Castle, Osborne, DeMint, Woolsey,
Davis of California, and Grijalva.
Staff Present: Kevin Frank, Professional Staff Member;
Alexa Marrero, Press Secretary; Stephanie Milburn, Professional
Staff Member; Krisann Pearce, Deputy Director of Education and
Human Resources Policy; Alanna Porter, Legislative Assistant;
Whitney Rhoades, Professional Staff Member; Deborah L.
Samantar, Committee Clerk/Intern Coordinator; Denise Forte,
Minority Legislative Associate/Education; Joe Novotny, Minority
Legislative Assistant/Education; and Lynda Theil, Minority
Legislative Associate/Education.
Mr. Castle. Good afternoon. A quorum being present, the
Subcommittee on Education Reform of the Committee on Education
and the Workforce will come to order.
We are meeting today to hear testimony examining success in
vocational education, and this is basically the startup on
hearings on this leading to a markup later, probably next
month.
Under Committee rule 12(b), opening statements are limited
to the Chairman and Ranking Minority Member of the
Subcommittee. If other Members have statements, they may be
included in the hearing record.
With that, I ask unanimous consent for the hearing record
to remain open 14 days to allow Members' statements and other
extraneous material referenced during the hearing to be
submitted in the official hearing record. Without objection, so
ordered.
STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL N. CASTLE, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON
EDUCATION REFORM, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE
Thank you for joining us today to hear testimony on
successful vocational and technical education programs
supported by the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical
Education Act. Today's hearing provides the opportunity to
examine the implementation of the reforms from the 1998
reauthorization, particularly the academic and technical
integration highlighted in the law. This is our first hearing
on vocational and technical education as we look toward
reauthorization of the Perkins Act.
The Perkins law provides Federal assistance for secondary
and postsecondary vocational and technical education programs
at the high school level and at less than 4-year postsecondary
institutions. The program provides one of the largest amounts
of Federal investment in our Nation's high schools and is a key
component of our efforts to provide opportunities for youth and
adults to prepare for the future by building their academic and
technical skills.
During today's hearing, we are focusing on the successes
the law has fostered at both the secondary and postsecondary
level. Progress has been made since the 1998 reauthorization of
the Perkins Act in modernizing vocational and technical
education programs by creating an initial performance
accountability system and strengthening the focus on academic
performance among participating students. Whether a student
progresses directly to the workforce or goes on to an
institution of higher education, it is imperative they have a
strong academic base.
According to the Southern Regional Board, students
completing a rigorous academic core of courses, coupled with
vocational and technical education, have test scores that are
equal to or higher than those of students identified as taking
only college preparatory coursework. Vocational and technical
education students also are more likely to pursue postsecondary
education, have higher grade point averages in college, are
less likely to drop out in the first year, and have better
employment and earnings outcomes than other students.
However, we know that the education supported through the
Perkins Act needs to reflect the changing reality of our
dynamic economy. Technology and economic competition are
combining in unprecedented ways to change education and work
and redefine the American workplace. Unlike jobs a half century
ago, many of today's jobs demand strong academic and technical
skills, technological proficiency, and education and training
beyond high school. Reinforcing this point, Federal Reserve
Chairman Alan Greenspan reiterated during a recent full
Committee hearing the importance of the ``provision of rigorous
education and ongoing training to all members of our society.''
Today, we begin the process of hearing from individuals who
have helped transform vocational and technical education. We
will be hearing from three school districts that will provide
us with lessons of how to achieve integration at the local
level. In addition, we will hear from a technical and community
college to learn how the school has partnered with the area
secondary schools. Finally, we will hear from a business
representative to learn about industry's efforts to partner
with secondary and community colleges.
Our challenge during reauthorization of this act will be to
ensure that all students pursuing vocational and technical
education are academically prepared for either postsecondary
education or employment of their choice. We hope to learn of
promising practices and how your institutions have used the
reforms of the last Perkins reauthorization to achieve your
successes. In addition, I am sure you will provide us with
useful insight on additional Federal changes. Thank you for
joining us.
I will now yield to Congresswoman Woolsey for any opening
statement she may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Castle follows:]
Statement of Hon. Michael N. Castle, Chairman, Subcommittee on
Education Reform, Committee on Education and the Workforce
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3384.011
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STATEMENT OF HON. LYNN C. WOOLSEY, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE
ON EDUCATION REFORM, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE
Ms. Woolsey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to
working with you on this and the Members of the Subcommittee to
reauthorize the Carl Perkins Vocational and Technical Education
Act.
The Perkins Act is one of the best investments we can make
in American youth and in the American economy. As we go along,
I am going to be fighting very hard that we keep WEIE, Women's
Equity in Education, included in our reauthorization, not only
because it is good for women, but in memory of Patsy Mink, who
was our hero on that.
When the first Federal Vocational-Technical Act was signed
into law in 1917, its stated purpose was to give young adults
an opportunity for better careers and to ensure America's
continuing ability to compete economically in the world
marketplace. Close to 90 years later, with all of the changes
that have taken place both in the American workplace and in the
global market, these same goals must continue. They have to be
the primary goals of vocational and technical education for our
country.
While I certainly support efforts to increase academic
achievement for all students, we must not sell short the goals
and accomplishments of good vocational and technical education
programs, programs which just do not prepare students for jobs,
but also prepare them for careers. Good vocational and
technical programs give students the education they need to
enter high-skilled, high-wage careers, the kinds of careers
that are essential to a strong American economy.
When a vocational education program is working well,
students do not have to choose between learning academics and
learning skills, because they actually learn both. A study
evaluating California's career academy programs found that the
students who participated actually had a greater increase in
their academic knowledge than their counterparts in the general
secondary education population.
In our efforts to improve public education, we cannot lose
sight of the diverse interests and needs of American students.
It is not a one-size-fits-all world. Not all students learn in
the same way, and successful vocational education programs
significantly reduce dropout rates, increase high school
graduation rates, and increase the number of students who go on
to postsecondary education, as well as going on to careers
which actually pay a livable wage.
I look forward to hearing how our witnesses use Perkins
funds to support technical and vocational education programs
which meet their students' career and academic goals. I hope we
will also hear some very good new suggestions on what we can do
in this reauthorization to improve the Perkins Act,
particularly ways that we can increase access to training for
nontraditional careers and any other changes that we can make
that will give more young Americans an opportunity to go and
get the American dream.
I welcome all of you. I am anxious to hear your testimony.
Thank you very much for coming.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Woolsey follows:]
Statement of Hon. Lynn C. Woolsey, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on
Education Reform, Committee on Education and the Workforce
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3384.012
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Mr. Castle. Thank you, Ms. Woolsey.
We also thank Mr. Osborne, the vice chair of the Committee,
and Mr. Grijalva and Mr. DeMint for being here as well. We look
forward to a distinguished panel of witnesses.
I am going to start the introductions with the pride of
Delaware, Ms. Sandy Walls-Culotta, who is the Principal of
Sussex Technical High School located in Georgetown, Delaware.
Prior to her taking on the principalship 4 years ago, she
was one of the three assistant principals at the school. Prior
to joining Sussex Tech's administration, she was program
coordinator, Principal of the School for Adolescent Special
Education Students housed within the Sussex Technical School
district.
In her spare time, she teaches career technical education
courses for Wilmington College and works at schools throughout
the country to help improve programs for their students.
Several of the witnesses here today are going to be
introduced by Members. I will introduce Dr. White and then Ms.
Woolsey will introduce Dr. Wong.
Dr. Roberta White is President and CEO of the Great Oaks
Institute of Technology and Career Development in southwest
Ohio. Dr. White taught for 17 years in suburban school
districts outside Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio. She sits on
several national boards dealing with two of her major concerns:
business education partnerships and vocational assessment. As
Great Oaks' CEO since January of 2003, Dr. White has increased
parent involvement, strengthened core academics and promoted
collaborative partnerships with business and postsecondary
institutions.
At this time, I yield to Ms. Woolsey to introduce the next
witness on our panel.
Ms. Woolsey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We have a pride in our community also, and his name is Dr.
Carl Wong. Dr. Wong is the Superintendent of Schools for Sonoma
County, California, one of the two counties that I represent
north of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Sonoma County's public school system is comprised of 40
school districts with a combined student population of over
73,000. In this locally elected position, Dr. Wong provides
county-wide leadership to support the success of the student
schools and districts of Sonoma County.
I have worked with Dr. Wong for many years. In fact, Carl
Wong was the Superintendent of the Petaluma High School
District, where I lived for many years, before he was elected
to the county position. He was well respected there, and he is
well respected in his new position by educators and students
alike.
He is terrific about letting my staff and me know when
there is something we need to be doing to make vocational
education better at the Federal level, and I so appreciate
that.
Dr. Wong, thank you for making the effort to be here today.
I know it was difficult, and I am pleased my colleagues will
have the opportunity to benefit from your knowledge and your
experience.
Mr. Castle. Thank you, Mrs. Woolsey.
Welcome, Dr. Wong.
Mr. DeMint will introduce our next witness, Dr. Barton.
Mr. DeMint. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We do have also here
the pride of South Carolina, Dr. Tom Barton, a great friend of
mine, legendary in our State for many reasons. Dr. Barton went
to Clemson University where he played football under the
legendary Frank Howard. He has been inducted into the South
Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame. He completed his doctorate at
Duke University and served in public education for years and
was part of the early stages of development of Greenville
Technical College. He is now the longest-serving president of a
2-year college in this country.
Tom Barton is known throughout the State. He has been given
almost every award in the State from Person of the Year to Top
Educator, and he has been a real innovator, most importantly in
education. He has demonstrated, I think, as much as any other
person, through the Greenville Tech institution how applied
learning, career, contextual-type learning can teach academics
in a better way.
He has been a major part of helping to develop the economy
of the upstate of South Carolina by training workforces for new
companies like BMW and Michelin that have moved in, and he has
done something that I think will set the pace in the rest of
the State by actually starting a charter high school as a part
of Greenville Tech. And the first graduating class of that high
school had the highest exit exams of reading and writing in the
school district, second in the State. One hundred percent of
those students went on to college and many went on to their
second year of college.
Through his innovation, we are seeing better ways to
educate in higher education, but to take applied learning into
high school and maybe even middle school someday to engage
students in a way that we have not so far.
Dr. Barton, thank you for traveling up here. I am certainly
looking forward to your testimony.
Mr. Castle. Thank you, Mr. DeMint.
Welcome, Dr. Barton.
Our final witness is Marie Zwickert who is the Area Academy
Manager for the CISCO Networking Academy program for CISCO
Systems, Inc., Ms. Zwickert manages the implementation of the
CISCO Networking Academy program in the Northeast and Ohio
Valley. She works with other secondary and postsecondary and
other nonprofit educational entities to ensure their success
relative to implementing the CISCO Networking Academy program.
Prior to her employment with CISCO Systems, Inc., Ms.
Zwickert was the Assistant Director of Professional Development
for Tri-Rivers Education Computer Association located in Ohio.
We welcome you also. You will be the cleanup hitter here.
Mr. Castle. Before the witnesses begin, let me tell you
what will happen. You will each have 5 minutes. You will have a
green light for 4 minutes, a yellow light for 1 minute, and
then a red a minute thereafter. When the red light goes on, you
might think about wrapping it up, and then each of us will have
5 minutes of questions and answers. So obviously we are looking
for relatively brief answers to get in as many questions as
possible. If we decide another round of questions is in order,
we will go to it, but we will make that decision later.
I think you can sort of sense this is a relatively friendly
hearing, and I say relatively because we never know what is
going to happen. But you are all individuals who have succeeded
in taking vocational education and producing students who are
achieving. We want to know what the key to that success is,
what have we done right and what do we need to change. We look
forward to your testimony and will ask you some questions.
Hopefully, you will get us off to a good start as we begin the
reauthorization of an important piece of legislation.
Ms. Walls-Culotta, you may begin.
STATEMENT OF SANDRA WALLS-CULOTTA, PRINCIPAL, SUSSEX TECHNICAL
HIGH SCHOOL, GEORGETOWN, DELAWARE
Ms. Walls-Culotta. Thank you for your invitation to testify
today.
I wish to provide to the Subcommittee with actual
experiences from my school, Sussex Tech High School, to show
how effective career technical education can make a significant
difference for all students in their academic achievement when
integrated with academics. I would like to emphasize that this
type of educational programming needs to continue so that all
students are successful in meeting the requirements of No Child
Left Behind.
Sussex Technical High School began as a shared-time
vocational center in rural southern Delaware. The center's
mission was to serve part-time students from seven independent
feeder school districts. By the mid-1980's there were serious
flaws. After 3 years of intensive planning through the
utilization of frameworks provided by the National Center For
Research in Vocational Education and the Southern Regional
Educational Board's ``High Schools That Work,'' the problem-
laden shared-time concept was discarded. Sussex Tech became a
High School That Works site, and followed that reform model. In
September 1991, the center was changed to a comprehensive
technical high school for students in grades 9 through 12.
The new school offers innovative concepts such as block
scheduling, common planning for teachers, structured programs
of study, career majors of strong and relevant college prep
academic programs, and an integrated curriculum. Sussex Tech
has been transformed from an area shared-time vocational school
with declining student enrollment, low academic achievement, to
a restructured clustered high school that offers students
challenging integrated curriculum.
Today, Sussex Tech has more than 1,200 students, and at
present, we have more than 300 students on the waiting list for
next year's freshman class.
Sussex Tech was organized around four clusters, which
provides a natural vehicle for students to develop specific
skills in small learning communities. Similar career programs
are grouped into technical clusters. The four clusters are
automotive technologies, health and human services,
communication and information technologies, and industrial
engineering. Each student has a 3-year program of study that
outlines their academic and technical coursework that is
required for that particular cluster.
The clusters are managed by two managers, one being a
technical teacher and one being an academic instructor. The
cluster provides facilitation for ongoing improvement,
implementation of the integrated curriculum, and instruction in
overall school improvement. All clusters have a common planning
time each day for the teachers to gather to discuss students,
provide peer support, and develop better integrated activities.
Our master schedule is developed so that all students with a
specific cluster are scheduled into the same classes.
The heart of the program at Sussex Tech is the integration
of academic and technical instruction. The term ``techademic''
was coined by an English teacher at our school to demonstrate
the goal of integrating a career technical curriculum with
academics.
All of our students are required to complete a minimum of
28 credits for graduation. Juniors are required to complete a
research paper based on a topic from their technical area which
is graded both by the English and the technical instructors.
Seniors must complete a senior project which is composed of a
research paper, a product that is built or produced and an oral
presentation. In the oral presentation, to make sure students
have communication skills, they must present in front of a
panel of academic and technical teachers, administrative staff,
and representatives from the business community.
Reform efforts at Sussex Tech have been ongoing since 1988.
Since reform efforts began, the administration has placed a
strong emphasis on professional development and the hiring of
teachers who want to find ways to integrate the curriculum and
work in teams across disciplines.
School reform and a full-time, comprehensive technical high
school model has shown to be successful at Sussex Tech. Since
1993, Sussex Tech students have gained significantly in their
academic achievement. On the Delaware Student Testing program,
we are normally in the top three in the State. Our math scores
for students meeting or exceeding standards have risen
dramatically, and in all areas. Our attendance rate is 96
percent, our dropout is 1.7. Our graduation rate is 96 percent.
Sussex Tech High School is a model that demonstrates that
sound integration of academics and career technical coursework
does assist students in improving academic achievement.
Academic instructors cannot do it alone. Career technical
instructors are the missing link for students who have become
frustrated with academics during their school careers. This
link provides students reasons for learning algebraic
equations, Ohm's law, the United States Constitution, and
learning to write correctly so one's thoughts are understood.
Career technical education does have an extremely important
part in assisting all students to meet and exceed academic
standards.
Mr. Castle. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Walls-Culotta follows:]
Statement of Sandra Walls-Culotta, Principal, Sussex Technical High
School, Georgetown, Delaware
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3384.004
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3384.005
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Mr. Castle. Dr. White.
STATEMENT OF DR. ROBERTA WHITE, PRESIDENT/CEO, GREAT OAKS
INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND CAREER DEVELOPMENT, CINCINNATI,
OHIO
Dr. White. Chairman Castle and Members of the Committee,
thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify about the
benefits of the Perkins legislation.
In today's competitive global economy, employers need and
are demanding that employees have higher levels of academic and
technical skills. The Perkins legislation is invaluable to
Great Oaks and other career and technical school districts in
preparing students to succeed.
Great Oaks is a public school that provides career and
technical education programs for 36 school districts in 12
counties in southwest Ohio. Each year we educate over 3,000
junior and senior high school students on our four career
campuses in full-day programs, and another 3,000 students in
technology programs we offer in their home schools. Over 50,000
adults enroll in programs and services we provide at Great Oaks
each year. We work closely with more than 1,000 employers in
postsecondary institutions to keep our programs on the cutting
edge.
The Perkins legislation recognized that businesses and
postsecondary institutions were demanding more rigorous
academic and technical skills from their employees and
students. The Perkins Act directly addressed this need by
requiring that core academics be integrated into the technical
curriculum. In response, Great Oaks has made and continues to
make significant improvements in the curriculum and in the way
we deliver it. We now prepare students for both careers and for
continuing education.
The first significant improvement is the increased emphasis
on more rigorous, integrated academics. General math and
science classes have evolved in advanced algebra, calculus,
microbiology and anatomy. Competencies are aligned with the
standards of the Ohio Department of Education, industry
certifications and postsecondary requirements. Teams of
teachers, both academic and technical, collaborate to ensure
these competencies are integrated into their curricula.
The value of career and technical education is that
students have an opportunity to learn a concept in a variety of
ways. In math and physics, a construction student learns about
loads and vectors and then applies them in her lab.
The second major improvement in our delivery system is an
increased emphasis on continuing education. Since the Perkins
Act was last reauthorized, Great Oaks has seen the percentage
of graduates who continue to go immediately into postsecondary
education nearly double. In 1998, about 20 percent of our
graduates went directly into postsecondary education. In 2003,
over 35 percent did. Great Oaks has 132 articulation agreements
with postsecondary institutions and apprenticeship programs
throughout the country. Through these agreements, students earn
advanced credit in their areas of specialization.
Our goal is to enable students to move seamlessly from
Great Oaks to a postsecondary institution and to arrive with
about 35 hours of college credit already in place. Students
from our police academy can enter Xavier University with 24
college credits and those in health technology can receive 26
college credits at the University of Cincinnati. Because
Perkins III created core performance measures within a year of
graduation, 98 percent of our graduates are employed,
continuing on to postsecondary education or both.
Our third significant improvement is an individualized
academic plan for each student. We are customizing each
student's career path, constantly measuring student progress
and providing intervention services as needed. Students, their
parents, teachers and counselors agree on a plan that outlines
what students need to graduate and to continue on a specific
career path.
For over 20 years, the Perkins Act has regularly given
career and technical education goals in workforce development
that enable us to meet the needs of employers and thereby
better prepare our students for careers. Perkins funds help us
in targeted and important ways, including professional
development for instructors, placement for high school and
adult students, support for students with disabilities, and
career education services.
Thank you very much for this opportunity to tell you about
our success with Perkins, and about the opportunities for
continuing that success.
Mr. Castle. Thank you, Dr. White. We appreciate your
testimony as well.
[The prepared statement of Dr. White follows:]
Statement of Roberta White, President/CEO, Great Oaks Institute of
Technology and Career Development, Cincinnati, Ohio
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3384.006
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3384.007
------
Mr. Castle. Dr. Wong.
STATEMENT OF DR. CARL WONG, SONOMA COUNTY SUPERINTENDENT OF
SCHOOLS, SONOMA COUNTY OFFICE OF EDUCATION, SANTA ROSA,
CALIFORNIA
Dr. Wong. Good afternoon, honorable Members of the
Subcommittee on Education Reform. My name is Carl Wong, County
Superintendent of Schools in Sonoma County. On behalf of our
county, our 40 school districts, our 73,000 students, I express
my appreciation for this opportunity to address the
Subcommittee on the topic of examining success in vocational
education.
I began my education career 33 years ago as a high school
industrial arts teacher, but I have more of a personal
connection. When I was in high school, I took all of the
industrial arts courses possible. Upon graduation from high
school, I served a 4-year apprenticeship at Mare Island Naval
Shipyard in Vallejo, California, and actually am a journeyman
machinist by trade. With that background, my testimony today is
both from a personal and professional perspective.
I would like to focus on how schools in Sonoma County are
integrating vocational and technical education with our
rigorous academic standards, as adopted by the State of
California.
There are 15 comprehensive high schools in Sonoma County
serving over 23,000 students in grades 9-12. All of the high
schools in the county do receive Perkins funding, and the
Perkins fund is complemented by State general funds, district
general funds; and we also integrate the Perkins funds with the
Regional Occupational Program, more commonly known as ROP,
which is a California State-funded program specifically for
vocational preparation, and also the tech-prep program which is
aligned with our local community college.
The Santa Rosa Junior College is one of the largest in
California. We have a junior college enrollment exceeding
30,000 students in our county. Our county has a long history of
both coordination and collaboration between the various
institutions, including the California State University located
in Sonoma County.
We encourage and have active representation, including
myself, on the Sonoma County Workforce Investment Board. We
have a local youth council. We are actively represented on the
Sonoma County Business Education Round Table and, of course,
the School-to-Careers Advisory Board. We are also members of
the Sonoma County Economic Development Board, and I sit on the
California State Youth Council.
Employer advisory councils are also convened on an annual
basis to validate our high school career pathways which
incorporate vocational and technical preparation, along with
college preparation coursework and work-based learning
experiences. These include job shadow opportunities, both paid
and nonpaid internships.
Sonoma County's proximity to Silicon Valley and the Bay
Area and our local telecommunications industry has resulted in
significant transformation of the vocational funds provided by
Perkins in more of a nontraditional manner. Even prior to the
No Child Left Behind Act, our local governing boards, school
districts, and superintendents were already embracing the
notion that English proficiency and strong academics needed to
be a priority. Furthermore, we are beginning year 7 of
Statewide academic standards which include advanced college
preparatory mathematics and science courses which are available
on all of our comprehensive campuses.
We no longer differentiate between a student's path through
high school as characterized by either college bound or work
bound. Our prevailing philosophy and practice is the
integration of workforce and academic skills so that education
is essentially career, technical, and vocational education.
Our Perkins-funded course work, along with our regional
occupational programs and community college tech-prep classes,
are calibrated to reflect current business and industry
standards. We work collaboratively with our local unions and
nonunions to develop career pathways that reflect the global
workforce of the 21st century.
Academic rigor and workplace relevancy are interconnected.
The Perkins Act funding serves to leverage and link a student's
comprehensive high school experience to support the notion that
academics applied is indeed academics learned.
I commend the Subcommittee holding these hearings to
receive input directly from the field. As a former teacher,
guidance counselor, high school principal and district
superintendent, I can assure you that Perkins funding is
invaluable in supporting the integration of vocational and
technical skills and academics. As a county superintendent, I
clearly understand the spirit and intent of the legislation and
take the necessary professional responsibility and prudent
application of the funds.
I thank you for this opportunity to provide testimony on
this important matter.
Mr. Castle. Thank you, Dr. Wong. We appreciate your
testimony, too.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Wong follows:]
Statement of Carl Wong, Superintendent of Schools, Sonoma County Office
of Education, Santa Rosa, California
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3384.008
------
Mr. Castle. Dr. Barton.
STATEMENT OF DR. THOMAS E. BARTON, JR., PRESIDENT, GREENVILLE
TECHNICAL AND COMMUNITY COLLEGE, GREENVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA
Dr. Barton. First of all, I want to tell you how I feel
about being here. I think it is certainly an opportunity for us
to say some things to such a group of people that represent so
many other people that it is a real honor to be here.
Ms. Woolsey, I happened to hear in your presentation about
WEIE, and we totally support what you said. We just used WEIE
in a special project of what we call ``Quick Jobs'' in the
upstate of South Carolina, and out of 5,100 people that did not
have jobs--they were at the 8th grade level; all the textile
industry is gone, and these people were the remnants left over
there--4,200 of them got jobs. That fits the WEIE concept that
you said there. I wanted to say that.
Mr. Chairman, I met you many years ago with Jack Owens, if
you remember the name, and I know you do. We had the honor to
help you and Jack Owens and the fine people in Georgetown to
build a university center on one of your community college
campuses. That was an honor for us.
The system that we represent in South Carolina, by the way,
has had tremendous support, and one of them is in this room,
Congressman DeMint. I am personally honored by his
complimentary remarks about me. I work with a lot of great
people, and I am just one of them. We make a very good team.
Our mission is very important for our State.
We come from a poor State. Forty, 50 years ago, all we had
was textiles in the upstate and agriculture in the low state.
The textiles are gone. The low state is still in agriculture,
most of it, not all of it.
It is growing in the upstate in the high tech area
tremendously fast. The corridor between Raleigh-Durham and
Atlanta is in one of the 20 top growth corridors in the world.
It is growing with foreign industries--German industries,
British industry, Canadian industry, Japanese industry--the
list goes on ad infinitum. We are in the middle of all of that,
and we are trying to use these community colleges and technical
colleges to train the masses of our people that are not going
into these universities, to train these people and give them
the necessary skills; and it has been said by some of these
fine people here, we are giving them the skills now to go into
an industry that requires more brain power than it does brawn.
And that is happening, and you know that, Mr. Chairman; you
mentioned that, as far as the technology and how it is driving
all of this. It is influencing and affecting our economy
tremendously.
We started out with a simple concept. We were going to go
out in the world and find this industry and bring them to South
Carolina. That is what we were trying to do. We have done quite
well with that--``we,'' meaning the State Department of
Commerce and many, many others, people that are involved with
industry and industrial development.
We work closely with them, but when we see these industries
face to face, we say, whatever your needs are to get you in
business and make you successful in South Carolina, we are
going to do it. That is our bottom line, and it is working
beautifully and we have not failed. We get the support of the
legislature. We get the support of Congress and people like
Congressman DeMint. It is working better than I think a lot of
people realize.
I am going to take this time to invite any of these
Members, if you ever want to come to our part of the State and
talk to our industrial leaders and get inside the big,
sophisticated plants, you are going to be more than welcome to
come and see us. We open up partnerships every day. We open up
partnerships in our school systems, in our hospital systems, in
our industries, in our governments, all of these things we are
interfacing with constantly. But the one I am to report on
today is the education side.
I look at education as a seamless system that starts at the
kindergarten level and runs all of the way through the 16
years. We are all in the same boat. It is an upward mobility
throughout the system. I think it is something that we have got
to accept that there is no separation. We are all working
toward the same thing and working toward educating the masses
of those young people, to get them ready for a university or a
fine technical job in some of these sophisticated industries.
I am going to give you a few very important projects. I
mentioned one quickly, a university center that now serves
approximately 5,000 people in the Greenville area that started
out because we did not have a major university in that city. We
now have seven State universities in that city. We bought a
600,000-square-foot mall to put them in, and that has been an
outstanding project and that leads back to these young kids
that are coming through our system in the end.
In conclusion, we are saying, yes, you need Perkins money;
yes, you need new industries; yes, you need jobs; yes, we need
all of these things. And, yes, we need Congress' support and
the support of State legislators, local governments, local
industries, we need all of that to make this work. I plead with
you to continue doing those things. It helps education, our
schools, our community colleges, our career centers, our
vocational high schools and so on.
I am honored to be here. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Barton follows:]
Statement of Thomas E. Barton, Jr., President, Greenville Technical and
Community College, Greenville, South Carolina
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3384.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3384.002
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3384.003
------
Mr. Castle. Thank you, Dr. Barton. Thank you for bringing
up the memory of our mutual friend, Jack Owens, who was a
master of getting whatever he wanted out of our legislature. I
was Governor when he kept getting a higher percentage than he
should have gotten.
I imagine you do the same thing, and I congratulate you. It
helps our young people.
Ms. Zwickert.
STATEMENT OF MARIE ZWICKERT, AREA ACADEMY MANAGER FOR NE AND OH
VALLEY, CISCO SYSTEMS, COLUMBIA, MARYLAND
Ms. Zwickert. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, I
am pleased to appear before you today to share our company's
perspective on the role and importance of career and technical
education in America.
I represent CISCO Systems, the worldwide leader in Internet
technologies. CISCO hardware, software and service offerings
are used to create Internet solutions that allow individuals,
companies and countries to increase productivity, improve
customer satisfaction, and strengthen competitive advantage. We
have over 34,000 employees worldwide. During fiscal year 2003,
our revenue totaled $18 billion.
Over the years, CISCO's name has become synonymous with the
Internet, since we are involved with every type of application.
We would like to say CISCO is changing the way people work,
live, play and learn.
CISCO's success is not ultimately the result of a product.
We are a knowledge-based company. We are only as successful as
our people are knowledgeable and skilled. For this reason, we
have always had partnerships with education.
Concerned about the long-term capabilities of our workforce
and that of our business partners and customers, CISCO launched
the CISCO Networking Academy program in 1997, a comprehensive
E-learning program which is designed to teach students Internet
technology skills. It has been developed and delivered by
educators and industry professionals, and the program provides
a combination of Web-based curriculum, instructor-led learning,
online assessments, student performance tracking, hands-on
labs, instructor training and support, and preparation for
industry standard certification. As a result, students can
apply classroom learning to actual technology challenges which
ultimately prepare tomorrow's workforce for lifelong learning
opportunities and motivate them to continue their learning.
Now in its sixth year, the Networking Academy has more than
10,000 academies in 152 countries with over 400,000
participating students. In the United States, we have over
4,000 academies with over 100,000 participating students. As
you can tell, CISCO is by no means a marginal partner in this
endeavor.
Based upon our 6 years of experience with the program, I
would like to share with you five key elements for programmatic
success. One is academic rigor and technical know-how. There is
no way around high academic skills when working in our
industry. Without a strong foundation in math, science and
reading, a student cannot pursue the most basic career path.
All our curricula are founded upon high academic rigor.
Students apply this academic foundation to technical concepts
and knowledge. By applying academic basics to networks and
other technology skills, the Academy program further develops
students' math, science, writing, and problem-solving
abilities.
Our curriculum also provides academic and technical
competencies. To promote a well-rounded educational experience,
the Academy curriculum is aligned with U.S. national and State
math, science and language arts standards, as well as workforce
competencies. We have invested in a sophisticated online data
base that crosswalks State academic standards with learning
targets of our respective courses. In other words, we answer
the age-old question: Why do I have to learn this?
Our second important element is assessment designed to
support learning. We use Internet technologies that help
support assessment. The assessment is designed to provide
immediate and ongoing feedback to our students and teachers
regarding proficiencies in specified knowledge and skills. The
feedback allows teachers to modify and adjust their
institutional approach, and the assessment strategy is designed
to inform or improve learning as well as hold students and
teachers accountable for results.
The third element that is important is alignment to
industry standards and certification. Our curriculum prepares
students for industry standards, hence enriching the skill set
required to succeed in a global economy. All academic
curriculums are matched to major certification in the IT
industry, both vendor and nonvendor.
Fourth is seamless, lifelong learning. The Academy program
has been adopted by and integrated into a full spectrum of
learning. It is offered by high schools, community colleges,
universities and community-based organizations. There is a
natural connection between secondary, postsecondary and
corporate learning. This connection allows for students to
launch careers in the industry which can include transition to
work and to postsecondary.
The fifth one is fostering digital opportunities. We
understand that the digital divide can be bridged through
education and the Internet, two great equalizers in this
century. Diversifying our workforce is crucial to creating and
maintaining skilled workers that our country will come to
depend upon.
More must be done to ensure that all members of our
Nation's workforce have equal access to employment
opportunities within the IT sector. Realizing this challenge,
we have been working to achieve digital equity in underserved
areas that benefit low-income individuals, certain ethnic
groups, people in disadvantaged communities, and people with
disabilities.
CISCO has established a gender equity project to address
the gender divide that seeks ways to increase women's access to
IT training and career opportunities. We partner with
educational institutions around the world to collect and
disseminate best practices on recruitment and retention
strategies. Based upon the research that we do on an ongoing
basis, we are developing tools and resources such as a gender
module for teachers of our programs, marketing materials,
gender Web sites, media presentations and role models designed
to attract and retain more women in the IT field.
In conclusion, CISCO Systems, with other business and
industry, is committed to working in partnership with career
and technical education to help provide the highest quality of
information technology programs available to our students and
this country. We strongly encourage you to consider the
importance of the Federal role in supporting career and
technical education programs.
As an industry that is concerned about its workforce's
future, we support high quality career and technical education
programs at the secondary and postsecondary level that
integrate academic and technical skill attainment, encourage
women to pursue nontraditional careers, support students of
diverse backgrounds and partner with business and industry to
provide youth and adults of this country the opportunity to be
successful in our workplace.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Zwickert follows:]
Statement of Marie Zwickert, Area Academy Manager for NE and OH Valley,
CISCO Systems, Columbia, Maryland
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3384.009
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3384.010
------
Mr. Castle. Thank you.
You have been a wonderful panel. You make a very strong
case for the Perkins Act legislation and funding. We get that
message loud and clear.
I yield myself 5 minutes to start the questioning. I would
like to address my first question and maybe my second question,
too, to Ms. Walls-Culotta and Dr. White and maybe Dr. Wong.
Moving off No Child Left Behind, I am worried about
children left behind. This is sort of counterintuitive for me
because I am always talking about the need for academics. Now I
am concerned maybe we have overdone it.
For example, in the case of Sussex Vo-Tech, you are turning
down 300 kids. You are all talking about the academics and that
kind of thing.
I have a friend who is a master carpenter and a great
fisherman. Looking at a pond, he can tell you things about that
pond that I would not see in a million years. And I am sure--I
don't know this for a fact, but I believe that he is not that
well educated, but probably had a great deal of interest in the
vocational end of it.
My concern is, what kind of education would have been open
for him? Are we overstressing the academic side of this? I want
to make sure we are not leaving some kids behind that may not
be able to handle these things.
Make me feel better about the balance of all of this.
Ms. Walls-Culotta. At Sussex Tech, we accept all students.
They have to be passing in one marking period all of their
courses, and that is with a 70. We do not ask for A's and B's.
We want a very diverse group of students.
In our curriculum, we make sure that it is not all academic
based, and it is really geared to their technical programs. We
have auto students that when I go out and work with them in the
shop areas, they really could care less what is happening in
English, but when you can tie it to a car magazine or technical
journal and have them write about it, they do not think they
are doing English, they think they are doing automotive.
We would like to take all 600 students, but we are up to
seven trailers, and we just had an addition 3 years ago. We can
only take so many.
Mr. Castle. Dr. White.
Dr. White. As we look at our individual academic plan, we
sit down and have a conversation with every student as they
come to Great Oaks. By doing that, we can determine where that
student has deficiencies and what that student needs. We have a
motto that ``one size does not fit all,'' so we are very
careful to make sure that we meet their academic needs through
a variety of ways.
As Ms. Walls-Culotta stated, our students do learn their
academics better, more comprehensively, when they are engaged
in something that they care about. We also look for other ways
to meet their needs.
Virtual academics is a way that we often meet students'
needs at Great Oaks. They may relate better to a computer
program rather than a classroom and individual teacher. We look
for any way to help individual students, any way we can.
Mr. Castle. Dr. Wong.
Dr. Wong. It has been said that quality education is in the
national interest. However, it is a State responsibility.
One of the issues you have raised in terms of who monitors
and who advocates so no child gets left behind really is
looking at a State structure. In California, we have over 6
million students in our K-12 public schools. So 6 million
students, residing in over 1,000 school districts, the
structure in California that helps ensure that there is an
advocacy and a degree of universal attention given to those
students is through a county delivery model. There are 58
counties in California, and within those 58 counties, there are
58 county offices of education and 58 county superintendents.
So for Congresswoman Woolsey to calibrate what is happening
in her two counties, she has to contact two county
superintendents. That level of accountability and that level of
oversight and leadership really ensures that when we look at
those scales, 6.5 million students that those 58 counties are
monitoring, working with those individual districts, looking at
a specific county, district-by-district, school-by-school
performance data to ensure that students are being given access
and equity to both academics and workforce preparation.
Mr. Castle. Thank you very much. My time is running out,
but let me ask about No Child Left Behind.
I am cognizant of the fact that it primarily applies to
children before they get to vo-tech high schools, although as I
recall, we have 1 year after 8th grade that has to be tested.
The President is talking about testing in 12th grade. I would
be interested in how you are handling that issue in your
schools. Any problems on that, complications, or has it a
relatively minor impact at the vocational-technical level?
Ms. Walls-Culotta. No Child Left Behind has made us look at
how we deliver our math programming because we found that is
where our students were having the most difficulty. As a
separate school district in Delaware, we are basically the only
school besides the adult ed division, so we do receive Title 1
funds, and we have now changed from reading to mathematics
because of our students' needs.
We have had to add additional time to the day to expand our
periods so we can double-dose our math because students coming
in to us that were below standard, we did not want to take away
from the technical programs that they were in because we felt
that made a better connection for them, but we had to figure
out another way to provide more math instruction.
Under the accountability system, even though we continue to
improve our scores, our students are going on to postsecondary
programs. They are earning tech-prep credits. My school will be
under school improvement this year because one of our special
ed cells cannot make the requirements. This will be 2 years in
a row, even though we have done a lot of great things for 1,180
students; we have the 40 who are doing the best in the State,
but we can't take credit for that.
Mr. Castle. It is No Child Left Behind. I appreciate what
you are doing.
Dr. Barton.
Dr. Barton. Let me add one comment. We have a large number
of people that come out of our high schools. A lot of them drop
out before they finish high school, and they come on to the
community college. We test all of those people to decide what
achievement level they have reached. A large number do not
reach the requirements to move into programs like nursing and
electronics and many of the more sophisticated programs.
We have a large division of remediation or developmental
studies that we channel these people through. They can come any
hour of the day, night or weekends.
A lot is self-paced technology that we are using. Somewhere
like 3,000 a month go through this system. Every week we put
out at least 100 of them that go into the program of their
choice and have reached that level to leave the remediation
program and go into the program of their choice.
They can do and are doing it. The technology is in place to
get it done; that is one major thing. We are in a salvaging
process, if you want to use that term, but that is what we are
doing.
Mr. Castle. I hope to do it sooner. My time has run out,
but Dr. White and Dr. Wong, any comments?
Dr. White. Relative to No Child Left Behind and increased
testing, it certainly has focused us in the area of
professional development. It is no longer what we used to call
``feel good'' professional development. Now we look at how
students scored on the assessment, and we determine how to
redirect our teaching so we can meet the needs of those
students.
Mr. Castle. Dr. Wong, your mission is a little wider.
Dr. Wong. We do recognize that the reauthorization of 1998
did compel all school districts to look at the integration of
relevancy as well as academic rigor. I believe all school
districts in California have taken that to heart. We no longer
see relevance and rigor to be exclusive of each other.
Mr. Castle. Thank you.
Ms. Woolsey.
Ms. Woolsey. Thank you very much. I want to say something
to Ms. Zwickert first. CISCO is in my district, and I am sure
they participate on Dr. Wong's Education Round Table. They are
an outstanding employer in the telecom industry for us, and we
thank you. I am pretty sure they are part of the one economic
effort that is going on to bring underprivileged women into the
digital age, and I congratulate you for that also.
My question is for Dr. Wong and Dr. Barton. You all
mentioned how you are working with industry, but I would like
to ask both of you to talk about how your process works in
determining which educational programs are the most beneficial
to your students. And at the same time, do you look into--like,
Dr. Wong represents a very, very high income, high-cost-of-
living area. Do you look at how a person can earn a living that
they can actually raise a family on when you are deciding which
programs to train?
Dr. Wong. Well, I agree, when you are looking at a complex
issue like workforce preparation, you have to look at regions
of a given State. I think part of the delivery model in terms
of the Perkins funding is to look at maybe specific counties,
work very closely with the local Chamber, the local economic
development board. Each and every county in California has a
Workforce Investment Board, and most county superintendents
actually have a seat appointed by the Board of Supervisors on
that Workforce Investment Board. That is an example of a
regional approach that is sensitive to labor market demands in
a State as complex as California.
Dr. Barton. I will say that the one thing that you need to
hear that we are doing, that might be beneficial: in order to
run something as large as this institution with some 70
different programs, and all of them rather complex and tied
into the heart of industry and some of the biggest industries
in the country, you have to have some real technical support to
do this.
What we did many, many years ago was to design a system of
advisory boards made up of these people from hospital systems,
industries, cut across the entire community, and we now have
some 60-plus boards and these people are really volunteers for
us. They are not paid, of course, and they are very committed
to what they are doing.
A lot comes down from the management level in these
factories and hospitals, doctors and dentists and lawyers and
police. These people keep us abreast of the technology, the
kind of equipment that we have to have, the modifications of
curriculums, curriculums that do not need to be there any more,
that are outdated, the jobs are not plentiful. All of this
comes under these boards and all of this is fed right into our
system, along with augmenting it with many other things, as
just pointed out.
When we get all of this kind of information, it is
relatively easy to keep up with the job market and what they
are doing.
Ms. Woolsey. And stay in front of it and not behind it
because you can get people trained, and the jobs are not there
any more.
Dr. White.
Dr. White. I agree with Dr. Barton. Having close industry
involvement is key, as well as looking at market labor
information. If you have a program that is no longer meeting
the needs of the community and serving the public, you need to
divest out of that program.
Ms. Woolsey. I want to ask how these programs are working
for young women. I have legislation called Go Girl, trying to
encourage young girls from 4th grade on to stay in the math,
science and technology fields because they lose interest. That
is half of our workforce.
Somewhere in your testimony, Ms. Zwickert, you said 50
percent of the workforce is female, only 20 percent are in
these technical jobs. Is there anything in your programs that
is encouraging young women?
Ms. Zwickert. We have a strategy called The Gender
Initiative, and we are trying to promote awareness at the high
school level for young women so they realize what opportunities
are available. So, for example, we have--in the Boston public
schools, we work specifically with the community college, and
on a yearly basis we provide a Technology Forum where we bring
in female systems engineers to work with these middle school
and high school girls to educate them accordingly.
Quite honestly, the guidance counselors also need to be
educated because many of the guidance counselors are not
familiar with what is available. One of our strategies has been
to develop a Web site with a tool kit so we can share it with
guidance counselors and teachers accordingly.
Mr. Castle. Mr. Osborne, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Osborne. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a very brief
question. I don't know if anybody can answer it.
I represent primarily a rural district. There has been a
lot of emphasis on academic rigor and what you are doing to get
people up to speed in terms of today's economy.
You know, a combine costs about $200,000. If you know how
to fix it yourself, it makes a lot of difference as opposed to
sitting out in the field. A new tractor is $100,000, and if you
know how to weld, fix a center pivot, it is a huge thing in
rural areas. I don't know if any of you have any experience in
that type of arena or if you have any observations.
It may be a very short question because that is what I am
interested in.
We really need to have Perkins grants out in the rural
areas. I know there is a push right now to make things more
sophisticated, more academically respectable.
But the reality of rural America is these things have got
to get fixed, and if we do away with the Perkins grant or some
of the things that are currently in it, we have got a problem.
So if anybody has a comment, I would appreciate it.
Dr. Barton. I will take a shot at it. I think I was trying
to place our institution in your district, and we have a basic
philosophy that if there is a need in that community, we are
going to find a way to meet that need, and that is exactly what
we would do with what you have described here. You may have to
go back to the manufacturer, or you may have to put something
together that you could operate a training program, and it
wouldn't be that expensive. There are numerous ways to find a
way to get those people into a training program, even if we
have to carry it out to them, and we do a lot of that, carry it
to them. They don't have to come to the college. We will go to
them, and we will find a way to identify exactly what they
don't know and do whatever it takes to get them to know what
they are after so they can make their own repairs and save a
lot of money there. So we do a lot of that, but we don't do it
on farming equipment. We do the same thing on a lot of other
type of equipment.
Dr. Wong. In California, specifically northern California,
Sonoma County and Napa County, of course, are in competition to
be the true purveyors of fine wine. However, the wine industry
is also supplemented by the dairy industry, and there are
strong ag mechanic programs. And many of our high schools
contained in the ag mechanic programs are components and metal
fabrication, welding mig, tig, as well as gas welding. There is
machining components. We work very closely with the machinist
union, sheet metal workers, and ironworkers in many of our
schools to make sure that those types of skills are responsive
to the needs of our particular region. So I want to assure you
that that is a good use of Perkins funds that are responsive to
regional labor demands.
Dr. White. I can only echo that we have agriculture
mechanic programs as well as a number of ag ed programs at
Great Oak, and again, we see it as our responsibility to the
economic development of our communities, and if the community
needs it, we are going to provide it both at the secondary
level and also part-time adult ed programs as needed.
Mr. Osborne. Thank you.
I won't belabor the point, but, Mr. Chairman, in areas like
I represent, I think that the main fear right now is that
somehow Perkins is going away, and if so, it will really impact
our high schools, our community colleges, our vocational/
technical schools. And so we will do whatever we can to
preserve it. I am glad to hear that you have some interest
also. Thank you. I yield back.
Chairman Castle. Thank you, Mr. Osborne.
Mrs. Davis is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Davis of California. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I wanted to follow up on Ms. Woolsey's question for a
second, Ms. Zwickert. Do you have statistics of the number of
young women who, in fact, are becoming excited, those who
otherwise would not have been, by math and science, for
example, and I guess what kind of an outcome would you feel is
successful versus kind of lukewarm in terms of the program and
how it is working?
Ms. Zwickert. Yes. We do have data, and we collect that
from the schools, and we use the Internet to maintain that
data, and it is information that can be shared. I do not have
it here today, but I can obviously get that to you.
What we are actually doing is working with eight different
schools around the country to increase female participation in
the academy program, and we are measuring those statistics.
Relative to outcomes, what we are trying to do is make
young women aware of the various careers that are available.
And we recently created a video called ``I Am a Female
Engineer.'' and I have a daughter myself who is 15, and quite
honestly she is not aware of what engineers do in an everyday
job, and I think it is our goal and mission to make young women
aware of what summer jobs are available. So the schools
themselves are working collaboratively with the community
colleges as well as industry to make these young women aware of
the kind of positions that are available.
Mrs. Davis of California. Thank you. And I know I have seen
some of those in my home area of San Diego as well, and part of
the question often is what are we seeing in terms of those
individuals that are making choices other than what they had
perhaps--
Ms. Zwickert. I have a really wonderful success story to
share with you. We have from Ohio, from Columbus High School. A
young woman went through our academy program because she was
invited by some of her peers to join the program, and she
really had a propensity to succeed in IT. She graduated as a
valedictorian from Briggs High School. She went on to Xavier
University with a scholarship, and now she is studying business
administration with a minor in computer science. And I have
many other stories much like that to share.
So it really goes back to the instructor as well to help
motivate the young women to learn about careers in IT, and in
many instances what we are trying to do is record the best
practices and then share them with educational institutions
throughout the country.
Mrs. Davis of California. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Ms. Zwickert. Sure.
Mrs. Davis of California. I think that earlier in the
testimony, and I am sorry I wasn't able to be here for that,
you talked about remediation and the need to bring students,
particularly in literacy and, I am assuming, in mathematics as
well, up to a level so they can really take advantage of the
programs that you have to offer. How are you working with the
teachers and the overall programs in order to do that? Is there
particular emphasis on students who you know are going to be
taking some of the courses particularly and having some of the
partnerships in the community that need those skills, they need
the remediation? How are they getting it, and how are you
isolating some of those issues?
Dr. Wong. The county office of education in Sonoma County,
we are promoting a concept called a graduate guarantee or a
warranty. Every single student who goes through our high school
system, if any employer feels that they need any kind of
additional skills related to their high school coursework, we
have a commitment to provide that free of charge. We will
provide--we will buy books for them to go back through the
adult school programs. We will actually bring training to the
employer's site. We are actually on the work sites of several
of our large businesses in terms of those employees who have
not yet completed their high school diploma. We are on those
work sites for GED prep. We are on these work sites for English
proficiency, and we are actually at one work site providing
coursework necessary for citizenship completion.
Mrs. Davis of California. And what source of funding are
you using for that?
Dr. Wong. We are using funding that flows through the
county office of education, which again serves as that umbrella
for the 1,000 independent school districts in California.
Mrs. Davis of California. And not necessarily Perkins money
then for that?
Dr. Wong. We want to maintain the integrity of the Perkins
money in terms of making sure that it stays localized to the
secondary school system.
Mrs. Davis of California. Great. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you all for being here.
I actually served on a school board in San Diego a number
of years ago, and we struggled with this all the time, and
there was a point at which--there were a number of, I guess I
would call it, vocational programs that were phased out because
students were not necessarily doing that well. And then they
came back in a different form, and there are some, I think,
wonderful model schools.
But generally speaking, I still run into many, many
students and faculty, parents who feel that we continue to put
greater emphasis on students who are going to college, and I am
sure that you have all addressed this issue. But is there
anything as you work with this that you feel we are perhaps
setting up some obstacles in the programs in order to be quite
successful in getting out the message that not only are the
programs there, the training is there for the instructors, the
premium is there to support them as they move forward? Where
are the real problems that you see and that we need to be very
cognizant of, I guess, as we move forward with this
reauthorization?
Dr. Barton. I think you are going to have to start and go
back and take a serious look at the dropout rate in our public
schools across the entire country. The number is going up,
folks, not down, and we are dealing with that every day. And we
are dealing with hundreds of them that drop out, but we are
also dealing with hundreds of them that have high school
diplomas in their hand, but they test out at around the eighth
or ninth grade level, and yet they want to be a nurse or
whatever they may want to be. We can't put them in those
programs unless we elevate that achievement level.
And that is exactly what we are doing, and I think he gave
you a very good answer there. And we do basically the same
thing. We have a full-time person that does nothing but work
with the leadership in the school district to try to pinpoint
these people in advance. And you have touched on the edge of
that, to try to find them out who they are, and help them, and
get the word to them, and get them into our remediation system
in our developmental studies.
So it is a big problem, but it is not going away easily. It
is a huge dropout problem, and on the other side of this these
people cannot get decent jobs in industry. They just can't do
it. They have got to have the skills. The jobs are there, but
the skills aren't there, and you can't give them the skills if
they are not capable of going into those training programs and
acquiring those skills.
So it is a tough situation. We are doing all we can, I can
tell you that.
Dr. Wong. Mrs. Davis, in response to your question about
teacher certification and teacher training, in the State of
California, as you know, certification and training is the
function of two major institutions, the California Commission
on Teacher Credentialing and the local county office of
education, that validate the credentials of those teachers
within their counties. So, for instance, San Diego County, Rudy
Castruita, superintendent of the San Diego County Office of
Education, he has a large team that does nothing but focus upon
making sure adequate training is available. The beginning
teacher program and support is there, and, of course, the
county superintendents work very closely with the commission to
make sure that we all have the strategies in place to ensure
that highly qualified teachers are standing in front of all of
our students.
Dr. Barton. Could I add one more thing? In order to solve
the problem that you are talking about here, in the future you
are going to have to go back into the universities, and you are
going to have to put some kind of training into those
administrators of the future; that they are going to have to
deal with this problem and not let this happen to this country
that they would go back and allow the philosophy to perpetuate
itself that we want all these kids going into a major
university when they don't go to a major university. And I
think that is where you are going to have to start, right where
the origin is.
Mrs. Davis of California. Thank you.
Dr. White.
Dr. White. I just wanted to respond that we recognize that
most parents want their children to go to college, but what we
are trying to help parents understand is success comes in all
different sizes. There is not one way to win; that success has
many different forms. We all know college graduates who are
unemployed or underemployed, and yet we want to make sure that
our students are successful. So we work individually with each
one, with their families, to determine what that looks like and
then help them reach their goals.
Ms. Walls-Culotta. In addition to what Dr. White said, we
also work very closely with the parents and the students from
the time they enter. We do eighth grade visitations, and we
talk then about your student is going to have options when he
completes our schooling here. He will be able to go into a
career or into the military or into college. It doesn't mean
that your child has to go on to a 4-year college to be
successful. And we try to bring in a lot of guest speakers and
take students out to workplaces to really see that you don't
always have to have that 4-year college.
Mrs. Davis of California. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank
you.
Chairman Castle. Thank you, Mrs. Davis. We appreciate your
questioning.
Mr. DeMint is yielded to for his questioning.
Mr. DeMint. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to ask kind of a philosophical question that
may be a little broader than just vocational/technical
education, if you will allow me just a moment. And, Dr. Barton,
I will focus on some of the things you said that I think one
out of every four American students graduate high school is a
statistic I have heard. And with all the talk back home, around
the country, of the lack of jobs and jobs going overseas, it is
always almost stunning to me as I tour manufacturing plants in
South Carolina that almost inevitably they tell me their
biggest challenge is finding skilled workers.
I was in a Tyco plant in Greenwood, South Carolina, last
week. They are adding 250 people in a community that has high
unemployment. Their biggest problem was the lack of high school
preparedness. Even a local teacher who was frustrated with
public school came in and applied for a job and didn't pass the
basic skills test.
There is some kind of disconnect, and the reason I am
asking this question to this group is I know when you are
involved with continuous quality improvement, you don't look at
the way things have always been done, but you try to discover
successes around the edges. And where I think the successes are
occurring have been in vocational/technical education not
because it is vocational/technical, but it begins to teach
academics in a context that has some relevant application to
students, and suddenly those who never got academics before get
it.
And I see in the high school students--I don't want to be
critical of high schools or teachers because they are angels,
they work harder than anybody I know, but there is something
about the way we are teaching and I think there is something
about what you are doing that we need to take back to the rest
of our education system, because folks who graduate high school
now, even those who succeed, have few marketable skills, and
many of them have very little knowledge of what careers are out
there. So they have no idea how to apply what they have been
learning.
And what we do here and what we do back in the education
community is we have got K through 12, everybody is going to
learn academics. We are going to pass on information, and those
that don't get it we will maybe send them to votech, or if they
drop out, we will try to get them to come back later. And it
seems to me that what we need to start thinking about is what a
lot of you have already been doing in high school, and
hopefully middle school, is to recognize that most students
don't learn academics well in the abstract, and that teaching
academics in the context of careers and skills, not just
votech, but banking and marketing and everything else, so that
in middle school these kids start to see that this makes sense
in their life, and they are not asking, why do I have to learn
this, because they start to learn why they have to learn it
while they are learning it.
And I am just very discouraged about our education system
and that we spend more on it than we do defense and we lose
ground to industrial nations every year. And it seems to me as
I see, Dr. Barton, what you have done with the charter high
school, what we are hearing about today, that you can take kids
who are not succeeding in the traditional academic environment
and find out that they are very smart, and they may ultimately
get a Ph.D., but we have to engage them some way, and I think
the way we engage them is the way you are engaging them.
My hope is--I know I am preaching more than I am asking
here--if you have seen and you have discovered in your charter
high school and these other applications that we can take
students who we otherwise didn't think were smart and discover
that they really are if we begin to teach them in a way that
has a context and relevance to their life.
So, Tom, I know I am not leaving you much to say, but I
would just like a philosophical answer related to all of
education, not just a little part of it that we are talking
about today.
Dr. Barton. I would say amen to everything you said. That
certainly is appropriate. But I think we are doing a lot of
what you said, as you know. Most of our programs have clinical
training, hands-on learning, applied technology. All of those
things we are involved with. I don't think they have that
opportunity.
We do cross over, I will say this, with our school district
and their career centers and so forth. We share labs with them,
sophisticated labs, labs that are very expensive. We are doing
some of that, and it is beginning to pay off, but it is slow.
It is a slow process. We bus them to our campuses and put them
in those labs, and we work with them to get the dual credits
while they are simultaneously in high school, and that is
called middle college, I believe, now is the new term for it,
and that is an appropriate name, of course.
We are doing some of that, but we are not doing enough of
it, and Congressman DeMint is exactly right. It is a change--
the change must take place down below the college level. It has
got to. It has got to take place below there. And we are trying
our best to help them get this done by supplying equipment for
them, cross-utilizing faculty, cross-utilizing libraries. Our
charter school is a perfect example. They are involved not only
with high-school-level training, but they are involved with
collegiate-level training simultaneously here. So it is
beginning to happen, but probably not fast enough--
Mr. DeMint. I saw a few smiles I liked over here. So just a
couple of quick comments. I know I am about out of time, too.
Ms. Walls-Culotta. I didn't realize how much disconnect
there was between our academic and technical teachers until one
of my math teachers and one of our automotive instructors were
participating in a research project for the National
Dissemination Centers, and they finally realized math is
sterile, and because the automotive instructor was saying, I
teach these same concepts, but these are the words I used. So
the students are learning the concepts. They don't realize they
are learning it. So that is one of the reasons why we try to
provide the staff development for our academic teachers to see
what really is going on in those technical areas and see how
they can make the connection, because the students then realize
that an algebraic equation or Ohm's law isn't just something I
have got to learn because it is math; if I don't learn Ohm's
law, if I put a new speaker in my car, I am going to blow the
alternator. So it is really practicality, and it gets the kids
to realize, you know, I really do need to know this.
Mr. DeMint. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Castle. Thank you, Mr. DeMint.
We have reached the time of the end of the hearing. I don't
know if any Member has a pressing question they didn't get a
chance to ask. If not, let me thank all of you very, very much.
The process of all of this is we take all of your testimony
as well as what you said today. Staff will review all this,
peruse it, and ultimately it will lead to the preparation of
legislation. So your contribution is very important to all of
us, and your upbeat attitude about many of the things that are
happening in education is appreciated as well. It is not always
as upbeat as that. So we appreciate that.
With that we stand adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 2:30 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]