Worcester model eyed for career and tech education

Harrity
Harrity

In eight years, Worcester Technical High School has gone from an underperforming school in Massachusetts to a national model for career and technical education.
Reinvigorating the honors curriculum and setting up an accountability plan for faculty and students led to concrete results, Sheila Harrity, the principal who implemented the successful turnaround of the 104-year-old institution, told Providence Business News last week.
It’s a track record Rhode Island wants to emulate.
In late January, state Senate leaders presented an action plan, some of it to be accompanied by legislation, to help close the skills gap for Rhode Island youth and the unemployed.
One bill being drafted by Sen. Roger Picard, D-Woonsocket, a Woonsocket educator, would deploy $1 million in state funding while using Worcester as a model to redesign career and technical education in Rhode Island. The bill also would require the R.I. Department of Education to align decisions about how to allocate limited resources with the state’s workforce priorities and integrate state-of-the-art programming with professional development.
Using the $1 million as incentive through the fall of 2015, lawmakers are requesting that the Department of Education invite Rhode Island’s public schools to compete by developing a best-practice model for career and technical education. If adopted by lawmakers, this model would serve as a pilot program in 2016 and if successful, would be fully implemented statewide in 2017, Picard said.
“The key for us is the partnership between the business community and the educational system to address the skills gap that we have,” Picard said.
Luke Driver, district director of the Providence Career and Technical Academy, called the legislative developments “awesome.”
“We are little kids playing in a sandbox compared to Worcester,” Driver said. “We are just getting started. Worcester has the benefit of decades of very strong post-secondary industry partnerships,” he said.
“Worcester Technical High School graduates are graduating college and career ready,” Harrity recently told the National Association of Secondary School Principals, which named her principal of the year this past fall. “The profile of the 2013 graduates is: 82 percent went on to higher education, 13 percent went directly into the world of work, and 2 percent joined the military.” And between 1996 and 2013, 92 percent of the school’s 1,400 students scored in the advanced/proficient categories of state standardized testing, an increase of 65 percent. In math, the percentage was 84, with an increase of 49 percent, Harrity said.
Worcester Tech has more than 350 industry advisers who contribute to the direction and success of the school and its students, Harrity said. For instance, Peterson Steel in Worcester has given donations of equipment and supplies, and offered students paid internships.
Career and technical education in Worcester offers 24 programs that are aligned with the needs of nearby business and industry. Using a variety of tools ranging from Advanced Placement courses and articulation agreements between the public school system, and colleges and universities, students earn free college credits while in high school and also get hands-on learning through equipment businesses help provide, Harrity said.
The programs “create that pipeline to two- and four-year schools, as well as directly into the workforce,” she said. This is being accomplished in a community where 65 percent of the students qualify for free and reduced lunch, she added.
“With this education and training, we’re breaking the cycle of poverty,” Harrity said, “and kids graduate with the ability to go directly into the world of work with industry-recognized credentials and certifications. Or, if they choose to go on to two- and four-year degrees, they have a strong transcript to get accepted.”
The Rhode Island Manufacturing Association, Rhode Island Builders Association and the Rhode Island Business Coalition all have been calling for a more uniform approach to career and technical education.
Bob Baldwin, immediate past president of RIBA and a member of the board of directors, has been studying the Worcester model for years and pointed to the Providence academy as one school moving in the right direction. “It is critical to create a statewide system of workforce training that has industry needs at heart if you really want to move Rhode Island from last place,” Baldwin said.
RIDE has started the process, having recently made the first update in 20 years to career and technical education regulations and begun reimagining programming for it, said Andrea Castaneda, chief of the division of Accelerating School Performance at RIDE. Rhode Island has more than 120 CTE programs from Westerly to Woonsocket, some in the technical schools but many in high schools, she said.
Another Rhode Island technical school, Davies Career-Tech High School in Lincoln, was named a Blue Ribbon school this academic year, according to U.S. Department of Education guidelines for high levels of overall proficiency improvement and small achievement gaps, she added.
“Rigorous, high-level academics can be joined together with … cutting-edge technical training,” Castaneda said. “Our job is to make [students] ready, not merely for jobs, but for rewarding careers.”
The Providence academy has 11 programs covering everything from electrical technology, plumbing, pipefitting and construction to masonry, welding, pre-engineering, graphic design, culinary arts, pastry arts and cosmetology, Providence Career and Technical Academy’s Driver said.
“The question is, ‘Why wait until after high school graduation for career preparation?’ Instead of a kid borrowing money and getting a two-year technical degree, why not offer that for free? We’re doing this already: following the Worcester model and creating a farm team for a major employer like Electric Boat or giving kids access to college-level material in high school,” said Driver.
Making such business relationships work is the goal, he said.
“This is why Worcester Tech has done so well,” Driver said. “They have literally hundreds of industry partners.” •

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