More college grads won't fix income inequality

Hear, hear!

And anyway, we shouldn't have so many kids thinking their best bet is an expensive college degree, and with it onerous debt at the outset of their lives -- that prevents or delays marriage and household formation, the backbone of the middle class.

Yes, we do need to make college less expensive, not just offer more federal loans and grants. In fact, I say public universities should be FREE for students who qualify, as many European countries do.

More importantly, we need to develop (almost from scratch, sadly), a concurrent educational tracking system for the provision of technical-vocational training, paired with apprenticeships at real companies, as Germany does.  

Indeed, we don't need manufacturing workers or even necessarily engineers with 4-year degrees. Or if a kid wants to write software code for the next great app, he doesn't necessarily need a 4-year degree. These are artificial hurdles to entering today's workforce. But there is nothing in their place; so employers demand a degree because they don't know how else to find and filter candidates.

Meanwhile (and I can attest to this personally), in today's "parachute-in-and-start-running" hiring environment, employers are increasingly looking at certifications that attest to a candidate's concrete work skills, not necessarily their broad-based knowledge or ability to learn quickly as attested by a bachelors degree. That's sad, but it is what it is and I don't see it changing anytime soon. It's an employers' labor market now, and it will continue to be so for the foreseeable future....

And then there are all sorts of in-demand jobs that can't find enough workers, such as nurses, home healthcare workers, medical office administrators, billing specialists and cost accountants that don't necessarily call for 4-year degrees. We end up over-educating future workers to fill these jobs who end up training on-the-job anyway to gain experience. 

As Pierson and Riley allude to, teachers may be the big exception to where federal action is warranted. We can't let the employment "market" determine where our best teachers go. We need the best teachers where they are needed most. To do that, we must compensate them accordingly. This requires concerted federal and state action. We can't just hope or leave this to chance anymore. Indeed:

Under the current system, teachers have more school choice than students do. Rather than sending the most qualified and experienced teachers to educate the kids who need them the most, we do the reverse.

That's a recipe for continued failure.  

But to end on a high note, I refer to the writings of education reform over-blogger (that's the only way I describe her verbal fecundity) Diane Ravitch, who points out that our K-12 system is not necessarily broken, it's just forced to deal with huge economic disparities that it is not equipped to remedy. Indeed, educational superstar countries like Finland took their best notes from U.S. public schools back in the day. So we DO know a thing or two about teaching our kids, we just need to do them without the politics and funding shortfalls.

Getting more poor kids into college won’t fix income inequality

By James Piereson and Naomi Schaefer Riley

October 23, 2014 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/1nB3Aj5

Prager: Sad conservative parents REDUX

In a previous post, I took more time than necessary to destroy Dennis Prager's flawed conceit that somehow college -- not reason or life experience -- is what turns kids into liberals instead of conservatives (or more importantly, voting Democratic instead of Republican).

Note that words here matter. Are conservative parents sad because their young-adult kids decide to vote Democrat, or because they espouse certain beliefs like support for gays?  

In his follow-on column, Prager provides a lot of, er, helpful advice for conservative parents who want to successfully indoctrinate their kids.

The trouble is, a lot of this "character-building" stuff that Prager preaches is indeed apolitical. I mean, I'm a far-left liberal and I agree with a lot of it. It's stuff that I was taught. And I'll teach the same to my kids with no fear that it'll transform them into Tea Party Republican zombies.  

As I said before, one's values are not the same as voting habits.  Most Americans hold very similar values; but we express them differently in our politics.  

Finally, I could pick apart at least half of Prager's "traditional American values," for instance: "...that American military strength is the greatest contributor to world peace and stability, or ... American exceptionalism."

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson certainly never dreamed that America's military strength was going to ensure world peace and stability. Washington didn't even favor a standing army.  America's superpower status was born after WWII.  So we're talking about a "traditional" state of affairs that is only about 70 years old -- not even one-third of our nation's history.

And the term "American exceptionalism" was coined by... Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1929. And he didn't mean it as a compliment. 'Nuff said about that "traditional" value.

If You Want a Conservative Child

By Dennis Prager

November 12, 2013 | The Dennis Prager Show

URL: http://www.dennisprager.com/want-conservative-child/

Prager: Sad conservative parents

"What in the world have they been teaching you at that college?!"

This is funny stuff, especially since it's meant to be a somber wake-up call. Where to start?

First, talk radio host Dennis Prager offers nothing but a few anecdotes to prove his point, which is probably evidence aplenty for his conservative audience. But is there any real evidence that so many young adults are rejecting their parents' values?

Here's counter-evidence from the 2013 American Values Survey:

Americans of every age, gender, political party, and region overwhelmingly say that "family" is most important to them, far more so than religion, work, community, or politics. Interestingly, such devotion to family is actually 13 points higher in the "liberal" northeast than in the "heartland" Midwest.

Love of family seems pretty conservative to me. And there's more:

Religion isn't the source of our division, either: 80 percent of Americans say religion is fairly or very important in their own lives, and almost 90 percent say they believe in God. 

Meanwhile, 60 percent of Americans still find abortion morally objectionable.

So if it's not Americans' strong love of God and family that bothers Prager, perhaps this is?:

According to the poll, large majorities of Americans now say that contraception, interracial marriage, sex education in schools, unmarried cohabitation, stem cell research, gambling, and divorce are morally acceptable. Even pre-marital sex and having children out of wedlock are morally acceptable to the majority of Americans under 65, and homosexuality is morally acceptable to the majority under 45. While marijuana is still about a draw (47 percent morally acceptable to 51 percent morally objectionable), for the most part what used to be "counterculture" is now, simply, culture.

Aha!  That's Sodom and Gomorrah alright!

That leads to my second point.  Prager avers that rejection of traditional values by the yutes has been happening "for at least two generations" now. A generation is 25 years, so that puts us back at 1963. Prager's Wikipedia page says he was born in 1948, meaning he was a teenager in the 1960s and a young man in the 1970s.

I seem to recall some interesting cultural stuff happening in the 60s and 70s... we read about it in high school once.... Oh yes! The counter-cultural revolution, free love, feminism, rampant drug use, riots, protests, bombings.... Gee, I guess all that happened on Pragers' parents' watch. Why didn't they put a stop to Prager's misbehaving? It makes you wonder... Is Prager really rejecting his own generation? 

I mean, compare the youth of the 60s and 70s with the youth of the 90s and 00s.  They're apples and oranges. As Fareed Zakaria recently noted, "[C]ompared with almost any period in U.S. history, we live in bourgeois times, in a culture that values family, religion, work and, above all, business."  

Read just about any survey of Millennials, or heck, go talk to one, and you'll find kids not just respectful of their parents, but downright reverent of adults. Moreover, "Millennials pray about as often as their elders in their own youth," according to Pew research, and, "Millennials (like older adults) place parenthood and marriage far above career and financial success." 

It gets worse for Prager -- I mean, better:

They respect their elders. A majority say that the older generation is superior to the younger generation when it comes to moral values and work ethic. Also, more than six-in-ten say that families have a responsibility to have an elderly parent come live with them if that parent wants to. By contrast, fewer than four-in-ten adults ages 60 and older agree that this is a family responsibility.

In fact, Millennials' biggest fear is an authority figure's disapproval (or failure to pat them on the back); and their greatest ambition is to live just like their parents (although few hope to live better). So it seems odd for Prager to cry "hell in a hand basket!" with such a crowd of fine, upstanding kids co-habitating in their parents' basements.

What gives? Well, I'd wager it has something to do with Prager's handsome head of white hair and 65 years of age. It's easy to forget the way we were. It's also related to his bio: he's always had his nose in a book. Prager was studying Russian and Hebrew while his coevals were screwing, smoking weed, dropping acid and dropping out. It seems to me his real problem is that his generation -- or at least the better parts of it -- changed American history for good. And true conservatives like Prager, as we all know, "stand athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so or to have much patience with those who so urge it."

So in that sense, Prager is a true conservative, because nobody is now so inclined to roll back the cultural changes of the 60s and 70s. Back then Prager should have done more standing athwart: he ought to have have studied less and cracked hippy skulls more.

Personally, I don't see how our culture could possibly go much farther to the Left. OK, gay marriage and twerking are new ones, but... in America's history we've been a lot more decadent, culturally and morally.  (For a total historical eye-opener, check out The Way We Never Were). 

And never ever in the history of mankind have our children been so well-protected and fretted over as they are in today's USA.  The whole country has practically become one big daycare center; it's completely child-friendly. 

Although... if you want actual daycare for your kids you'll have to get a second job and go into debt, because it's more expensive than college. It's a shame that Prager and other "sad conservative parents" in their 50s and 60s aren't more upset about that! But why should they be? Their privileged kids are all grown up and in college now being indoctrinated in Lenin, Marx and Lady Gaga....

And this brings me to my third and final point: values are not the same as political affiliation. Certainly the two are related, but not always the same.  Here's Prager's real beef with today's yutes, I suspect:

To be sure, Millennials remain the most likely of any generation to self-identify as liberals; they are less supportive than their elders of an assertive national security policy and more supportive of a progressive domestic social agenda. They are still more likely than any other age group to identify as Democrats.

Noooooo!  Anything but that!

Well, sorry to break it to you, Prager and Mom & Dad, but it is indeed possible to pray often, honor your parents, love your country, get jazzed about private enterprise and still be a liberal Democrat.  Now go grab some kleenex before your kids see you like this.

Conservative Parents, Left-Wing Children 

By Dennis Prager

November 5, 2013 | National Review

There is a phenomenon that is rarely commented on, although it’s as common as it is significant.

For at least two generations, countless conservative parents have seen their adult children reject their core values.

I have met these parents throughout America. I have spoken with them in person and on my radio show. Many have confided to me — usually with a resigned sadness — that one or more of their children has adopted left-wing social, moral, and political beliefs.

A particularly dramatic recent example was a pastor who told me that he has three sons, all of whom have earned doctorates — from Stanford, Oxford, and Fordham. What parent wouldn’t be proud of such achievements by his or her children?

But the tone of his voice suggested more irony than pride. They are all leftists, he added wistfully.

“How do you get along?” I asked.

“We still talk,” he responded.

Needless to say, I was glad to hear that. But as the father of two sons, I readily admit that if they became leftists, while I would, of course, always love them, I would be deeply saddened. Parents, on the left or the right, religious or secular, want to pass on their core values to their children.

As a father, I have as my purpose not to pass on my “seed” but to pass on my values. Just about anyone can biologically produce a child. That ability we share with the animals. What renders us distinct from animals is that we can pass on values. As the Latin puts it, animals have only “genitors,” while humans have “paters.” Or, as the Hebrew has it, parent (horeh) comes from the same root as teacher (moreh). That is why Judaism puts teachers (of religious and moral values) on the same plane as parents.

So it is sad when a parent who believes, for example, in the American trinity of “Liberty,” “In God We Trust,” and “E Pluribus Unum” has a child who believes that equality trumps liberty, that a secular America is preferable to a God-centered one, and that multiculturalism should replace the unifying American identity.

It is sad when a pastor or any other parent who believes that the only gender-based definition of marriage that has ever existed — husband and wife — has a child who regards the parent as a bigot for holding on to that definition.

It is sad when a parent who believes that America has always been, in Lincoln’s famous words, “the last best hope of earth” has a child who believes that America has always been little more than an imperialist, racist, and xenophobic nation.

That this happens so often raises the obvious question: Why?

There are two reasons.

One is that most parents with traditional American and Judeo-Christian values have not thought it necessary to articulate these values to their children on a regular basis. They have assumed that there is no need to because society at large holds those values, or it did so throughout much of American history. Villages do indeed raise children. And when the village shares parents’ values, the parents don’t have to do the difficult work of inculcating these values.

But the village — American society — has radically changed.

Which brings us to the second reason.

Virtually every institution outside the home has been captured by people with left-wing values: specifically the media (television and movies) and the schools (first the universities and now high schools). In the 1960s and 1970s, American parents were blindsided. Their children came home from college with values that thoroughly opposed those of their parents.

And the parents had no idea how to counteract this. Moreover, even if they did, after just one year at the left-wing seminaries we still call universities, it was often too late. As one of the founders of progressivism in America, Woodrow Wilson, who was president of Princeton University before he became president of the United States, said in a speech in 1914, “I have often said that the use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible.” Eighty-eight years later, the president of Dartmouth College, James O. Freedman, echoed Wilson: “The purpose of a college education is to question your father’s values,” he told the graduating seniors of Dartmouth College.

Even now, too few conservative parents realize how radical — and effective — the university agenda is. They are proud that their child has been accepted to whatever college he or she attends, not realizing that, values-wise, they are actually playing Russian roulette, except that only one chamber in the gun is not loaded with a bullet.

And then the child comes home, often after only a year at college, a different person, values-wise, from the one whom the naïve parent so proudly sent off just a year earlier.

What to do? I will answer that in a future column. But the first thing to do is to realize what is happening.

There are too many sad conservative parents.

Why U.S. college tuition is so high

Interesting analysis by Dylan Matthews over at Wonkblog of why U.S. higher education is so expensive.  (Spoiler: It ain't tenured left-wing professors or the education lobby).  Basically, it's a messed up market.  Higher education is a market for what economists call an "experience good" whose ultimate quality is unknown for a long time even after a student begins to consume it; and there are too many customers involved in one transaction; and there's something called Bowen's Law at work:

The main signal that you can use is price, and in particular sticker price. The theory is schools that cost more will deliver a better education. That means schools have a real incentive to push up tuition for its own sake. And if the Bowen theorem is right, once tuition goes up, so too does spending, making it harder for the effect to be undone.

“It sets in motion some really bad incentives,” [Robert] Martin [of Centre College] says. “The first is that consumers tend to take their cue on quality from how much each institution spends. Even more damaging is that any institution that tries to compete on the basis of cost, consumers are going to construe that to mean they’re cutting quality. So you don’t have cost competition, and you thus don’t have a competitive pressure to reduce cost.”

Matthews offers evidence that administrative "gilding" is the real cause [emphasis mine]:

At public and private research universities, “institutional support” costs grew more than instruction costs from 2000 to 2010. Indeed, instruction costs accounted for only about 28 percent of cost increases (in those areas where they occurred) for public research universities from 2000 to 2010. It sure looks like administration, rather than instruction, is what’s driving this.

Meanwhile, as Matt Taibbi recently described in Rolling Stone, we have the federal government financing this zany college spending spree while loading up America's youth with onerous debt.

  

The Tuition is Too Damn High, Part VI — Why there’s no reason for big universities to rein in spending

By Dylan Matthews

September 2, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/17v6zOZ

Sirota: Higher education should be a right like high school

Following up on Matt Taibbi's expose of the scam that federal student loans have become, David Sirota offers us an alternative [emphasis mine]:

Just consider the critical difference between how high school and college education programs are funded.

The former is funded by broad-based taxes and few would ever suggest changing it to an individual tuition system. Why? Because we've come to view access to high school as a right. This view is based not just on notions of morality but also on an economic calculation. Basically, we know we need a workforce with as many high school graduates as possible, and we've decided that forcing young people to go into crushing debt to get a high school degree would deter many from getting the degree.

Yet, even though we know that higher education is also increasingly an economic necessity, we do not have the same funding model or outlook for college. Instead, we still predicate access to higher education on a student's wealth and/or their willingness to go into crushing debt.

[...]  No doubt, shifting our policies to treat post-secondary education as equally necessary as high school -- and therefore worthy of similar fiscal treatment -- requires a paradigm shift in thinking.

It requires us to see higher education as not just 4-year university programs, but also 2-year community college programs and vocational and technical education.

As I've been saying for years, we can give millions of Americans marketable, in-demand job skills without four-year colleges.  For too many, four years of college is an extravagant waste of time and money; they don't want or really even need to be there, (hurting the college experience for those who do); they just need a piece of paper at the end that generically qualifies them for gainful employment.

The College Degree Is Becoming the New High School Diploma -- A Minimum Requirement for Getting Even a Low-Level Job

By David Sirota

August 29, 2013 | Alternet

URL: http://www.alternet.org/education/college-degree-becoming-new-high-school-diploma-minimum-requirement-getting-even-low-level?paging=off

Good. Young Republicans don't get it either

Good news for Democrats: young Republicans are just as clueless as their elders. They also think the GOP's electoral problem is its "messaging" and "branding," not the content or underlying values of those messages: 

"We don't know how to brand our message and we are getting outworked on that, and I think that's our major issue," Lucas Denney, 21, said.

Yep, Republicans just need to send a bunch of tweets and Instagrams about how they've slapped a sombrero, a rainbow pin, and an attractive young face on the Grand Old Party, then they'll start winning again. 

¡Ay, caramba, they're dumb! What are they teaching young Republicans at college nowadays??

College Republicans Offer GOP Advice For Winning Over Their Generation

By Don Gonyea

February 16, 2013 | NPR

URL: http://n.pr/Yw8WJy

GOP, IRS abet U.S. sports socialism

You know, I might not be against rampant U.S. sports socialism if all the rabid Red State Republican sports fans out there would just acknowledged how much of their personal self-esteem and enjoyment was tied up in government-funded schools, with teams filled with government-supported minority athletes -- minorities whom they fear or despise in most other contexts.

Take any Red State you want, and on any given Sunday you'll see bumpkins who barely graduated high school proudly wearing the local college sweatshirt, cursing at minority athletes and overpaid coaches on the TV in the local sports bar, all provided to them thanks to the local publicly-funded college team.  

Furthermore, it's a mockery of Republican-Christian notions of "charity" to say that mandatory, tax-deductible donations to a schools sports program in exchange for select seats is some kind of charitable "donation."  We've let Republicans pervert our tax code to this extent.  These so-called boosters of charity are neither charitable nor Christian.  

This is yet more evidence that our country has become dangerously obsessed with sports (and it wasn't always this way): watching a bunch of poor minority athletes competing for a one-in-a-thousand slot in the professional athletics lottery for our selfish enjoyment, subsidized by Joe Taxpayer.  Shame on us!

Read a damn book, take a walk, play a sport yourself, spend time with your family, get a hobby!  Sports socialism reveals the core of America's hollow, atomized, sedentary popular culture.  

College football gets tax breaks; fans ‘contribute’ millions for tickets

By Gilbert M. Gaul

October 18, 2012 | McClatchy Newspapers

URL: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/10/18/171894/college-football-gets-tax-breaks.html

Study: Education is no silver bullet for workers

I'm glad there is more and more serious scientific research that gives the lie to the bipartisan, faith-based assumption that more and better education is the cure for America's competitiveness and joblessness woes.

For a few years now I've been debunking the STEM education myth, emphasizing the vital role of unions, and calling for more vocational training and professional apprenticeships in lieu of college to create skilled workers.

Is Education a Silver Bullet for Fixing the Economy?

By Richard Kirsch

August 3, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/NS6ltF

Report: Real causes of U.S. college tuition hikes

For all those who believe that an abundance of overpaid, tenured professors is to blame for skyrocketing U.S. college tuition costs, check it out:

In the past decade at public two-year colleges ... published tuition and fees, excluding scholarship aid and adjusted for inflation, have increased by 44.8 percent.  Faculty salaries, meanwhile, have decreased by 2.5 percent, according to the [American Association of University Professors] report.

Over the past decade at public four-year colleges and universities, tuition and fees have increased by 72 percent, the association said.

The cost of higher education continues to soar, rising 8.3 percent at four-year public colleges in the fall, the College Board reported.

So what is the real cause of college tuition hikes?

Tuition prices have been rising, in part, because state funding is providing a smaller proportion of revenues, and institutions have shifted more of the burden to students and their families, Curtis said.  At the same time, financial aid awards have not kept pace, and have been converted primarily into loans rather than grants, thereby increasing the student debt burden.

Professors' Group Say U.S. Faculty Salaries Not Driving Tuition Hikes

By Susanna Kim

April 9, 2012 | ABC News

URL:  http://abcnews.go.com/Business/us-professors-stagnant-pay-leading-higher-tuition/story?id=16088503

Is college worth it?

It's clear that a college education pays dividends in the long term, historically speaking, but something new has been afoot since the '80s: the cost of college has tripled.

Meanwhile, more and more students are saddled with huge debts upon graduation. They optimistically take on those debts with promises from colleges that their lifetime earnings will more than compensate them.

You know, when evaluating business schools, it's quite common for graduates to look at the return on investment (ROI) of two years of education expenses, based on average starting and lifetime salaries of graduates of a particular business school. Indeed thinking in terms of money and payoffs jibes with a business education. Yet we need more of that in other academic disciplines, including the Humanities. Because undergrad students are spending about the same amount of money on tuition and getting drastically different ROI. They deserve to know what they're in for, no sugar-coating it.

Making Headlines Since The '70s: Is College Worth It?

By NPR Staff

June 18, 2011 | All Things Considered

URL: http://www.npr.org/137257390

'Hire' education: A vocational model succeeds

High school aged teens should not be wasting 20-30 hours a week flipping burgers and playing organized sports. With proper mentoring and supervision, they are smart & mature enough to do college-level coursework, and do white-collar internships with real career prospects after HS graduation.


'Hire' education: A vocational model succeeds

By Audrey Schewe
March 7, 2007 | CNN

Have you ever used what you learned in high school to get a job? Ask the graduates of Central Educational Center in Coweta County, Georgia, and you'll likely get a resounding "yes."

Mark Whitlock runs the CEC, a publicly funded charter school that opened in August of 2000. "Our mission is to ensure a viable 21st century workforce," Whitlock said.

Like all public schools, CEC must meet state standards and its students are required to take all state standardized tests. However, as a charter school, CEC has the flexibility to tailor its curriculum to meet the changing needs of the business community.

"CEC is about change in the workplace," says Whitlock. "In the 1960s and 70s, most jobs could be accessed with a general high school diploma or less. ...Today, most jobs require something beyond high school -- though not necessarily a four year degree -- and generally technical in nature."

Coweta County witnessed this change in the late 1990s, when the Yamaha Motor Manufacturing Corporation, a long-time employer, considered relocating its expanded operations.

"Their message to our community was that we are not sure locally if we have the skilled workforce that we need," explains Whitlock.

In response to messages like this from various local employers, a study group comprised of county business, education and community leaders joined forces to address their individual yet interrelated needs.

The group's findings were consistent with national data, notes Whitlock. "Workers have less supervision, so more independence is required; businesses have more automation, so more technical skills are required, and we have a new global customer base, so workers need to relate to people across many different barriers."

In addition, business leaders wanted a higher level of work ethic -- a demand also not unique to Coweta County.

A recent National Association of Manufacturers study found that 69 percent of businesses cited "inadequate basic employability skills" such as attendance, timeliness and work ethic as the most common reason for rejecting job applicants.

A new model for vocational education

The study group's findings resulted in a new concept for high school education, realized in the opening of CEC in August of 2000.

"CEC is a joint venture among businesses, the Coweta County School System and West Central Technical College," explains Whitlock.

With CEC designed and operated on a business model, Whitlock is known as the CEO rather than the principal. CEC teachers are referred to as directors, and students are called team members.

Coweta high school students can spend part of their high school career at CEC, taking courses such as welding, graphic communications, electronics, computer networking and health occupations.

But unlike traditional vocational education programs, CEC integrates higher academic standards with higher levels of technical and career proficiency.

"The difference here," explains Whitlock, "is that we have high school age students taking classes with college curriculum, college instructors and college clinical rotations."

Students who dual-enroll with West Central Technical College can earn college credit and even receive credit toward significant portions of an associate's degree prior to high school graduation.

Another major difference between CEC and previous vocational programs is the emphasis on work-based learning.

Partnerships with nearly 200 local businesses provide CEC students with real-world experiences such as unpaid internships, job shadowing and apprenticeships.

VistaCare, one of the nation's leading hospice providers, is a CEC business partner. CEC students seeking certification as a Certified Nursing Assistant may shadow VistaCare's hospice registered nurses.

"The fact that we have the opportunity to get to know these potential employees before we hire them helps us to reduce employee turnover and helps to increase our patient satisfaction scores," said Vicki Kaiser, director of professional relations for VistaCare. "We are truly growing our own future workforce."

Jeannie Davis, an area manager for ResourceMFG, a company that specializes in placing skilled and semi-skilled workers in the manufacturing industry, stresses the charter school's emphasis on work ethic as a reason for the success of its students.

"Our customers complain that they have huge attendance and performance issues," says Davis. "At CEC, students receive a work ethic grade (in addition to a course grade) -- they are evaluated on attendance, ability to get along with others, how they work in a team and their willingness to participate."

CEC meets the needs of the local economy while also meeting the needs of its students.

As a high school junior, Mary King Tatum job-shadowed in hospitals and nursing homes as part of her health occupations courses at CEC. Senior year, she dual-enrolled in West Central Technical College. Prior to graduating from high school, she received her nursing assistant certification.

"A lot of my peers were smart kids who assumed that if you were going to CEC it was because you weren't that smart, or that you didn't want to go to a four-year college," says Tatum. "But by my senior year, they could see how the CEC classes were really relevant."
For honors student Toby Hughes, CEC provided an opportunity to get the practical training that he needed to enter the computer networking industry.

Hughes was hired by a computer networking company his senior year. "After I graduated from high school," says Hughes, "they put me on salary for $52,000 and promoted me to Operations Manager -- I was only 18 years old!"

A national model school

Proponents of the CEC model point not only to the immediate benefits to businesses and young people, but to the broader educational and economic impact of career technical education.

"We know from two research universities that 98 percent of young people who dual-enroll in a technical college program while in high school and who earn a technical college certificate will graduate from high school," stresses Whitlock. "Within 120 days, all of those young people who do graduate will have success in entering into the workforce or entering into additional post-secondary education. It's a virtual assurance of success."

Whitlock adds that since CEC opened in 2000, there has been a dramatic decline in the annualized dropout rate in Coweta County high schools. And, according to the research, he says that students who participate in career technical courses do better on Georgia High School graduation tests.

The school's role in enhancing the local economy has also been documented. Yamaha credited CEC with its decision to build its expansion in Coweta County -- which brought $40 million in new facilities and 300 new jobs to the community.

CEC was recently nominated and selected by a consortium including the International Center for Leadership in Education, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and others, as one of 30 replicable national model high school programs in the United States. And, Whitlock's team has received a grant from the state Department of Education to disseminate and replicate the CEC model throughout Georgia.

"We are beginning to hear the drumbeat for more career and technical education programs," says Whitlock. "Seven years ago, people wondered if this model would work. Today, the message we get now is that you guys aren't nearly big enough."