Remember woodworking in high school shop class? Or the kid on your street who almost didn’t get out of grade school, but graduated from a specialized vocational education high school and moved immediately into a secure, lucrative career as a plumber?
That’s just not how it works if you’re a high school student who wants a job in today’s high-tech industry.
Rhode Island took the old fashioned voc-ed approach when it started integrating high-tech training into the state’s high schools about 15 years ago. But it just doesn’t work that way in high tech, say industry experts – and educators are catching on.
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Vocational schools have to be agile and creative if they want to successfully move high school students toward computer jobs, say people already in the industry.
Technology changes too fast for schools to adopt a single, long-term technology curriculum. The level of math and science skills needed to excel in many areas of the industry requires years of traditional classroom learning that perhaps only college can provide. And, even for the proverbial geek computer whiz kid, high-tech companies crave employees with a minimal level of people skills and other "soft" work skills.
In short, Rhode Island high school kids in technology-focused vocational education programs will probably need at least an associate’s degree if they want to star in today’s hi tech industry. And they will definitely need ongoing certification training after graduating high school, say experts.
"One of the challenges, if you’re a student in an IT academy and you’re not planning to continue educating yourself, is that you’ll run through that skill set fairly quickly – technology advances so rapidly," said Louis Soares, project manager for work force development at the Rhode Island Technology Council.
Career and technical high schools in Rhode Island have offered computer-training programs for 15 years, and they have evolved over time. In the last several years in particular, educators and business leaders here have spent a lot of time and millions of dollars trying to create programs in vocational high schools that will launch students into computer jobs as effectively as the voc-ed schools churn out carpenters and plumbers.
A major breakthrough occurred in the fall of 1999, when the Community College of Rhode Island, business sponsors and Cisco Systems launched a Cisco Networking Academies Program in Rhode Island. The Networking Academy curriculum centers on teaching students to design, build, and maintain computer networks, and learn Web design, IT Essentials, Cabling, Java and UNIX. Today there are 12 Cisco Networking Academies at high schools in Rhode Island.
Then last September the Rhode Island Technology Council launched its own Academy of Information Technology, using a nonproprietary teaching curriculum based on the Cisco Networking Academies model. Three more of RITech’s academies are set to open in high schools this September, with two more scheduled for the fall of 2003.
And the Rhode Island Department of Education recently signed an agreement with Oracle to create its own academy program in the school system, according to RITech.
Another initiative occurring is the Secondary/Postsecondary Articulation for Technology Education Consortium Project. The SPATE Project is sponsored by the state’s Department of Education, using federal vocational and technical education funding, and is based at the Community College of Rhode Island.
All of the development and redesign of the state’s high-tech vocational education programs has been a big improvement, everyone agrees. The programs are in line with industry standards, lead to industry certification, and have high-tech companies for partners. And the number of students in the programs are up – last school year, there were 501 high school students studying information technology in Providence, and 4,209 in Rhode Island, according to state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
"Each school was doing something a little bit differently, so we spent a lot of time setting high standards, getting the programs aligned with each other," said Vanessa Cooley, coordinator of career and technical education for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. "These students are well prepared to go into career in the industry."
Well, maybe not yet. On May 13, RITech published a poll of more than 300 of the state’s IT professionals which found that that high-tech employers have mixed feelings about whether potential employees are receiving an adequate education in Rhode Island schools.
Only 54 percent of high-tech employers polled said that Rhode Island-based training for its IT work force is adequate. The most frequently cited area for improvement is vendor-specific training courses – exactly the kind of courses being offered now in the voc-ed schools.
The survey showed that 62 percent of firms look for job candidates with a minimum of two years’ work experience. Only 15 percent of respondents commonly hire IT employees with associate’s degrees, while 64 percent require a bachelor’s degree.
Among respondents with internship programs, 75 percent prefer college-level students for those positions.
"We have difficulty finding internships for high school students in general. The high-tech industry is one of those things where it’s nice to have certification, but they’re really looking for someone with experience," said Peter Woodberry, dean of business and technology at CCRI and project supervisor of the state’s Cisco Networking Academies.
Louis Soares, who as project manager for RITech’s Academies of Information Technologies, also spends his days trying to create a pipeline into the high tech world for high school students, said the same thing.
"I’ve got all kinds of stories from teachers who tell me about their students coming out of a career tech center who go to work for a local employer, doing system-support or networking – really bright kids, who realized in a year they really needed to go on and get some form of further certification," said Soares. "Yes, companies do have positions to fill at entry level, but they really need people who can manage projects and manage people, who can kick their skills up from entry-level to the next level."
Soares added, "Because technology upgrades so quickly, I’ve always wondered whether public schools can keep up. How do schools rise to meet that challenge? It’s something we’re all wrestling with together."
