The sweeping change unearthed an old debate in some circles: Should public schools’ mission be to graduate educated citizens or educated, employable workers.
The state-ordered career education and counseling law, which extended for the first time an employment-based curricula into seventh and eighth grades, kicked in during the 2015-2016 school year. That year the Ohio Department of Education began offering classroom instructional guidelines for middle school teachers, telling them how to incorporate career study into their classrooms.
The impact on Butler County schools and local career education has been broad and on-going.
Ohio Senator Bill Coley — a veteran member of the Senate’s education committee — said the mandate for the state’s 612 public school systems — part of the sweeping Ohio House Bill 487 — was necessary as well as historically pivotal.
“We really needed to get moving on that because we need people who can participate in our workforce,” said Coley, R-Liberty Twp.
But for some, the aggressive push of recent years for earlier and more career education is too much, too soon, though there is disagreement among education experts.
University of Cincinnati Professor of Early Childhood Education and Human Development Victoria Carr is all for students studying careers — but not until they are of high school age.
“Career education in high school is an opportunity. But pushing younger children into these (career) roles can be confusing,” said Carr, who is also co-editor of “Children, Youth and Environments” journal and executive director of UC’s Arlitt Center for Education, Research and Sustainability.
Children in grade and middle schools are not developmentally ready for counseling and instruction on careers and jobs, she said.
“I didn’t think I would be a college professor when I was in the seventh grade,” Carr said.
UC Assistant Professor of education Susan Gregson says the trend is not necessarily a negative one, but cautioned that school officials — and parents — should be vigilant for signs their children are experiencing undue pressure about careers.
“It hasn’t always been like this and (career education) has trickled down to grade school,” Gregson said.
It’s okay for grade and middle schoolers to explore careers, said Gregson, who researches equitable classroom practices and trains future K-12 teachers at UC, but “the idea that everyone needs to be an entrepreneur is problematic.”
Coley counters those who have reservations about earlier career education and maintain the primary goal of public schools is producing citizens.
“I never understood that the goal of schools is only making citizens. Workers are citizens. It’s not (public) education’s job to create a bunch of citizens who sit around looking at their navels and thinking high thoughts,” Coley said.
“We want people (students) thinking about what they love to do and what they are passionate about. And it’s vital we do that early on,” he said.
Jon Graft, superintendent of Butler Tech, echoed Coley’s stance.
“If someone were to say to me that schools are starting too early to talk about career exploration, I’d say that schools may be starting too late. The kids are starting career exploration on their own very early in life, whether we as adults recognize it or not,” said Graft.
“Kids are naturally curious about careers. Even at early ages, they will talk about being a firefighter or an astronaut, and they will incorporate that into their play. They’ll ask a lot of questions about what mom or dad does for a living,” he said.
“These programs are like an introductory menu to career choices they (students) will be making in coming years. It’s helping them start to see how the math, reading and science classes they’ve been taking all their lives have real-world applications. And it’s getting them better prepared to enter high school with a clearer sense of what decisions they need to be making now to be successful in life later,” said Graft, who was hired last year in part because of his aggressive stance to expand Butler Tech’s partnerships — and student career opportunities — with area private industries.
The career school recently announced a series of moves and investments toward the youth career education trend.
Last month, Butler Tech opened its first career lab, offering eighth-graders exposure to 20 different careers via inter-active computer and other learning stations at its main D. Russel Lee campus in Fairfield Twp.
The same month saw Butler Tech announce for the first time in its history that sophomores will be allowed to enroll in its career education programs beginning next school year.
And the same year House Bill 487 became law, Butler Tech opened a $16 million Bioscience Center campus in West Chester Twp.
The high-profile career school — strikingly visible atop a hill overlooking the Interstate 75 and Cincinnati-Dayton Road interchange — now enrolls hundreds of high school students being trained in medical services work.
A big part of the Bioscience Center’s mission: Get more high school students to choose and learn how to join the labor force of expanding hospitals, medical centers and related health-care industries along the highway corridor running from northern Greater Cincinnati to southern Greater Dayton.
“One thing career technical education does exceptionally well is turn off the conveyor belt of ‘one-size-fits-all’ education,” said Graft, of the past goal of funneling most students to college.
“Classroom lecture will only go so far in keeping kids engaged, especially when they hit the high school level. Career tech breaks the mold by getting students into a lab environment with hands-on learning. They are getting more encouragement to try their own ideas and work with their peers to tackle big challenges,” he said. “They’re even getting into real business environments through internships and apprenticeships at the high school level.”
It’s worked for Randy Wilhelm’s teenage son, Caleb.
The West Chester Twp. teen was unmotivated by the traditional classroom, said Wilhelm, but now thrives as a top academic performer at Butler Tech.
“He went from sort of mediocre grades to being an honor-roll student there,” he said of his son who is studying precision machinery.
And motivation is no longer a problem.
“We don’t even have to get him out of bed. The kid is standing there at the door, waiting for me to leave with him every morning,” he said.
“For hundreds of years kids have asked ‘why do I need to know this?’” he said. “But at Butler Tech students know exactly why the learning is important.”
The trend of earlier career education is about expanding options for students, according to Graft.
“What we are really delivering is choice. Students and parents choose to come to Butler Tech and when they graduate, we want them to have more choices. Some may go to a two- or four-year college right away because they know they want to be a doctor or an engineer,” he said.
“Others may choose to go directly into the workforce because they’ve been recruited into a great job with benefits, and they’ll seek higher education when it better aligns with their career goals,” he said. “Whatever the direction, we want them to have as many choices as possible to define what success means to them, and to reach or exceed their dreams.”
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