By Fawn Johnson

IBM has taken matters into its own hands to grow workers who could actually perform its jobs. Like a lot of tech-related firms, IBM recognized a few years ago that it had a habit of hiring people with bachelor's degrees for openings that only require associate degrees, according to Robin Willner, vice president of IBM's Global Community Initiatives, who talked to me last year when I profiled the firm's education operation.

IBM teamed up with New York City's education department and the City University of New York to form an unusual hybrid of a high school and a vocational community college. The first Pathways in Technology Early College High School opened in Brooklyn in 2011. This year, P-TECH has expanded to 16 other schools in the state, and IBM hopes the model will spread across the nation. At P-TECH, students who complete four years of high school and two years of college emerge with a technical associate degree and a priority shot at any IBM opening for which they are qualified.

The company knows that the graduates will be able to perform its jobs because it has had a heavy hand in directing the curriculum. The partnership between IBM and city's education department is the type celebrated by outgoing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has worked to replace struggling high schools with career-oriented academies. The idea is not without controversy, however. If these kinds of partnerships take off, neighborhood schools could suffer from lack of enrollment and find themselves closing.

On Friday, President Obama visited P-TECH, toured a classroom, and charmed the students. "When I was living here, Brooklyn was cool, but not this cool," he told them, which delighted the New York Daily News. His trip was intended to illustrate "the importance of ensuring that the next generation of middle class American workers and entrepreneurs have the skills they need to compete and win in a global economy," according to the White House.

P-TECH goes a step farther than the White House's community college focus by including high school students in its vocational education universe. For a disadvantaged teen, the prospect of a technical degree after six years of school is a distinct incentive to stay in school—one that IBM, other tech companies, and Obama hope will be replicated elsewhere. P-TECH also caters to students that otherwise might not find themselves in a post-secondary school. It does not academically pre-screen the school's enrollees. Applicants need only express interest in science or technical careers to be accepted. Willner told me there have been cultural adjustments in orienting students to a professional career because most of their parents didn't go to college. But IBM executives know that's all part of the game.

Should more high schools offer students the ability to earn associates' degrees with a few extra years? Should high school students be exposed to the idea of a two-year college degree earlier than their senior year? Is there any reason to steer them away from an associate's degree? How different are hybrid high school/community colleges from "regular" high schools? Should businesses be intricately involved in local schools, as IBM is with P-TECH? And most importantly, just how cool is Brooklyn?
 

Kevin Welner comment:

President Obama and other supporters of schools like P-Tech are right to offer praise, but they should also be cautious—much more cautious than they appear to be.

A few months ago, I co-authored a commentary concerning P-Tech and this renewed push for vocational tracks in our public schools. (http://www.timesunion.com/opin...

In that commentary, Carol Burris and I noted that “P-Tech includes many features that should be applauded — it places two or three teachers in each classroom, it has extended learning time, it has a hands-on approach to learning, and its students have access to the latest technology.”

But we also explained that vocational education has a long and often troubling history in the US. It has been used as a low-track alternative for groups of students perceived to not be college material. Those groups—e.g., immigrants and students of color—have long faced disadvantages in our society and in our schools. ‘These are great options for those other kids,’ our leaders would say, ‘even though we’d never consider them for our own kids.’

In contrast, President Obama has repeatedly stated his own educational goal as: “We must ensure that every student graduates from high school well prepared for college and a career.”

Needless to say, there’s a difference between college AND career and college OR career. It’s the difference between equitable pursuit of core American value and the pursuit of stratification, tracking and inequity.

Here’s some of what I wrote with Carol Burris:

“This should be troubling to Americans who believe in the public school as a place where equal opportunity thrives. Although vocational classes can be both engaging and worthwhile, sorting 13-year-olds into separate ‘pathways’ that determine their future is an idea that should give us pause.

“Our country’s history provides clear lessons. At the start of the 20th century, schools faced an influx of immigrants, and policymakers responded by creating programs for those who were called the ‘great army of incapables.’ Vocational tracks prepared immigrants to be factory workers, while the children of well-off parents were given a college preparatory education. This pattern of separating students into different classes was repeated during the era of racial desegregation as a way to maintain segregated classrooms, and it was repeated again in the 1970s when students with special needs were increasingly enrolled in mainstream schools.

“Americans have long valued the potential of schools to provide a route from poverty to prosperity. But such routes are largely closed when disadvantaged children are directed toward lower-tier tracks and diplomas. When lawmakers adopt these misguided policies, they open up opportunity gaps that inevitably lead to the achievement gaps that these same lawmakers then decry.

* * *

“P-Tech has only just now completed its second year, making it an odd source for evidence of success. Moreover, P-Tech’s approach raises red flags, because it prepares its graduates for entry-level tech jobs, such as answering questions from software users over the phone. The starting salaries for these jobs are less than the salary earned by custodians in the New York City public schools.

“The problem, of course, is not the job or even the salary. The problem is a school system requiring young students to make important life choices that foreclose later options.”

Perhaps P-Tech will surpass our expectations and prepare its student of options beyond whatever 
jobs that IBM has in mind. Perhaps they will indeed be prepared for career AND college.

Or perhaps Carol and I are being too idealistic, wanting school reforms to truly be equitable as
opposed to simply offering some disadvantaged students something better than they currently have. This business does wear us down, lowering our expectations for our society and ourselves. But I cannot help but look at so many of today’s well-meaning enterprises and ask why we don’t ask and expect much more.