Schools Score Low Marks in Jobs Training

Just as attendance at state colleges has dipped among San Fernando Valley high schools, so has the amount of time students spend in vocational education courses, according to state figures released last week offering more bleak evidence that non-college-bound students are being ill-prepared for an experience-hungry job market.

Only nine of the 33 high schools in the Valley area top the state average of 9.2% of student hours logged in vocational ed classes, according to the annual High School Performance Report released Tuesday by the California Department of Education.

The low numbers confirm the continuing downward spiral of vocational education classes at high schools and have renewed concerns among administrators and school board members.

“Clearly, we have not given adequate attention to the needs of students entering the work force directly from high school,” said state Supt. of Schools Delaine Eastin in a written statement attached to the report. She also called for improving vocational ed programs throughout the state.

LAUSD board member Julie Korenstein, who represents the West Valley, agreed.

“This has been a complaint I’ve gotten for years, that we have to push forward with our vocational education program because not every child attends college,” Korenstein said.

The state measures success in vocational education programs by determining the percentage of hours students spend in those courses. In the Valley area, Glendale High School topped the list with roughly one-fourth of students’ time spent in vocational ed. At the bottom of the list was Cleveland High School in Reseda.

Joe Gibson, principal at Glendale High, said the school has been beefing up its vocational program to serve a growing percentage of students who are not likely to ever get to college.

Glendale’s strong performance in vocational ed marks a two-year increase of 17.5%, which places the school well head of others with similar demographics, according to the state report.

Besides the traditional woodworking, welding and auto-mechanics classes, Glendale High is developing vocational “academies” covering transportation, construction, electronics and graphic arts. These offer courses from the practical to the academic to prepare students either for a job or for further professional study, Gibson said.

“If you just leave high school, you can go to work as an apprentice,” he said. “You can also go on to community college and come out at a supervisory level. Two more years at a four-year college and you come out as engineer, designer or architect.”

Vocational courses are also what keep many students in school. At Burroughs High School in Burbank, among the top five Valley-area schools in the subject, students have been guided toward vocational classes that would put them on a specific career track.

“Most students know that they’ll either go on to community college or into the work force,” said Martie Parker, a Burroughs guidance counselor. “For the students who work after school, the vocational ed classes are an incentive.”

Despite such potential inspiration, Cleveland High in Reseda logged a dismal 3.5% of student hours in vocational ed classes in the state’s report.

Assistant Principal Al Weiner defended the school’s performance, saying the report did not include in its calculations the number of students who attend vocational ed classes off campus through a regional program.

“The state report is completely in error,” Weiner said. “About 28% of our students are enrolled in vocational ed classes” at the West Valley Occupational Center in Woodland Hills.

Administrators at Monroe High School in North Hills were also perturbed by figures in the state’s report. Monroe’s performance in vocational ed, according to the state’s standards, landed it among the bottom third of Valley-area schools.

“In the last eight years we must have added some 10 to 12 vocational education classes,” said Monroe Principal Joan Elam.

Elam said she was concerned about the source of the state’s information. “I’ve never remembered a survey of the vocational programs we have at our school,” she said.

Tom Fong, a research analyst for the California Department of Education, said vocational education statistics in the state’s report are based on the California Basic Education Data System (CBEDS)--information that each school reports to the state. The CBEDS do not calculate the number of students who enroll in courses at occupational centers off high school campuses, Fong said.

“That’s one of the problems we find out,” he said. “If we have a regional occupation program it doesn’t come up in the CBEDS.”

Despite the large number of vocational courses a school may have--such as Monroe High--there still may not be enough students enrolled in those courses, Fong said.

David Stern, director of the National Center for Research in Vocational Education in Berkeley, said students’ interest in vocational ed might increase if more schools combined a curriculum of academics and vocational courses to serve their needs, whether they get a job after school or go on to college.

“Employers and parents alike are realizing that there’s a benefit to combining the academic and vocational learning rather than keeping them separate,” Stern said. “Neither one is any longer adequate by itself.”

Jim Konantz, director of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s career development program, said more high schools in the district, including Monroe High, are integrating academic and vocational courses for students. But more work needs to be done, Konantz said.

“The schools have to do a better job of making the students aware of what options they do have,” he said. “If the courses are there, they need to know about them so they can take them. That’s the only way I can think of to pull these numbers up.”

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Valley Vocational Enrollment

The table below, taken from the California High School Performance Report released this week, shows the career-vocational enrollment rates of the 33 Valley- area high schools. The first column is the percentage of all classroom hours spent in vocational courses. The second column shows the percent change over two years of teh study. The last column ranks the school among 100 others of similar enrollment, socioeconomic background and other features.

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Vocational Vocational Vocational School District Education Rate Two-Year Change Group Rank Antelope Valley Antelope Valley 7.2 -2.6 27 Highland 6.9 0.2 23 Littlerock 7.2 -0.4 38 Palmdale 7.0 -0.9 37 Quartz Hill 8.9 -2.4 70 Burbank Burbank 12 0 83 Burroughs 10.8 0 69 Glendale Crescenta Valley 8.7 1.0 75 Glendale 25 17.5 99 Hoover 5.0 0.3 11 Hart Canyon 10.9 0.3 77 Hart 9.5 1.5 73 Saugus 11.8 0.5 86 Valencia 8.6 N/A N/A Las Virgenes Agoura 9.5 0.8 85 Calabasas 6.1 1.9 46 LAUSD Birmingham 8.3 1.9 45 Canoga Park 7.6 -0.4 35 Chatsworth 5.6 -2.3 15 Cleveland 3.5 -1.2 6 El Camino 8.7 0.2 66 Granada Hills 5.5 -0.9 16 Grant 8.5 1.7 62 Kennedy 9.7 0.8 59 Monroe 6.0 -0.3 21 North Hollywood 5.9 -1.0 20 Polytechnic 8.4 -0.4 55 Reseda 5.6 -0.1 12 San Fernando 5.7 -2.0 16 Sylmar 9.3 0.7 67 Taft 7.1 -0.3 39 Van Nuys 6.4 -1.7 29 Verdugo Hills 6.4 -2.9 26

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