Not your father’s shop class

Career and technical education is becoming more popular as a way to keep kids interested in school and give them the practical skills necessary to compete in today’s tough job market. Over the last five years, the Clark County School District has built five new career and technical academies and has plans to modernize a sixth academy. But please don’t call it vocational education.

During a Las Vegas convention of the Association of Career and Technical Education today, the Hall Pass caught up with President Gary Moore to ask him why the “vo” in vo-tech is so out of vogue.

“The field has changed dramatically,” Moore said. “Vocational education is associated with another era, basically shop classes. We’re a lot more than shop classes.”

“My field is agricultural education, and a lot of people think agricultural education is ‘sows, cows and plows,’ ” said Moore, a professor at North Carolina State University. “Today, it’s microbiology, genetic engineering.”

Moore believes schools are “moving toward a balance” of offering both the academic and the technical after many years of only emphasizing the academic.

“Back in the ’80s, a report came out called ‘A Nation At Risk,’ which said we had to increase graduation requirements. So every state ratcheted it up. If a kid couldn’t pass Algebra 1, what was the solution? Put them in Algebra II. It didn’t really make sense,” Moore said.

“So I think we’re becoming more balanced. With the current economic situation, everybody is realizing this is what we need.”

Moore said there is merit to the argument that career and technical education keeps kids in school. He cited a North Carolina study that found that career and technical students are “much more likely to graduate from high school than those who are not.”

“That research is found in other states also, but there has not been a nationwide study,” Moore said. “There was a Gates Foundation study where they looked at drop-outs. They said if they had been able to have hands-on learning, they probably would not have dropped out.”