Dozens of Chicago-area high schools, worried that vast numbers of teenagers are drifting through school with little direction and meager job prospects, are devising a new and potentially controversial technical line of study.
This new ”tech prep” track, as it is known, doesn`t follow the usual vocational education path, nor the traditional college preparatory route.
Instead, it is loosely designed on a European model to prepare students for such rapidly growing jobs as computer technicians, electronics specialists and even registered nurses-jobs that require both head and hands, academic grounding and technical training.
But as businesses across the country embrace tech prep programs as a way to improve the workforce, some parents shudder at the thought of a 15-year-old deciding so young to forgo college for the promise of a job, even a well-paying one.
Many worry that the allure of steady work and a decent salary will cause teenagers to dramatically limit their futures. Others wonder if tech prep isn`t a new name for the same lackluster vocational education programs suffering declining enrollment in many high schools.
”Our whole American way is against tracking, saying at an early age that this is what you`re destined to be and so we`re going to put you in this program,” said Ione Phillips, a spokeswoman for the American Vocational Association, which supports the tech prep experiment.
”We`re in favor of personal choice, and the downside has been that a lot of kids have been lost in the system.”
Indeed, state education officials say the far-reaching initiative is at the center of efforts to pay more attention to what tech prep advocates call the neglected majority-those students neither at the top nor the bottom of their class.
New technology, especially computers, has blurred the line between many white and blue collar jobs, and high school classes should reflect that, they say. Besides, many educators contend, parents and their young students have a radically unrealistic view of how many people ever go on to earn bachelor`s degrees, much less become lawyers or engineers.
State education officials estimate that fewer than 20 percent of Illinois high school students go on to earn bachelor`s degrees within eight years, if ever. At the same time, businesses facing labor shortages are eyeing those students who rank in the second and third quarters of their class as their best prospects for filling their service and blue- and white-striped collar jobs.
Now, in Chicago and Palatine, Joliet and Grayslake, Champaign and Rockford, as well as 11 other sites around Illinois, administrators at community colleges are sitting down with neighboring high school officials to develop the new track.
The federally funded program borrows heavily from some of the vocational training methods common in European education systems, but with some big distinctions. It is voluntary, and students can leave the program if they decide it`s not for them.
They also can continue on to earn bachelor`s degrees later, though state education officials expect relatively few to do so.
Richard Miguel, assistant state superintendent for adult, vocational and technical education, concedes the program faces some stiff opposition in its goal of expanding to most Illinois high schools within five years. Though Gov. Jim Edgar has requested the state kick in $3 million for the program, Miguel said, some schools remain wary of developing whole new classes and programs.
”There are some tough political, administrative and attitudinal barriers to doing this,” Miguel said. ”Some high schools don`t want to restructure this much.”
Still, Miguel said, ”I think this really does hold out a new hope for high schools. It gives a real solid alternative for that middle 50 pecent (of students). The idea is to give these kids opportunities, not take them away. They can still go to college or choose a different occupation anytime they want.”
The program targets not only traditional vocational education students but also some youths who might otherwise have gone right on to college. That marks a leap in philosophy for high schools that long have been reluctant to steer any students away from college if they possibly could go.
As young as age 14, students can jump on the new tech prep track, which steers students to careers in five major fields: business, industry and manufacturing, health, home economics and agriculture.
In their freshmen and sophomore years, tech prep students take math, science and other standard classes, but with an emphasis on hands-on learning and applying skills to daily life. At the end of their sophomore year, students choose a field, such as banking or manufacturing, and take some classes tailored to those areas.
Those classes lead to another two years of study at the community college, which coordinates its curriculum with the high schools. Armed with an associate degree or certificate and summer internships in their field, students then venture out to find full-time work.
Amanda Clark, a senior at Schaumburg High School, is one of two dozen students in her area to give the program an early try. As part of a pilot program with Harper College in neighboring Palatine, she chose to specialize in banking and insurance.
Though she was accepted to several four-year colleges, Amanda plans to continue with the program. This summer, she will be placed in a paid internship with a bank or insurance company. Next fall, she starts the two-year-program at Harper, one designed to build on what she learned at Schaumburg High.
”I had a hard time deciding,” said the 17-year-old, who describes herself as an average student, more interested in business than academics.
”But everyone told me you need experience to get a job and that made the difference for me. . . . I didn`t have a very good idea what was out there. This will give me something to go by.”
But her mother said the idea of tech prep took some getting used to.
”I had a hard time with it at first,” Sharon Clark said. ”She`ll miss the college life, the camaraderie there. But it looks like her earning power will almost be the same, and I think it`s a good opportunity for her now.”
Eventually, Amanda said, she hopes to earn a bachelor`s degree but only after she has more money and a particular major in mind. Like many students attracted to tech prep, she said, she saw too many friends and relatives struggle to find work after high school and even college.
”If you look at the fastest growing occupations and the ones with the most job openings expected from now to the turn of the century, you see most of them require some school beyond high school but not a four-year college degree,” said Dan Hull, coauthor of ”Tech Prep Associate Degree,” a new book that champions the tech prep track.
Seventeen sites plan to launch tech prep programs in the fall, and expand the choices of occupations they offer over several years, Miguel said. Another 10 plan to undertake a year`s planning and then offer the program in the fall of 1992, he said.
