Vocational/Technical Education

Vocational/Technical Education

Vocational/Technical Education

Vocational/Technical Education

This paper will discuss the inception of vocational education as a separate curriculum track and the significant impact it has had on the American education system. It is necessary to first define vocational, or what is now called career-technical education. The Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Improvement Act of 2006 includes in its definition of career and technical education, “organized education activities that offer a sequence of courses leading to employment or postsecondary study, or technical skill certificates or industry credentials.” The definition also requires “rigorous academic courses.” A review of the literature reveals other definitions of CTE.

Vocational education is a collective term in high schools to identify curriculum programs designed to prepare students to acquire an education and job skills, enabling them to enter employment immediately upon high school graduation. As mirrored in the larger, complicated society and its public education system, vocational education in the United States is diverse, large, and complex. (Lynch, 2000).

Grey and Herr (1997) describe high school vocational education as a “system of occupational education, operated largely separate from the regular high school program.”

Career and technical education programs operate outside the framework of traditional education programming by providing a separate funding stream, along with separate goals and accountability for career-technical educational programs. CTE policy at the state and federal levels establishes a separate vocational education system from academic education, a concept that will be discussed in a later section of this chapter. Recent policy efforts since 1998 have sought to bridge the gap between academic and workplace education, but historically, the American education system has been characterized as a dual system of academic and vocational (Grubb and Lazerson, 1974) in which the two are separated in American high schools.

After defining CTE and describing the way in which it operates as a separate curriculum track outside academic programs, it is important to review the historical context of CTE and ways in which it has changed over the past 100 years. The following section discusses the inception of CTE and its role as a proposed solution to American problems and social ills.

In 1890, fewer than five percent of Americans finished high school. Today, nearly three-fourths graduate with a high school diploma (Kantor, 1982). Prior to the universal schooling movement at the start of the 20th Century, one system of education existed to serve the elite and wealthy, providing children with a traditional academic preparation in the nation's public schools. Several forces came together in the late-1800s and early 1900s that pointed to a need for universal schooling signaling the “rise of vocationalism” (Grubb and Lazerson, 1974). These forces included the country's economic shift from agriculture to industry, migration from rural locale to cities, an influx of immigrants and the need to socialize them to American work values, and demand for a relevant public school system.

The 1917 Smith-Hughes Act provided the basis for what would become America's dual education system. During this time, schools were responding to universal ...