Mass. experience with vocational-technical schools shows the skills gap is really a knowledge gap

There is much hand wringing in the educational and economic development communities about the “skills gap” – a disconnect between the skills high school and college graduates possess and those that employers say they need. But the experience of vocational-technical high schools in Massachusetts shows the skills gap is really a knowledge gap.

Among the more path-breaking elements of the Bay State’s landmark 1993 Education Reform Act was the requirement that vocational-technical students be held to the same academic standards as their counterparts in comprehensive public high schools and pass the same state tests to graduate.

{mosads}At first, vocational-technical administrators resisted these requirements because they doubted their students’ ability to achieve at the same level as those in non-vocational “academic” schools.  But the fact that many of the technical manuals voc-tech students will need to master after graduation are written at up to a college level highlights the need for a solid academic foundation.

To their credit, vocational-technical leaders ultimately embraced academic standards and accountability and worked to help their students meet the standards. Massachusetts voc-tech schools use a unique model under which students alternate weekly between traditional academics and hands-on work in their trade. The schools have also forged strong partnerships with local employers.  Students graduate with both a high school diploma and a certificate of proficiency in their career technical program.

The hard work done by vocational-technical schools has paid handsome dividends. Although the schools educate a higher percentage of low-income and special needs students than the state’s comprehensive high schools, voc-tech students drop out at about a third of the rate of their more traditional counterparts.  Among special needs students the graduation rate is 24 percentage points higher.

Two-thirds of vocational-technical graduates go on to post-secondary education. For those who choose not to, a Northeastern University survey of business owners and others found that voc-tech grads are more job-ready than other high school graduates.  Students and parents have responded to this reality: there are more than 4,400 students on waitlists for the state’s regional vocational-technical high schools.

Vocational-technical schools in Massachusetts have embraced the liberal arts. Studying Shakespeare, for instance, has enabled voc-tech students to match the performance of students at comprehensive high schools on state tests. And state standards are high: Massachusetts students have placed first in the nation in each subject and on every grade level in all but one administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress since 2005. 

The success of Massachusetts vocational-technical schools vindicates the work of University of Virginia Professor Emeritus E.D. Hirsch, who has long argued persuasively for the primacy of imparting academic knowledge in public education.

In Massachusetts, prioritizing academic knowledge was memorialized in the Education Reform Act, which eschewed “soft skills” such as “cultural competence” and “global awareness” in favor of a strong focus on the liberal arts, such as history and literature, and enforcing accountability through high-stakes testing. Going forward, the challenge will be to protect this focus on knowledge and accountability in light of recent flirtations with educational fads like “21^st century skills” and “social emotional learning,” and efforts to move away from objective assessment.

It also should not be overlooked that Bay State vocational-technical high schools are schools of choice. Students are there because they want to be. In this way, the United States has long been different than European countries where students are directed into a particular career path. 

This right to self-determination promotes social mobility and is at the heart of American democracy. Assigning students to vocational-technical schools rather than allowing them to choose where they go is not only inherently undemocratic, but also class-driven. It makes it all too easy for voc-tech schools to reflexively become the destination for less affluent students. 

These schools are not for everyone. To ensure their continued success, they must be reserved for students whose families actively choose this type of education or career pathway.

The foundation of the success of Massachusetts’ vocational-technical schools is rigorous liberal arts education and strong accountability measures. Their success reveals that the much-discussed skills gap employers bemoan is really a knowledge gap, and when rigorous academics are combined with applied occupational learning and strict accountability, the gap begins to disappear.

Thomas F. Birmingham is the former Massachusetts Senate president and the distinguished senior fellow in education at Pioneer Institute in Boston. William F. Weld is the former Massachusetts governor and a lawyer in Boston.