Don Blake’s introductory electricity classes at F.K. Marchman Technical College in New Port Richey, Fla., once consisted mostly of students drawn from high schools in the Pasco County School District. But his most recent all-day class of about two dozen students included only three high-schoolers, despite Marchman being classified as a district high school.
“The number of high school students in the program has been dropping off; it used to be that 90% were drawn from our district schools,” says the longtime program instructor. “Today, it’s mostly those who’ve already graduated.”
The falloff in high school enrollees in that program and others Marchman offers is a symptom, Blake contends, of a growing district and state educational system bias against vocational-technical (vo-tech) career training. More than ever, he says, the emphasis is on a college preparatory curriculum and academic proficiency exams. A consequence is that it’s now harder for interested students to supplement their studies with vo-tech education, which can potentially yield readily monetizable knowledge and certifications.
Citing statistics showing just 30% of district graduates complete four years of college, Blake laments that “many students are being steered into college prep classes, and the academic requirements [for graduation] don’t allow students the elective credit space to take pre-apprenticeship electricity training courses.”
In addition to helping students who might want to work in the field, he argues, the study of electricity has academic merit, too. “Electricity is a science requiring the application of technical writing, reading, math and science, and students should be able to receive a science credit for it.”
If what’s happening at Marchman is part of a trend at high school vo-tech programs nationwide — and it’s not entirely clear that it is — it could prove consequential for an electrical services industry increasingly concerned about replacing skilled and knowledgeable workers who are retiring at a faster clip. Companies surveyed in 2016 by EC&M for its annual look at the “Top 50 Electrical Contractors,” for instance, were nearly unanimous again in saying that finding enough qualified workers was their top business challenge in coming years. The worry, it seems, is that they’ll face a squeeze — ever more jobs to fill, but fewer who are able, or even willing, to fill the void.
“We have a lot of old-timers leaving the industry, or who can’t work in the field anymore and are moving inside for building maintenance, estimator and project manager jobs,” says Greg Rachal, president and owner of POPS Electric, LLC, Greensboro, N.C. “Replacements aren’t just coming in the door like they used to, so we’re having to go out and get them.”
High school-based vo-tech programs that jump-start training for electrical services careers are one source that more contractors should be trying to cultivate, says Rachal. Heavily involved in the electrical skills development component of the SkillsUSA technical career training organization that targets high school and college students, Rachal views high school vo-tech programs as a target-rich environment for contractors, but one that’s challenged on several levels.
“Funding and support of these programs is a problem at the state and federal level,” he says. “They need top-quality instructors and also the materials needed to teach the subject. But it’s also a challenge to get students interested. Most who enroll come from families that have some sort of electrical background. It’s hard to put a finger on the reason more aren’t getting into the programs.”
Battling waning interest
There’s evidence, though somewhat dated, that electrical and other vo-tech programs have been challenged to attract students. Between 1990 and 2009, accumulated career and technical education (CTE) credits for the average high school graduate fell from 4.25 to 3.5, according to U.S. Department of Education statistics. More telling, perhaps: CTE-credit averages were the only ones to decline in that span; average credits for all other core academic areas rose.
But even as CTE training appeared to decline during that period, enrollment in electrical apprenticeship training programs may have been climbing. According to Todd Stafford, executive director of the Electrical Training Alliance (ETA), which runs the NECA/IBEW-supported apprenticeship programs that draw heavily from all adult vo-tech programs, as well, enrollment peaked around 2008 at 42,000.
Today, he says, some 35,000 are enrolled, and the trajectory is upward, due partly to a continuation of the long economic recovery. But, he adds, the challenge of enticing young people to train for electrical services careers remains formidable. That’s evident in the difficulty high school vo-tech programs face in enrolling students, but less so in adult education programs that cater to the growing numbers of people looking to switch careers and go into trades. Still, he maintains, high school programs are part of the mix of potential sources that need to be cultivated.
“We’ve had to reach out and partner more closely with community colleges, trade schools, and high school vo-tech programs to expose who we are, and it didn’t always used to be that way,” says Stafford. “There are more paths open to students, and a lot of young people don’t want to pick now what they want to be doing 25 years from now.”
But that serves as a call to action for some of ETA’s 285 training centers. The one that serves greater Cincinnati, for instance, has been increasing its outreach to area public school systems. Energized by the prospect of an Ohio law requiring public schools to put resources for career training on a more level playing field with college-prep by 2018, the center is hoping to better position its apprenticeship training as an option for non college-bound students.
Chris Fridel, the center’s assistant training director, is working to build relationships with districts that can identify and direct students into specialized vo-tech programs like electricity or general ones like construction technology. In turn, those can become potential feedstock for the ETA apprenticeship program. Sitting on a vo-tech education advisory board for the Cincinnati district, Fridel is optimistic about drawing more future electrician trainees directly from the ranks of local high schools’ programs.
“Schools will be able to start working to identify students as early as sixth grade to promote the pathway,” he says. “The new law lets me get my foot in the door with counselors.”
A proactive mandate
Strong guidance, including the ability to identify and cultivate candidates, has long been a cornerstone of the success of vo-tech programs, and it’s likely to grow in importance. But as secondary education puts ever more emphasis on traditional academic subjects and college prep, students who may be drawn to electrical and other trade careers risk getting overlooked.
Working to achieve more academic parity with college prep — something Blake has actually pursued with Florida education officials — is part of the answer, but that may be a steep climb. So one of vo-tech’s central challenges will be to gain a freer hand in courting students who may fit the profile of a trade-career candidate — and to clearly demonstrate how early training can lay a foundation for solid career opportunities.
And the ranks of those students might be growing, especially as the numbers of unemployed and under-employed college graduates grow. In short, there may be a growing subset of workforce-ready teens more eager to start learning and making money in a trade and less enthusiastic about borrowing it to buy more education of questionable value in the job market.
Students gearing to enter the workforce after high school — or perhaps gain exposure to fundamentals that will help in the pursuit of higher education in the field — are targets for a 540-hour electrical training course offered at two Advanced Career Education (ACE) Centers in the Henrico County (Va.) School District. Electricity & Cabling I and II courses instruct juniors in the basic principles of electricity, residential wiring and installation, and repair and maintenance techniques, while seniors study AC/DC concepts, industrial wiring and motors, work on advanced projects, and potentially gain credit for actual work experiences.
Bryan Halstead, a second-year electricity instructor in the program, says the course is primarily geared for students looking to enter electrical apprenticeship programs. After completion, some graduates move into formal training offered by the Central Virginia Electrical Contractors Association (CEVCA), a strong local backer of the curriculum. But the program also offers both general workforce readiness and OSHA safety certification and specialized academic credits that can be valuable to college-bound students.
“We send a lot of students to CEVCA and other programs because our course gives them an understanding of basic concepts they’ll tackle,” Halstead says. “It’s not a prerequisite, but it pretty much guarantees you a place in an apprenticeship program.”
The courses, open to students in the district’s nine high schools, have been drawing between 10 and 20 students a year, Halstead says. While he’s seen little evidence of a groundswell of new interest, he’s confident the course has sustainable appeal to students set on pursuing electrical careers. Moreover, many area employers support it as they look for prospective electrical workers who can hit the ground running.
“There’s a handful of companies asking me, speculatively, for names of some of my best students,” he says. “They know they’ll get someone who has good, basic electrical training who doesn’t have to be spoon-fed the knowledge they need.”
Motivated students
More than likely, employers tapping vo-tech programs also get teens ready for work — ones who’ve carefully researched career options and settled on a trade that meshes with their interests and skills. That’s something Charles H. McCann Technical School, in North Adams, Mass., tries to ensure.
Ron Pierce, a McCann graduate who eventually returned to teach the electricity course, says prospective students must complete a comprehensive exploration of program options before settling on one. That helps ensure students entering his program as freshmen have at least some aptitude for the field, as well as a degree of commitment to pursuing a career in the electrical field. Together, that makes them strong, eager learners — a likely valuable quality in employers’ eyes.
“Asking a 14-year-old kid to pick what they want to do for a living is a downside of high school vocational training, but we’re giving them exposure to something in that area while they also get a full high school education,” he says. “We’ll get some who say they know what they want, but then they’ll end up finding something else.”
Students completing Pierce’s course, which expands from residential wiring, circuitry, switch and cabling basics to commercial and industrial motor control and PLC concepts to transformers, photovoltaics and teledata applications, leave with valuable credits. One is the equivalent of 300 hours of theory, half the amount the state requires to take the state journeyman’s exam. Plus, they have the educational equivalent of 1,700 hours of field work. Both ensure that their classroom time has tangible workplace benefits, he says.
“Most of my seniors are on work co-op, and they’re set up, I hope, for work after graduation,” he says. “One of my students was my son, and he was able to go right to work for an electrical contractor.”
While they court students who want and need what they offer, high school electrical programs are also more challenged to teach well and effectively advocate for students. The ability to keep the curriculum current, acquire adequate teaching resources, and maintain relationships with other training entities and employers is central to the mission of minting workplace-ready graduates. But that’s increasingly hard to achieve in the face of budget pressures and closer scrutiny of those programs that don’t align well with testing imperatives and the prevailing college prep mind-set.
Staying current
Yet programs appear to be constantly striving to deliver electrical education that’s in sync with industry trends and evolving employer needs. The Henrico County ACE program, for example, hosted a representative from the local electric utility to talk about power station technology, and was also planning an outing to watch a solar panel installation. The McCann program, Pierce says, is eyeing development of a mechanical trainer that will help acquaint students with the skills needed to do electrical maintenance work — a specialization that local employers have advised will be more in demand.
Introducing such training is also on the docket for an electrical program offered at two Berks Career and Technology Centers, which serve students and adults within school districts in Pennsylvania’s Berks County. Based on discussions with an occupational advisory committee to the program, plans are to begin teaching elements of electric motor control, says electrical instructor Ted Semanchick, who’s also looking to keep the program dynamic in other ways.
“Green technology — solar and wind concepts — are getting more attention as we produce our own electricity for the campus facilities,” he says. “And now we’re in the process of building a charging station for electric cars.”
In a fast-changing world where employment demands current skills and knowledge, that’s a big element of the supply-side prescription for the future success and relevance of high school electrical training programs. But it’s not everything. Equally important, on the demand side, will be enlisting institutional support and effectively engaging a student body that, in spite of readily observable changing calculations about the college-work equation, may actually be drifting further away from consideration of trade careers.
Ultimately, both amount to worries for Blake, who has enthusiastically taught high school electricity for nearly three decades. As barriers to students entering such programs get higher, he says, the negative impact on instruction quality may only grow. The result, regrettably, is that electrical and other secondary vo-tech programs may be more at risk than ever, to the detriment of students and potential employers. His biggest concern: the potential for watering down technical education as it’s molded to conform more to traditional academic standards, with teachers increasingly teaching “to the test.”
Programs are more oriented than ever to “summative assessments that are not relevant to the needs of industry, employers, and students in our communities,” says Blake. “This has taken a toll on teaching the critical content for future electricians. Industry needs to get involved in an advisory role to change the trajectory of this trend, which has severely failed our electrical career preparation training.”
Zind is a freelance writer based in Lee’s Summit, Mo. He can be reached at [email protected].
SIDEBAR: Career Preparation a Mission of the SkillsUSA Program
Nowadays, a high school diploma rates as little more than one ticket-punch for college. So the idea that a high school graduate can be ready for the skilled workplace has lost some credibility. But a look at the ranks of students involved in the SkillsUSA program challenges that notion.
Supporting training to students pursuing technical, skilled, and service occupations, SkillsUSA helps create the culture that allows the cream of both high school and college vo-tech education’s ranks to rise.
A central element of that multi-pronged effort is annual skills competition that challenges contestants to demonstrate what they’ve learned, on the clock. Contests at the individual state and national level gauge subject knowledge, preparation, organization and hands-on capabilities, all witnessed under the glare of judges and an audience.
Attracting not only the best and brightest, but also the most committed, the competitions assemble a crop of young people prepared to either step right into jobs or onto the next rung of the educational ladder.
That was the case with Tanner Kurtz, the 2016 co-winner of the national electrical construction wiring competition held last July. (Kurtz was initially deemed the sole winner, but a subsequent review of scoring from the contest revealed that another high school competitor, Daria Stifel, who originally placed 10th, actually won, tallying more points than runner-up Kurtz, who, nonetheless, gets to keep his gold medal.) Following that SkillsUSA competition and his graduation in May from both Berks Career and Technical Center, Leesport, Pa., and Fleetwood Senior High School, Kurtz began working full time for an electrical contractor in the fall. He put his original plan to attend Penn State University for electrical engineering on hold, preferring to stay in the workforce for now, earning and learning.
“I’m leaving my career options open, but I know that for now I have a solid job that I can rely on,” he says, adding that his employer has offered him the opportunity to get on an apprenticeship track.
Kurtz, an “A” student who elected to supplement high school academics with technical training in a field he was drawn to, credits several years of exposure to SkillsUSA competition for helping prepare him for a field whose employers covet new hires who bring a degree of knowledge and skill.
“It helps to have that on a job application,” he says. “SkillsUSA is an opportunity that not a lot of students get to train for the real world.”
Kurtz is representative of many SkillsUSA contestants, says Greg Rachal, owner of POPS Electric, LLC, Greensboro, N.C., and also chair of the SkillsUSA championships contest technical committee for electrical construction wiring. Competition is rigorous and demanding, he says, requiring students to navigate a series of sequential processes that measure not only technical knowledge and skill, but also attentiveness, preparation, orderliness, and thoroughness. They also must pass a written exam, submit a resume, and even pass a uniform inspection. Those who excel in the competition as it winds its way through regional, district, and national contests (numbering in the hundreds annually for wiring alone) are usually good bets for employers.
“That’s important because it means you can walk in with some working knowledge of what’s going on, and that gives you an advantage over other applicants,” he says, adding high school contestants generally perform better than their college counterparts. The reason: “They may be easier to mold.”
