The Promise and the Peril of Career and Technical Education in Colorado

Nine years ago, my family moved to Colorado from Alberta. Both there and in the UK, I had had excellent experiences with CTE programs.

In the UK and EU, I had seen firsthand the emergence of a new human capital ecosystem, which has clear responsibilities for competence definition, development, assessment, certification, and the award of portable academic credit. This system has created a new organizing principle, based on continuously updated portfolios of certified competencies and linked academic credits, that will integrate and drive individuals’ classroom, online, and work-based learning (WBL) across their lifetimes.

Unfortunately, here in Colorado my experience with WBL and the broader field of Career and Technical Education (CTE) has been far less encouraging, and left me pessimistic about the future.

But it began in a very positive way...

Our kids attended Wheat Ridge high school, where 50% of the students are at-risk. Until recently, it was led by Griff Wirth, a remarkably entrepreneurial principal who began our CTE adventure by encouraging science teacher Charles Sprague to pursue the latter’s desire to create a STEM program. Over the past four years, our student-designed and manufactured fuel cell vehicles have twice won the Shell Eco-Marathon Americas, along with a second and third place. Student, parent, and employer support for the program has been overwhelming.

Seeking to expand the STEM program into WBL, we reached out to then Denver Public Schools Deputy Superintendent Susana Cordova and Joe Saboe, who after his military career had joined DPS to rapidly build their very successful CareerConnect program. Joe generously shared with us the processes and systems he had developed to make it easy for employers to work with DPS. As a former CEO, I found them to be first class, and could easily see why so many business leaders had responded so favorably to Joe’s request that they sign up with CareerConnect and host paid student interns.

Inspired by Saboe, in just three months Wheat Ridge’s remedial reading teacher, Jen Marquez, developed and launched the CareerExpore paid internship program, which was targeted at kids who had lost hope and were at grave risk of dropping out, substance abuse, and worse. Jen, Griff, and Ken Trager (an Assistant Principal) quickly built partnerships with employers in the healthcare, construction, and hospitality sectors. For the 28 students in the first year pilot, attendance improved, reading results increased by two grade levels, and all graduated. The cost per student was $3,200, much of which was covered by outside funding.

Also inspired by Saboe, our guidance counselor Amanda Olenberger volunteered Wheat Ridge to be a pilot for Colorado’s new CareerWise public/private partnership and the “Swiss Style” paid apprenticeship program it was launching. My son signed up, and is an advanced manufacturing apprentice at an optical technologies company. He worked 16 hours/week his junior year (including Saturdays and full time work in the summer), and works 24 hours/week this year, while carrying a full load of AP classes.

CareerWise used Pairin Inc.’s impressive suite of assessment tools to establish our son’s non-cognitive skills baseline and develop a plan for improving his deficits and tracking progress during his apprenticeship. He is also about to complete his online course leading to the US Manufacturing Skill Standards Council’s Production Technician Certification (which his employer must approve). My wife and I could not be more pleased with how much our son has learned from and enjoyed his apprenticeship experience, or more impressed with the professionalism of WBL at his employer.

The bad news is that all these initial wins — and the people who delivered them — have ultimately been undermined. Today, Colorado’s CTE system overwhelmingly reflects the interests and priorities of the education establishment, rather than those of students, parents, and employers.

Let me give you some examples.

When CareerWise launched, there was a political fight with DPS over control of grant funding and employer relationships. Joe Saboe left CareerConnect for the DSST charter network.

Community colleges have resisted awarding credit for certified competencies that are not developed and assessed in their classrooms. While the “permeability” of competences and academic credit is an important feature of the European system, it doesn’t exist here.

Neither has our son received the high school credit he was promised when he joined CareerWise. Apparently, the obstacle seems to be a demand on the part some school districts to have teachers evaluate the quality of employers’ WBL programs before granting any student credit, (even after CareerWise has certified them). Given that 60% of Colorado 11thgraders don’t meet the “college and career ready” standard on the math SAT, it is unsurprising that few employers have agreed to this demand.

I have also seen districts and schools undermine CareerWise in other ways. Our district took over the CareerWise relationship from Wheat Ridge, and centralized apprenticeship marketing to students and parents, alongside its own internship program. Teachers who don’t believe that “job training” is the role of a high school have at times made work scheduling difficult for apprentices, and one sports team coach told our son that he would be heavily penalized for missing one practice a week for work (the coach kept his word).

Control of our high school’s CareerExplore program was transferred to the district head office, and its entrepreneurial approach predictably became much more ponderous and bureaucratic.

Like other districts, ours also launched its own (unpaid) WBL internship program. From what I have seen, it is decidedly inferior to CareerWise. For example, while disrict leaders wax eloquent about how their program develops “soft” or “21stcentury” skills, there is no systematic use of assessment technology like Pairin’s. Instead, the district simply claims that students are developing critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration skills. Yet if you ask a sample of 100 teachers and administrators how they define and assess these skills, and what they have found to be the most cost-effective interventions to improve them, you receive a combination of 100 different answers and 100 blank stares.

As districts have launched CTE and WBL programs, they have also begun to seek their own business partnerships. Employers who once believed that the CareerWise public/private partnership would provide a consistent approach and serve as the intermediary between their companies and the Colorado K-12 system are now faced with demands that they figure out how to navigate multiple districts’ unique contacts, processes and standards.

Unsurprisingly, employer enthusiasm for WBL has waned. Our son’s CareerWise pilot class had over 200 apprentices. This year’s was down to about 150. The original CareerWise goal of 20,000 apprentices now seems wildly unrealistic.

At this point, I cynically believe that the K-12 and community college establishment is just waiting for CareerWise to quietly disappear when its grant funding runs out. Their cheers when that day comes will surely be muffled, but they will no doubt be clearly heard by others who would dare challenge Colorado’s traditional education interests.

Preservation of the K-12 status quo, however, is likely to produce some painful consequences.

Based on their actions, it seems clear that the state’s K-12 and community college leaders either don’t understand the larger system dynamics that are at work in the economy, or don’t care about the predictable effects that will flow from heaping mediocre CTE and WBL programs on top of already deeply inadequate academic achievement results.

The critical point they miss is that many companies now have an increasingly attractive alternative to the state’s underperforming education system, in the form of exponentially improving automation and artificial intelligence technologies that are enabling new “labor-lite” business models. In a world of winner-take-all markets, leading consultants are warning companies that they run a growing risk of being permanently left behind if they don’t accelerate their investment in this area.

In sum, I’ve seen the potential of well-run CTE and WBL programs to deliver substantial value for both students and employers. And I’ve been privileged to know true K-12 and employer heroes whose passion and persistence have made this happen. But I’ve also seen how easy it is, at least here in Colorado, for entrenched education interests to undermine even the best CTE and WBL programs. And I have no hope that this is going to change.

Tom Coyne has been a business executive for 40 years. For the last 20, he has invested all his volunteer time in K-12 performance improvement.