Sections:

Article

Do CPS 'College Readiness' bureaucrats get a paid day off for Bastille Day?... Chicago Public Schools can't even find the phone number for its vocational and 'career' programs, let alone provide a list of schools' offerings to a caller

Lotty Blumenthal - July 22, 2014

In the last month, the Tribune Business Section had at least two articles by two different writers describing the thousands of jobs for workers in skilled areas as drafting, machinery, electronics, and others. In its Weekend Edition of July 19 - 20, 2014, The Wall Street Journal featured a photograph of a welder on the front page of its "Review" section. The welder, identified as Anthony Solis, was illustrating a lengthy article about the need for skilled technical workers. The article pointed out that skilled welders can earn as much as $100,000 per year.

Latisa Kindred told the July 16, 2014 budget hearing at Kennedy King College in Chicago that she had just been cut from her teaching job at Simeon High School. Simeon, which was once "Simeon Vocational High School," had an electricity program taught by Kindred, the only African American woman teaching that subject in all of Chicago's public schools -- until CPS "Student Based Budgeting" resulted in her no longer doing that job. Kindred's students were qualified for apprenticeships and jobs out of high school, but CPS has been ruthlessly eliminating vocational education programs for nearly two decades, while Mayor Rahm Emabnuel stages at least one publicity stun press conference each week to bombastically proclaim a further expansion of "STEM" stuff. The rampant destruction and privatization of vocational education in Chicago didn't begin with Rahm Emanuel and Barbara Byrd Bennett, but no one before them has been so media hungry with the unsubstantiated claims about their novelty programs while real programs continue to be cut. Substance photo by Susan Zupan. The Wall Street Journal article led with a drop quote: "Economic mobility is alive and well for Americans who pursue technical or practical training. Welders, nurses, and franchise owners are still finding career paths into the middle class..." and a second quote: "'Middle-skilled' jobs -- needing more than high school but less than college -- could make up close to half of future U.S. jobs..."

During any month, the nation's business press is reporting the same news: the need for trained technical workers -- who don't need a college degree but need certain skills.

Yet, in the last two years since the current CPS administration came into power, more and more of these shops and training programs that once placed high school graduates into technical training apprenticeships (and sometimes directly into jobs) have been closed in the Chicago Public Schools.

CPS has closed hundreds of shops during the past 20 years (since corporate "school reform" has taken over) and a couple of vocational high schools were phased out during the same time. Shops that once hummed with the sounds of band saws and other machinery at Prosser, Chicago Vocational, Lane Tech, an Dunbar, to name a few, are silent. Entire corridors that once housed shop classes are empty. And two once famous and successful vocational schools are now completely closed. Jones Commercial High School has been turned into "Jone College Prep" for the gentry of the South Loop and environs. And the Near North Career Magnet High School building still sits vacant a few blocks from where the mayor wants to build a new, expensive, "Obama High School."

Chicago teenagers could use the skills they could have learned in those programs and in those buildings, but that is no longer an choice for Chicago students and their families.

The new policy seems to be to eliminate vocational training programs completely and privatize some of those choices. This policy is depriving students of the training in areas where skilled people are needed. Some technical programs have been replaced by art and music, which every child should have -- but for which few if any employers have been asking for.

In September 2013, the Chicago Board of Education voted to promote Aarti Dhupelia (above at the June 27, 2014 Board of Education meeting) from "Deputy Chief of Staff" to "Chief Officer, College and Career Success." Dhupela has no teaching experience nor does she have any experience with vocational and career education. He degree is an MBA. Like most of the top education executives hired by CPS in recent years, she came from outside the school system with no training or credentials in public education. Her annual salary is $175,000. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt. High school graduates can be placed in jobs in technical and vocational areas -- but CPS is cutting those while talking endlessly about "STEM" (the jargon for "Science Technology Engineering and Math" and an office called "College and Career Success" in place of what used to be an office of "Vocational Education" and other offices devoted to the city's college preparation programs.

How can someone find the answer to this seeming disconnect?

I tried calling the Chicago Public Schools about this as an interested citizen on July 14th and want to report the runaround anyone asking questions will get. First I called the old CPS number 773 553 1000. Apparently, they are trying to eliminate human clerks answering telephones, since all you get is an endless loop there.

So from Information, I got the number 773 553 1500.

I called 773 - 553 - 1500 and was given another number that was supposed to be "Career/Tech Education." A recording answered that I had reached the "College Readiness" department -- and no one was in the office because of the holiday and to leave a message. I left a message that I thought that CPS must be off for Bastille Day which was odd and was looking for the Career and Tech Ed department.

I called back to 773 553 1500 and was given the same number again assured that was the correct office for career and technical education. So I called it again. This time a female person answered and explained that college readiness and career/tech education were in the same office. I told her I wanted to know what CTE at CPS was doing to solve the problem of the thousands of empty jobs requiring training in skilled areas as drafting, welding, machinery, electricity, etc. since they were being closed out at schools like Lane and other high schools.

The female person told me they were being taught in some schools. I asked her to name some where these subjects were being opened. She said "just a minute..." and left me holding the phone, waiting. I had to assume the she was going somewhere in the office of college and careers to get a list of career classes I was asking for.

I waited for about seven minutes. Then, the phone was ringing. I was being transferred.

A young man answered, and I stated all I had said before. The young man informed me that I had been connected to 773 553 1600. He said did not know anything about Career/Tech Education (apparently like every else at CPS), but told me the regular number for career/tech education was the one that had been given me by the woman at 773 753 1500.

I thanked him.

I called back the number given for CTE for the third time.

There was no answer. The answering machine came on again. It was July 14, 2014. Apparently, everyone was again celebrating Bastille Day.

Three days later I heard that Chicago Public Schools closed the last electricity class at Simeon High School, which had been taught by an African American woman. Electricity is definitely an area that leads to apprenticeship programs and jobs that pay well.

But, not one of the 400,000 students in Chicago Public Schools will be trained for it (or the other skilled subjects destroyed). This administration has prevented the students from receiving training for areas with high skilled job training that pays well. Also, no one in the CTE Department feit her exit or knows anything which has led to tragedy for students.

Let us know if you call CPS and can find a listing of vocational and career courses -- and which schools they are being taught at in 2014. And ask each person who answers each phone for the person's name and title. All of the friendly voices I got on the phone, before being cut off, were anonymous.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ARTICLE 'THIS WAY UP' ON TECHNICAL TRAINING....

This Way Up, by Tamar Jacoby

Dakota Blazier had made a big decision. Friendly and fresh-faced, from a small town north of Indianapolis, he'd made up his mind: He wasn't going to college.

"I discovered a long time ago," he explained, "I'm not book smart. I don't like sitting still, and I learn better when the problem is practical." But he didn't feel this limited his options�to the contrary. And he was executing a plan as purposeful as that of any of his high-school peers.

It started in his junior year with release time from high school to take a course in basic construction skills at a craft training center run by the Associated Builders and Contractors. The next step was an internship with a local contractor, Gaylor Electric.

Readers of the print edition of The Wall Street Journal might have been surprised to see a massive photograph of welder Anthony Solis on the front page of the Journal's "Review" section of July 19 - 20 2014. In the lengthy article that accompanied the welder's picture, a Journal contributor argued that the USA was not providing enough career education training for young people who were not ready or interested in college -- but who wanted to work with their hands as well as their minds.This summer, he's at Gaylor full time, earning $10 an hour plus credits he can apply at the ABC training center, where he intends to return this fall for a four-year apprenticeship. Mr. Blazier, 18, beamed as he explained his plan. This was no fallback, no desperate Hail Mary pass. It was a thoughtful choice�and he was as proud and excited as if he were heading off to the Ivy League.

College-educated Americans tend to know mostly other college-educated Americans and to think that is the norm, if not universal. In fact, just three in 10 Americans age 25 or older have bachelor's degrees. Another 8% are high-school dropouts, leaving the overwhelming majority�more than 60%�in circumstances something like Mr. Blazier's.

The questions that keep him up at night aren't about inequality: How rich am I, or, how rich is my neighbor ? What he worries about is the kinds of opportunities open to him. Can he get an education that equips him for a job he wants? Can he find that job and build on it to make a career? His concern is economic mobility.

The changing economy isn't encouraging. New technologies and globalization are driving deep-seated change�and no one knows for sure what it will mean for most Americans. But one thing is certain: The future will put a premium on technical skill. Educators and employers agree: High school is no longer enough.

Americans have a host of postsecondary options other than a four-year degree�associate degrees, occupational certificates, industry certifications, apprenticeships. Many economists are bullish about the prospects of what they call "middle-skilled" workers. In coming years, according to some, at least a third and perhaps closer to half of all U.S. jobs will require more than high school but less than four years of college�and most will involve some sort of technical or practical training.

STEPHANIE RABELLO, REGISTERED NURSE | Working her way from practical nurse to registered nurse to bachelor-degree nurse. Preston Mack for The Wall Street Journal

Will these be just jobs�or real careers? Is the system preparing enough Americans to fill them? Are there adequate opportunities for training? Do we do enough to steer young people toward technical training?

As Mr. Blazier knows, there are plenty of opportunities for people like him to get ahead. Despite our digital-age prejudices against practical skills, Americans are quietly reinventing upward mobility. Consider three often overlooked paths: welder, nurse and franchise manager.

The first requirement of any upward path is entry ramps at the ground level. The Craft Training Center of the Coastal Bend, in Corpus Christi, Texas, teaches welding to 200 high-school students, mostly at-risk youth. When Anthony Solis first heard about the program, he was close to dropping out. He didn't know what welding was but decided to give it a try�at least it would get him out of class a few days a week.

Unlike his father, who didn't need even a high-school diploma to make a decent living on an oil rig, Mr. Solis, now 19, knew he needed some kind of qualification. He found that he liked the hands-on aspect of the training program. Suddenly, math came more easily�he needed it to calculate weight and volumes.

Welding itself was harder, but he learned that he could do well if he tried�something he'd rarely experienced in a classroom. Soon, he was attending not just his for-credit class but also an adult program in the evening, and he returned to the center that summer for a career-prep course�all of it subsidized by his high school and a local employer group.

The Saturday Essay

The New Jihad (7/11/14)

The Declaration of Independence: The Words Heard Around the World (7/5/14)

Life Lessons From Dad: Caring for an Elderly Parent (6/27/14)

World War I: The War That Changed Everything (6/21/14)

Joe Queenan's Guide to Public Speaking (6/14/14)

At the 'End of History' Still Stands Democracy (6/7/14)

Why Putin Says Russia Is Exceptional (5/31/14)

Treat Veterans With Respect, Not Pity (5/24/14)

The second requirement of any good upward path is for training to lead to a job. Mr. Solis's big break came last August, when he and 20 other Coastal Bend students auditioned for JV Industrial, which does high-risk, high-paying maintenance work in oil refineries. JV had never recruited at the Corpus Christi center, and Mr. Solis was so nervous that he was almost ill on the day of the hands-on test. Still, he made the grade and headed off to Houston for more free training�with the possibility of a big job if he finished.

A third requirement of a good career path is that it must be aligned with economic needs. This is where employers like JV can make all the difference. Many high schools and community colleges teach job skills, but too many of them use outmoded techniques and equipment or steer young people to industries that aren't growing. The best way to stay current is to partner with an employer, who can offer advice about what's in demand, help design curricula, lend equipment, even�like JV�provide training.

It isn't always easy to find an industry partner: Training is expensive, and some firms fear that competitors will poach the workers whom they train. But a growing number of farsighted companies�often bigger firms in growing fields such as construction, manufacturing or IT�grasp the mutual benefit. What better way, after all, to attract and retain good employees?

This is especially true in a trade like welding, where demand can sometimes seem insatiable. The average age in the field is 54, and the American Welding Institute predicts openings for more than 400,000 workers by 2024�welders and others who need welding skills, such as pipe fitters, plumbers and boilermakers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics pegs the average wage at $36,300 a year, but anecdotal evidence suggests that is the low end of what's possible. JV Industrial says that it pays more like $75,000, with some employees earning more than $100,000. In the burgeoning shale industry, in Texas and Appalachia, welders can earn as much as $7,000 a week.

Like construction, nursing is a time-tested path to the middle class, and it has many of the same hallmarks: easy on-ramps, goal-oriented job training and a series of ascending steps, with industry-certified credentials to guide the way.

The profession is already growing robustly. From 2000 to 2010, the number of registered nurses increased by 24%. But the aging of the baby-boom generation will sharpen demand even as it reduces supply: Roughly a third of today's nurses are more than 50 years old.

Consider one microcosm: Orlando, Fla., where there are many different ways into the nursing profession. The University of Central Florida trains only bachelor-degree nurses. You need an outstanding high-school record, there's a long waiting list, and tuition is $14,000 for in-state students�and more than three times that if you're not from Florida. Two well-equipped, award-winning community colleges�Seminole State and Valencia State�offer associate-degree RN programs, where tuition is $7,500. Then there is Orlando Tech, a county-run career center, located in an old building in an industrial area near downtown, which trains licensed practical nurses for about $5,000.

It sounds insidious�a quintessentially inequitable, tracked system, with RNs earning some $65,000 year and many licensed practical nurses, or LPNs, starting below $40,000. But appearances can be deceptive. Alongside the three tiers, there are myriad ways that different kinds of students can tap into the programs and transfer among them, building their own upward paths, sometimes over the course of a lifetime.

The streamlined route starts in high school: a "dual enrollment" magnet program that allows focused, able students to earn college credit and professional certifications, including as a nursing assistant. Participants who enroll within two years at Seminole or Valencia get advanced placement credit, saving as much as $1,250. And those who are really in a hurry can matriculate simultaneously at UCF, earning "concurrent" credit for advanced courses taken at community-college prices, then graduate in just three years with a UCF bachelor's degree.

More often, though, the path up through the system is slow�an intermittent process with many phases. When Stephanie Rabello, 41, graduated from high school in the early 1990s, all she could think about was getting into the nursing profession�the sooner, the better�and she enrolled in a 10-month LPN program at a local career center.

Her LPN license opened several doors: She worked in an elementary school, a nursing home, a rehab hospital, often two jobs at once. But after nearly 20 years as a practical nurse, she decided that she wanted more respect and better compensation. So in 2012, she went back to school at Seminole State, enrolling in a yearlong LPN-to-RN "bridge" program with online classes and convenient clinical rotations that allowed her to continue working while she upgraded.

Sherry Harris, 33, who followed a similar path from LPN to RN, calls it "step-by-step" professional training�the "working-class way in." Ms. Harris is now taking the next step: an RN-to-BSN program for a bachelor of science degree in nursing.

Ms. Rabello also wants a bachelor's degree and is hoping to enroll next spring at UCF. But for now, she's happy where she is. "I used to be a floor nurse," she said. "When I graduated as an RN, the facility promoted me to unit manager. That's exactly where I want to be�getting some respect and moving up the ladder."

At first blush, franchising seems very different from welding and nursing�no technical skills, no required training, no earned industry certifications. But in many ways, it is a looser, market-driven version of the same upward path: Young people start at the bottom of a practical trade and learn by doing.

SHANA GONZALES, FRANCHISE RESTAURANT OWNER | She started as a cashier at Taco Bell and now owns four restaurants in Atlanta. Raymond McCrea Jones for The Wall Street Journal

Looking back, Shana Gonzales, 41, says that she always wanted to be an entrepreneur. She came from a family of modest means: Her father was a coal-miner in Arizona. Her first franchise job, in the early 1990s, was at a Taco Bell, where she worked as a part-time cashier while attending community college.

More than 20 years later, she owns and operates four fast-food restaurants in Atlanta that generate $3.5 million in annual revenue.

It wasn't an easy path, but it isn't uncommon in the franchise industry. At McDonald's, MCD -1.45% some 60% of what the company calls "owner/operators" started as hourly employees, as did 63% of the chain's two dozen U.S. regional managers.

Ms. Gonzales's first break came after nine months on the job. She was focused on her college classes and working just to earn some extra cash. But the store manager noticed her: She was responsible, took initiative and seemed curious about how the restaurant operated. Ms. Gonzales agreed to undergo training, then spent 12 weeks studying a textbook and shadowing an assistant manager. This qualified her as a shift manager.

She didn't expect the next promotion either, or the one after that, although by then she'd been working in fast-food outlets for nearly four years. Except for those first 12 weeks, everything she knew about the restaurant business was self-taught. But the third promotion was a big job: general manager, running her own store, with a regular salary and 15 direct reports.

It was then that Ms. Gonzales started to see that the franchise business might be more than just a job�there might be a career in it. By this time, she was working for the Rally's Hamburgers brand, which was purchased that year by a bigger company with a more corporate culture. Ms. Gonzales and other midlevel managers were brought to Tampa periodically for presentations and networking. She still remembers how eye-opening it was. "The others had all started behind the counter too," she recalls. "But this was the first time I had ever met other people like me�people with the same desire to work hard and give everything they had to the company." By 2003, when she left what was then Checkers Rally's, she was manager of operations for Arizona and California, earning more than $100,000 a year in salary and bonuses.

Ms. Gonzales's next boss, Aziz Hashim, has his own rags-to-riches story. He started out in what he calls a "lower middle-class" immigrant family in Los Angeles and earned a prestigious degree as an electrical engineer�then quit abruptly to go into the franchise business. Today, his company, NRD Holdings, owns more than 50 franchise outlets, and he is seen as a rising star in the industry.

Still, he explains, neither he nor Ms. Gonzales is an anomaly. "If you work hard in this business," he says, "you can't help but rise. We owners have no choice but to hire from within and train our own managers. No one comes out of school knowing how to run a fast-food restaurant."

The hardest step up the franchising ladder is from management to ownership. Franchising is the safest way to start a small business. Though lesser-known brands can pose risks, most outlets open with a popular product and a proven way of doing business. But it isn't cheap to get started: The initial purchase fee is rarely less than $100,000 and usually several times that.

Mr. Hashim's parents lent him their life savings. His company has a program called "Own It!" to help his top managers make the transition. Ms. Gonzales used his help to buy four Checkers outlets and just this summer finished paying off her loan. Her goal is to buy 10 more stores in the next five years.

Today's conventional wisdom about economic mobility in the U.S. is gloomy and growing gloomier. We're told that good jobs are disappearing, that less educated workers have bad work habits, that the U.S. is falling behind other countries.

What's strange is that this isn't what you hear from many people who are working toward the middle class: people training, saving and in other ways striving to make it, who invariably see more dynamism and possibility. Ms. Gonzales described her path as "opportunity after opportunity. Every time I think about getting out of the business," she says, "something exciting happens�a promotion or a new direction that keeps me engaged."

Who's right? Surely, the answer is up to us�and not just the strivers alone. One place to start would be by showing some respect for practical training. As millions of Americans know, even in a knowledge economy, countless valuable career skills can be learned outside a college classroom.

[Ms. Jacoby is the president of Opportunity America, a Washington-based nonprofit group working to promote economic mobility. She is the author of "Someone Else's House: America's Unfinished Struggle for Integration" and the editor of "Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrants and What It Means to Be American."]