P-Tech schools, short for Pathways in Technology Early College High School, are the hottest new education commodity, especially in urban areas with progressive political leadership. They essentially are STEM focused public high schools at which students will spend four years, gain a high school diploma and an associate’s degree, receive curriculum and leadership from a business partner such as IBM, and be guaranteed a job with that business once they graduate.
As Rana Foroohar of Time Magazine explains in its recent feature article, as of now there are not many P-Tech schools, only 8 of them in New York City and Chicago, but Stanley Litow, IBM’s vice president of corporate citizenship and corporate affairs, says that he receives daily phone calls from other corporations in technology, manufacturing, health care, and others asking how they can get involved and start new P-Tech schools. There are likely to be around 30 new P-Tech schools in the next two years.
Businesses are clamoring for more of these P-Tech schools not only because it helps them fulfill their responsibility to the communities around them but also for the much more practical reason that it enables them to create new crops of perfectly trained employees to fill positions they are having a hard time filling. These are mid-level jobs, perfect for young professionals with more than a high school degree and less than a full 4-year college degree.
Many education officials approve of P-Tech schools because they recognize the reality that on average, workers with an associate’s degree will earn 73% more than those with only a high school diploma. This means a real opportunity for those from disadvantaged backgrounds to gain social mobility, while still staying where they are from and hopefully even investing back in that community. P-Tech schools at this point locate themselves near where the business is already located so that the transition to work after school is even easier.
You might expect that these P-Tech schools would be raising all sorts of questions and complaints from teachers unions and liberal-leanings education professionals. After all, this is certainly a corporate model reform which threatens to devalue education. Furthermore, there is the possibility that P-Tech schools will create a divide between “professional” schools and “academic” schools, something that the U.S. tried early in the 20th century and found led to “professional” schools essentially becoming second-rate schools.
However, because the schools are entirely public and do not receive funds from the businesses that work with them (they only receive curriculum and training), there has been surprisingly little backlash as of yet from teachers unions. For example, speaking about P-Tech schools, AFT President Randi Weingarten said, “It’s captured the imagination of people who want to walk away from the whole debate over charters and testing and vouchers and data and just focus on where children need to be and how we can give them the steps on the ladder to get there.”
Democratic and Conservative governors alike are lauding the possible merits of P-Tech schools and many are hoping to get these programs up and running in their states.
First off, it is fairly straightforward to see how P-Tech schools could work in large urban areas with lots of big businesses, but less obvious to see how this could work in smaller areas.
The biggest problem of all is money. If P-Tech schools are going to be entirely public, not charter, and are not going to gain money directly from businesses, cities and states are going to have to find ways to make up the difference. Governor Haslam of Tennessee recently outlined a proposal that would provide two free years of community college for any high school graduate. While this is not exactly the same as a P-Tech model, it does attempt to provide two additional years of school towards an associate’s degree just as P-Tech schools do. Two more years of education do not come cheap. Governor Haslam has thus far suggested the fairly vague idea of surplus funds from the lottery covering his state’s estimated $34 million annual cost of providing free community college.
With P-Tech schools still such a small presence at this point, it is unclear what direction they might take. But they clearly provide excellent opportunities for the students at those schools and offer businesses an effective method to gain the sort of employees that they have struggled to find in recent years.
For the full story, please visit: http://time.com/7066/the-school-that-will-get-you-a-job/
