The 'missing piece' from career academies

Count Pasco School Board chairwoman Kathryn Starkey as sold on the concept of training more high school students who aren't headed to college for the world of work.

Starkey just returned from a trip to Germany and Austria (on her own dime, before you ask), where she visited several apprenticeship programs to see how businesses and schools there collaborate. Now she's raring to emulate the model here.

She spoke at length with the Gradebook about how the European students get hands-on preparation in a factory, along with lessons in language, the economy, and even athletics and team-building. It's like Florida's move to career academies, she said, "but it takes it a step further. ... To me, it's the missing piece of the career academies."

Starkey and the others she traveled with are preparing an executive summary and a report that they plan to share with local leaders, as well as with Florida officials, in hopes of adapting the apprenticeship idea into Florida's education plans. "I think our leaders need to see what they (in Europe) are doing," Starkey said.

Pasco and Pinellas already have embarked upon a small-scale program for engineering students. Read about it here.

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Comments

[kathryn]

Ed, there are some fantastic companies in our area that have signed on to help us. Jabil Circuit, Micron Pharmaworks, Nielson Media, Pall Areospace and Coastal Caisson. Every day we are working to expand this list!

[Ed]

kathryn,
What German plants are opening in the Tampa Bay area? Sounds like you are planning to outsource our children to other countries. The large majority of the teenagers that I am acquainted with through my own kids are not mature enough to travel overseas, thousands of miles away from family and friends! Spur the economy at home, I'll support that!

[Tom]

Now, THIS is the kind of thinking we need - not wasting our tax money on pushing the creationist agenda.

BRAVO!

[publicschoolteacher]

Woo hoo! Starkey's on the blogs! All I can say is BRAVO to this idea. Expanding vocation training was one of HF's campaign promises on her first go-round. It's good to see that someone is looking out for our kids who aren't planning on going to college. Since you're reading, how about expanding Marchman, which so many of my students are longing to get into. It really needs to go all the way down to the middle school level, too!

[kathryn]

Ed,
Turns out the population growth in Europe is taking a nosedive, and we already have a few German manufacturers opening plants here. If we can provide a trained workforce, I bet we can get more manufactures here. Good jobs for trained students. Also, why can't American kids have a wonderful experience working overseas. We already have students from North Carolina being trained on the same equipment a major manufacturer uses in Austria, and some lucky kids get to travel there and further their training and careers.

[kathryn]

Pirate: The kids I saw in the apprenticeship programs were not the college track kids (pretty much 10% of the student population-same as here), They were the kids who had an interest in being trained for a meaningful job with good wages and room for advancement, making school (albeit nontraditional) more relevant. They were the majority!

[pirate]

Last time I checked, engineers had college degrees.

[Ed]

Who's going to build the factories for the students to work in? Or are we going to send them to India, China, Mexico, Etc?

[terminator]

thank god, someone finally gets it!
termie has been advocating Florida go in this direction for some time.
with the drop out rate so high, many students bored with traditional high school and many who either don't want to go to college or aren't equipped, this is the route.
Think of how many kids who could finally get a meaningful education that prepares them for something.