Calif. high schools on path to meld career, college preparation

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — For years, high schools have prepared some students for college and others for work. Now there’s a push at the highest levels of state government to meld the two, so that as students learn job skills, they’re also fulfilling course requirements needed to get into college.

You can see the concept at work at Cosumnes Oaks High School in Elk Grove, where a licensed contractor teaches college-prep engineering classes.

“I know I have a lot of students that aren’t going to college, but my goal is still to prepare them because ultimately they have to be critical thinkers, whether they’re in the workforce or they go to school,” said Tim McDougal, a college-educated teacher who owned a contracting business for 12 years.

His approach is part of a trend in California high schools: blending college preparation with career preparation. The goal is to offer more hands-on classes that will engage students turned off by the traditional academic approach, while infusing the college-bound curriculum with more real-world applications.

The number of career-oriented classes that meet admissions requirements at the University of California and California State University has skyrocketed in recent years, from fewer than 300 a decade ago to more than 8,300 today.

Sen. Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat, has quietly helped fuel the growth through his role as the Senate’s president pro tem.

The Senate confirms all nominees to the University of California’s governing Board of Regents, and Steinberg has used the process to press them on the role UC can play in making high school curriculum more relevant to the job market. UC determines which high school classes count toward admission to UC and California State University, so it has a huge influence on what high schools teach.

Now Steinberg has written a package of bills that could do even more to steer high schools to offer classes that are both college preparatory and job-oriented.

“There has to be a stronger relationship between what we’re teaching, how we’re teaching it and preparing young people for the real world,” Steinberg said.

Steinberg will present the bills to the Senate education committee Wednesday. They include:

–Senate Bill 547, which would change how the state calculates the Academic Performance Index for high schools to include factors such as the rates at which graduates enroll in an apprenticeship program or enroll in college.

–SB 611 and SB 612, which would expand and codify two UC programs that help high school teachers develop college-prep, career-oriented courses and train them in teaching material with real-world applications. The bills focus on developing more college-prep classes related to growth sectors of the economy, including biotech, clean energy and health care.

None of the bills would require more spending. But their passage could help California compete for grants to support the teacher training programs, Steinberg said. He said the bills have the potential to make high school more relevant to students, whether they’re headed for college or the workforce.

Relevance matters to high schoolers. It’s the reason Cosumnes Oaks senior Liz Schneider says she doesn’t like studying history — she can’t imagine how it will help her in the real world.

In her engineering classes, on the other hand, everything seems relevant, so she doesn’t mind working harder to learn more. “You get to see how things go together and how you could use this stuff in the future,” she said.

Like most of the career-oriented classes that UC has approved to meet the so-called “A through G” admissions requirements, the Cosumnes Oaks engineering class fulfills the elective category.

Steinberg says job skills can be taught through other disciplines as well. He wants high schools to offer more job-oriented classes that fulfill college-prep requirements in history, English and math.

UC so far has approved only eight math classes that are considered job-oriented. They include business algebra, business statistics and Da Vinci algebra, which blends principles from math and art.

South Lake Tahoe high school teacher Kristi Leonard helped develop the Da Vinci math class during UC-sponsored training last year. One unit combines the painting technique known as one-point perspective, in which artists use lines emanating from a point to portray distance, with algebra lessons on linear equations.

“It’s given students an ability to see math in a different way, to help tie in relationships where they don’t normally think in a mathematic approach,” Leonard said.

UC officials have embraced Steinberg’s push for them to play a greater role in remaking high school curriculum.

“It’s good for everybody,” said UC Provost Lawrence Pitts. “It just means the quality of UC classes gets better and better.”

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