Career Technical Education in Michigan
Announcer: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education, a weekly show featuring interviews with community leaders, school administrators, school business officials, and individuals, who are passionate about the future of Michigan education. And now, here is your host for Inside Michigan Education, Rob Huisingh.
Rob Huisingh: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education. This week we are joined in the Foxbright Podcast Studio by Paul C. Bergan. Paul is the Regional Director for Career/Technical Education at the Berrien County RESA. Mr. Bergan has served as President of the Michigan Council of Vocational Administrators and is a member of the Association of Career and Technical Education. During 2006-2007 school year, Mr. Bergan shared his time between the Berrien County RESA and the Michigan Department of Education working on high school redesign. In June 2007, Mr. Bergan was appointed to the Council of Labor and Economic Growth by Governor Granholm. The topic of our show today is Career Technical Education in Michigan. Welcome Paul! It is great to have you on the show.
Paul Bergan: I am glad to be here, and anything I can do to add to the knowledge of your audience, it will be a great pleasure.
Rob Huisingh: Paul, I am familiar with career technical centers, but I understand there are two delivery methods for CTE. Can you help us understand the difference?
Paul Bergan: Yeah, the career and technical education is delivered to high school students in two basic forms: One is through centers, and there are about 30 or so of these centers throughout the State of Michigan. They are generally paid for through a charter millage and built and supported. Many are run by intermediate school districts, partnerships with local districts. The rest of state that probably covers 65% of the students in the State of Michigan or more are served by comprehensive high schools, who have Career Technical Education programs in their high schools. And there are many consortiums of which -- our particular area happens to have one -- a consortium whereas all 15 of the high schools in our county have formed a consortium where any student can go to any other high school for a program that their high school doesn't offer on a shared time basis. Actually, like I discussed, there are more students in the comprehensive high schools than in the centers. The centers just cannot be large enough to handle all of them.
So, anybody that has a center usually ends up with state-of-the-art equipment. They have the resources to be able to keep more current and it is always a struggle when you are trying to work in a comprehensive high school situation for districts to do the fund and to do these things on their regular foundation grant budgets.
Rob Huisingh: Now, help us to understand from a statewide basis, how many students are going to participate in CTE throughout the State of Michigan.
Paul Bergan: Well, over 60% of the students in the Michigan and in particular our area, it is over 80% of students that sometime in their four years in high school will have participated in a Career Technical Education class. I mean Career Technical Education is so much different from your old vocational ed. as you knew it 20, 25 years ago, where that was the fact where if a student couldn't make in the academic side, they shift him over to vocational or something, where maybe he could get a trade.
Well, that whole system has changed. It started a lot of it with career pathways where students were allowed to choose a career pathway going into ninth grade; these are broad areas of interest for students. It was discovered and really with a new and emerging programs that are coming out of it, that there are a lot of new technology and a lot of new programs where students really have to have academic skills to be able to compete in these programs. So, the idea here is that if you don't have the academic skills to do it in the regular classroom, you are going to struggle in Career Technical Educational class as well.
However, it must be said, that what Career Technical Education brings to the table for all students is a right brain learning experience where students can learn hands-on by doing and seeing it done rather than hearing it or reading it in a textbook. That's what we bring to the table, and I think that has -- and when you look at Career Technical Education as well, it is also probably one of the top three Dropout Prevention Programs in the country and having a solid, quality, Career Technical Education program.
Rob Huisingh: Well, what should we expect from Career Technical Education today and tomorrow?
Paul Bergan: The Role of Career Technical Education is: expose students to, number one, is to prepare them for 21st century jobs. We wanted to prepare them with the skills that they'll be able to utilize throughout the next training level of their career. I don't think-- it used to be that we could train people to go out into the world and get a good job right out of high school. That is not the case anymore. Good jobs, high paying, high skilled middle class jobs take more training than high school, no matter how good the programs are. Now, obviously, we can prepare students for entry level, but entry level means "entry level", and to be successful, they are going to need to go on for further training. In fact, all Career Technical Education programs in Michigan have a post-secondary component by being having their curriculums aligned with the post-secondary program in the community college area. So, they are all aligned.
So, the next step is once a student completes a program at high school, they can go on and continue on an aligned accreditation to a certificate or a degree at the community college. I think we understand the fact that we are giving people an opportunity to choose what they want to do in life with their career and to explore those things at high school while it's free, rather than worrying about it when you get to post-secondary education, especially at the university level where it is very expensive to do career exploration when you are at our institutions of higher learning.
Rob Huisingh: Has the Michigan Merit Curriculum affected CTE, and if so, in what way?
Paul Bergan: Well, it is going to have a tremendous effect on Career Technical Education and I think we haven't felt it yet but we are going to. However, I think that we are going to -- and in State Superintendent Flanagan recognized the Career Technical Education as a delivery of the Michigan Merit Curriculum, it is very viable and he encourages it. But one of the things that happened, as you know that Michigan Merit Curriculum came about a lot of the way because of what our curriculum for the state was before, and our position in competing for in the economic area with trying to recruit companies and jobs to Michigan.
We started out with a curriculum that had only two credits required, and that was government and health. When you would have, say, Ohio or Wisconsin, or Indiana or Illinois and you have a company from Europe come over and say, "How is your work force trained? What is you curriculum?" And you looked at the other states and they would say, "We have three years of this, two years of that." They look at Michigan and say, "You have two credits." But we are a local control state; every district has their own -- and people from Europe don't understand that. So, part of the reason we had to do this was we had to be competitive, and to swing that competitive, we had to align a curriculum that would at least make sense globally to people that would come in. It just as much an academic preparation for the jobs for the future as it is a marketing tool for the State of Michigan.
However, I would say one thing that happens is that, I think we had a panel on that went from two curriculum, and now swung us all the way over where we have got a curriculum that is so expensive that unfortunately, one size doesn't fit all. I think one of the things that needs to happen over the next year or so and hopefully the legislature will look at it and do some corrections to make sure that we haven't, because of this curriculum, going to have a lot of students go under the bus because they cannot complete high school and complete the requirements for this Michigan Merit Curriculum. But I think Career Technical Education though is the answer to make this happen.
Rob Huisingh: What areas of Career Technical Education are you most pleased with right now?
Paul Bergan: I would say that we are -- I think in Michigan Career Technical Education, first of all, their alignments with post-secondary programs. The fact that they are working with business partnerships -- Career Technical Education really has the access to the employers. Every one of our programs has an advisory committee which has employers on it, and employers help guide the curriculum, help guide the idea that what are the skills needed in the future. What is it they need to have to be employed.
So every one of the programs in the State of Michigan has this, and that unique partnership allows us really the credibility to say, what we do really counts for kids. Of course, we have an awful lot of new and emerging programs. If you talk about some things in the energy program, we happen to be promoting right now a program in alternative energy. Our community colleges like Michigan College has just put in energy technician degree and it is basically based on two nuclear plants that are in our community college area to train those workers. So, we will be starting a Career Technical Education program which we will feed into the college program to prepare workers for the nuclear industry. We are also looking at the wind and places like that.
We also looked at healthcare. That has expanded tremendously over the last ten years. We used to have health occupations, certified nursing assistant. Now, we have programs -- and I am not just speaking for my area -- I am speaking for around the state -- in sports medicine, athletic training, emergency medical technician, certified nursing assistance, pre-nursing, the rad tech programs, surgical assistance, and pharmacy tech. All those programs at least exist in high schools around the state and in certain areas in the State of Michigan, where students can get an idea of what their career maybe and get some skills so as they further their education, they can use the things that they have learned at Career Technical Education to earn money while they further their career goals.
Rob Huisingh: Now, in 2007, you were appointed to the Council of Labor and Economic Growth by Governor Granholm. What are your goals and what do you hope to influence and achieve?
Paul Bergan: I guess my own personal, and I think we have been working since I have been appointed, and one I am very proud of the fact that the State of Michigan through the Council for Labor and Economic Growth and the delivery system of Michigan Works and the State of Michigan have adopted the WorkKeys or the Career Readiness Certificate in the State of Michigan all over the state. That's really huge because when the Michigan Merit curriculum had their testing mark, they have got none of the ACT test, but they use two of the WorkKeys tests, which will allow some students to get two thirds of the qualifying scores for Career Readiness Certificate.
This year the legislature, with the help of a lot of people that have hoped for this, have added the third test to the Michigan Merit Curriculum. So, all students beginning with the students that took the test this coming year, they will be getting the third test and will qualify for a Career Readiness Certificate. So, not only will they get their ACT test, they get their high school diploma, but they can qualify for Career Readiness Certificate which tells the employers that they are job ready for certain areas and certain levels. It closes the loop, because we have the high schools doing it, now we have Michigan Works doing it and we get the community colleges and other workforce looking at it, and business to begin to adopt this. It will be closing the loop on workforce development in the State of Michigan and I think that's a very, very powerful thing. We have had no system. It was like our high schools, everybody did their own thing. They did good things, but it was their own thing. Now, we have tied it together as a state and I think it will help us in the future.
Rob Huisingh: Well, Paul, I want to thank you for taking the time to be on the show. You are a wealth of knowledge and I hope that you'll come back and visit with us again in the future.
Paul Bergan: I sure will and I appreciate it and I enjoyed my time with you. Thank you very much.
Rob Huisingh: If you would like to learn more about Berrien County RESA, we invite you to visit their website. Their URL is www.remc11.k12.mi.us/bcisd. Again, that URL is www.remc11.k12.mi.us/bcisd. If you would like to contact Paul Bergan directly, please call (269) 471-7725. Again, the telephone number is (269) 471-7725.
Do you have a story about something that's interesting, that's going on in Michigan education? Well if you do, I'd like to hear about it. Let us know, you can respond to us at our website that's at www.insidemieducation.com. Until next week, this is Rob Huisingh with Inside Michigan Education.
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