As they attract a new wave of attention and support in schools across the country, career and technical education programs grapple with new challenges: How should they maintain program quality and weed out career paths that lead students to dead-end jobs? As high-flying programs become popular and more academically rigorous, how can educators ensure that they remain demographically diverse? And how can schools do a better job of getting the word out to all students about all of these new college and career options? Photographers Mark Abramson, Andrea Morales and Joe Buglewicz worked with Education Week reporter Catherine Gewertz on a three-part series for Education Week that takes a look at the challenges and opportunities faced by three states’ career and technical education programs.
Older students from the Marine Academy of Science & Technology in Highlands, N.J., help rig nets and lines as they assist the boat’s captain and mentor the marine biology students. The popular school funnels students into colleges and jobs in marine science, engineering, and other fields. —Mark Abramson for Education Week
Freshman Tristen Izzo releases a fish back into the water after studying it with his classmates. Seats in the academically rigorous, career-technical education program are highly coveted and filled mostly by white students, a trend the school is working to change. –Mark Abramson for Education Week
Students from the Marine Academy of Science and Technology handle a flounder caught on a boat trip in New Jersey’s Sandy Hook Bay. The students record data on fish for state officials before tossing them back into the sea. —Mark Abramson for Education Week
High school freshman Ivan Szasz pilots a boat during a field trip for marine biology students from the academy. —Mark Abramson for Education Week
Eighth grader Jacoya Marrs, center, reacts to feeling low-level electrotherapy on her back during a “job shadow” day at a physical therapist’s office at CrossRidge Hospital in Wynne, Ark. The state is betting big that this kind of early career exposure—embedded in a career-planning process that spans middle and high school—can launch more students into its workforce and colleges with a clear idea of where they’re headed. —Andrea Morales for Education Week
Eighth grader Erika Faircloth watches veterinarian Julie Boone operate on a cat during her job-shadowing experience at a local veterinary clinic. —Andrea Morales for Education Week
Equations line the whiteboards and walls of a mechatronics class at Warren County High School in McMinnville, Tenn. The school district is seeking to give students a clearer path to high-tech jobs by phasing out traditional vocational-technical classes and replacing them with studies in mechatronics, a blend of electronics and engineering that’s the brains of the automation in many advanced manufacturing systems. –Joe Buglewicz for Education Week
Warren County High School seniors Alex Yates, left, and David Romero work on an assembly line machine during their mechatronics class in McMinnville. The technology skills they learn in the class help prepare them for jobs in the area’s booming automotive industry. —Joe Buglewicz for Education Week
Keaton Turner, a junior at Warren County High School, welds a during an advanced manufacturing class in McMinnville. –Joe Buglewicz for Education Week