Arapahoe County – Leaning under the hood of a Jeep, Sheridan High School junior Alejandro Rivera pulls on a torque wrench and reads the measurement on the dial.
“We want to get it up to 23 foot-pounds,” the 17-year-old tells classmates in an auto-technician class for high school students at Arapahoe Community College.
Like many teens, he is indecisive about his future. At times, he dreams of studying law at Rice University, or of operating his own auto garage in Las Vegas. In school, he says, “they usually just talk about trying to get to college.” That doesn’t bother him: “I think it’s good.”
Across the nation, there is a growing push to prepare all high school students for college. Yet thousands of students like Rivera – some bound for college and others eager to take on the working world – are exploring “career and technical” options, once known as vocational programs.
In 2003, 37 percent of Colorado high school students were enrolled in at least one technical program, said Dan Lucero, executive director of the Colorado Association for Career and Technical Administrators. Lucero believes this is an increase from the vocational-school era.
The students are enrolling in courses for careers in carpentry, Web development, barbering, nail technology, electrician assistance, practical nursing, heating and air conditioning, cabinet-making, animal science and welding.
Technical schools – once regarded as a lesser alternative for students ill- equipped for college – are now drawing students who are more deliberate and focused in their career goals, educators say.
“With technology, if you don’t know how to operate a computer and technology in an automobile, you’re not going to be successful,” Lucero said. “It used to be that all you had to use were your hands. Now you have to use your brain, too.”
But the push toward four-year degrees has some worried that students will have fewer opportunities to explore vocational careers.
Jim Stone, director of the National Centers for Career and Technical Education in Minnesota, said the college focus is largely driven by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which emphasizes proficiency in math and reading, and national reports that “the world of tomorrow will require college degrees to be successful.”
“An awful lot of kids go through school and all they hear is, ‘After school, you go through college,”‘ he said. “They don’t hear about viable alternatives that don’t necessarily lead to a four-year degree.”
In Colorado, many districts are boosting the number of math and science courses that high school students need to graduate, in anticipation of new admission requirements that are to be in place in 2008 at the state’s four-year colleges and universities.
“With the increase in academic requirements for students, the opportunity for them to have the time to take career and technical education options is shrinking,” said Carol O’Brien, director of the Arapahoe/Douglas Career & Technical School at Arapahoe Community College.
Cindy Stevenson, superintendent of the Jefferson County School District, the state’s largest with nearly 85,000 students, acknowledged that an increased focus on core classes “has reduced kids’ ability to take those classes.”
Others, like Scott Idlet, a counselor at Pickens Technical College, which offers training programs to adults and high school students, said he believes technical schools will eventually get more recognition. He notes that Gov. Bill Ritter has made a goal of increasing not only college degrees in Colorado but technical certificates as well.
Educators say technical courses remain popular, even among those who still plan to attend college.
At Pickens, part of Aurora Public Schools and the state community-college system, horticulture student Evan Gulbrandsen recently made his way through several humid greenhouses in flip-flops, pointing out dozens of budding plants. There are strawberries in hanging baskets, leafy tomato plants and thousands of potted geraniums.
The high school senior waters and fertilizes the plants weekly and can give their common and Latin names. He has learned how to place plants, the amount of sunlight they need and how to pay workers – all skills that he believes give him an advantage over students without real-world experience.
“The vocational part is getting me where I need to be,” said Gulbrandsen, who still plans to enroll at Colorado State University after completing his program at Pickens. “It gives me an edge.”
His mother, Lori Wichael, said she researched Pickens when she noticed her son was always pruning trees and clearing away leaves in her yard.
Wichael, who home-schooled Gulbrandsen, said that even among home- schooling families, there seems to be a “peer pressure” to go to a four-year school. But she believes many vocational jobs can lead to successful careers.
“We’re all driving cars. Somebody has to know how to fix those cars,” she said. “All of these jobs are important.”
Staff writer Karen Rouse can be reached at 303-954-1684 or krouse@denverpost.com.
