Institutes

US Department of Labor Takes Close-up Look at CHOICE
  December 13, 2007

Officials from the Department of Labor were impressed by the design and construction skills of the CHOICE CTI students at Crestview. The home they are building will contain SMART technology features.

CHOICE Director Jeff Scroggins gave an overview of the CHOICE program to Ann Stom (L) and Joanna Mikulski of the US Department of Labor. Far right: Linda Sumblin of the Okaloosa-Walton office of Workforce Florida.

Scroggins guides the group, which included Terry Grove of Boston's "Jobs for the Future", School Board member Cathy Thigpen and Pam Tedesco of Florida's Great Northwest. Crestview's program has grown immensely under Principal Ed Coleman.

Deputy Bobby Maloney is a crime scene investigator with the Okaloosa Sheriff's Department who teaches CSI at Crestview High School.

The techniques Maloney teaches are the same as those used by the Sheriff's Department and other law enforcement agencies, including making casts of footprints.

Stom talks to a student in the CHOICE IT Institute at Niceville HS, where students earn Microsoft, Cisco, Adobe and Macromedia certification.

The final stop on the tour was the Aviation Institute at Choctawhatchee HS, where Dean Leo Murphy briefed the visitors about the excellent relations with the aerospace industry and local military personnel.

The unusually close ties between education and economic and workforce development found in the CHOICE program have so intrigued the US Department of Labor that two officials came from Washington to take a close-up look at the award-winning program.

Manpower Development Specialist Anne Stom and her colleague, Joanna Mikulski, recently visited the CHOICE Institutes at Crestview, Niceville and Choctawhatchee High Schools, accompanied by Terry Grove of the Boston non-profit organization, "Jobs for the Future."  They asked in-depth questions about how the program got its start, how courses are selected, how teachers are trained and how the program is funded. 

CHOICE Director Jeff Scroggins gave an overview of the program, beginning with the problem of the "disconnect" between student aspiration and achievement. I n 2001, the Okaloosa County School District commissioned the Haas Business Center for Research and Development of the University of West Florida to survey parents and businesses regarding
education and career preparation. The Haas Center reported that the vast majority of parents expected their high school students to go to college, yet statistics showed that just 56% of Okaloosa students actually enrolled in college and of that group, half would not graduate. This meant that about 70% of the student population would finish their formal education with high school.

At the same time, business owners reported that the type of skills these high school graduates had did not match their needs. The businesses had jobs to offer, yet were having great difficulty filling them, because they couldn't find enough qualified workers. The problem they had finding skilled employees was impeding their growth, and the problem was not merely local. Across Florida and across the United States, employers reported a shortage of skilled workers in many key industries, just as global competition was becoming fiercer.

The CHOICE program was initiated with the idea of creating rigorous industry-driven curriculum choices for students, giving them marketable skills that would lead to higher wages. Lo cal and regional business industries would have a voice in deciding what the students would learn, aligning business needs with the curriculum so that students would be guaranteed real opportunities once they graduated. Students would use the same software, the same methods and the same vocabulary as the industries. The new yardstick for measuring student achievement would become national industry certification. This would ensure prospective employees that students had up-to-date skills that were useful and needed in the workplace.

Scroggins pointed out that the success of the program was due to the remarkably close relationships forged with the local workforce development board and the regional economic development entity, Florida's Great Northwest, which manages the Department of Labor's WIRED grant. Much of the grant has been used to help Florida school districts help defray the start-up costs of CHOICE replication projects.

The relationship with Workforce Florida - the Florida version of the Department of Labor - stretches back many years. They have supported many district initiatives over the years, including underwriting grants for career academies prior to CHOICE. They played an active role in shaping the direction of CHOICE, helping identify strategic industries in the region which provided higher-than-average wages. Three of these became the core institutes of the CHOICE program: Information Technology, Aerospace and Construction Technology.

Rigorous Standards

A fundamental aspect of CHOICE would be its rigor: meeting high industry standards would prepare students for the challenges of the future. They would have the option of going to college, going straight to work or working their way through college. The Haas study showed that it was very important to both parents and students that college remain a viable option. In the past, vocational training had generally been recommended only for those who did not plan to continue their education.

"Having marketable skills is not just important for students going straight to work," emphasized Scroggins. "It's also important for those going to college. The standards required for admittance into college today are more rigid than in years past. Colleges are looking for students who possess marketable skills."

A rticulation agreements were signed with colleges and universities to allow CHOICE students to earn college credit for some of their courses. Leo Murphy, Director of the CHOICE Aerospace Institute, refers to his courses as "college in escrow." Upon graduation from high school, students in the program receive a transcript from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University for the courses they successfully complete - with a potential value of up to $48,000 in tuition. Other CHOICE programs offer credits from the University of West Florida, Okaloosa Walton College, Johnson & Wales Culinary Institute and others.

Stom enquired about teacher retention, noting that teachers who earned high-value industry certification could then choose a different career.

Scroggins replied that while it was certainly possible, retaining qualified teachers has not been a problem so far. "People sometimes forget that being an educator is about who they are and not about what they do," he said, explaining that those in the teaching profession are passionate about their work.

He also mentioned that in some cases, where specific industry knowledge is necessary, experts from industry have been recruited to teach. He cited the popular Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) program at Crestview, where an experienced crime scene investigator, Deputy Bobby Maloney, teaches students the same methods that the Sheriff's Department and other law enforcement agencies use. While many of the CHOICE instructors are lifelong educators, other members of the team include Navy and Airforce pilots, a civil engineer, database programmers, graphic designers and experts from the field of construction.

Because the costs involved in career-technical training are higher than traditional academic courses, Stom was especially interested in the recently passed Florida Senate Bill 1232: "The Career Education Act." This legislation awards schools an extra 30% of the base FTE (Full Time Equivalent) funding each time a student receives approved industry certifications. The legislation mandates that school districts work with the regional workforce development boards to identify key high wage industries and places the responsibility for identifying appropriate industry certifications on the Agency for Workforce Innovation (AWI).  

With budgets tightening at schools across Florida, the supplemental funding will provide much needed resources to ensure that today's students are acquiring the skills that industry is so desperately seeking.