I was interested, but skeptical. After all, many universities seem to be highly rated somewhere. Is State Tech really that good? In a 2024 article, I worked with two University of Missouri graduate students, Maxx Cook and Michael Reda, to find out. We examined State Tech’s impact on student graduation and earnings.

It quickly became apparent that State Tech students had better outcomes in the data, which is consistent with what they report on their website. However, we weren’t sure whether this was because of State Tech’s superior educational programming, or just because it attracts stronger students in the first place.

We used two strategies to sort this out. First, we used detailed data from the Missouri Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development to compare students who attended State Tech with students who had similar pre-college qualifications but attended other two-year colleges in Missouri. Second, we used econometric tools to isolate a group of students who attended State Tech only because it happened to be near where they lived, rather than for other reasons. We then compared these students to otherwise similar students who happened to live farther away. This strategy helps remove a lot of potential confounding factors that might make State Tech look better than it really is.

Our findings confirm that State Tech is the real deal. It increases associate degree attainment by more than 20 percentage points compared to other two-year colleges in Missouri, and State Tech students graduate faster. It also increases earnings (measured six years after initial enrollment) by over $11,000 annually. Importantly, State Tech students outperform both non-technical and technical students elsewhere in Missouri.

We should celebrate the presence of such an excellent institution in our great state. We should also try to learn from State Tech to replicate its success. If this were any other industry, competitors would be flocking to Linn to figure out the secret sauce. But based on my years of experience studying education, I doubt this is happening. Why not? Because there is no competitive incentive to do so. In business, an exceptional company forces rivals to adapt or close. In public education—K–12 or higher ed—the risk of closure due to poor performance is almost nonexistent.

This means Missouri’s other public two-year colleges have little reason to put in the work required to emulate State Tech. It’s a missed opportunity, but we can still appreciate State Tech’s success and be proud to call it our own.

The post Let’s Celebrate (and learn from) State Tech, One of the Best Technical Colleges in the Country appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Now that we have reached the (projected) enrollment peak and are heading down the cliff, Missouri needs to begin considering the implications for higher education and the workforce. First, the state should focus on the cost and access of public colleges and universities. Second students not planning on attending college should have access to career-building skills and certificates while still in high school. Finally, and most importantly, every Missouri high school graduate should leave school college or career ready.

We’ve known about these trends for a while, but there’s still time to adjust to our new enrollment reality if we make needed changes now. We’ll see if Missouri lawmakers actually follow through.

The post This Is Not a Drill appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post One of the Biggest Problems Facing Schools in 2024 with Nat Malkus appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Founded in 2012, by Gay Lorberbaum, Paul Krautmann, and Frank Lorberbaum, Building Futures: Design and Build Workshop began as a year-round Saturday workshop focused on supplementing the education of the under-served young people in the St. Louis metropolitan area.

Listen on Apple Podcasts 

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Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

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Let’s forget the last part of that statement, which suggests that the job of adults is to find out where a student’s “heart is and let them follow it.” I might argue that the job of the adult is to steer children into a worthwhile pursuit, understanding that our passions can often lead us astray. Nevertheless, that is not the point I want to make here. The point is, Kehoe is promoting a very specific educational philosophy . . . and it is an educational philosophy that not everyone holds.

Noted professor and philosopher, Mortimer J. Adler, whom William F. Buckley described as “unquestionably the single most prolific educator in America” during the introduction to his 1970 Firing Line appearance, wrote in 1951, “Vocational training is learning for the sake of earning.” On the other hand, Adler also said “School is a place of learning for the sake of learning, not for the sake of earning.” Adler promoted what we call the “liberal” view of schooling. This view, not to be confused with the modern political conception, suggests that the purpose of schooling is to cultivate those skills which are common and necessary for the development of all people. The liberal arts are, according to Adler, “nothing but the skills of learning itself—the skills of reading, writing, speaking, listening, observing, calculating, and measuring.”

Many agree with Adler’s view of the purpose of education:

The aim of education is to cultivate the individual’s capacities for mental growth and moral development; to help him acquire the intellectual and moral virtues required for a good human life, spent publicly in political action or service and privately in noble or honorable use of free time for the creative pursuits of leisure, among which continued learning throughout life is preeminent.

But this view is in contrast with Kehoe’s vision. Learning how to use fabrication tools is itself a useful vocational skill; it is not, however, a universal skill that leads to continuous self-improvement in areas beyond the skill itself. It is vocational, not liberal.

While the lieutenant governor praised the vocational programs in Moberly, the liberal programs do not appear to be going as well. In 2021, little more than one third of students in the Moberly school districts scored proficient or advanced on the state’s language arts exam and fewer than one third did in math. The average ACT score for Moberly students was 18.5, well below state and national averages.

So what do we do about this as a society? We have two very different, competing ideas for what our public schools should be doing. One suggests the purpose, as early as elementary school, is to prepare students for the workforce. The other suggests the purpose of schools is to inculcate those skills and dispositions that lead to a lifetime of learning.

We have two options. We can, as we have done throughout history, allow the ideas to battle it out in the public sphere where the winner takes all by setting the philosophy down in state statutes, standards, and testing regimes that control local public schools. Or we can allow individuals broader access to the schools that align with their vision of a quality education via school choice programs.

School choice programs allow schools that focus on vocational preparation to flourish alongside schools that focus on the liberal arts. These programs allow for minority voices, which may otherwise get shut out in the pugilistic, winner-take-all system, to have an opportunity for the schools they desire.

As someone who tends to subscribe to Adler’s view of education, I wish I could make everyone see the world the way I do. I wish people would realize, as Adler suggests, “Training in the liberal arts is indispensable to making free men out of children. It prepares them for the uses of freedom—the proper employment of free time and the exercise of political power. It prepares them for leisure and for citizenship.” Alas, I don’t have those powers of persuasion. So, in the meantime, I’ll settle for a school choice system that allows such schools to flourish.

The post Is the Purpose of Education to Prepare Students for Jobs? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Fact #1: Our economy and society are increasingly bifurcating along educational lines.

Fact #2: People with bachelors’ degrees are doing much better than people without them.

Fact #3: Not everyone can or should earn a bachelor’s degree. (Okay so this one is part fact, part opinion)

A recent paper by economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton showed that while racial gaps in life expectancy are narrowing, the gaps in life expectancy between those with bachelor’s degrees and those without them are widening. And, tracking the last two decades of unemployment data shows that every time there is an economic contraction, those at the lowest end of the educational spectrum are hurt substantially more than those with college degrees. This is reflected in the completely different pandemic experience of more-educated Americans who were more likely to have jobs that could be performed remotely and less-educated Americans who had jobs that had to be performed in person.

If our society continues to cleave along educational lines, there will be serious negative consequences for our politics, communities, and economy.

It is tempting to respond to this problem by saying “Okay, well then everyone should get a bachelor’s degree,” but we know that many good jobs don’t require bachelor’s degrees, many people are unable or unwilling to engage with college-level work, and college is increasingly expensive.

The real question is: Is there another way?

A recent working paper published by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University may offer a better way forward. Researchers from Rice University and the RAND Corporation examined occupational credentials—post-high school certifications that denote skills or knowledge relevant to a particular field.

The authors found that certifications increased the probability of employment for workers without a bachelor’s degree by 37 percent. As they put it, “this suggests that occupational credentials act as an important signal to employers in the hiring process, especially for those with less than a bachelor’s degree.” This, as one might imagine, also translates to higher earnings.

It is increasingly clear that students need some kind of post-high school education to access more stable, more rewarding, and more remunerative jobs. Creating quality certification programs and helping link students to the training that they need could go a long way in bridging the educational divide.

The post Are Occupational Credentials the Answer to Educational Polarization? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As more students consider moving directly from high school to the workforce, they will need quality career and technical education (CTE) at their schools to provide them with job skills and work experience that will qualify them for good jobs after graduation. Are schools ready to respond to changes in the needs and priorities of their students? If not, what will it take to get them ready? How well are CTE programs in Missouri serving students now? Any district that currently treats technical education as a backwater for kids who “don’t have what it takes” for college is already doing a disservice to its community, and the harm done will only get worse in the coming years.

Today I’m releasing two essays: Career and Technical Education and Workforce Development and Investing in the Future Workforce. Together these reports explore numerous aspects of CTE programs in Missouri and address the following questions:

• How is the current state of Missouri’s workforce affecting its economy?
• Are the priorities and practices of Missouri’s CTE programs aligned with what employers in the state say they need?
• What can Missouri learn from other states that have been successful in bolstering their workforces though CTE?
• What incentives can the state give educators to encourage them to help students earn the credentials that employers value?

To read the full reports, click on the links below.

The post Career and Technical Education: Investing in Missouri’s Future appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

After graduation, districts and schools follow up with their graduates to see what they’re currently doing, and then DESE compiles the data. I connected the DESE data with the federal data set that labels each district with different locale types, ranging from big cities to remote rural areas. You can see the results in the graph at the top of this post (the data may not add up to 100 percent due to data privacy and inability to contact all students).  

Looking at the 2018 data, 33 percent of rural district students entered employment and 35 percent enrolled in a 2-year college following graduation, both of which were the highest percentages for each category out of all locales. On the other hand, rural schools had 21 percent of its students attend a 4-year college or university, the lowest percentage out of all locales.

Workforce preparation for rural communities, thus, should have a strong focus on preparing students for high-demand, well-paying jobs they can enter soon after graduation. This could mean students taking the proper classes and having access to the credentials and skills training they need to be set up for a successful career immediately. Taking job-specific courses or earning college credit during high school should also be an option to help bridge students from high school to technical school.

Missouri needs to consider the data when planning for workforce development. There are good jobs available to Missourians, and the state needs to make sure students are ready to fill them.

The post Workforce Development for Rural Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

If employers are looking for a more skilled workforce, getting more students to earn industry-recognized credentials (IRCs) would be a step in the right direction. IRCs are credentials awarded from industry groups after passing an exam, allowing the bearer to demonstrate proficiency in a specific field. Earning an IRC is a great way to jump immediately from high school to a job.

85 percent of businesses responding to the workforce survey said they have some or considerable difficulty finding applicants with an IRC (only around a quarter of respondents said IRCs were not applicable). According to the survey respondents, IRCs are the most challenging type of educational attainment for employers to find in prospective employees, even including postsecondary degrees.

The variety of survey respondents is also notable. Responses came from a number of industries including healthcare, education, manufacturing, construction, and finance. This is good evidence that the problem of IRC scarcity is widespread and not just confined to pockets of the Ozark economy. The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has approved 81 types of IRC exams; only 16 of those exams were completed successfully by an Ozark student. In total, a mere 470 IRCs were awarded to high school students in the Ozark region in 2017. If each IRC was earned by a different student in the graduating class, then only 8 percent of Ozark graduates would have an IRC. The real number is likely even lower than 8 percent, because one student can earn multiple IRCs.

The survey responses make it clear that there’s unmet demand in the Ozark region for students graduating with an IRC in hand. One way to increase IRC attainment is to offer a financial incentive to schools and teachers. An IRC bonus pay program would give teachers financial compensation for each of their students that earn an IRC. Florida implemented an IRC bonus pay program and saw an explosion in students earning IRCs.

The Ozark region has a workforce problem that IRCs could help solve. It’s time to get creative in finding ways to prepare students for life after high school.

The post An IRC Bonus Pay Program Would Benefit the Ozarks appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Fortunately, the findings from a recent nationwide survey conducted by Gallup, the Strada Education Network, and the Lumina Foundation, suggest that a college degree isn’t necessarily the only thing that employers are interested in. Researchers looked at two types of credentials that can be earned without a college degree and measured their impact on the employability and the earning power of the people who earned them. The credentials studied were the following:

• Certificates “awarded by educational institutions for completion of professionally oriented courses that typically represent a year or less of work.”
• Certifications “awarded by independent bodies that verify specific skills and competencies through testing”

The survey looked at adults 18 to 65 years old who had no postsecondary degree and compared those who had earned a certificate/certification with those who had not. The results suggest that earning a credential offers some real benefits in terms of employment rate and income.

It’s important to note that the study involved subjects of widely varying educational levels. Some had been to college (but hadn’t earned a 4-year degree), while others hadn’t completed high school. Those who hadn’t finished high school are overrepresented in the non-credentialed group, while those who had gone to vocational/technical school are overrepresented in the credentialed group. This means that we can’t easily separate the effect of the credential from the effect of the amount of education a participant has had.

However, the study also found a benefit to having a credential among low-, middle-, and high-income earners:

There’s strong evidence that educational programs that result in students earning these certifications provide real benefits, but what does that mean for Missouri?

It could mean a lot, especially with respect to prioritizing needs when allocating the money Missouri spends on education. Credentialing programs appear to offer a positive return to students on the money invested in them. So why can’t these programs capture the imaginations of the public (and of policymakers) in the way that things like pre-K programs do—even though the case for the long-term benefits of pre-K is anything but ironclad?

Nothing against imagination, but when making spending decisions, policymakers are better off being guided by the facts. Although this survey covered adults aged 18 to 64, investing in high schoolers so they can earn industry-recognized credentials could help students leave high school qualified to enter the Missouri workforce immediately. In this case, the facts are lining up behind credentialing programs as a possible way to help Missouri’s workers and employers alike.

The post What Can Credentials Get You? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

If we had just $10 million to spend on fixing this situation, would it be better to ensure students are career ready before they graduate from high school, or put that money towards those who were part of the 58 percent and have not been successful? To be certain, both are important. But which is the better investment? I think the former.

One of the most high-profile bills in the 2019 legislative session awarded corporate welfare to General Motors. Tacked on to that bill was a measure spending $10 million to create the Fast Track workforce development program. The program will cover tuition for Missourians who are at least 25 years old, make less than $40,000, and want to go back to school to pursue a degree in a “high demand” field. Students are allowed to transfer and can take up to one year off. And when they’re finished, they must remain in the state for three years and be employed full time within twelve months. If students don’t comply with these requirements, the grant will then convert to a loan.

Missouri community college tuition averages $5,750 for in-state students. If a student qualifies for a Pell Grant, most of that cost would be covered. Pell Grants are generally awarded to students with total household incomes below $20,000, which means Fast Track would primarily cover people making between $20,000 and $40,000. Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that a typical Fast Track student received a quarter of their funding from the program and finished their program in two years, which is an extremely conservative estimate Under this scenario, the program could serve a maximum of 7,000 students. It’s a lot of money to put toward a complicated program that likely won’t be able to serve many students and may or may not result in a more skilled workforce in Missouri.

What about the first option—improving the career readiness of our students before they leave high school? One proven way to do this is to create financial incentives for career and technical education (CTE) teachers who make sure their students are career ready. These are students who earn an industry-recognized credential (IRC), such as the Automotive Service Excellence credential or the Certified Nursing Assistant credential. At a cost of just $500 per credential-earning student, with some of that going to the district, some to the CTE student, and some to the teacher, $10 million could improve career outcomes for 20,000 Missourians each year. States that have implemented programs like this have seen exponential growth in the number of students who leave high school with an IRC in hand.

Giving CTE teachers an opportunity to earn a few thousand extra dollars each year is a simple and direct way to improve our workforce. Creating a new government bureaucracy to manage a complex new government program very well may not be.

The post It’s Easier to Prepare Someone than to Repair Them appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

During the 2017–18 school year, over 180,000 high schoolers in Missouri took at least one CTE class, but fewer than 28,000 concentrated (taking three or more classes) in any one area. What’s more, fewer than 8,000 students earned an industry-recognized credential (IRC), a signal to employers that the student has mastered some set of skills. Many Missouri students—especially those not interested in going to college—could benefit from earning an IRC and leaving high school career ready. 

A recent report from ExcelinEd shows that there are thousands of well-paying jobs that could be readily accessible to Missouri’s high schoolers if they were earning the right credentials. According to the report, Missouri met only one out of five indicators of a quality CTE program.

To put in perspective what kind of opportunities students are missing out on, let’s take a look at careers in just two industries. In 2018, some 617 students in Missouri earned an Automotive Service Excellence Certification. But there were over 3,600 job postings requiring that credential, and these jobs paid over $15 an hour last year. The unmet demand is also apparent in digital designing. There were over 3,300 job postings for Adobe Certified Associate and Adobe Certified Expert credentials each—again, these jobs pay at least $15 an hour—yet there were only 146 Missouri high school students who earned an Associate credential, and none received the Expert credential. Perhaps not enough students are interested in these careers to meet the demand, but are they even aware of these opportunities?

One way to improve awareness and options for students is through teacher bonus pay. If CTE teachers have skin in the game—for instance, $50 for every student of theirs who earns an IRC—they would have an incentive to get more students that could excel in a particular field working towards earning an IRC. Florida has such a program and students there earned over 140,000 credentials during the 2016–17 school year. Overall, one in six Florida high school students earned a credential, compared to just one in twenty high school students in Missouri.

Like many states, Missouri has a workforce problem. But with some simple changes, which other states have implemented successfully, we could increase the number of students earning credentials, while aligning those credentials to the job market. Good information paired with the right incentives can help move Missouri’s CTE in the right direction. 

The post CTE in Missouri Is Not Aligned with Needs of Students or Employers appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

When a student is looking to go to work right out of high school, an IRC shows the potential employer that the student has skills needed for that job. If a student is planning on going to college, an IRC can help them gain valuable experience, make some money, and potentially earn college credit. Particularly in industries like agriculture and animal science where there is a lot of student interest, Missouri should look for ways to create clearer pathways for high schools to earn IRCs.

In a recent article from the St. Joseph area, a local teacher discusses how he is observing more students interested in jobs related to agribusiness such as food safety, veterinary science, and conservation. But according to data from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), only three students from the St. Joseph school district passed the MO Agriculture Skill & Knowledge Assessment, an IRC that shows that students have mastered one of 15 areas including farm management and livestock evaluation. Despite interest in veterinary science, no students in the district received the Veterinary Assistant Animal Care Technologies IRC.

It is worth noting that some districts do very well in getting their students credentialed. For instance, even though Jefferson School District had fewer than 50 high schoolers enrolled in 2018, students in the district earned 23 MO Agriculture Skill & Knowledge Assessment certifications.

Nevertheless, Missouri as a whole could do a better job of helping students get a jump start on a career or college. And not just in agriculture-related fields—there are opportunities, albeit limited, for students to specialize in areas like welding, web programming and development, health care, and automotive repair. In 2018, only 7,084 IRCs were earned by Missouri high schoolers and about 2,800 of those were ag-related (for perspective, there are over a quarter-million high schoolers and over 64,000 12^th graders in Missouri).

How can we expand these opportunities and make earning an IRC for career-minded students more of the norm in Missouri? Creating an incentive for teachers and districts through bonus pay is one option. In Florida, teachers are awarded a bonus of $25 to $50 for each student that obtains an IRC. After adopting this policy, IRC obtainment increased from 803 in 2007 to over 86,000 in 2017. North Carolina also has bonus pay for high-performing instructors and over 160,000 IRCs were obtained in 2017.

Missouri has over 500 school districts, all with different strengths and challenges. Establishing a bonus pay program would give districts an incentive to find the best way for them to give more of their students a head start on a career or college.

The post Why Aren’t More Missouri Students Earning IRCs in Agriculture-Related Industries? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The report projects Missouri to be the ninth-highest state in tech growth over the next decade with 2.9 percent growth, ahead of the national 2.1 percent projection. The tech industry includes energy, environmental, life sciences and information technology (IT).

Despite projected growth, Missouri workers may not be prepared to fill the needs of an expanding tech industry, as jobs could outpace the availability of skilled workers. A survey by Gallup of 1,000 Missouri employers find that only 44 percent were satisfied with the current availability of skilled workers, and only 15 percent agree that high schools are preparing students for the workforce. In 2016 one of the largest workforce gaps was in Science and Technology—around a 9 percent gap  between the workforce demand and available workers.

This gap shows the need for more high school graduates prepared to enter the tech field. If students graduate with the proper credentials, they could have access to a high-demand job and enter the workforce immediately. The largest tech sector in Missouri is IT, of which high school students can earn over 15 IT-related industry-recognized credentials (IRCs) approved by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). An IRC is a nationally recognized credential that tests job skills, awarded by a third-party professional organization. In 2018, fewer than 500 IT-related IRCs were earned among Missouri high school students (less than one percent of the graduating class if all test takers were seniors) according to data received from DESE.

Florida and North Carolina have found that providing bonus pay to teachers is one way to get more students to graduate with an IRC. Bonus pay encourages high schools and teachers to focus on the important work of preparing students for a career.

A growing tech sector would be a huge boon to Missouri’s economy. But if we don’t act now to ensure our workforce is ready for these jobs, the potential boon will turn into a missed opportunity.

The post Missouri Needs to Prepare for Expanding Tech Job Market appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In many cases, the “right” credential to have coming out of high school is an industry-recognized credential (IRC). You earn it by passing an exam that is designed not by your school, but by a professional trade organization. There’s nothing wrong with earning a CTE certificate from your school; it can reflect a broad competence in the skills required for a given profession. But an IRC indicates mastery of knowledge specifically chosen by employers who have jobs to fill. It only makes sense that schools should encourage students to earn the credential that their potential employers want them to have.

The graphic at the top of this post shows just a few of the career options that can open up for students who earn an IRC. Others include (but aren’t limited to) education, culinary arts, business, graphic design, and hospitality. Fewer than 3 percent of Missouri high school students earned an IRC in 2017. Moreover, out of 27,437 students who completed three or more CTE classes during the 2016–2017 school year, only 8,565 earned IRCs. Employers are bending over backwards to tell us what students need to learn in order to get hired; shouldn’t we listen to them?

Listen to the podcast.

IRC infographic-1.pdf

The post IRCs Open the Door to Career Opportunities appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• Workforce development wasn’t just mentioned in the speech—it was singled out as one of the two most important policy priorities moving forward. Patrick Ishmael has been out in front of this issue, writing on the importance of workforce development, particularly in the area of vocational training. Readers of this blog may also have seen posts by Emily Stahly on the potential for charter schools to help give Missouri a more skilled workforce, and by Abigail Burrola on how a focus on industry-recognized credentials could better prepare our high-school graduates for good jobs after graduation.
• Infrastructure was the other issue designated as a top priority, particularly the pressing need to fund necessary repairs and improvements to Missouri’s highway system. Back in 2016, Joe Miller wrote a comprehensive paper on options for funding the Missouri Department of Transportation. More recently, Graham Renz and Patrick Tuohey have advocated for user fees as the best way to fund our state’s transportation needs, whether through a gas tax or some form of tolling.
• The Governor noted the drain on the state’s finances caused by Missouri’s high incarceration rate and his desire to avoid building more prisons. Ways to help keep prison populations down include reform of laws governing mandatory minimum sentencing and efforts to help ex-offenders enter the workforce, as Patrick Tuohey has written.
• The need to control the growth in the cost of the state’s Medicaid program was also discussed. Elias Tsapelas has not only written on this topic, but has also looked at measures being taken in other states to address the problem

Even topics mentioned only in passing during the speech have been covered by Show-Me Institute analysts, including telemedicine, tax credit reform, and educational challenges facing children with autism and other disabilities.

It’s encouraging to hear that so many long-overdue reforms may be on the docket during the current legislative session. As we watch to see if 2019 will bring important changes to Missouri policy, we’ll continue to research and advocate free-market solutions that will help move our state forward.

The post State of the State Highlights Show-Me Research appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Hundreds of career and technical education (CTE) programs across Missouri offer practical training in fields such as agriculture, business, health care, culinary arts, construction, computer science, and others. In many cases, students who complete the required coursework are issued certificates to that effect. But a school-issued certificate alone isn’t always enough to ensure students can access the workforce; they need credentials that carry weight with employers in the world beyond school.

Private-sector employers have everything to gain by ensuring that new graduates are ready to start work right away. That’s why many professional associations issue their own industry-recognized credentials (IRCs), such as Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) or Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) certification. CTE students don’t have to take IRC exams to graduate, but passing an exam can save students time and money at the outset of their careers. For example, a CNA certificate that could be earned as part of a student’s high school coursework might otherwise require about 5 months of coursework and several hundred dollars in tuition at a community college.

To promote IRC attainment among high school students, several states have begun offering teachers bonus pay for every student of theirs who passes an IRC exam. For example, for every student who leaves high school ASE certified, the auto shop teacher might receive $25 to $50.

Linking teacher bonuses to IRCs has boosted student IRC attainment in states that have adopted the policy. For example, Florida awards a $50 bonus to a teacher for each student who earns an IRC after taking a course that could earn them college credit in the relevant subject, and $25 for each student who earns an IRC after taking only high-school–level classes. IRC attainment has grown from 803 graduates in 2008 to over 86,000 in 2017.

Similarly, since offering CTE teachers bonus pay when students earn IRCs, North Carolina has seen a 53 percent growth in five years. In the 2016–2017 school year, over 160,000 IRCs were earned. By comparison, there were 8,566 IRCs earned in Missouri the same year (according to information provided by DESE), meaning that Missouri has plenty of room for improvement. Unbelievably, just six high school students passed the Masonry IRC exam and just five passed the Construction IRC exam in Missouri last year.

More students getting IRCs could create a stronger workforce for our state. Other states are finding creative ways to make this happen—shouldn’t Missouri?

The post How Can Missouri Get More Out of Its CTE Programs? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

While it may be true that Missouri’s 2-year and 4-year colleges have room for improvement, business leaders should not overlook the potential to shape high school education to better meet their needs. In particular, the flexibility of the charter school model and ability to focus on career and technical education (CTE) should appeal to businesses and students throughout the state.

Bucking the traditional high school model, Robert Schwartz with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute explains that charter schools could “be co-designed by charter leaders in collaboration with regional employers and community college leaders. This would ensure that its programs were focused on preparing young people for careers in high-growth, high-demand industry sectors like IT, health care, and public services.”

In Fresno, California, a career technical education charter school—the product of coordinated effort by community and business leaders and the Fresno County Superintendent—is opening this fall. Not only does the charter high school’s curriculum align with what industry leaders want, but students can also take college courses at a local community college. In Wisconsin, the Green Bay Area Public School District received a grant from the state department of education to open an innovation charter school that would prepare at-risk students for high-tech jobs.

There is no good reason why similar opportunities are not available to Missouri’s students. Even now, industry leaders could work with local school districts to open a CTE charter school. Better yet, Missouri could allow charter schools to expand throughout the state and authorize universities to sponsor charter schools anywhere, not just in Kansas City and St. Louis.

Instead of just concentrating on higher education or writing off charter schools as only for urban areas, business leaders should seriously consider the role charter schools could play in developing a more skilled workforce.

The post If Business Owners Want a More Skilled Workforce, They Shouldn’t Forget about Charter Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But if the conversation about workforce development ends there, then it will have covered only the “seen” impact of public policy. Instead, policymakers should also consider the unseen consequences of oversubsidizing fields offered through our higher education system and neglecting other possible workforce investments. As the cargo-cultification of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) jobs has escalated in public policy circles in recent years, workforce development policy has increasingly emphasized professions requiring at least a bachelor’s degree, while other quality jobs that don’t require that version of education have been neglected—or even denigrated. 

Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs fame, who’s become a fierce public proponent of jobs of all stripes, may have put it best in this response to a detractor last year:

To be clear—I strongly support education in all its forms. I have a college degree, and as I’ve said many times, it’s served me well. But I believe society is making a terrible mistake by promoting college at the expense of all other forms of education. For instance, the surgeon you reference (who I would indeed prefer to have graduated from an accredited university) will never make it to the hospital to successfully remove my appendix without a functional infrastructure, which depends almost entirely upon an army of skilled tradespeople. And yet, our society clearly values the surgeon far more than mechanic who keeps her car running, or the contractor who put in the roads that allows her to drive to the emergency room.

We need people with formal higher educations. We also need people in professions that don’t require such degrees. The perception—often promoted by four-year institutions seeking tax dollars—that high paying jobs require degrees is plainly wrong.

It certainly remains true that four-year degree holders tend to make more than those who don’t hold such a degree, but while the average salary might be higher, there is a lot of variance in those numbers when you get down to the individual level. I have countless friends in their early 30s with undergraduate and graduate degrees who are scraping by under the twin pressures of loan payments and compressed salaries in both STEM and non-STEM professions. At the same time, I also know countless blue-collar professionals in their early 20s who have been catapulted into life’s comforts with a rising middle class salary thanks to professions like construction that, especially now, have tons of jobs but hardly enough trained professionals to fill them. (We’ve talked about this issue before.) 

Policymakers who believe in limited government need to reassess what the state spends its money on—what the state subsidizes directly and indirectly—and this is as true in the realm of workforce development as it is in other parts of the budget. Surely, STEM industries and other higher education programs deserve attention, but policymakers should exercise considerable caution in treating those jobs as talismanic rather than as components in a much larger, and much more diverse, state jobs portfolio.

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Business leaders have voiced concerns over how unprepared recent graduates are to enter into the workforce, many of them citing the lack of applicable skills as a major problem. The Alabama Community College System projected that over the next year, 5,000 skilled worker jobs will need to be filled in southwest Alabama alone. 

Having recognized this problem, several states are backing programs that would allow students enrolled in vocational training programs to earn credentials at a faster rate, continue to build on those credentials, and keep them no matter where they move. They are considered portable and stackable. Portable in the sense that, as the McGraw-Hill Research Foundation notes, they are “trusted by employers and educational institutions throughout the country… they would be independently verified or accredited”; and “stackable” in the sense that they can be combined with each other to earn industry certifications or even associate’s or bachelor’s degrees.

An example of a portable credential is the National Career Readiness Certificate. This credential measures the test-taker’s ability to solve problems, think and read critically, and understand and use work-related text. The certificate is recognized in 42 states and can be used by employers to help predict an applicant’s ability to succeed in the workplace.

Virginia addressed the need for skilled workers in 2008 by creating the Virginia Career Pathways System. This system includes training programs like apprenticeships so students can earn credit toward a certificate or degree while also getting hands-on training.

Mississippi created a similar system in 2005 that has 4 levels of skills achievement. It starts with an Adult Basic Education Certificate, then moves on to a Manufacturing Skills Basic Certification. At the next level, students can choose the manufacturing skill they want to learn in depth and enroll in a program devoted to it. Finally, the industry knowledge they acquire can be used for college credits toward a degree.

Stackable credentials are more flexible than traditional degrees, appear more in tune with what employers want, and may be collected over time at a lower cost. They are a promising way to help students get the preparation they need to be successful in the job market.

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