About 76 percent of Texas public school students graduate high school prepared to enter college or the workforce — a statistic that Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath likes to highlight.
However, as Morath himself has acknowledged, six years after graduation, only 36 percent of those students go on to earn a bachelor’s degree, associate’s degree or some kind of trade credential.
What can Texas public schools do to close that gap?
Wilborn P. Nobles III, who covers workforce readiness and economic mobility for the Dallas Morning News, said that 40% slip between readiness and achievement can be attributed in part to students feeling the lack of a clear path after high school.
“When students are in school and they’re just trying to go through the motions and get all the things they need to get that diploma, there is a lack of consideration around what they want to do after high school,” he said. “What we’re seeing right now among different school leaders is there are these conversations around how soon do we need to begin putting career exploration opportunities in front of students?”
Nobles said in Dallas, some middle school students benefit from mobile career labs.
“You can give students the opportunity to see what kind of career options they would like to explore,” he said. “But (advocates say) let’s start sooner. Let’s start in elementary school.”
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Nobles said Dallas ISD is in many way a model for workforce readiness programming in the K-12 school system.
“Dallas ISD has these career institutes, right, where students can go there and they can learn how to pick up trade skills. So maybe it’s welding,” he said. “Maybe they want to work in the plumbing industry. And so they get this hands-on experience.”
Students can also take dual credit college and high school classes, so they can graduate with an associates degree and a high school diploma at the same time.
“If you can get an associate’s degree while you’re still in high school through these programs, it’s free,” Nobles said. “Whereas you go to college right after high school and you have to… You might be dealing with student loans or you might be dealing with all these other different expenses.”
Nobles said all of these efforts help students see they have options outside of going straight into a four-year degree.
“We used to really put this emphasis on getting the bachelor’s degree and beyond, and there weren’t that many shout-outs to folks who were in what you would call the blue-collar fields,” he said. “Nowadays we’re seeing a lot of these folks who, if they went through the trade route and they kept working at it and maybe they got a supervisor position or something like that, their starting salary may be somewhere between $50,000 to $60,000 and it’ll keep going up from there.”
There is also a proposition on the ballot this November — Proposition 1 — that will increase funding for technical education.
“Texas voters will get to decide if the state should create this new $850 million funding source for the Texas State Technical College,” Nobles said. “This is a system of public two-year campuses across the state where students can get the technical and workforce training credentials to work in like construction and plumbing.”
The election is on Nov. 4 this year, and early voting starts Oct. 20. You can get more information about what’s on the ballot at www.votetexas.gov
