In Bronx, the New Face of Vocational Education

Eyeing a scrolling stock ticker flashing the latest prices, a 16-year-old high school junior, Raymond Rodriguez, said the other day: "That's like my morning coffee." Wendys International was down; Intel was down; Allied Waste was down, and then another announcement rolled across the ticker: Graduation is June 5. It was 10:30 a.m. at the Bronx School of Law and Finance, a small high school on the eighth floor of the gigantic John F. Kennedy campus in the Marble Hill section of the Bronx where students choose between two majors — law or finance — and then rack up a laundry list of practical skills, from how to wear a suit to how to trade stocks. (Mr. Rodriguez, a finance major, has invested about $100,000 in virtual dollars in Coca-Cola, Kellogg, and Xerox.)

This is the new face of vocational education, updated for the 21 st century, where securities class replaces shop and, rather than heading to factories, students serve summer internships at places such as McKinsey, Deutsche Bank, and Citi.

"Vocational — that word is out. They're now career schools," the school's principal, Evan Schwartz, said.

Having posted among the most remarkable results in the city — Regents scores and graduation rates are well above the citywide average — the new schools, known by the name career and technical education, could also become the new face of New York City's public schools. In his State of the City address this year, Mayor Bloomberg named expanding CTE schools a main priority, announcing that three CTE "demonstration" schools would be opened by 2009.

"Traditionally, such career and technical education has been seen as an educational dead-end," Mr. Bloomberg said. "We're going to change that."

Although not technically accredited as a CTE school (that requires going through a Byzantine process the state Board of Regents is looking to revamp), Law and Finance is part of the National Academy Foundation, a national umbrella group for CTE, and it receives federal vocational education grants.

It has also caught the attention of CTE's chief proponent at City Hall, Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott, who dropped in unannounced for a visit last month.

Introducing his CTE push, Mr. Bloomberg declared, "College is not for everyone, but education is."

At Law and Finance, the course-load may be untraditional — even non-finance and law courses hoe the career theme, with English teachers instructing on e-mail etiquette as well as "Catcher in the Rye" and history teachers assigning Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat" — but college is a universal must.

Students said they are trailed ruthlessly by the school's college counselor, who is referred to as Mrs. D. "It's like you walk down the hallway, there goes Mrs. D," a senior, James Calvin, said. "It's like she's following you."

Last year, 95% of the school's first graduating class was accepted to college, and 80% of those seniors were headed to four-year colleges, Mr. Schwartz said.

Far from being in tension, students said the school's career focus drives them to college.

"It's like, 'Wow, this is what I could be doing,'" a junior finance major, Deyanirse Jourdain, said. "I enjoyed it so much," a senior, Caswell Simpson, said of his summer at Deutsche Bank, where he worked with clients based in Germany. "If Deutsche Bank was college, that's my dream college. That's Harvard for me."

But, knowing that his real dream job requires a college degree, Mr. Simpson said he set his sights on a Deutsche Bank internship for college students and applied to 10 colleges.

Vocational schools have been criticized for tracking students prematurely. At Law and Finance, course options are limited; students take between two and three of their major courses each semester, and the school offers only two Advanced Placement classes, Latin and American History.

Regina Flannery, the director of the New York City National Academy Foundation schools, which oversees the Bronx program and dozens of others, said of the problem of lack of diversity in coursework, "If I could figure that out, I'd be president."

But students — including one senior who said she no longer likes law and finance — said they do not feel pigeon-holed.

Saying the small size creates a tight-knit community, they compared Law and Finance to a family.

"It's the best," Mr. Rodriguez said. "It prepares you for the real world. Not a lot of other high schools do."