Vocational Schools Work Better, Report Says

Labor and business groups are calling for a dramatic expansion in vocational high schools after a report released yesterday showed that the schools are graduating more students and losing fewer dropouts than are city schools overall, even as advocates say support for them has stalled.

In the class of 2005, 63% of career school students graduated in four years compared to 58% citywide, and just 10% dropped out compared to 15% citywide, a 2006 state Board of Regents report found. Career school students also performed far better on Regents exams, with more than 80% gaining high scores in math, English, and science compared with 55% or less citywide.

Yet the 22 city high schools that teach such skills as auto mechanics, fashion design, and podcasting alongside the traditional curriculum receive $265 less per student in funding, and just 12% of career programs have been given state certification, the report said.

Advocates blamed the low numbers on the Department of Education. Applications for state approval must be shepherded by a local school district, but the schools chancellor, Joel Klein, has not supported career training schools, they said.

"They've been stepchildren at the Board of Education for a long time," the president of the teachers union, Randi Weingarten, said. "Now we're concerned they'll become orphans."

In a statement, a Department of Education spokeswoman, Marge Feinberg, said the department plans to expand the programs. "We are working with the state to provide more certified programs, and our Fair Student Formula provides a new and more equitable funding stream to our schools," she said.

The formula will raise funding levels at 12 vocational high schools in the next months, the report said.

A panel on vocational education that includes labor, business, and higher education groups, the Advisory Council for Career and Technical Education, has been working with department officials on a plan to improve career education, possibly through building more vocational high schools and expanding career programs into middle schools, the chairman of the council, Stanley Schair, said.

But Mr. Schair said he has seen no evidence that the department will follow through with his recommendations, which he said would help not just the industries his group represents — which include fields in need of skilled workers, such as construction, engineering, and graphic design — but also the students in the city schools.

"Too much in the past we've had a Chinese wall between career preparation and academics. That doesn't have to be," he said.