Mayor Bloomberg is widening his approach to education, announcing a new focus on workforce preparation and a toughening of standards for entering ninth grade.

The workforce initiative will be kicked off at three new demonstration schools set to open in 2009. It is being pitched as an update and improvement on the vocational schools of years past.

“Traditionally, such career and technical education has been seen as an educational dead end,” Mr. Bloomberg said in announcing the initiative during his State of the City address yesterday. “We’re going to change that. College isn’t for everyone, but education is.”

The move is pulling the Department of Education in a new direction. The department has devoted much of the last five years to opening new schools for those whom college prep is almost a missionary enterprise. Now, its portfolio office, where new schools are created, will have to create three very different kinds of schools.

Career schools work with industry groups to equip students with very specific job skills, but they have also produced significantly better academic results than the rest of the city’s high schools, with students scoring higher on Regents exams.

Chancellor Joel Klein said the types of industries the three new career schools will prepare for has not yet been decided. One detail is known, however: At least one school will stretch from kindergarten straight through to ninth grade.

A task force comprising a mix of education and business leaders will spearhead the project.

Mr. Klein said the career initiative does not represent a significant philosophical shift for either him or the mayor. Of the notion that all students should go to college, Mr. Klein said, “That’s a model we gave up a long time ago in New York.”

The mayor also announced yesterday that he is expanding his ban on so-called social promotions to eighth-graders. The ban means next year’s eighth-graders will not move onto high school unless they hit a certain level on state tests and pass certain classes. Following similar policies in lower grades, students who do not meet standards will get one more shot at summer school, but if they do not improve there they will not move onto high school.

The policy could affect a substantial number of eighth-graders next year. Had the policy been in effect last year, school officials said about 16,000 of 77,000 total eighth-graders would have been sent to summer school. Promotion rates after summer school are generally about 50%.

The promotion ban got mixed reviews yesterday, with a parent advocate, Leonie Haimson, declaring that “holding back kids doesn’t work.”

The teachers union president, Randi Weingarten, praised the plan. She also joined business leaders in praising M r . Bloomberg’s career and technical schools expansion — an initiative both groups have been seeking for years.

The president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, Kathryn Wylde, said her group is already preparing to mobilize “a pan-industry effort” to aid the career school task force.

Both new education initiatives come as New York hikes its standards for high school graduation. Next year’s ninth-graders will be the first class that will have to pass several Regents exams in order to get a diploma.