A plan to build new vocational high schools in the city is gaining ground, a signal that the Department of Education is moving in a new direction after years of disinterest in such schools.

An executive with experience opening career-tracked schools is starting work at the education department this week, and sources said City Hall officials are hearing details of a plan that would build several new “model” schools across the city in the next few years.

The move follows lobbying from business and labor groups that say the city’s economy depends on training more skilled workers. The groups said a recent report on career schools from the city comptroller, William Thompson, has also catalyzed interest. The report found that, despite outperforming other high schools in areas such as graduation rates and test scores, vocational schools have been losing staff and students steadily.

An investment in high schools tracked to specific careers would be a significant reversal on another level, too. The education department has focused on building new schools that prepare students for college, but while students at the city’s 23 full-time career-tracked schools and roughly 189 career programs sometimes go on to four-year colleges, they are also in a position to move directly into the work force.

Law, accounting, real estate, automobile repair, culinary arts, and restaurant are among the industries programs target.

“I have more faith that the Department of Ed is actually going to push this more than they have been,” a vice president at the city teachers union, Michael Mulgrew, said yesterday after a meeting with the career and technical education program’s new tsar at the department, Gregg Betheil.

A spokeswoman for the education department, Melody Meyer, would not say whether the department is moving to expand programs. But she said an effort to improve career education is ongoing.

Mr. Mulgrew said the schools’ results are bringing them extra attention, citing an average lead of 18 percentage points over other students on state Regents exams. The chairman of a panel on career education, Stanley Schair, said his group, the Advisory Council for Career and Technical Education, which represents industry and labor groups, has also been encouraged. After representatives from the mayor’s office attended a recent meeting, the group is hoping for good reception on its proposal to build several new “model” career schools, Mr. Schair said. He also cited Mr. Betheil’s appointment as evidence of a renewed interest.

Mr. Betheil began work this week after spending 15 years opening career-tracked schools. He said yesterday that career education poses no apparent conflict with the department’s record. Mayor Bloomberg’s Children First program and career schools share a single goal, he said: to provide students who leave city schools with a menu of high-quality career and college options.