Texas district to try training program to address growing number of grads unprepared for college or career

Public-school students in Texas are demonstrating a significant gap between workforce “readiness” and subsequent “achievement.”

“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,” notes the Texas Standard, a publication at the University of Texas at Austin.

“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.”

To address this shortfall, the Dallas Independent School District (ISD) is experimenting with career institutes – an innovative approach to preparing students for “high skills, high wages, and high-demand occupations” before they graduate, its website explains.

“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,” said Wilborn P. Nobles III, a Dallas Morning News journalist covering workforce readiness and economic mobility.

“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.” 

Offering students early opportunities to explore vocational options 

The career institutes website currently lists 17 study programs. 

These range from familiar industries such as plumbing and pipefitting, construction and carpentry, and aviation to more specialized areas such as game design and e-sports, phlebotomy and EKG, and cybersecurity. 

“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,” Nobles said. “Maybe they want to work in the plumbing industry. And so they get this hands-on experience.” 

Offering these opportunities before students graduate high school can help reduce the gap between workforce readiness vs. achievement, according to Nobles. 

“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 explained. “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?” 

Although the district’s website describes its vision as providing choices for “high school students” in pursuing different careers, some middle schoolers have been participating. 

Under frequently asked questions, the program emphasizes it has “no grade requirements” to participate in career institutes, which are free to all Dallas ISD students. 

“You can give students the opportunity to see what kind of career options they would like to explore,” Nobles concluded. “But (advocates say) let’s start sooner. Let’s start in elementary school.”