Saving Our Young Brothers — A Study and A Project

First, the study.

As a student of public policy, it’s of particular interest to see a true experimental design done on an issue as near and dear to my heart as education. As my friend Dr. Marvel tells it, they’re not cheap to do.

So it was with real excitement that I read about the results of a long-term study on the effects of career academies in the Washington Post yesterday. The key takeaway was this:

And yet, because the career academy research by the New York-based MDRC (formerly known as the Manpower Demonstration Research Corp.) was so detailed and professional, we have just learned that the academies accomplished something perhaps even better than higher passing rates on reading exams. They produced young men who got better-paying jobs, were more likely to live independently with children and a spouse or partner and were more likely to be married and have custody of their children.

Well, for a long time, at least in my conversations with my peers, I have been an advocate of vocational education. I think it’s narrow-minded to say that everyone has to go to college in order to be successful, when there are so many other trades and professions that are unionized, pay well, and cannot easily be outsourced. Of course, the students in the article weren’t only steered towards trades, but towards a variety of careers, and one of the key components was having all of these positive role models of success around them, even if it didn’t necessarily translate into the statistics that we normally check for. After all, it seemed to translate into the statistics that matter.

Now, the project.

Advanced manufacturing is, to me, the next wave, the next big thing, and likely one of the main engines of our future prosperity. I once was reading about a woman who became a welder, and it turned out that she wasn’t in there with a blowtorch like, say, J-Lo in that one video (worth watching, always). Instead she was doing some sort of chemical process with high-grade ceramics.

This sort of thing requires lots of math and science training, as well as precision skill; and mainly, we’re not producing a population that can do that. Folks are heading into law and finance instead of productive activities. So it’s great to see a program like the Austin Polytechnical Academy happening. The approach they’re taking could lead to, not only a renaissance for the communities in which they are working, but the recreation of the strong industrial base that has been eroding for decades in this country.

Sez the founder:

“Right now [overseas] competition has competitive advantage among unskilled workers. […] Where we still have an advantage, and even where a lot of jobs are coming back, is in making complex products. Making complex products requires an educated workforce and skilled workforce as well as a much more dynamic management and more deeply committed and creative owners,” he says. “Making complex products is the point were you have the highest convergence of public and private interests.”

Full article here.