I strongly support career and vocational education starting in middle school and continuing on through high school.   Each Kansas K-12 student needs to learn employable skills and knowledge so they can qualify for a job at a living wage. 

Currently, only 1% of the billions of dollars spent in Kansas schools each year goes to teach vocational skills for our K-12 students.   It will take strong leadership on the State Board of Education to make sure that relevant, realistic courses are offered to students who want to learn jobs skills before they graduate from high school.   Turning this ship around will not be easy, but I am committed to working together with business and labor leaders to identify the skills to be taught and finding ways to implement these changes in curriculum in our schools as soon as possible.

CLICK below to view my YouTube video on the need for more emphasis on vocational education in Kansas schools.

The Machinists International and other labor unions have been leaders in this area to prepare our kids for the 21st Century jobs.   Below is their position on this high, national priority. 

Machinists Vocational Training Initiative
America’s Edge – Our Skills, Our Kids 

Each decade, 30 million American children enter high school but only 6 million of them ever receive a college degree.   The remaining 24 million either drop out; complete high school and enter the workforce; or attend a community college or university for a couple of years.

Each year, over half a trillion dollars of local, state and federal monies is focused on students bound for college.  Technical and vocational education, by contrast, receives less than two percent of that amount.

Increasingly, blue collar kids find the path to college blocked by exorbitant tuition costs, intense academic competition, static enrollment levels in colleges and universities, and the financial realities facing their families.  Entering the workforce immediately after high school seems their only realistic option.

And yet, America faces a growing skills shortage.  Labor economists predict that "a serious lack of skilled workers will begin in 2005 and grow to 5.3 million in 2010 and 21 million in 2020.

Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) put the issue in perspective. "Today's skill deficiencies and tomorrow's skill demands will require significant investment in education and training. Employers estimate that 39 percent of their current workforce and 26 percent of new hires will have basic skill deficiencies ... Seventy-five percent of the American workforce will need to be retrained merely to retain their jobs."