The Challenges Of Arranging Vocational Ed

Technical vocational education administrators are facing difficulties internally and externally to improve the image of vocational education. The biggest challenges are fighting misconceptions, meeting the demands of the changing workforce, and finding the money to secure the latest technology.

Administrators hope to get more funding from the federal government and are working with businesses to meet their needs. Improving the image of vocational education continues to rank among the greatest job challenges for vocational education administrators. When it comes to preserving and promoting programs, you'll find them in the forefront.

Whether they're dealing with wary communities, intractable counselors, skeptical businesses or uninformed politicians, administrators are vocational education's first line of offense in the battle to move career and technical education from over there to the mainstream. They're employing a variety of strategies to do that. "Historically, there are two questions, two points that sort of stick in my craw," sighs Gerald Paist, superintendent of Pathfinder Regional Vocational-Technical High School in Palmer, Massachusetts. "One of them is, you're not doing well at the local high school. Why don't you try Pathfinder?' and the other is, you don't want to go to Pathfinder. You're too smart for that, and you can't go to college from there."

These are times of daunting, heightened challenges for vocational administrators, requiring expertise in wooing business partners, providing the budget-busting technologies and equipment students need for today's workplace, keeping up with an array of new government programs and mandates, and discerning vocational education's role in their implementation. Yet the more things change the more they remain the same. Along with all the 21st-century issues, vocational administrators still face a maddening carryover from decades past: the struggle to upgrade vocational education's image internally and externally, in communities and counselors' offices alike.

Battling misconceptions about vocational education continues to be "a big challenge," says Jim Orr, president of the 1,100-member National Council of Local Administrators, an organization of individuals whose main responsibility is managing vocal-tech programs. It's still an important part of the job, echoes Jacqueline Cullen, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of Vocational Administrators. And the key to upgrading that image, vocational administrators agree--and to meeting the demands of the changing workplace--is simply getting out and stumping for career and technical education.

"I talked to a [vocational] director who kept a record last year of all the evening meetings he had attended. It came to 105," Cullen recalls. "It might be the Rotary Club, it might be PTAs, it might be meeting with different businesses and industries, and it might be school board meetings. I don't know that 105 are atypical. If you're doing the job you need to be out there. If you're not at the table you're going to be dealt out." Image is everything