Beyond Shop Class: Training students for all careers.

• Author: Rhode, Scott
• Position: EDUCATION

Blazers, blouses, and skirts hang on racks, but this isn't a clothing boutique. In the Enterprise and Entrepreneurship lab at Martin Luther King Jr. Technical High School in Anchorage, students can borrow professional attire for a job interview or presentation. That's just one way King Tech helps guide students into a career.

Entrepreneurship is a long way from the vocational school King Tech started as in 1974. At that time, shop class was for "hobbyesque" crafts and home economics was, well, for homes, says Kern McGinley, principal of King Tech. Nowadays, auto shop and carpentry are taught alongside nursing, cooking, video production, and, yes, starting a business--all under the umbrella of career and technical education (CTE).

The transformation came in 2006. When Congress reauthorized the Perkins Act--first enacted in 1984 to provide federal funds for vocational education--the term "vocational education" was replaced with "career and technical education."

The old terminology will fade as generations change, says Cathy LeCompte, director of Alaska Vocational Technical Center (AVTEC) in Seward. The school operated by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development was established to crank out welders, diesel mechanics, and cooks for the newly discovered Prudhoe Bay oil fields. Those remain core programs, yet in the 21st century AVTEC also trains modern millwrights in the use of 3D printers and automated CNC routers.

Hands-on tinkering isn't just for shop class; it's also part of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), another educational trend that's gained momentum since 2006. As far as the Anchorage School District (ASD) is concerned, STEM is a subset of CTE: it's one of twelve "career clusters." The others are agriculture, business management, communications, construction, education, health science, hospitality, human services (which includes both counseling and personal care, like hairstyling), information technology, manufacturing, and transportation.

Missy Fraze, ASD's acting director of CTE, says about half of middle and high school students are involved in a program in some way. That involvement boosts graduation rates: compared to 82 percent of ASD's general population. King Tech has a 97 percent graduation rate, among the highest in the city. Kids get excited to be there, says Fraze, and CTE promotes a passion for learning.

Center of Attention

Before 2018, King Tech was King Career Center, where students from Girdwood to Chugiak could access equipment and expert teachers. About 800 part-time students still visit King Tech each day, split between morning and afternoon sessions. What changed in...