White wants to remove stigma from career-path diplomas
Published 7:56 pm Monday, October 7, 2013
State Superintendent John White wants to remove the stigma placed on career-path diplomas that has grown over the last decade.
“In America, where many jobs are now technical in nature and do not require a four-year degree, that seems to be just wrong,” White said in a speech Monday at Sowela Technical Community College. “We’ve placed a stigma on career education and that needs to change.”
Louisiana students now have the option of three diplomas: the college preparatory diploma, which 77 percent of students obtain; the “basic diploma,” which doesn’t qualify them for TOPS; and the “career diploma,” which applies to only 1 percent of graduates.
White has been an advocate of streamlining the three diplomas into one by “ending the complex system” and removing the negative connotation associated with a career diploma.
“The idea that there is a hierarchy of diplomas with career education at the bottom — this seeks to end that,” he said in his proposal.
White wants there to be funding available for a “rigorous technical education” on the high school level.
“It’s expensive to teach kids how to weld or how to be a nurse,” he said. “We need to honor that in our system.”
White said he wants to give local colleges, local industries and high schools “the ability themselves to produce a vision of what these courses and apprenticeships should look like — not mandated from Baton Rouge.”
And with an unprecedented amount of industrial jobs coming to Southwest Louisiana, White added that “there is no other region” in the United States that could benefit more from a technical education.
“There are literally thousands of opportunities. It can be opportunities for Louisiana’s graduates if we provide the opportunities for them to take it,” White said. “If we don’t, the jobs will go to students out of state and out of the country.”
White said an official proposal will be presented to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) in January. In the spring, proposals will be presented to state legislators.
State Superintendent of Education John White. (American Press Archives)
