Week One

Last week I heard there were 52 more days until spring!

Every year the Vantage Teachers Organization hosts a scholarship dinner to raise funds to sponsor college scholarships for our students. The February 8 event is combined with our annual Open House, and chicken dinners from Romer’s in Celina will be served from 4:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Open House is from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Stop out at Vantage and see what we have to offer!

February is national Career-Technical Education month. Check our school website at www.vantagecareercenter.com to see what special events will be held to recognize career-technical education this month. Some facts you should know:

127,083 students are studying career-technical education (CTE) in Ohio.

23 percent of Ohio’s students are in workforce development programs (CTE).

27,000 teachers across the nation are members of the Association for Career Technical Education. This number isn’t nearly what it should be, considering that ACTE is the organization that represents career-technical ed interests at the national level to our federal government. It gives visibility and voice to all CTE educators who work in the valuable profession of teaching skilled trades to our youth.

Over the past 10 years, jobs requiring science and engineering skills increased 51 percent. Yet, over 334,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in the last 10 years.

90% of the fastest growing jobs require education past high school.

The recent U.S. manufacturing survey showed that 90 percent of employers reported moderate to severe shortages of skilled workers. Over 300,000 Information Technology (IT) jobs have gone unfilled in the last decade because of a lack of qualified applicants. And yet 52 percent of teens have little or no interest in manufacturing careers.

One last fact I learned is that from 2010 to 2025, up to 95 million baby boomers will leave the U.S. workforce or change their work focus. Only 40 million Generation X and Y’ers will replace them.

ACTE believes every student in this country should go through career-technical education training—Almost all will enter the workforce at some point and should have access to information, resources, tools, and academic rigor to apply those skills.

This blog has been filled with statistics. There are skilled jobs in America and CTE is essential to preparing people for these jobs. A good way to end this post recognizing national Career Technical Education month is to paraphrase the comment ACTE’s Executive Director Jan Bray shared with Ohio’s CTE administrators last week at our legislative meetings: “Career technical education is not about ‘less than’; it’s about application and preparation for what comes next in students’ lives.” Come out to Vantage during the month of February and celebrate CTE with us!