Built in the early 1970s, Santa Maria High School’s auto shop serves as a classroom, a storage facility, and a mechanic’s workroom.
Fluorescent lights flicker overhead as students gaze intently at a projector screen hanging on the back wall. There’s the distinctly pungent scent of motor oil and grease in the air.
A silent army of vehicles—all in different states of disassembly— stands vigil as shop teacher Lorin Cuthbert explains the importance of taking precise measurements.
Being off by even one one-thousandth of an inch, he says, could ruin the data.
“We’re in the real world here. It’s not just theoretical,” Cuthbert reminds his students. “It’s not like a math class where you just have a bunch of numbers. In this class, the numbers have meaning.
“If you’re repairing parts in the engine of someone’s car and you say, ‘Yeah, that valve is good. I checked it,’ and your measurement is wrong, you’re not doing your job,” he says. “If that valve is off by even five one-thousandths of an inch, it’s worn out.”
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For the past few decades, Cuthbert has been teaching teenagers at Santa Maria High School much more than just how to change their cars’ oil.
Yes, students enrolled in Cuthbert’s beginning classes do learn that basic-yet-important skill. But as their education progresses, the students become capable of more advanced tasks, such as reading an alignment machine, restoring classic cars, or overhauling a defunct engine.
They’re important skills for kids to have,” Cuthbert said. “They’re skills that can lead to successful careers.”
And for some of his students, that seems to be exactly what’s happening.
“Senior Angel Espinosa and junior Jaime Meraz are both in Cuthbert’s advanced auto mechanics class and are members of the school’s racing team. Through their connections in the club, the boys have been offered positions on professional racer Cruz Pedregon’s top fuel team upon graduation.
“We’ll get to move to Indianapolis and work on racecars,” Espinosa beamed. “It’s a major thing for the [school’s racing] team, because there’ll be two of us out there in the real world working, and it’ll get out that the team does good work.”
Of course, not all of Cuthbert’s students are going to have such glamorous job opportunities, but that doesn’t mean other careers stemming from a background in auto mechanics won’t be as worthwhile.
Exposure to these kinds of skills during high school, Cuthbert said, could put a teenager on the path to becoming a mechanic or small business owner, especially if he isn’t interested in pursuing a college education.
“Not everyone is a white-collar person who wants to sit behind a desk eight hours a day,” he said. “A lot of people enjoy working with their hands and working with tools, and they can make a living doing that.”
Nonetheless, the dismal state of California’s economy, along with high school curriculum changes brought on by legislation such as the No Child Left Behind Act, are jeopardizing vocational courses like Cuthbert’s auto mechanics class.
“When it comes to funding, electives are the ones at the end of the chain,” said Cuthbert, who also chairs the school’s industrial arts department. “And the vocational courses are sometimes hurt more from budget cuts because those classrooms cost more to run than other more traditional, text-book based classes.
“And it’s a shame because those classes are the reason why a lot of students come to school,” he added.
Getting left behind
According to information from the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), a vocational training advocacy group, the number of students enrolled in career-oriented classes has increased nationwide from approximately 9.6 million students in 1999 to about 15.2 million in 2007.
“CTE is kind of the hidden secret of education,” association representative Sabrina Kidwai said. “We’ve always struggled with a bit of an image issue. In the past, it was thought that’s where you stuck bottom-of-the-rung students. But in the last 20 years, CTE courses have changed dramatically. The coursework has become more rigorous and relevant, integrating with issues such as sustainability, health care, engineering.”
Additionally, Kidwai said, vocational classes go beyond their traditional counterparts by “teaching students career skills and how to think outside of the box—things you can’t teach them out of a book.”
With such glowing results, one would probably expect California’s school systems to have booming vocational programs. However, data from the California Department of Education show almost the exact opposite.
According to Department of Education statistics, about 66 percent of high school students in the early ’90s were enrolled in some kind of vocational class. As of 2007, that number was cut in half to about 30 percent.
That trend has revealed itself locally as well. Five years ago, for example, Santa Maria High School’s industrial arts program offered a total of 21 courses. Today, that number is down to six, Cuthbert said. And that’s just one department at one school.
Undoubtedly, there are many possible reasons for such a dip in enrollment. Lack of funding is a no-brainer. But, according to many teachers and school administrators, there’s one factor that started chipping away at the foundation of vocational programs long before the economy went south: the notorious No Child Left Behind Act.
Signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2002, the act requires, among other things, that all American students achieve proficient or above average scores in core subjects by 2014. The act also requires states to test students’ proficiency in core subjects in order to receive funding from the government.
Since its inception, the law has invited both positive and negative claims. Some people argue it increases accountability among schools and generates higher test scores. Others counter that it creates a cookie-cutter curriculum and pressures schools, districts, and states to manipulate test results.
But another less-known consequence of the act, said Santa Maria High School’s Cuthbert, is a decrease in funding for vocational courses.
“If a student’s grades aren’t doing well, they get pulled out of electives and put into remedial core classes,” he said. “And then the district will turn around and say they’re shutting down the elective classes because they’re too small or there’s not enough student interest. It’s frustrating, but there’s not a lot they can do because of No Child Left Behind.”
Currently, the Santa Maria Joint Union High School District is in “program improvement” status, which means its schools aren’t making adequate yearly academic progress in core subjects. Academic progress is determined by a number of things, such as test scores and graduation rates. Schools under the improvement status are expected to complete certain requirements, which can include creating more remedial classes to help struggling students.
“If a student is not proficient in math and English, there will be an intervention,” said Kathy Frazier, the district’s assistant superintendent of programs, testing, and curriculum. “Sometimes decisions need to be made in the best interest of the student. If they’re not proficient, something needs to be done [to change that].”
Still, some teachers are frustrated by the changes.
“I’ve had kids tell me, ‘I can’t take your class because I have to take a remedial class.’ But I think the only thing we’ve learned about remediation is that it doesn’t work,” said Jim English, a welding teacher and head of the agriculture department at Righetti High School.
English, who’s been teaching in the district for more than 30 years, said he’s seen the “pendulum go back and forth” between emphasizing academic or vocational curriculums. But the key to developing strong students, he said, is to integrate the two.
“To say all students should go to college is not realistic, and to say all students should only get college prep classes is ridiculous,” he said.
Santa Maria High School’s Cuthbert agrees: “One of the biggest worries I have is that [the nation] focuses so much on core curriculum and going to college,” he said. “But Santa Maria is largely a blue-collar town. It’s not like major metropolitan areas with lots of white-collar jobs. Many of the kids going to high school here are going to stay in the Santa Maria Valley, and they’re going to need jobs.
“I’m not blaming any individual person; it’s just how things have worked out,” Cuthbert said. “There seems to be a mentality that everyone goes to college, and if they don’t they’re a second-class citizen.”
Assistant superintendent Frazier said the district and school board do their best to acknowledge the benefits of vocational training and try to back it up with funding.
“We find that students can be exposed to both,” she said. “It’s always a challenge, but you can’t lose sight of the fact that we have to put the students first. We have to give them the best high school experience possible because they don’t have the luxury of waiting out the economy.”
Frazier said since the state started making drastic reductions to education funding, the district has managed “to shield most of those cuts away from the classroom.”
But it’s up in the air whether or not the school board will be able to maintain that pattern. Based on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s budget proposal, the district is looking at approximately $4.3 million in cuts for the 2010-11 school year. And it’s definitely not alone in the shadow of the ax.
“Everybody in education has taken drastic cuts. No one has been spared. All districts are scrambling to find ways to finance programs,” said Tony Bauer, the Regional Occupational Program representative for Northern Santa Barbara County. “The important thing to remember is that this is not all the [districts’] making. This is a problem from Sacramento.”
Bauer said electives, like vocational classes, are typically looked at first because “you can’t cut math and science and English and social studies.”
However, he went on to say that vocational classes are considered “very stable” compared to other electives because they get money outside of the district’s general fund, through state and federal grants. To gain access to such funds, districts are required to submit lengthy applications and can only use money to buy certain equipment.
These grants are the saving grace for many vocational programs in California, including those in the Santa Maria Joint Union School District.
“Our district is really good about going after the funds. It’s a lot of paperwork, but it’s worth it,” said John Crandall, a wood shop teacher at Righetti High School.
Crandall said the money the school receives enables him to keep his shop up to date. He recently used grant money to buy two new table saws “with pretty amazing safety features.”
“Those alone cost $8,800,” he said. “We would never have been able to buy those without the CTE funds.”
Still, that money can only go so far and for so long.
“You can use it to buy equipment, but not materials,” Crandall explained.
As a result, he said, “We’re very conscientious about the amount of material we use in class because it’s not a very fun class if you don’t have wood.”
For now, students are still draining oil, kicking up clouds of sawdust, and snapping safety goggles into place. But they’re also facing increased competitiveness for grants and an uncertain state budget.
“We’re all holding our breath to see how it works out,” Crandall said.
Contact News Editor Amy Asman at aasman@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 28 – Feb 4, 2010.