Bill seeks to help vocational students enter the workforce

The Missouri House will take up legislation designed to help high-school graduates with career and technical education enter the workforce.

The bill's sponsor, state Rep. Kathy Swan, R-Cape Girardeau, is optimistic the bill will become law. A House committee unanimously approved the measure late last week, sending it to the full House.

Swan's measure would create a career and technical education -- or CTE -- certificate, which students would receive for completing specialized, vocational training courses.

Swan said employers are looking to hire prepared, high-school graduates for jobs that don't require an associate or four-year degree. She said the certificates would allow employers to know these job applicants have specialized training. The certificate program also would boost the portfolio for students seeking to enroll in postsecondary education.

In 2014, Missouri had a high-school graduation rate of 87.3 percent. But Swan said not all high-school graduates enroll in college. Less than 66 percent of students across the country enrolled in college immediately after high school, she said.

She said the opportunity to obtain a CTE certificate also may encourage students, who may be thinking of dropping out, to finish high school.

"This helps get them to graduate," she said.

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education would be responsible for creating the policies to implement the certificate program.

Rich Payne, director of the Cape Girardeau Career & Technology Center, welcomes the measure, which passed the House last year but failed to get out of the Senate. Payne said the certificate program would give "added value" to vocational training and its importance in the job market.

Payne, who has served as director of the career center for 16 years, said the public too often thinks of vocational education as a lesser goal than going to college. But Payne said that belief is wrong. Many employers are looking for high-school graduates with vocational skills. Such jobs can command good salaries, often higher than those made by college graduates, he said.

"Kids, when they hear of college, they think of a four-year liberal arts degree," Payne said. But he said the focus should be on all postsecondary training, not strictly college. "We need to emphasize that all of our students need some type of postsecondary education to be marketable in this economy."

Payne cited the case of one of his students who learned welding while at the vocational school. After high school, the student enrolled in a welding school. He is now a professional welder, earning $120,000 a year, Payne said.

The certificate program would help students and the public see the value of vocational training, he said.

"I think this certificate program shines a spotlight on career and technical education and lifts it up a bit in everybody's eyes," Payne said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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