Local school officials embraced a plan state schools Superintendent John Barge unveiled Tuesday at the Whitfield Career Academy to better prepare students for jobs or college.
Under the initiative that begins with the freshman class of 2012, all students must complete a career pathway to get a high school diploma. It’s a plan Barge said is designed to make school relevant and to address the fact that not every student wants to pursue a four-year degree or could meet market demands by doing so.
“What we need to understand is education is not about career and technical or about academics — it’s both,” Barge said. “... What I realize is the value of both academic skills and technical skills.”
Tailoring each student’s education to suit his or her interests is something Dalton Public Schools and Whitfield County Schools officials have set as a goal for some time.
“Perfect alignment,” remarked city schools Superintendent Jim Hawkins. “He gets it.”
“It aligns with what we’re doing here at the Career Academy and (with) Georgia Northwestern (Technical College),” county schools Superintendent Danny Hayes said. “We’ve been talking about building those pathways from our middle school up ... We feel like kids need to be introduced earlier.”
Educators are constantly discussing ways to make school more relevant, to address the problem of kids dropping out because they’re bored and don’t see the point of what they’re doing. In many cases, it’s because schools have adopted a one-size-fits-all, everyone-should-be-college-bound approach to education, Barge said. Whitfield officials recently partnered with Georgia Northwestern to house a campus at the Career Academy and offer more dual enrollment and other options to high school students.
Under Barge’s initiative, students will continue to be introduced to career options in elementary school with an amped up focus on choosing something in middle school. They can change pathways during high school but must eventually settle on one in time to complete it. Barge hopes to eventually have a work-based learning component to every pathway. In some cases, students could complete more than one pathway if scheduling permits.
Barge said one of his goals is having a statewide policy that allows students to graduate as soon as they complete their course requirements, even if they’re older or younger than traditional graduation age. He said he’d also like to one day provide for students who already know the material to get credit simply by passing a pre-course exam. It would allow students to move on to things they need and want to know, he said.
“Guys, if we can’t make education relevant, they can go somewhere else,” Barge said. “They can learn it online.”
State Board of Education member Larry Winter of Dalton said he asked Barge to unveil his plan in Whitfield County. Barge has several ties to the area. About two years ago, he was on the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) committee to re-accredit the school system. The Career Academy was one of the schools committee members visited. Just out of high school, Barge worked for a yearbook publishing company. Southeast High School’s annual was one of the company’s publications.
“This is what industry has longed for,” Winter said of the new education plans. “People in industry that have heard this say ‘Finally, someone who gets it!’”
“It’s what this school was built around,” said Louis Fordham, a vice president at J&J Industries and chairman of the Whitfield Board of Education. “There’s not one path of success. There are thousands.”
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