A Brooklyn High School Takes a New Approach to Vocational Education

The building and its surroundings in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, may look run-down, but inside 150 Albany Avenue may sit the future of the country’s vocational education: The first 230 pupils of a new style of school that weaves high school and college curriculums into a six-year program tailored for a job in the technology industry.

By 2017, the first wave of students of P-Tech — Pathways in Technology Early College High School — is expected to emerge with associate’s degrees in applied science in computer information systems or electromechanical engineering technology, following a course of studies developed in consultation with I.B.M.

“I mean, in 10th grade, doing college work?” said Monesia McKnight, 15, as she sat in an introduction to computer systems course taught by a college professor. “How great is that?”

The United States has the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. Yet many with four-year degrees are facing a transforming economy where jobs require less generalized types of education and more of the skills that many college graduates lack, in science, technology, engineering or math.

Into this breach, school systems around the country have been aiming to start new high schools like P-Tech. Officials in Chicago were so taken by New York’s school that they opened five similar schools this year with corporate partners in telecommunications and technology. Besides New York and Illinois, education officials in Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, North Carolina and Tennessee have committed to creating such schools, and the Obama administration has recommended that Congress provide more money for vocational education — the preferred name is career and technical education, or C.T.E. — to promote this approach.

A year from now, New York City plans to open two more schools just like P-Tech, focusing on other growing industries in the city, possibly including health care. A fourth one is planned to open in September 2014. The State Board of Regents is also trying to develop assessment exams for this type of school, perhaps one that could be substituted for one of the usual Regents tests.

“When we view high-quality C.T.E. programs, we see how engaged those students are and what clear aspirations they have for their future,” said John B. King Jr., the state education commissioner. “Unfortunately, that’s not always present in some of our struggling schools.”

P-Tech, which began last year with a ninth grade and now has a 10th grade, is inside Paul Robeson High School, which is being phased out because of poor performance. Students attend from 8:35 a.m. to 4:06 p.m., in 10-period days that intersperse traditional classes like math and English with technology and business-centric courses like “workplace learning,” which teaches networking, critical thinking and presentation skills. Second-year students are offered physics and global studies as well as the business courses and college-level courses in speech or logic and problem solving — or both. There is also a six-week summer academy for geometry.

The objective is to prepare students for entry-level technology jobs paying around $40,000 a year, like software specialists who answer questions from I.B.M.’s business customers or “deskside support” workers who answer calls from PC users, with opportunities for advancement.

Stanley S. Litow, the president of I.B.M.’s International Foundation, the company’s philanthropic arm, and a former deputy schools chancellor in New York, said that the P-Tech curriculum was mapped backward: I.B.M.’s own employees were analyzed to learn what skills a student would need.

Each student also is paired with a mentor from the company, as is the principal, Rashid F. Davis; students take trips to I.B.M. facilities to learn such things as how computer chips are made; the company helped train the school’s 18 teachers, and it provides a full-time liaison based at the school to work with faculty from the New York City College of Technology and the City University of New York, which also helped develop the course work. Mr. Litow said that while no positions at I.B.M. could be guaranteed six years in the future, the company would give P-Tech students preference for openings. They would also be well-trained for other information technology jobs, Mr. Litow said.

“Because that is the problem,” he said. “Too few kids have these skills.”