NC Lagging in Workforce Development - Half community college students need remediation

RALEIGH — A lack of education and vocational training — specifically in technology, science, and biotechnology fields — has left the North Carolina public school system lagging in the competitive race of building a competent workforce to attract new corporations and businesses to the state.

Martin Lancaster, president of the North Carolina Community College system, said the NCCC is doing its best to bridge the gap across the state through tech prep and other programs, but he thinks the state is on a collision course with disaster in preparing the workforce for the future.

“Forty-eight percent of recent high school graduates that enroll in community college need remediation in either reading, writing, or mathematics,” he said. “It’s a very bad sign that puts the North Carolina economic future at risk. If North Carolina is going to be an economy based on knowledge, then we need to do better at our high school and community college level.”

Part of the problem, Lancaster said, is that students aren’t challenged on the high-school level. Most, he said, end up getting a general high school diploma that only can get them a job flipping hamburgers. “Almost any job of the future is going to require math and science skills if you’re going to be successful beyond menial tasks.”

This news doesn’t bode well for many of the corporations looking for sites to build new facilities.

A report by The Workforce Stability Institute in Greensboro said employers are increasingly concerned about maintaining a stable workforce. “They need competent, dedicated, and effective workers to serve their customers to fulfill their missions… It is frustratingly difficult to find, recruit, and hire the caliber of employees that companies desire today.”

Carly Fiorina, former North Carolina resident and current CEO of Hewlett Packard, said most industries are technology-based and are looking for a well-educated workforce.

”Keep your tax incentives and your highway interchanges,” she once told the National Governors Association. “We will go where the highly skilled people are… Education is at the heart of everything, I believe. You must, we must together continue to reinvent and re-engineer our education systems to achieve higher standards of competence and skill.”

The Rural Program, founded by The Duke Endowment to Help Strengthen Rural Communities, found the largely agricultural state of North Carolina does not meet the standards or educational levels required by most industries to compete in the current economy. “In many rural counties only slightly more than half of the population have a high school degree,” the report said. “Getting a good job in today’s economic environment now requires postsecondary education and training, along with systems of lifelong learning.”

A recent article by Jason Spencer of The Free Press of Kinston cited how education and training became the focus when Boeing, a leading manufacturer on airplanes, was trying to decide on a location to build a new plant.

The article said the company was told in a state proposal that a pool of 96,000 workers were available within a 200-mile radius of the Global TransPark, located in rural eastern North Carolina. However, Boeing officials didn’t necessarily want employees skilled in traditional crafts such as manufacturing and painting. The company was also apprehensive about finding enough qualified workers for their plant.

Jones County economic developer Roy Fogle said he wasn’t surprised at the manufacturer’s decision. “It’s hard to find a trained labor force for a big company like Boeing in rural areas.”

Fogle said there are ways to improve a community’s chance to land a large anchor business. One is lowering the dropout rate of more than 100 students per day in North Carolina by providing vocational and technology training before they reach college age. “It’s got to start with high school. Students ought to have a choice. I think America is falling down on training for those boys and girls who need it. We’re failing those kids, giving them a productive life and productive living.”

Laura Williams-Tracy, reporter for North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry, said Johnston County commissioners offered $3 million to build a workforce development center to train frontline workers in the field of biotechnology. “We believe the best incentive we have to offer business is a prepared workforce that needs less training,” said Linwood Parker, chairman of the Johnston County Economic Development Advisory Board.

Williams-Tracy said the facility, which is being built in cooperation with Johnston County Community College and Johnston County Public Schools, will offer apprenticeship programs to school-age students.

The article also quoted Mike Desherbinin, director of Johnston County Economic Development. “It behooves us to be in a position to provide the best available workforce,” he said.

“New technology is really driving the need for retraining. Standard operating procedures 10 years ago no longer exist. It’s a constant lifelong process for the workforce to be adaptable as possible. Retraining never goes away.”

Lancaster said many counties are beginning to offer a “middle college” experience for at-risk high school students. “This program is for students who are thinking about dropping out, but have the ability to succeed in a different setting.”

Lenoir County, home of the GTP, is also seeing the need for more expanded training and programs, said School Board Chairman Connie Mintz.

She said the school district recently sent out a survey to more than 1,000 teachers and support staff to find out what is needed to upgrade the school system. “It was amazing to me how important it is to most of those surveyed to get vocational training back into the high school level,” Mintz said. “The days of the farm are over, and we’re seeing how important it is to start training at an early age.”

One of the ways to achieve this goal, she said, is to work with experts outside the public school system. “Some of these jobs in today’s world are very, very complicated,” Mintz said. ”I think we need to work in conjunction with the community college and get more of the high school students to attend. They are going to need specific training for specific jobs.”

Larry Gracie, director of Planning, Accountability and Continuous Enhancement in the North Carolina Community College system, said allowing high school students to begin training in a specialized field can only be good for the region. “If we start the children younger, they can be out by the age of 18 and be a viable part of the workforce,” he said.

It's not hard to understand that a state, with a public school system that ranks near the bottom, would have so many public high school graduates in need of remediation.

It amazes me that people who did so poorly in high school would want to attempt college.

I am going to college 14 years after graduating high school... It's tough, I forgot all that I learned in Algebra, Geometry, and Trig. As a result, I am having to take all the prerequisite math classes, which do not count towards my bachelor's degree. I am finishing up Trig this semester, pre-Calculus over the summer, then three semesters of advanced calculus.

Maybe that's one of the reasons why there are 50,000 homeschoolers in NC and who knows how many private schools.

If schools would just cut the crap (indoctrination) and teach kids how to read, write, and do math, the technology portion will take care of itself if a student decides he wants a job in a technical field. Not all students do, but this article makes it seem that that is where they're headed whether they like it or not. Sounds a lot like Hillary's School-to-Work program.

Do students who go to private schools receive "training" in technology or are they not expected to turn into worker bees for big corporations?

So if one goes to school and excels at one's studies, then all will be well, right?

Unless one happens to get a degree in a field being shipped offshore, of course.

Which means....just about everything. Maybe the aspiring burger flippers are wiser than we realize.

Public High Schoolers in NC are not taught. They are programmed to spit out a particular answer to a particular question on the state proficiency exams.

In regular testing, my older son's OS teacher spends the entire day prior to a test going over the questions that will be on the exam.

The same thing for his A+ class. Only there he studied on his own, took the professional exams, got his A+ certification and was exempted from the remainder of the class with a grade of "A".

In "Honors" English, the questions are so simple and predictable that he has quit studying altogether. He simply goes over the chapter review worksheet 10 min. before the exam and scores 100's.

In his own words, "What's the point of taking classes where they give you the answers to the tests"?

Of course one could also ask if the citizens of these rural counties want a Boeing plant in their backyard. Are we allowed to ask that? Or just accept what other states see as 'progress'. The education stinks yes. Blame 16 years of leadership by Jim Hunt with a Jim Martin tossed in the middle. But the sprawl from RTP and from Charlotte is worse. Why would I want that in a rural area brought on by 'progress'?

How can this be? We were blessed with 16 years of the Education Governor, James Hunt.

Highest taxes in the Southeast, and our education system isn't up to snuff? How can this be?

Why would I want that in a rural area brought on by 'progress'?

The dems know that they have control of the votes in the inner-cities, but they are still fighting to get new votes in the rural areas.

History shows that Dems get votes by creating "dependent classes". (Then both parties struggle to control the dependent class, but that's for another day.)

The Dems don't care if Boeing puts a facility in a "poor, rural area", but they do care about using a rejection of a rural area by Boeing as an excuse to take greater control of the public schools, etc., in that place.

Billbears,

There are other problems in the rural areas created by our tax happy leaders. Many young people would remain in farming if half of every farm didn't have to be sold to pay estate taxes, etc.

BTW, you probably know that most of the "perceived poverty" is really just a case of untraceable barter. Nobody starves unless there is a very long, sustained drought or widespread flooding.

So if one goes to school and excels at one's studies, then all will be well, right?

No. Doing well in school is just one part of the "recipe for success".

It is important to be skilled diplomatically and to be perceptive of unspoken communication.
It is critical that one be well-mannered, organized, energetic, motivated, networked and most of all in a good mood (optimistic).
It helps to be morally grounded and not involved with substance abuse or alcoholism.
Last but not least, one should be migratory, moving to areas experiencing job growth.

"Teaching to the tests" is the way many teachers describe it. They don't like it because it's an objective way to judge how well they're doing their jobs.

As usual, Thomas Sowell says it best in many of his essays. An example from a discussion of school choice:

In the public schools, only people who have gone through worthless courses in education can become "certified" teachers -- which means that many highly educated and intelligent people are repelled. As for teaching "anything," that is what our public schools are increasingly doing -- teaching everything from New Age paganism to homosexual techniques.

BTW, you probably know that most of the "perceived poverty" is really just a case of untraceable barter

And that's my point. Many of the good folks in rural counties don't need the 'progress' brought by big plants that would require them to learn 'updated' skills. Coming from what used to be a rural county and having family from rural counties in the west I can attest to that. OTOH, some do want 'progress'. That's what cities are made for. Do like I did. Move to one, live there for a few years and realize it was actually a lot better in a rural community. Don't ruin rural communities however with 'progress' that will be a major mistake and destroy just a little more of what makes this state what it is though

I drift between Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada. Our dumbies are twicest as dumb as your dumbies. NC ranks 21st. We are all in the bottom five and damn proud of it.

What we have are parallel universes. You can live in an 1880's cow camp with only contrails of jets to remind you of the modern world. You can visit a Navajo sheep camp where no English is spoken and hand signs are communication. Border jumpers use the same trails the Clantons used to steal cattle from Mexico. Yet you can visit the most modern Bio-tech labs in the world. Phoenix and Tucson are humming within sight of Indians practicing ancient rituals, not for show but for real.

Yeah? Well .5% of homes in NC still don't have indoor plumbing (unless you count sani-flush potties).

Are you sure we rank 21st? I had recently read 47th in SAT scores.

Oh! you must mean spending. Right. NC spends a lot and gets little in return. But, hey! The teachers are employed.

:-)

Well .5% of homes in NC still don't have indoor plumbing (unless you count sani-flush potties).

I can remember how hard it was to teach some tribes to go outside and not do their bidness on the floor. A few weeks ago I backhanded one for going on the sidewalk in front of a shopping center. He genuinely did not know what he had done wrong.

SAT scores fluctuate by state depending on what percentage of the students take them. IIRC NC scores poorly but has a large percentage taking the test. Arizona scores well but only a small percentage take it. The deeper down you reach into the great unwashed, the lower the scores.

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