Cram: Don’t hire unprepared graduates

Brian Seals

Thursday, Feb. 12, 1998 | 10:51 a.m.

Clark County School Superintendent Brian Cram has a simple solution for businesses finding graduates of his school system to be unprepared for employment: Don't hire them.

"Turn them away and send them back to us. We want them to understand the consequences of poor performance," Cram told members of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce at a Wednesday luncheon celebrating the third year of the southern Nevada schools-to-career initiative.

Conversely, the school superintendent asked employers to at least give consideration to students who have positive academic and attendance records in making hiring decisions.

The school-to-career program is designed to produce students that fall into the latter category. Wednesday's event showcased the initiative.

Backers of school-to-careers, sometimes called school-to-work, say it benefits students by exposing them to the work world and the expectations that go along with it. Moreover, they say it benefits businesses, which gain opportunities to influence school curriculum.

Rooted in the federal School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994, the southern Nevada version of the program encompasses four counties -- Clark, Lincoln, Nye and Esmeralda. The partnership also enlists the Chamber, the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and Community College Southern Nevada in the effort.

Several programs are used to expose students to the work world such as job shadowing, internships, mock job interviews and guest speakers who visit schools to discuss their profession. The southern Nevada initiative is funded by an annual $1 million grant from the state and a recently awarded $1.3 million federal grant.

Three years into the effort, the director of the Southern Nevada Regional School-to-Careers Partnership, Jan Huey, said the program is going well. "We have made fantastic progress," Huey said. "We have impacted schools in each of the four counties."

Though Wednesday's event saw the program lauded, the school-to-work concept has been a source of controversy nationwide. Although backed by many in the business and education community, there are critics, especially in social conservative circles. Opponents say the program de-emphasizes liberal arts education and could ultimately produce little more than drone-like workers and force students to choose a vocational path at too young an age.

Kris Jensen of Nevada Concerned Citizens said that group supports vocational education as long as it is the student's choice. But she is concerned that such programs could lead to a limited education.

"When you re-structure education to do nothing but meet the labor market, you produce a one-dimensional individual," Jensen said in an interview. "You're robbing them of a truly liberal arts education that will teach them to think critically."

She said a more broad-based education would enable students to adapt to changing job markets.

But backers of the concept say the program reinforces academics.

"This program is about opening doors, not closing doors," Cram said prior to his address. "All students can benefit by knowing what's required in the world of work."

Cram and Huey said the program includes parental input and students can change course if they so desire. Huey said in some localities students have been channeled into a career path at an early age, but that is not the philosophy in Southern Nevada. She said the purpose of programs like job shadowing, in which students observe a professional at work for a day or so, is to enable students to decide if they want to pursue a particular vocation or change course.

"If there's a bottom line to all of this, it is strengthening academics so they'll (students) know what kind of courses they will need to enter that vocation," Huey said.