Why would anyone listen to the Chamber on workforce? This question comes after Chamber initiatives of the Greater Memphis Alliance of Competitive Workforce (GMACW), 7 years ago and Upskill 901 2 years ago, and still no connected workforce development plan.
In a Memphis Business Journal article, the Chamber’s Beverly Robertson asserted the need for more research to change the workforce narrative, all while connected workforce development implementation is non-existent. What’s stunning is the County Commission continues to rely on the Chamber and douchebag elitists for guidance in developing the workforce.
After years of ripping off and botching the workforce development system, the elitist need to “start pukin” up millions, if not billions to rebuild the workforce development system they destroyed. “Start Pukin” is my branded solution platform to solve an array of local challenges.
Given these challenges, in many cases, no research is needed. Answers are in plain sight starting with the 12% Career Technical Education (CTE) concentrator rate in Shelby County Schools. A student is considered to be a CTE concentrator if they have completed at least 2 CTE courses (formerly known as vocational courses) in a single career pathway.
Another huge gap is the seeming omission of vocational community colleges in the local workforce development discussion. K-12 and Universities are regularly featured in local public proceedings but not Southwest and the Tennessee College of Applied Technology (TCAT). In a recent Leadership Memphis webcast on workforce, neither Southwest, TCAT or Moore Tech were represented, leaving a massive gap in the discussion.
All of this to say, increasing CTE enrollment and post-secondary 2 year and less degrees is paramount to successful economic development efforts.
More on CTE
To summarize the table above, the CTE concentrator rate, per the State of TN report card in 2019 was 41.7% statewide. Arlington, Bartlett, Millington, Collierville and Germantown collectively had a 33.5% CTE concentrator rate with Shelby County Schools (SCS) at an abysmal 12%. SCS declined by 40%, in percentage terms, in 2018 from 20% to a 12% CTE concentrator rate. What happened ?
I don’t blame SCS for the low CTE concentrator rate. After all, there was supposed to be a number of “partnerships” to help propel SCS workforce and economic development programming over the years, that never seemed to happen for one reason or another. Like early literacy, CTE should be locally thematic, but it isn’t, fundamentally squandering economic development efforts.
The Shelby County Schools CCTE website lists almost 80 partners that consists seemingly of every known entity in Memphis. This listing begs the question, “what did the partners do, tell students not to enroll in CTE?”
Its understandable why an urban school district would have below average ACT academic scores, but a 12% CTE concentrator rate ? Occupational demand easily supports a CTE concentrator rate at 50% or above. Such a rate is good for economic development as it is aligned with employer demand.
Anyway, based on a State Report Card cohort of 7,900 students, increasing the CTE concentrator rate to the state average of 41.7% would increase the SCS high school graduation rate by 2% or 164 students and annual post-secondary enrollment by 234.
This is based on this Congressional report that reveals that CTE concentrators have a 7% higher high school graduation and 10% higher post secondary enrollment rate as compared to non CTE concentrators.
While there is a ton of work to do, having a connected workforce development system plan, not decreasing and increasing the SCS CTE concentrator rate and regularly engaging vocational community colleges is where we are at…..