Rural education programs getting help in comeback fight

 

By PHYLLIS COULTER 
FarmWeek

The long-held idea that a four-year university education was best for everyone is now recognized as flawed by many education advocates. Today, rural schools are bringing back displaced programs, but it will take time and resources.

“Career and Technical (CTE) programs, once called vocational programs, were a significant part of the fabric of rural schools across Illinois and the nation. Several decades ago, a huge pendulum swing took place across the country that all but wiped out this valuable CTE programming,” said Patrick Twomey, superintendent of Macomb School District 185, and a longtime rural school advocate.

“The push was that every child needs a four-year college education and in the process of addressing that belief, vocational/CTE courses were eliminated one by one. As they say, hindsight is 20-20, and looking back, we all know that was a monumental mistake,” Twomey said.

John Dunlap always saw the value of technical education. Directly after high school, he worked as an ag equipment technician and earned his certification, which eventually led him to the position of director of the AGCO Service Technician Program at Parkland Community College.

“Earn-while-you-learn programs are a perfect option for somebody who has to pay for their education. Most of the time they are guaranteed a job placement,” Dunlap said. “Business and industry have jobs they need to fill, and schools have a pool of students to draw from,” he said of the model that has worked so well for him and his students.

However, rural schools struggle to gather resources to bring CTE programming back. “They lack the financial resources as well as the human capital necessary to tackle this issue and yet we all agree it is paramount that we find a way,” said Twomey, who is on the executive board of the Association of Illinois Rural and Small Schools (AIRSS), one of the organizations leading the comeback.

John Glasgow, AIRSS program director, is spearheading the Rural Illinois Career and Technical Education Project, a joint effort between the Illinois State Board of Education and AIRSS, founded in 2023, to revive and advance career and tech education for Illinois students.

High school tech classes were once viewed as something for “kids who have nothing better to do.” Attitudes are changing. “College is only one route to success today,” Glasgow said, noting that college grads often earn less today than those in “the trades.”

He and the team spent the first year of the Rural Illinois CTE mostly on research. Their study quickly revealed a priority: the need for direct and specific support for rural CTE programs. Glasgow and his colleagues created a web-based portal to share resources including webinars, newsletters and materials. Now, the site, airssedu.org/cte is live and provides centralized information from a respected source for rural districts, Glasgow said.

“We’re slowly playing catch up but there is still really a long way to go,” said Glasglow of the team’s effort to get more resources and funding for CTE.

Among other things, the Illinois Rural CTE Project is looking for ways to improve options for regional career and tech schools, which have long been underfunded.

In 2024, the IL Rural CTE Project team identified the highest-need rural school districts, noting their challenges and strengths. The biggest pocket of high-needs schools is in the south including Jefferson, Clinton, Marion, and Franklin counties. Other areas are scattered throughout the state including LaSalle and Bureau counties in the north and parts of Champaign and Vermilion in the east.

The next step is to create pilot projects.

Some new pilot projects will come from adapting innovations in urban centers. One such idea is a pharmacy tech program that allows students to work in a hospital pharmacy. It is offered by a high school in Elgin, in a school district of more than 33,000 students in Kane County. “It offers a foundational knowledge base for every student wanting to go into a medical area. In rural areas that kind of medical experience may be hard to get,” Glasgow said.

Glasgow is already working with schools in Tazewell and Peoria counties in central Illinois to see how they could use Elgin’s idea as a model to get a pathway for medical careers in their rural schools.

In southern Illinois, Brooke May, co-director of the Southern Illinois Future Teachers Coalition (SIFTC) and Leslie Bradley, director of student career services and co-director of SIFTC at Vienna High School District in Johnson County are leading a 25-school network of more than 400 high school students in technical programs.

CTE pathways have traditionally been seen as lacking in value, especially when compared to academic pathways that lead to perceived higher wages and benefits, said May, also a member of the AIRSS Rural CTE Advisory Council.

“It is challenging to showcase the value of high school CTE pathways when funding for required equipment is limited, an insufficient instructor pool exists and inequities in the access to programs is a hurdle that many students are unable to overcome,” May said.

Yet, even with the glaring challenges, groups such as SIFTC has at its helm two qualified CTE instructors, dual credit education programs in 14 of their schools, and a large budget to support high school students who wish to enter the CTE field of education, which continues to face a shortage,” May said.

As the Illinois CTE Project and other efforts enter a new year, Glasgow said he hopes that all these actions will “help all rural districts enrich and grow their programming.”

 

This story was distributed through a cooperative project between Illinois Farm Bureau and the Illinois Press Association. For more food and farming news, visit FarmWeekNow.com.