Bentley has many years of experience helping students learn about careers. But she recently had trouble persuading one student — her daughter — to try out a job training class at the academy.

“She didn’t want to travel,” Bentley said of her daughter, whose main school is about 30 minutes away from the career training center. “I wasn’t going to make her do it, but I think it would have been a great opportunity.”

Sometimes a school system has just one training center for every five or six high schools. And asking high school students to travel from their local school to another building is just one of several obstacles career training centers face.

They need to persuade students to take more than one or two classes. They also need to expand programs that prepare students with basic training for higher-level training after high school.

Another problem is when students are interested in taking career training classes, but their parents do not agree. They might believe the student should take more classes in subjects like math and science.

Bentley said sometimes parents’ wishes prevent training centers like the Edison Academy from getting the community support they need. However, once parents see the kind of education their child can receive from a career training center, they usually change their minds.

Charles Wilkinson recently graduated from Edison High School and took some auto repair classes at the academy. He described the conflict between the high school and the academy. He felt as if the adults in the high school did not support students who wanted to take career classes.

“The attitude that students doing well shouldn’t waste their time in [CTE] classes is heavily damaging to the experience and needs to see a change,” he said.

Alisha Hyslop is the Senior Director of Public Policy for the Association for Career and Technical Education. Hyslop said training centers like the Edison Academy are good for students who do not want to attend college. But the people in charge of the centers also need to tell people that many students who take classes there move on to attend college.

She said high schools around the U.S. need to work hard to “align secondary programs with post-secondary programs and build those seamless pathways for students.”

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