Sometimes it may be a struggle to keep career and technical programs alive and well in high schools and middle schools, but it?s a battle worth fighting.

By Susan Reese, Techniques Contributing Editor

Sarah Raikes is one career and technical educator who has already proven herself a strong champion in defense of our programs. She has managed to rejuvenate not one, but two family and consumer sciences education programs in Kentucky.

After rebuilding the family and consumer sciences (FCS) education program at Campbellsville High School in Taylor County, Ky., Raikes moved to the high school in Washington County where she now teaches. The move was not made for reasons of money or prestige. She went there, says Raikes, because she was needed.

The program at Washington High School was without a certified teacher and was on the verge of being closed, but when Raikes arrived, she began implementing the same changes that had been so effective at Campbellsville High School. She upgraded both the name (it was still being called home economics) and the curriculum. She established career paths and career interest inventories?and she began a campaign of community service.

As her student volunteers became involved in numerous community projects, they created greater awareness of?and respect for?the high school?s FCS program. Raikes had also employed community service in strengthening the Campbellsville program. But, at both schools, she made a point of connecting community service projects with the core content and curriculum of her classes.

Today, the FCS program at her high school is strong, and Raikes says that she knows her principal would not consider closing it because of its importance to the school and the students.

?If it was closed,? states Raikes, ?no one else could meet my students? needs. I know on a daily basis that I touch my students in a way that no one else does. I can tell you how my students feel about things and whether or not they are having a good day or a bad day.?

It is the family and consumer sciences education content that allows her to achieve such a remarkable rapport with her students. ?We have the perfect curriculum to do that,? Raikes notes.

?Right now I have a student whose sister is battling cancer,? she explains. ?She can come to me anytime because she knows I?m there for her. The curriculum I teach is what allows that.?

Her dedication to her students, her community, and career and technical education earned Sarah Raikes a very special honor last December. At the ACTE convention in New Orleans, she became the first recipient of a new award when she was named the ACTE-McDonald?s Outstanding Teacher in Community Service.

One County?s Story

When the board of education in St. Mary?s County, Maryland, began considering elimination of family and consumer sciences classes in schools there, a campaign to keep the program in county schools was launched, and it soon spread beyond the borders of the Eastern Shore county.

On January 15, 2002, an article entitled ?Home Ec Programs Fall on Hard Times? appeared in The Washington Post. The article centered around a pending decision by the St. Mary?s County Board of Education to eliminate the family and consumer sciences classes to make time for an extra period of reading.

The Washington Post cited the eighth-grade reading test scores on the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program as a prime factor in the school officials? plan. Three out of four St. Mary?s eighth graders have not been able to read at the level considered satisfactory by the state of Maryland, and the 1998 Maryland State Task Force on Reading found that many middle and high school students are nonreaders. Adding to the argument for eliminating FCS was the fact that few teachers were becoming certified in the subject area.

But many teachers and parents wanted to keep the classes, and even the board members were split in their opinions.

Presenting the Case for FCS

While it was hard to dispute the need for improving the reading of the county?s students, there were numerous arguments in favor of the classes. For one thing, there was the possibility that FCS classes could play their own role in improving the eighth graders? reading. After all, family and consumer sciences education has strong academic components as well as life skills components. FCS teachers point out that their students have to read and analyze food labels. They write essays on topics such as conflict resolution, and they write research papers on nutrition. They use math skills for calculating calorie content and in learning to balance checkbooks and budgets.

The difficulty for FCS may come from being able to document its benefits in a way that proves its case.

?In Congress and with the powers-that-be who provide the funding, they want statistics,? says Sue Shackelford, the vice president of ACTE?s Family and Consumer Sciences Education Division. ?We can?t prove that our students manage their finances better or have better health because they manage their nutrition better.?

It may be difficult to prove because productive and responsible citizens tend to not have the statistical documentation that follows those with health, economic and social difficulties. Statistics are not difficult to find on people who have developed chronic health problems due to poor nutrition habits or for individuals who have to declare bankruptcy by the time they are out of college.

Mary Ellen Saunders with the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences suggests inviting parents, teachers and administrators into the classroom to see what is being taught. She says that, ?There are myriad benefits to FCS, but the teachers may assume parents and other decision makers will understand the benefits sort of by osmosis.? She also cautions against what she calls the ?retroactive reactionary process going on,? and advises doing a better job of marketing a program before it gets into trouble.

One suggestion Saunders offers is taking the students to school board meetings and to visit legislators. ?Take the students who have accomplished something special and have them testify about what they have learned in FCS,? suggests Saunders, ?because they are the ones who can become the best marketers for the program.?

Another argument, one that has been presented before in the pages of this magazine, is that middle school is a time for exploring new interests and potential future careers (see ?A Time for Exploration? in the October 2001 Techniques). FCS classes offer middle school students the chance to explore some of the options life has to offer.

According to the Washington Post article, parents of special education students in St. Mary?s County were especially concerned about elimination of the classes, because it meant a lost opportunity for their children to learn with students in a mainstream class.

?For my son, it was an opportunity to interact with his nondisabled peers,? one parent of a developmentally delayed student told the newspaper.

While they also acknowledged that reading scores were in need of improvement, some parents questioned whether the answer was just another reading period.

The FCS Community Rallies

The Washington Post article prompted a letter to the editor from Barbara McFall of Roanoke, Va. She pointed out in her letter that, ?many of the school reform documents currently embraced by the powers that be are advocating for precisely the types of learning that FCS provides ... experiential, personally relevant, community and family connected, hands on, and involving emotional and physical intelligence as well as mental.?

Although those who teach family and consumer sciences education know about this and the other contributions made by the field, she wrote, ?Our public sees only the stitchin? and stirrin?.?

McFall, who has a master?s in resource management from Virginia Tech, spent many years working in the business world and returned to family and consumer sciences about six years ago. ?When you run a business, the problem is not teaching people how to do a specific thing but how to function as competent humans,? she says. ?You can teach a competent person to do almost anything.?

That is the role that she thinks FCS is starting to take and needs to continue taking even more seriously. ?I would like to see FCS reposition itself as one period during the day when students would work on real-world applications?when they could take all of the information they picked up in math, reading and science and use it to learn how to become real, functioning adults.?

Even the Post article acknowledged that this is not the same old-fashioned course that was once called home economics, saying that everything about today?s curriculum is different.

Another letter, this one penned by then-Maryland Association of Family and Consumer Sciences President Mary Ellen Shachat with help from the national association, was sent to Dr. Patricia Richardson, the superintendent of St. Mary?s County Schools. In it, she expressed dismay at the possibility of cancellation of the FCS programs in county middle schools and stated her belief that the programs could actually be a part of the solution to the very problem that had prompted the board to consider their cancellation.

?We understand the need to improve students? reading capability,? wrote Shachat, ?and we reiterate that FCS programs reinforce and build academic skills through interactive programs that also teach critical life skills.?

She then made her case with a list of life skills taught by FCS courses and detailed how reading skills are reinforced by the way those courses are taught. Furthermore, she raised the question: If FCS does not teach those important life skills, where will the children of time-challenged, dual-career parents learn them?

Urging the superintendent to consider the importance of an inclusive and well-balanced education for the county?s students, Shachat said, ?Pure academics without the integration of basic life knowledge and skills classes fall woefully short of preparing a student for the realities of higher education, lifelong learning, employment and family life.?

Battles Are Won

When the St. Mary?s County Board of Education met on January 24, 2002, the decision was made to maintain the FCS program for another two years.

There are probably a number of lessons to be learned from the St. Mary?s story. We need to strengthen our efforts in publicizing the benefits of career and technical education programs such as family and consumer sciences so that crises such as these do not become more common.

The new accountability provisions in the No Child Left Behind Act may cause other school districts to look at eliminating career and technical education programs in favor of more teaching-to-the-test classes. But leaving no child behind should apply not only to reading and mathematics but also to life, and FCS courses play an important role in providing the skills that help young students grow into responsible citizens.

It is also important to bring more FCS-certified teachers into the classroom, so that programs are not eliminated simply because there is no one qualified to teach them. The year before Sarah Raikes moved to Washington County High School, there had been no certified FCS instructor from December until the end of the school year.

?There are fewer and fewer people going into our profession,? notes Raikes, ?and we are all struggling to get people to go into it.?

That is a major hurdle in maintaining FCS programs in schools because, as she points out, ?There has to be an energetic and dedicated person to keep a program going.?

These are battles we will continue to face in keeping career and technical education programs alive. But at least for now, thanks to the strength of the case presented by family and consumer sciences educators and advocates, the program in one Maryland county has been saved. And thanks to the dedication of one outstanding teacher, two family and consumer sciences programs in Kentucky are alive and well.