Linda Lavender was so excited that she awoke at 5:15 a.m. Jan. 11 to read about the Virginia Beach public schools’ Computer Network Administrator program. It had gained recognition as one of four “exemplary” programs in the nation.
But Lavender’s enthusiasm quickly died once she spotted the story in our Hampton Roads section.
The story’s main headline (“Beach vocational course honored nationally”) was OK, although she would have preferred we had said technical course.
Then came the deck headline: “Students not bound for college learning skills that land jobs.”
“I went like, `Whoa,’ where did she get the part about not going to college? Where’d that come from?’ ” recalled Lavender, who noted that the story contained similar language.
Lavender, CNA instructor, called to complain that the story painted a stereotypical picture of not only the award-winning program, but technical education in general.
Mary Lee Wilkerson, who teaches early childhood education at the Beach school division’s Technical and Career Center, where the program is offered, registered a similar complaint.
The piece by staff writer Susan White, Wilkerson said, “set vocational education back 10 years. . . . She degraded vocational education by implying that most of our students do not attend educational institutions beyond high school.”
Lavender was especially upset because, she said, nothing could be further from the truth. And because, she said, she stressed this fact in her talks with the reporter.
White, it must be noted, did not actually say that the students in the CNA program aren’t headed to college. She said: “School officials say such vocational education programs are important because they reach students who aren’t college bound.”
But the implication — gleaned from the headline and the comment in the story (attributed to “school officials”) — is that the program’s students are not your typical college-bound lot. Our failure to cite the statistics that Lavender says she supplied “no less than three times during the telephone interview” does a disservice to the program. And impressive stats they are:
Some 71 percent of Lavender’s 2002 graduating class have said they intend to attend two- or four-year colleges, with the remainder planning to enter full-time employment or the military in the information technology field.
Since the program started in 1994 with 12 students, 75 percent of the graduating seniors have gone on to two- or four-year colleges. Nearly all of the rest, Lavender said, are working in IT, with about 5 percent in related military occupations.
“Programs like the Computer Network Administrator program are advanced courses normally found at the college level, and this program enhances education the student receives in his traditional academic setting,” Lavender explained.
The CNA program is linked to Tidewater Community College, and the students actually earn college credit while attending the Beach program.
Lavender said she told the reporter that her students have an advantage over students not receiving the CNA training and going to college. That’s because her students can work during college in IT-related fields and likely would be highly experienced and sought after for employment.
Lavender said she also told White that students at the technical center “grasp some SOL (Standards of Learning) concepts quicker or perhaps more easily since we have integrated SOLs in all our programs.”
White’s response is that she and Lavender “talked in general about students who have graduated from the program and how they go on to college, into the military and into the business world.
“I don’t recall discussing the specific statistics referred to,” White said. “Most of my questions dealt with how the program directly prepares a student for a job and the idea that you don’t necessarily have to get a college degree to earn a lot of money. We even talked about how some students leave with the kind of skills college graduates don’t have.”
White doesn’t think her story perpetuates a stereotype. “I think it shows how marketable and successful students in this program are,” she said.
Education editor Lorraine Eaton said the story was originally to be part of a yearlong series that The Virginian-Pilot is doing on vocational education. The first story in that series emphasized the fact that the face of vocational-technical education has changed greatly.
Because of the national award, the CNA story was pulled out of that series for special emphasis. It should have included information on the college-bound students in the program, Eaton said.
I think the story was wrongfully focused, or framed, as we say. Instead of trotting out the typical story about a “voc-tech” program that can help non-college-bound youngsters, we should have explored how this particular program gives a multiplicity of students a leg up vocationally and sometimes academically.
Reporters have to be leery that they don’t settle on a premise for a story and then disregard facts that alter that premise — which isn’t to say White did so. They must also increasingly think outside the box so that they don’t tell the same old story. As our story did.
