'You're doing it right,' US education secretary says after visiting Francis Tuttle

U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said he was impressed by what he's seen of Oklahoma's CareerTech system after visiting with students and teachers at Francis Tuttle Technology Center.

Cardona toured several classrooms at the school's Rockwell Campus information technology building and met with students learning broadcast and video production, coding and 3-D animation. He later held a roundtable meeting with more students who were studying at Francis Tuttle hoping to become a computer scientist, an early childhood education teacher or a doctor.

"What I saw here today was something that I want to lift up, because you're doing it right here in Oklahoma," Cardona said.

CareerTech is a statewide network of schools where high school and adult students get a hands-on education that bridges the gap to college or the workforce. In one classroom, students were busy at computers, working on 3-D animation projects. In another, they used modern editing and design software to prepare for a career in video production.

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The CareerTech system also has close ties with local industry so that the schools become a pipeline for new employees.

"I came here because I heard that this program is great, and that it's providing students with real-world learning and opportunities for employment," Cardona said after his tour wrapped up on Thursday. "I just finished talking to a high school senior who has a credential already in early childhood education. She can use that credential now to get work. I talked to a student a little bit earlier who is working now for the OKC Thunder to use the skills that he learned here at Tuttle."

Oklahoma's CareerTech model, he said, is an example of what he wants to see across the country.

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Bridging the gap

Cardona, an appointee of President Joe Biden, served as the top education official in Connecticut before he was elevated to U.S. secretary of education. Before all of that, though, he graduated from a technical high school in his home state, studying automotive technology.

"I like this model, but I also think we need to think about the models that we have across the country and how we provide better opportunities in our comprehensive traditional high schools, so that students have access to college-level courses and dual-enrollment courses, for example," he said.

During the roundtable discussion, students suggested that their peers across the country could benefit earlier from career-oriented education in middle school, and said young people should be taught life skills to prepare them for adulthood.

Cardona said he thinks high schools need to evolve to make sure students have real-world experience in the industries that are prevalent in their communities and ensure they have a path to credentials that will be needed once they reach the workforce.

"If we can, what I call 'blur the lines' between our high school systems, our college systems and our industry, I think our students are going to have better opportunities throughout the country," he said.

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Indigenous education

During his visit to Oklahoma, Cardona also planned to visit Riverside Indian School in Anadarko to tour the campus and then take part in a private conversation with tribal leadership.

In Anadarko, he was expected to be joined by Tony Dearman, director of Indian Education at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and Tracy Goodluck, senior adviser to the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs at the U.S. Department of Interior.

On Wednesday, Cardona joined a roundtable with Native American parents in the Oklahoma City area to listen to their experiences with urban schools and learn more about ways the U.S. Department of Education can support language preservation and revitalization.

According to a department news release, parents spoke candidly about those issues and about the importance of offering mental health support that is culturally sensitive.

"We owe it to our students to do better, to take advantage of the disruption of the pandemic and make sure we aren’t building out schools to how they were in 2018," Cardona said. "There is more money in education than ever before. How we use it will determine how successful our students are.”