This is the fourth of 10 essays I'm writing about why I'm running for Hamilton County mayor before the May 3 primary.
Growing up, I learned early there are many paths to success other than a four-year college degree. I was the first person in my mom’s family to earn a degree, but I was far from the first person in the Watts family to make a good living. My grandfather worked in manufacturing for Southern Champion Tray for decades. My uncles, Johnny Watts and Jeff Watts, are an electrician and a mechanic, both of whom have used their skills to start small businesses on the side of their full-time employment over the years. My cousins have followed in their footsteps.
In business, over my seven years at Lamp Post Group and the technology investment fund Dynamo, I learned a similar lesson. Technology companies don’t care about where you went to college, all that matters is whether you can write and manage code.
Needless to say, when Governor Lee selected me to serve on the Tennessee Board of Regents, which oversees our state’s largest college system of 40 community and technical colleges, I took a lifetime of skepticism about the four-year path with me.
At our local Tennessee College of Applied Technology, Jim Barrott leads one of the most competent public institutions I’ve ever seen. A 94 percent job placement rate for those who complete a certification, most ranging from 12 to 18 months, is evidence of the college’s overwhelmingly successful model.
Students are taught applied mathematics in a way that seems to simply connect better than a high school classroom. Those who teach almost all come from industry. The HVAC instructor, like many of his colleagues, used to own his own HVAC company. I recently saw the auto body repair instructor working on the weekend at a local car show to recruit new students to his program, which has a 100 percent job placement rate.
In a county where less than 40 percent of our graduating public school seniors meet the state standard for readiness to go to college or go to work, we appear to have a costly disconnect.
How does our local, state-run technical college maintain a job placement rate of 94 percent after 18 months of working with students, but our public school system runs a “Ready Graduate” success rate of just 39.6 percent after 13 years working with students?
Part of the answer is that K-12 education in America is fundamentally broken. We put a one-size-fits-all mold on our children, pushing them towards a four-year college degree, even when it doesn’t fit their passions, their gifts or their learning style.
As a result, our community, and particularly our city, is full of hopeless young people. In raw numbers, nearly 1,800 Hamilton County 18-year-olds enter adulthood every year unprepared for what’s next.
Undoubtedly, this leads to more crime and less economic advancement for our community.
There is no “silver bullet” to reforming public education in Hamilton County. But our saving grace could be to increase career training, expand paid apprenticeships and reinvest in vocational education options, like Sequoyah High School, where many programs like welding are on a waiting list due to demand.
It’s no secret that the skilled trades pay well, but these are also the jobs that built our country – that once made Chattanooga famous as the Dynamo of Dixie. Our students should be introduced to career and technical education as the profoundly dignified path that it is. Next year, when we open the beautiful, new $22 million facility at TCAT-Chattanooga, we will, for the first time, be able to welcome students to a facility commensurate with the quality of the education and training they will receive there.
Lastly, as evidenced by so many of Hamilton County’s most prominent business leaders, mastering a skill is the most realistic path to small business ownership. We should never forget that.
A conservative approach to education should challenge the failed status quo with a heavy emphasis on career training. The highest calling of county government is to prepare our young people for lives of success and dignified work – whether that means they attend a university or not. My desire to lead that transition is a big part of why I’m running for Hamilton County mayor.
Weston Wamp
westonwamp.com