The System Was Designed to Sort—Let’s Redesign It to Build

Booker T. Washington, Swiss Apprenticeships, and the Future of Equitable CTE By Dr. Christopher R. Nesmith

When I earned my doctorate from Washington State University, I wasn’t just joining a proud Cougar tradition—I was entering the legacy of one of America’s original land-grant institutions. WSU, like other land-grant schools founded under the Morrill Act of 1862, was established on a revolutionary premise: that higher education could serve both academic and applied learning. That working-class people, farmers, mechanics, and tradespeople deserved access to rigorous, publicly supported education grounded in practical knowledge.

That founding vision combined university learning and workforce relevance. It was comprehensive, inclusive, and it worked. So well, in fact, that countries like Switzerland studied our land-grant system and modeled their dual vocational education and training (VET) systems on it.

Booker T. Washington, Source: Wikipedia

But in the U.S., that integrated vision began to fracture. In 1917, the Smith-Hughes Act formalized the split between “vocational” and “academic” education. Rather than connecting theory and practice, we began dividing students. Academic pathways became the de facto college track. Vocational programs became the track for everyone else, especially Black, Brown, working-class, and disabled students.

This wasn’t accidental. It was design.

And more than 100 years later, we are still living in that design.

CTE Was Built to Sort. But It Can Be Rebuilt to Launch.

The original intent of Career and Technical Education (CTE) wasn’t to track students away from opportunity. It was, as envisioned by Booker T. Washington, a means of empowerment. At Tuskegee, Washington blended intellectual development with technical mastery. His belief was not that technical training should replace academic learning but that the two could, and must, coexist to serve human dignity and mobility.

Yet today, CTE remains stuck in a false binary: college or career. You’re either “college-bound” or “job-ready.” You’re either earning academic credit or earning wages. Rigor or relevance. One or the other.

We’ve heard it in countless school buildings: “Some kids just aren’t college material.” “They need hands-on.” “At least they’ll have a trade.”

This is deficit thinking in disguise.

A Model That Proves the Binary Is a Lie

In Washington State, we’ve spent the last decade building and proving a different model. One where students don’t have to choose. One where a student can:

• Earn 2,000 hours of on-the-job training through a registered Youth Apprenticeship

• Complete 15+ college credits aligned with university's general education requirements

• Earn a journey-level credential from the Department of Labor and Industries

• Meet the Washington State public four-year university admissions criteria, including academic GPA, English, math, science, and world language requirements

  
  

This is not theoretical. This is real.

In the West Valley School District, students completed this full journey while still in high school. By senior year, they had earned $28,000 in wages, met graduation requirements, obtained a state-certified journey card, and kept open the full pathway to college or advanced training.

This is not CTE as “the other path.” It’s CTE as the launchpad.

Rigor in Context: The Best Kind of Rigor

The assumption that technical learning means lowered standards is not only false, it’s harmful.

In the apprenticeship model, students must demonstrate mastery, not just memorize for a test. They must meet employer-defined competencies, apply mathematical reasoning in live production settings, and communicate clearly across teams and disciplines. These are not “soft skills.” They are transferable skills, and they’re assessed through performance, not worksheets.

In Elma, Washington, we implemented Mastery-Based Learning within a CTE framework. Students moved through standards, not based on seat time but on skill acquisition. This model not only improved engagement—it aligned with university rigor in a way traditional lecture-based classrooms could not.

In fact, technical learning often demands more of students. It requires them to synthesize knowledge across disciplines, math, science, literacy, and human systems, AND also to be successful in the workplace.

Rigor in context isn’t a compromise. It’s better aligned, more retained, and more relevant.

So, Why Don’t More Systems Do This?

Because our institutions are still trying to force new models into old frames.

We ask apprenticeship programs to “fit” into Carnegie units. We ask students to choose between an algebra credit or a work-based learning hour. We ask districts to run advisory boards for compliance, not for decision-making. And we still treat technical education as something less than academic learning.

Our system was built to sort. It was not built to support these kinds of pathways.

But we can rebuild it.

Conclusion: We Don’t Need Reform. We Need Redesign.

The work ahead is not about adding new programs. It’s about rejecting the premise that students must choose between meaning and mobility. It’s about restoring the original land-grant idea—that higher education and career preparation are not opposing forces, but interdependent.

We can design systems that allow a student to earn a journey card and a college acceptance letter.

We can design systems where rigor is contextualized, not compromised.

And we can design systems where CTE isn’t the place students land when we give up on them, but the place they go when we believe in what they can build.