lazers, blouses, and skirts hang on racks, but this isn’t a clothing boutique. In the Enterprise and Entrepreneurship lab at Martin Luther King Jr. Technical High School in Anchorage, students can borrow professional attire for a job interview or presentation. That’s just one way King Tech helps guide students into a career.

Entrepreneurship is a long way from the vocational school King Tech started as in 1974. At that time, shop class was for “hobbyesque” crafts and home economics was, well, for homes, says Kern McGinley, principal of King Tech. Nowadays, auto shop and carpentry are taught alongside nursing, cooking, video production, and, yes, starting a business—all under the umbrella of career and technical education (CTE).

The transformation came in 2006. When Congress reauthorized the Perkins Act—first enacted in 1984 to provide federal funds for vocational education—the term “vocational education” was replaced with “career and technical education.”

The old terminology will fade as generations change, says Cathy LeCompte, director of Alaska Vocational Technical Center (AVTEC) in Seward. The school operated by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development was established to crank out welders, diesel mechanics, and cooks for the newly discovered Prudhoe Bay oil fields. Those remain core programs, yet in the 21st century AVTEC also trains modern millwrights in the use of 3D printers and automated CNC routers.

Hands-on tinkering isn’t just for shop class; it’s also part of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), another educational trend that’s gained momentum since 2006. As far as the Anchorage School District (ASD) is concerned, STEM is a subset of CTE: it’s one of twelve “career clusters.” The others are agriculture, business management, communications, construction, education, health science, hospitality, human services (which includes both counseling and personal care, like hairstyling), information technology, manufacturing, and transportation.

Missy Fraze, ASD’s acting director of CTE, says about half of middle and high school students are involved in a program in some way. That involvement boosts graduation rates: compared to 82 percent of ASD’s general population, King Tech has a 97 percent graduation rate, among the highest in the city. Kids get excited to be there, says Fraze, and CTE promotes a passion for learning.

Before 2018, King Tech was King Career Center, where students from Girdwood to Chugiak could access equipment and expert teachers. About 800 part-time students still visit King Tech each day, split between morning and afternoon sessions. What changed in 2018, along with the name, was accreditation as a self-contained high school.

Having some 300 full-time students, all 11th and 12th graders, entitles King Tech to its own share of state funds, rather than relying on the funding formula from students’ neighborhood schools. In return, King Tech has academic faculty to ensure students complete general graduation requirements.

One thing King Tech graduates need, not common at other high schools, is a plan for after they leave. A post-graduation plan is such a simple, high-impact idea that the Anchorage school board is considering a similar requirement for all students.

Eleven of the twelve career clusters have programs at King Tech. (STEM is distributed among West, Dimond, Eagle River, and South High.) Five clusters are represented at King Tech exclusively.

In addition to entrepreneurship, King Tech is the only place in ASD for students to learn early childhood education. One room on campus is equipped as the most inviting daycare a preschooler might ever see. Amid the toys, tiny chairs, and an indoor play fort sits a black and white rabbit in an enclosure on the carpet. Tots scurry from station to station, watched by larger kids, in turn watched by adult faculty.

King Tech students practice editing in the film, audio, and visual production course.

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Upstairs, there are dogs. They help with veterinary assisting, part of the agriculture cluster. Also in the cluster is sustainable food systems, centered on a greenhouse along Northern Lights Boulevard.

King Tech has the district’s only cosmetology program, and its auto shop is the last remaining at any Anchorage high school. In fact, McGinley says the collision repair and refinishing program is the only formal auto-body training available in the city, at any level.

“I look at it as an opportunity to help our students narrow their interest areas and start to explore those,” says Fraze. Speaking as an international business major who switched careers to education, Fraze says, “They do that before graduating high school to make a more informed decision for those years after high school that are likely to be most expensive.”

By the post-secondary level, students have a clear idea of what they want. According to LeCompte, “At AVTEC, you get in, get out, and get on with your life.” No time wasted on exploration; a novice can become a plumber in four months.

To maximize exploration in high school, King Tech has its “Third Session,” a class period from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. taught by faculty working overtime, like coaches for extracurricular sports. Third Session opens King Tech to students in the district who might not have access during the day.

“Just coming here is a big deal,” says Jessica Hunt of Emmonak, a teacher for the Lower Yukon School District (LYSD). Hunt gets back home during the summer to fish, but she lives in Anchorage now because LYSD operates a residential school on the shores of Lake Spenard.

So highly does LYSD value CTE that it sends students to the big city, just to use King Tech’s facilities for two hours each day. The rest of the time, students live at Kusilvak Career Academy (KCA), a former log-sided hotel.

The academy’s de facto headmaster, LYSD Residential and CTE Director Conrad Woodhead, says the district estimated the cost of furnishing a career ed program locally at $95 million. In comparison, the $2.7 million to purchase the Long House Alaskan Hotel was a bargain, plus that much more to renovate it into dorms and common space.

As a public school, LYSD pays for travel, room, and board. LYSD also pays for the privilege of using King Tech, covering the cost of Third Session mainly through grant funding. ASD budgets half a million dollars for CTE statewide partnerships, and so far this partnership has been “nothing but smooth,” says McGinley.

Since 2019, KCA has hosted up to forty-five students for nine-week quarters. Whereas a boarding school like Galena Interior Learning Academy, up the Yukon River, houses students year-round, KCA students choose when to leave home, Woodhead says. For instance, the cohort in early 2022 was just fourteen; other students stayed home for basketball season. Or, Woodhead explains, if they hunt or fish, they come to town in the off-season.

Career education supplements subsistence, as Woodhead sees it. “You might be the culture bearer for your village; subsistence is all you want to do. But in the system in which you live, you have to be able to still provide for yourself,” he says. “You still have to buy the gas. You have to buy the ammunition.”

Such reminders are an antidote to homesickness, Woodhead says. The discomfort of leaving the Lower Yukon and living in a strange city is the price students pay for opportunities. A quarter at KCA exposes students to diverse peers, gives them access to Southcentral Foundation healthcare, and connects them to career avenues, such as local labor unions.

Anchorage also offers Alaska Middle College School, which happens to be co-located at King Tech. A couple of KCA students are on that path, earning college credits while in high school, and Woodhead says there is room for expansion. “We would partner with other districts that want their kids to access middle college by having KCA be the conduit for those sites to do that,” says Woodhead.

College credit is at the core of ASD’s CTE programs. Dual credit alignment with UAA and UAF gives high school students a head start toward a certificate or associate degree. “We do that with our certified nurse program. We’re going to start doing that with our business academy that we’re starting next year,” says Fraze. “Those are creative ways that we can build that bridge between high school and post-secondary.”

Fraze notes that not every CTE program is available at every school, and CTE is absent from elementary schools (apart from STEM-stimulating maker spaces). King Tech fills the gaps, but that’s not all it’s for. McGinley says his school offers a deeper dive into more advanced skills, serving as a capstone to programs at other schools.

Learning to maintain and repair heavy equipment takes a lot of space and money, so AVTEC must carefully choose which programs to offer.

Melissa Guernsey | AVTEC

A CTE teacher is a master in their field, like a plumber earning $140 per hour, who must set that paycheck aside. School districts award Type M certificates to become classroom teachers while they hone their pedagogical skills on the job. McGinley says CTE programs are “often hiring teachers direct from industry, not teachers who’ve been classically trained in education.”

King Tech’s principal himself is classically trained in education. A doctorate, in fact, yet McGinley’s original background was as a cook, informally trained. “I feel very strongly about career and technical education because I know what those skills can bring in life,” he says.

Training welders was one of the core missions of Alaska Vocational Technical Center when it was established shortly after the discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay.

Melissa Guernsey | AVTEC

Voc-ed carries a stigma that separates certain kids from their college-bound peers. “We’ve had these different lanes, and different attitudes and opinions, but we’re moving away from that,” McGinley says. “The idea that college is very important, and college will change your life and offer better employment opportunities—I think that’s still part of the way society thinks, but I think people are starting to realize that college debt isn’t going away.”

The broader scope of CTE also helps to reduce the stigma, according to Fraze. “As career-technical education has expanded and grown, and legislation has changed, it has really developed to encompass all careers,” she says. “It’s not a program for ‘those kids’ or ‘these kids.’ It’s a program for all kids.

A King Tech student assesses the roof of a shed in a carpentry course.

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College and career training aren’t mutually exclusive, of course. LaCompte, who used to teach business courses at UAS, served for six years as associate dean of UAA’s Community and Technical College (CTC), a remnant of the former Anchorage Community College. LaCompte says AVTEC could fit within the UA System but for the fact that its accreditation is based on “clock hours” rather than academic credits.

After 180 days of intensive training, AVTEC students complete the equivalent of twenty to thirty college credits, LeCompte figures—about halfway to an associate degree. LaCompte wishes to dispel the myth that voc-ed is only for students who are not academically inclined: “That’s not how it works. You’ve got to know some math. You gotta know how to read a technical journal.”

Rather, LaCompte says, career training is for those who have the time, flexibility, and energy to acquire specific job skills in a matter of months.

A King Tech student repairs car bodywork in the collision/repair class.

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Demand for fast-track training may outstrip supply. “As soon as this infrastructure money lands,” LeCompte says, “we’re probably not going to be able to meet the need,” but she says other schools are stepping up, including Charter College and Northern Industrial Training.

Yet workforce training requires a certain prudence to avoid oversaturating the job market. “I’m not going to turn out a thousand welders,” says LeCompte. “We couldn’t employ a thousand welders. I’m going to turn out twenty or thirty a year, and they get jobs.”

King Tech students learn how to nail roofing material.

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In the Lower Yukon School District, where unemployment rates consistently surpass anywhere else in Alaska, CTE can create new job opportunities. KCA teacher Hunt says students trained in auto mechanics, carpentry, or cosmetology can bring those services to villages without any, making the region’s service economy more self-sufficient.

“We have a fully untapped workforce in our young people in our region, for sure,” says Woodhead. “We want folks to understand that our kids are worth the development in being the next workforce.”

He calls Kusilvak Career Academy an “institution of hope,” especially in an area suffering from high rates of despair and suicide. “We’re saving lives every day,” says Woodhead. “Whether we know it or not, giving kids a plan really is going to help them.”