Vocational education and race in the Chicago public schools: Three historical case studies and implications for current reform

Three vocational high schools provide illustrative and contrasting histories in terms of African-American education and economic opportunity. Washburne Trade School reinforced trade union exclusion of African-Americans, and since integration in the 1960s has been abandoned by most of the powerful unions. Dunbar Vocational High School directed African-Americans into the lower-paying trades, but has lost the economic base that the ghetto once provided. Chicago Vocational School prepared the white working class for industrial jobs, but integration and re-segregation has coincidentally seen the erosion of Chicago's manufacturing base. These schools are compared in the economic, political, and cultural contexts of past and present. It is proposed that an integrated strategy for the reform of vocational education is necessary for these schools to adapt to economic change in the present and future.