Maryland State Wire

Gov. Larry Hogan met with IBM executives last week to host a roundtable meeting to further expand the Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) program in the state.

The P-TECH enables students to graduate with both a high school diploma and an associate's degree in a STEM field in six years or less at no cost. It was launched in 2011 and includes 110 schools across eight U.S. states in addition to Australia, Morocco and Taiwan.

Bill Reinhard, the director of communications at Maryland State Department of Education, said career and technology programs like P-TECH are increasingly necessary to education programs.

Bill Reinhard | Contributed photo

"They've long been part of our program, but every year we see more and more employers interested in this sort of education and more and more students interested in taking these courses," Reinhard said in an interview with Maryland State Wire.

Reinhard said the department has a lot of different programs in addition to P-TECH.

"We have a lot of different programs that allow students to be prepared either for more education in that area or to step right into a career once they finish high school," Reinhard said. "For a lot of students, this is something they find is very important, as well as their parents. They're very interested in getting actual career training while still in high school."

Hogan's administration has invested more than $2 million to develop eight P-TECH schools in Maryland, including Dunbar High School and Carver-Vocational Technical School in Baltimore, which were the first to open at P-TECH schools in 2016.

For the 2018-19 school year, Dundalk High School and Clarksburg High School launched their P-TECH programs. Allegany Career and Technology Center and Frederick Douglass High School previously launched their programs as well.

Each P-TECH school must work with industry partners, as well as a local community college to ensure an up-to-date curriculum that is academically rigorous and economically relevant.

There are also workplace visits, paid internships and P-TECH students are first in line for consideration for job openings with the companies partnered with the school.

IBM Corporate Citizenship Vice President and Global Head Guilermo Miranda; Education Corporate Citizenship Vice President Grace Suh; Hogan's Senior Advisor Keiffer Mitchell; Carver Vocational-Technical High Principal Lori Bush; and Justice Heughan, a junior in the P-TECH Carver program addressed business leaders at the event.