Why Apple, Facebook and Google Should Hire Students from this Suburb of Detroit

I visited the Detroit area recently for a meeting of the Digital Promise League of Innovative Schools. Our host was Utica Community Schools, a district serving 28,600 students in Sterling Heights, Michigan.

After visiting an elementary school and a high school, it hit me: Apple, Facebook and Google should hire students from Sterling Heights.

Why do I say that? Here’s the short answer.

These kids are determined. They want to learn. They want to graduate from high school. They want to go to college. They want successful careers. And they are developing the skills to solve complex, real-world problems.

In today’s right-answer-to-the-test-driven education system, that's unusual.

Now, here's the long answer to why employers looking for high-performing workers should one day hire students from Utica Community Schools.

To get to Sterling Heights from the Detroit Metro Airport, you head east on Interstate 94. Right away, you’re struck by the number of boarded up homes and businesses bordering the roadway – a reminder that as the U.S. auto industry embraced the 21st century and its global economy, it left much of its workforce behind.

Eleven miles up the road in Dearborn is Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge manufacturing plant. Completed in 1928, it was the world’s largest vertically integrated factory. It even had its own power plant onsite. At its peak in the 1930s, River Rouge employed more than 100,000 people. A Model A car rolled off the assembly line every 49 seconds.

Today, River Rouge is again a showcase – an example of sustainable manufacturing after a 20-year revitalization project completed in 2003. The plant now produces F-150 pick-up trucks. But it employs just 6,000 people.

It wasn’t always this way. Until about 1970, the U.S. auto industry couldn’t hire people fast enough. To attract workers, plants offered high wages and generous health and retirement benefits. According to John Barnard in his book American Vanguard, “… auto workers… were the best paid blue-collar workforce in the world…”

Throughout the boom times of the auto industry, the availability of high-paying jobs that did not require degrees or special training drove many young men in the Detroit area straight from high school to the assembly lines. Some had graduated; some had not.

Some of these workers are likely the great-grandfathers, grandfathers and perhaps even the fathers – or mothers – of students who go to school in Sterling Heights and neighboring communities.

And so, gathered around holiday dinner tables, students who attend Utica Community Schools today have no doubt heard the stories. How in the 1970s and 80s, high oil prices and Japan challenged the U.S. auto industry. How profits began to shrink and employment levels dropped.

How many workers were replaced by automated manufacturing systems. How new job demand is for designers, engineers, computer scientists, project managers and IT professionals – all of which require at least an undergraduate college degree.

How the era of the assembly line autoworker was over.

As a result, kids born into middle-class families in the Sterling Heights area know very well that they face a job market far different from the one previous generations faced when they came of age. They know that working for one company or in one type of job for life is not a realistic expectation in the 21st century.

And here is something else they know: Utica Community Schools has stepped up to meet the challenge of preparing them for life and work in a world transformed.

One of the district’s many programs supporting this aim is the Utica Center for Science and Industry (UCSI), which combines rigorous academics, technology and hands-on learning to teach students how to solve real-world problems.

In addition to core subjects such as math and English, students in the program choose from multimedia production, mechatronics (smart devices) and engineering. They design websites and build robots. They work in teams. Shadowing professionals and internships are part of the curriculum.

UCSI assumes that students will continue their education in community or four-year colleges after graduation from high school. The vast majority do.

Another great learning opportunity is Utica High School's school store, run by students studying marketing, finance and management. With a marketing teacher guiding them, the students do everything – purchasing, managing inventory, marketing, selling and keeping the books. For two years running, the store was named one of the top 10 school stores in the nation.

Talking to the students in these programs is awe-inspiring. One young man who helps run the school store was described by his fellow students as “the best salesman ever.” When asked what he wants to do when he graduates from high school, he didn't miss a beat: “I want to go to college and start my own business.”

Whether he becomes a business owner or goes to work for a company, one thing is certain: he and his fellow students will graduate from high school with real-world skills that will last a lifetime. That’s why many of these kids have plans for the future that extend far beyond getting their first job.

Apple, Facebook and Google would be lucky to have them.

Karen Cator is President and CEO of Digital Promise, a non-profit whose mission is to vastly improve the opportunity for all Americans to learn by accelerating innovation in education through technology and research. From 2009-2013, Karen was Director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education.