Rich Pedroncelli/AP Photo

What used to be the woodshop at Georgia's Dalton High School is now free of dust. Instead, it's filled with welding stations, a 3-D printer, and a computer-controlled plasma cutter. Students work with the engineering students across the hall on robotics projects, building their knowledge of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Seventy-four percent of Dalton High's students are enrolled in career, technical, and agricultural courses. But this isn't your father's vocational ed. Here, training for particular careers is considered part of a well-rounded college-preparatory education. "It's not an either/or with us," said Principal Steve Bartoo.

Dalton, Ga., a city of just over 33,000 in the Appalachian foothills, calls itself the Carpet Capital of the World. (Northwest Georgia produces 90 percent of the carpet made in the United States.) It's also home to a fast-growing Latino community. Latinos comprise 48 percent of Dalton's population—although only 9 percent statewide—and 70 percent of the students at Dalton High.

The community is still struggling to emerge from the recession; about 70 percent of the school's 1,640 students qualify for federally subsidized lunches. But despite changing demographics, falling incomes, and declining state funding, Dalton High's students are graduating at higher rates than ever. By combining a rigorous approach to career and technical education, known as CTE, with high academic expectations, the school has lifted its graduation rate from 56 percent to 92 percent over the past decade. Almost 70 percent of the class of 2011 enrolled in college within two years of finishing high school.

Starting this year, all ninth-graders in Georgia will be required to follow a career- or academic-focused "pathway"—in agribusiness, say, or finance—to graduate from high school. In Dalton, educators know that industry-focused courses can help teens thrive, but only when such courses aren't considered a separate track. The lines between electives, college-preparatory work, and career exploration are blurring. Schools that take this seriously can use career courses to elevate every student's education, rather than to warehouse the students lagging behind.

Tracking? What's That?

Vocational education has been controversial since early-20th-century reformers proposed a divided system of public education—college-preparatory work for some, technical training for others. Critics worried that such a system would track poor, minority, and immigrant children into working-class jobs, restricting their access to higher education and limiting their social mobility.