The jobs that once kept the city prosperous are being replaced by skilled jobs in service sectors such as health care, finance and information technology — positions that require more education than just a high-school diploma, thus squeezing out many of those blue-collar, traditionally middle-class workers.

Lara’s classmate Amber Phoumyvong, 17, shares his desire to escape from Lowell, but not his academic drive — a principal challenge to an education system trying to support a revitalization for places like Lowell. Six months before she graduates, she is not about to hide her feelings: She hates school. “Elementary school: hated it,” Amber says. “Middle school: h-a-t-e-d it. School just isn’t for me. I hate coming to school. I hate waking up early. I hate homework.”

Amber envisions a comfortable future that includes a family, a modern-yet-rustic house and a good job, maybe as a business owner. Her distaste for school may put her dreams out of reach, but it would take more than a boost in motivation to change the tide.

On the surface, American high schools are educating better than ever. Eighty-four percent of students are graduating on time — an all-time high, according to the U.S. Department of Education — and 70 percent are enrolling in college directly after high school. And yet, beneath these optimistic benchmarks lies a career- and job-readiness picture that may be increasingly out of sync with what the future economy will require.

I think where high schools have gotten it wrong, or let's be honest, those of us in the policy world have gotten it wrong, is in thinking that high schools’ only job is preparing kids for a four-year liberal arts degree. Michael J. Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute

As emerging technologies rapidly and thoroughly transform the workplace, some experts predict that by 2030 400 million to 800 million people worldwide could be displaced and need to find new jobs. The ability to adapt and quickly acquire new skills will become a necessity for survival.

Critics say high schools aren’t doing enough to prepare young people for life after graduation, in-demand jobs and a pathway to the middle class. Underscoring the criticism are sobering statistics: Nationally, just 25 percent of high school seniors are able to do grade-level math and just 37 percent score proficient in reading. Those numbers are egregiously lower among African-American and Hispanic students. And while 93 percent of middle school students say they plan to attend college, only 26 percent go on to graduate from college within six years of enrolling. These indicators, coupled with the staggering cost of higher education and millions of unfilled jobs in skilled trades, are pushing policymakers to rethink America’s bachelor’s-or-bust mentality.

At Lowell High School, educators are scrambling to prepare kids for the future, while acknowledging its fundamental unknowability.

“We’re preparing kids for these jobs of tomorrow, but we really don’t even know what they are,” said Amy McLeod, the school’s director of curriculum, instruction and assessment. “It’s almost like we’re doing this with blinders on. ... We’re doing all we can to give them the finite skills, the computer languages, the programming, but technology is expanding so rapidly, we almost can’t keep up.”

Amy McLeod is Lowell High School's director of curriculum, instruction and assessment. Kate Flock / for The Hechinger Report

When The Hechinger Report surveyed nearly 1,000 Lowell High School juniors and seniors this winter to gauge their feelings about their job- and career-readiness, close to 70 percent said they felt well-prepared to succeed in college and careers; nearly 80 percent said they felt confident that they’d acquired the digital skills necessary to thrive after high school. But a national survey indicates this optimism may be misplaced: Just 16 percent of college instructors rated incoming students as “well” or “very well” prepared for college-level work, according to the 2015 study by ACT, the creators of the standardized college entrance exam.

At Lowell High School, students generally have strong performance on academic assessments and high graduation rates overall, but the school has a significant achievement gap: Academic performance and graduation rates for low-income, special education and English language learners — the high-needs students who make up nearly 60 percent of the school's population — are alarmingly lagging.

Disengaged from school

For Amber, college is dead-last on her to-do list. There is one part of her school day, however, that continues to stand out from the blur of required classes and tests she endures in order to graduate: “Culinary is most likely the best part of my day,” she says. In her first year at Lowell High, Amber, like all freshman here, got to pick one or more courses from the school’s Pathways Programs. She chose Culinary Arts and never deviated from the program all four years.

Lowell High School’s amped-up program goes a step beyond typical enrichment offerings, with coursework intended to prepare kids for continuing education and jobs in local and state industries that are actively hiring and projected to grow.

Pathways — which include multiple classes organized under umbrella sectors such as engineering, health and bioscience, business, environmental sustainability and culinary arts — is extremely popular at the school. Last year, 463 of the 645 students who graduated accrued 10 or more Pathway credits, earning a special designation on their transcripts, a sort of postsecondary résumé-builder. Although the goal is to get kids into college or other postsecondary education, students can also become certified in a specific skill, enabling them to be job-ready by graduation.

For students like Amber, who would rather do just about anything but go to school, the Pathways program serves another function: It makes learning engaging, maybe even fun, and possibly keeps her in school and on track to graduate.

Amber Phoumyvong, 17, is a Lowell High School senior. She has gone back and forth on her plans after graduation: "I wasn't born to have my life planned out." Kate Flock / for The Hechinger Report

“I think we’re turning kids off to learning in this country by putting them in rows and giving them multiple-choice tests — the compliance model,” McLeod said. “But my hope is that in the pathways courses, we’re teaching them to love learning. And they’re learning about options in the field — there’s plenty of options for kids to try here.”

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Amber, whose parents moved here from Laos before she was born, always loved food and cooking. At home, she likes to cook stir-fries and feu (Lao beef stew), and recently learned how to prepare a papaya salad, based on a recipe from her mother and grandmother. Her eyes light up when she speaks about the food she loves.

But turn the subject back to school, and she crosses her arms and her face becomes guarded once more. The Lowell culinary program ultimately became a disappointment. “I’m fine with the behind-the-scenes part of culinary, I still like cooking, it’s still fun. But dealing with people and customer service, that’s just not my thing,” she says.

And so mid-senior year, she finds herself adrift. “All my friends, they have their lives planned out. They’re going to college, they have scholarships, they know what they’re going to major in, where they’re going to live,” she says. “I feel it’s different for me because I wasn’t born to have my life planned out.”

Amber is far from alone as she faces finishing high school with plans for her future derailed and no clear path to college. A 2016 Gallup poll of students found that just 34 percent of 12th-graders across America feel engaged in school and only 44 percent of 11th-graders report feeling excited about the future. Engagement and optimism about the future are directly linked to making plans for life after high school — such as attending college or starting a business.

Though the mere mention of college depresses her, Amber knows she will eventually need more education after high school. Workers with bachelor’s degrees now outnumber workers with high-school diplomas, according to a report by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Even when hiring workers without a bachelor's degree, employers still look for more than a high school diploma, increasingly favoring those who have an associate degree or some college training. American high schools need to do more to educate young people about careers that require two-year degrees or certifications, rather than primarily promoting expensive bachelor’s degrees, say some experts.

“I think where high schools have gotten it wrong, or let's be honest, those of us in the policy world have gotten it wrong, is in thinking that high schools’ only job is preparing kids for a four-year liberal arts degree," said Michael J. Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a right-leaning think tank. “We have probably about 30 to 40 percent of kids who graduate high school ready for a four-year college program and they do OK. But then there's another probably 30 or 40 percent of kids who aren't terribly well-prepared, but go to college anyway and end up in remedial classes and drop out. So now they've had this failure early in their life and nothing much to show for it.”

Some educators hope that a push to upgrade career-and-technical programs will engage more students in learning and prepare them for the in-demand jobs and flexibility the future will require. Massachusetts, for example, is investing $45 million over three years to expand and improve career-and-technical schools, making the programs more responsive to the changing job market, and refashioning them as a path not just to jobs but also to two- and four-year colleges. Nationally, there’s some evidence that such efforts are working. All 50 states and the District of Columbia report higher graduation rates for students who take career-and-technical classes than for other students.