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History
Established in 2003, The D.C. Students Construction
Trades Foundation is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization, dedicated
to advancing career and technical education in the District
of Columbia. Vocational education had been around for decades
in the District’s public schools, but by school year
2000, construction education programs were all but abandoned
as a result of lack of interest and low enrollment. Miller
& Long chairman John McMahon and a group of District business
and community leaders initiated a multi-year development process
with District of Columbia Public Schools that resulted in
the opening of the Academy of Construction & Design at
Cardozo Senior High School. The participants in this public-private
partnership envisioned something vastly different from the
vocational education program of the past. Working together,
these leaders designed a training program that would intervene
earlier, during high school, to better equip youth for employment,
higher education and career opportunities after graduation.
They also believed specialized career and technical education
represented the hope of a better future for students who could
improve their performance in school and were less likely to
cut classes or drop out when they were engaged in learning
with their heads and with their hands, too.
From the beginning, the Foundation and its
partners wanted to replicate for District students the exceptional
construction education program they had observed at the Thomas
Edison High School of Technology in Montgomery County, Maryland.
That longstanding program had produced more than thirty student-built
houses and had instilled a sense of pride and accomplishment
in a generation of students, many of whom went on to college
or careers in various construction trades and eventually started
their own businesses.
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