Paving the way to success
Tech Prep is an education plan that enables you to take college or pre-college courses in high school and start planning early for a successful career.
The Tech Prep program identifies high school courses that are comparable to our college courses and creates a ‘course to course articulation agreement’ between the high school course and the Los Medanos College course. In simple terms, the high school student effectively takes a ‘college course’ while in high school and gets college credit for the course if he/she passes the course and final exam with a grade of “A” or “B”. As a result, high school students get a head start on college and career.
Tech Prep, in broader terms, is a sequenced program of study that usually combines two years of secondary (high school) education with two years of post secondary (college) education leading to a certificate or a degree in preparation for a career. This is called a ‘program to program articulation’ or a ‘career pathway’.
15 career pathways in a variety of industry clusters have been identified nationally. Instruction in high school tends to be broader, while the instruction in college begins to get more focused as students mature and have a better idea of what they want to do as they prepare for more focused career choices.