By CANDACE CHASE

The Daily Inter Lake

Flathead Valley Community College, Flathead High School and local business and industry have broken curriculum ground with a new concept called career clusters.

Kathy Hughes, vice president of instruction at Flathead Valley Community College, said the approach to organizing instruction and student experiences around broad career categories is an innovation.

"It's not the old vocational education," she said.

Because of the group's pioneering work, the Flathead Valley was chosen to host the Montana Business Education Summit in July 2007. The meeting will highlight the education/business partnership's work to better prepare Flathead High students for their chosen careers.

Hughes led off a presentation before the board of trustees at Flathead Valley Community College recently by listing the six clusters used as a framework for reforming Flathead High School's curriculum.

The groupings of occupations and broad industries are:

. Arts, audio/visual technology and communications.

. Agriculture, food and natural resources.

. Business, management and administration.

. Human services

. Health science

. Science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Hughes said career clusters help colleges and high schools provide a more seamless pathway into their chosen fields. She said it helps students make better education choices.

"It really is about more choices for the student," Hughes said.

Bill Roope, director of the tech-prep consortium at the college, told trustees the reauthorization of the Carl Perkins Act provided an impetus for reworking the curriculum. The act governs distribution of federal vocational/technical education money.

"One major change is accountability," Roope said.

Dan Zorn, assistant superintendent for Kalispell schools, said the change to two high schools provided the perfect time to initiate this program.

"We're going through a lot of curriculum reform," he said.

Zorn said that the high school curriculum has focused on preparing students for college, not technical careers.

"We've been preparing kids for a future the majority are not going to be in," he said.

Under the new curriculum, students continue to take core courses such as English, math, social studies. Clusters come into play as students select their elective courses.

High school officials work with field advisory teams in each of the six career clusters as they add and up-date electives.

Joe Unterreiner, president of Kalispell area Chamber of Commerce, provided a list of 60 business leaders serving on the field advisory teams through the Kalispell Business Education Initiative.

Unterreiner said the final phase of the initiative calls for expanding the program locally and statewide.

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.