Critical Issue:
Improving School-to-Work Transition for All Students

ISSUE: Too many students leave high school without the occupational and academic skills to succeed in the workplace or in postsecondary education. School-to-work transition initiatives offer a promising approach to this issue and require major school restructuring.

OVERVIEW: A report by the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, America's Choice: High Skills or Low Wages! (1990), states that "America may have the worst school-to-work transition system of any advanced industrial country." (p. 4) The curriculum of the typical American high school is geared toward preparing students for four-year colleges and universities.

Lynn Peters, director of Business-Education Partnerships for the Fox Cities Chamber of Commerce and Industry, discusses how high schools in Wisconsin often direct most of their efforts toward the 25 percent of kids who graduate from college. Excerpted from NCREL's Rural Audio Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, From School to Work - and Back Again: Youth Apprenticeships in Wisconsin (NCREL, 1994) (Audio comment, 315k). A text version is available.

Yet only about 50 percent of graduating seniors enroll in postsecondary education, and only half of them attain bachelor's degrees. Students who do not plan to pursue a four-year degree after graduation often are placed in a "general track" - which leads nowhere - and expectations for their academic achievement tend to be low. Although many excellent high school occupational programs exist, the U.S. Department of Education (1994) reports that enrollments in vocational programs are declining, as are the number of occupational programs nationally. Add in a national high school dropout rate of 11 percent - and as high as 50 percent in some urban areas - and the net result is that the majority of American high school students approach adulthood without the skills to sustain themselves economically or succeed in postsecondary education. (See Section 2 of the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994.)

At the same time, the U.S. economy faces a serious challenge from international competition, while technology advances at breakneck speed. The resulting changes in skill requirements may particularly affect women's paid employment, the educational needs of rural women, and employment opportunities for minorities, because these groups traditionally have been employed in low-skill and clerical jobs - jobs that are becoming more scarce in the new global economy. Indeed, a recent U.S. Department of Education report (1993) said that 89 percent of the jobs created in the United States between 1992 and 2000 will require postsecondary levels of literacy and numeracy, but only half of those entering the workforce are likely to have those skills. In other words, the skills that employers need and the skills that potential employees have are mismatched.

Meanwhile, even as the world's best companies are redesigning themselves to increase productivity, quality, variety, and speed, most American businesses are still organized around the mass production economy of the early 1900s (Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, 1990). Too many American companies do not make the investments in human resources and training needed for a high-performance workplace.

Clearly, while improving education is not the only answer to the country's economic problems, the education system needs to be restructured to prepare students for success in the workplace and postsecondary education. The federal government is attempting to stimulate such restructuring with the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994. The law funds activities in three arenas: school-based learning, work-based learning, and connecting activities. A core theme of the Act is the need to integrate academic and vocational learning, school-based and work-based learning, and secondary and postsecondary education.

The Act cites tech prep, youth apprenticeship , career academies, and cooperative education as "promising" school-to-work activities. Local partnerships can design systems that meet their local needs through school-based learning, work-based learning, and connecting activities.

Joe D'Amico and Ed Janus, hosts of NCREL's Rural Audio Journals, speak about how school-to-work efforts strive to help students see the connection between work and learning. Excerpted from NCREL's Rural Audio Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, From School to Work - and Back Again: Youth Apprenticeships in Wisconsin (NCREL, 1994) (Audio comment, 387k). A text version is available.

GOALS: The Act has 14 stated purposes the first purpose being to establish a national framework to enable the creation of statewide school-to-work opportunities systems that are part of comprehensive educational reform efforts. These systems must offer opportunities for all students to earn portable credentials; prepare students for first jobs in high-skill, high-wage careers; and increase students' opportunities for further education, including education in a four-year college or university. These goals should be accomplished through performance-based education and training programs and integrated into systems developed under the National Skill Standards Act of 1994 (Title V of the Goals 2000: Educate America Act), which establishes a National Skills Standards Board.

Joe D'Amico, one of the hosts of NCREL's Rural Audio Journals, talks about how the confidence that students gain through successful apprenticeship experiences allows them to go farther in their education. Excerpted from NCREL's Rural Audio Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, From School to Work - and Back Again: Youth Apprenticeships in Wisconsin (NCREL, 1994) (Audio comment, 360k). A text version is available.

ACTION OPTIONS: The Center on Education and Work, University of Wisconsin, Madison, has developed A Leadership Model for Planning and Implementing Change for School-to-Work Transition (Paris, 1994). This collaborative planning model incorporates aspects of the "plan-do-study-act" process used for continuous improvement in organizations practicing total quality management (TQM). Teachers, administrators, counselors, parents, students, postsecondary representatives, business, industry, labor, and community representatives work in partnership to plan and implement systems that will improve school-to-work transition for all students. The model identifies six strategies for improving school-to-work transition for all students:

1. Developing an applied and integrated curriculum
2. Implementing classroom-based developmental career guidance
3. Developing work-based learning opportunities
4. Creating occupational curriculum articulation between K-12 and postsecondary education
5. Working in partnership with business, industry, labor, and the community
6. Providing professional development activities

IMPLEMENTATION PITFALLS: Schools tend to make plans and then try to "sell" those plans to the rest of the community. It is extremely important for key stakeholders to be involved in collaborative planning from the beginning of the process to ensure that the entire school community is committed to the implementation of school-to-work transition plans.

Other pitfalls include making major changes too quickly without adequate professional development or communication; creating work-based learning programs based on convenience rather than labor market need; and designing and implementing programs that do not meet the needs of a diverse population of students.

DIFFERENT POINTS OF VIEW: Some view the school-to-work movement and tech prep, which preceded it, as systems for tracking low-income and minority students into vocational programs:

"Despite the claims of its advocates, [youth apprenticeship] will not equalize educational opportunities or improve the economic prospects of poor and minority youth; it will only reproduce the inequities that apprenticeship claims to address." (Kantor, 1993)

While school-to-work supporters are confident that business, industry, and labor will participate in school-to-work programs, opponents fear that there is little incentive for them to do so.

ILLUSTRATIVE CASES:

Kalamazoo County's Education for Employment

Craftmanship 2000 youth apprenticeship programs include work-based and school-based learning and connecting activities.

CONTACTS:

Center on Education and Work
University of Wisconsin at Madison
Educational Sciences Building
1025 W. Johnson St., Room 964
Madison, WI 53706-1796
608-263-2714; fax 608-262-9197
Contact: Dr. L. Allen Phelps
WWW: http://www.cew.wisc.edu

National Center for Research in Vocational Education
Materials Distribution Service
Western Illinois University
1 University Circle
Macomb, IL 61455-1390
Contact: Diana Burnell
(800) 637-7652, FAX: (309) 298-2869
e-mail: mimds@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu
WWW: http://www.wiu.edu/users/micpc/index.html

Jobs for the Future
One Bowdoin Square, 11th Floor
Boston, MA 02114
617-742-5995
Contact: Mary Ellen Bavaro, Director of Communications
FAX: 617-742-5767
e-mail: meBavaro@jff.org

References

This Critical Issue was researched and written by Kathleen Paris, Director, Leadership Institute for School-to-Work Transition, Center on Education and Work, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Date posted: 1995