The Lack of a Clear and Shared Vision for School-to-Work Reforms

"Educators themselves are unclear about the role of school-to-work programs. Only those in vocational education - a dwindling number, given the decreasing vocational enrollments during the 1980s and peripheral in most schools because of the low status of vocational education - have participated in the integration of academic and vocational education and the tech- prep initiatives that appear in school-to-work legislation. Most academic educators have been preoccupied with other reforms - subject-specific changes in math and English, for example, or 'restructuring' (whatever that is), or following the principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools or Paidea Schools or some other piper - that have little to do with occupational preparation." (Grubb, 1994, p. 4)

...

"The most likely scenario, without a clear vision of how schools should change, is that the great interest in work-based learning and the lack of interest among educators in occupationally oriented education will combine to create the worst of all worlds. Work experience programs will be supported in high schools that remain much as they are now - dominated by the college-bound track, with no apparent connection to future employment. They will provide some work opportunities for small numbers of students, many of them 'at-risk,' but utterly fail to reshape the high school in any important way." (Grubb, 1994, p. 5).

References