|
Erwin Flaxman
Annabelle Guerrero
Denise Gretchen
Teachers College, Columbia University
National Center for Research in Vocational Education
Graduate School of Education
University of California at Berkeley
2030 Addison Street, Suite 500
Berkeley, CA 94720-1674
Supported by
The Office of Vocational and Adult Education
U.S. Department of Education
June 1999
FUNDING INFORMATION
| Project Title: | National Center for Research in Vocational Education |
|---|---|
| Grant Number: | V051A30003-99A/V051A30004-99A |
| Act under which Funds Administered: | Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act
P.L. 98-524 |
| Source of Grant: | Office of Vocational and Adult Education
U.S. Department of Education Washington, DC 20202 |
| Grantee: | The Regents of the University of California
c/o National Center for Research in Vocational Education 2030 Addison Street, Suite 500 Berkeley, CA 94720 |
| Director: | David Stern |
| Percent of Total Grant Financed by Federal Money: | 100% |
| Dollar Amount of Federal Funds for Grant: | $4,500,000 |
| Disclaimer: | This publication was prepared pursuant to a grant with the Office of Vocational and Adult Education, U.S. Department of Education. Grantees undertaking such projects under government sponsorship are encouraged to express freely their judgement in professional and technical matters. Points of view or opinions do not, therefore, necessarily represent official U.S. Department of Education position or policy. |
| Discrimination: | Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 states: "No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance." Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 states: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance." Therefore, the National Center for Research in Vocational Education project, like every program or activity receiving financial assistance from the U.S. Department of Education, must be operated in compliance with these laws. |
This study investigated the institutional and social and psychological effects of attending an urban career magnet high school. It was designed specifically to examine the differential impact of the curriculum and instruction in the school, students' extracurricular experience, work experience while in school after graduation, peer relationships while in school, and family attitudes toward schooling on the postsecondary education potential and career development of the graduates of both career magnet and comprehensive high schools. To determine these effects, the study used a random assignment database, which was created by a lottery mechanism used to assign seats in oversubscribed career magnet high schools.
The subjects of the study were 110 graduates of four career magnet high schools and four comprehensive high schools in New York City. A total of 51 students who attended and graduated from a career magnet school--the "lottery winners"--and 59 who attended and graduated from a comprehensive high school--the "lottery losers"--were included in the study. Because the subjects were drawn from a database for the study constructed in an experimental design format, the graduates were selected in pairs in which one graduate was randomly admitted to a New York City career magnet high school while the other was randomly rejected from the same school, and subsequently attended and graduated from a comprehensive high school. In our study, then, the random selection process assured group equality and eliminated the initial differences between the groups known as selection bias. Since the pairs of graduates were constructed by random assignment and matching, any consistent difference between career magnet and comprehensive high school graduates could be attributed to the schools they attended. All 110 graduates were surveyed using closed-ended (Likert scale and yes/no) and open-ended structured interviews.
The graduates of the career magnet and the comprehensive high schools reported a number of statistically significant differences in their high school educational and work experiences, career choices and development, post-high school work and educational experiences, and peer and family relationships that can explain the impact of the schools on their career development. In most of their responses to the interview questions, the graduates of the career magnet high schools were more articulate than the graduates of the comprehensive high schools: they gave more answers to questions when given a chance to make a second or third choice on a scale, and their responses were more specific and comprehensive to open-ended questions.
The career magnet graduates retained stronger positive feelings toward their high school than the graduates of the comprehensive high schools. Given the opportunity, the career magnet graduates said that they would choose to attend the same high school again because of its career focus. The comprehensive high school graduates did not indicate that they would want to return to their high school because of the value of the education it offered; they would return because of the appeal of the location, its safety, or the fun they had.
The comprehensive graduates also cut classes more frequently (once a week) than their career magnet peers (a few times a semester). The career magnet graduates felt a greater peer pressure not to cut class and were concerned that they would upset their parents if they did. They also rarely cut their occupational classes.
The career magnet graduates were significantly less likely to engage in behaviors associated with poor school performance. They were less likely to have been in a fight, to smoke, to drink alcohol, to use drugs, to be pregnant or make someone pregnant, or to be arrested by police on serious charges. The reduced incidence of academic risk behaviors was the biggest difference in the two groups while in high school.
For the most part, the graduates did not differ in their overall perception of the impact of their coursework on their career development; however, the career magnet graduates did feel that they learned more in their occupationally related classes than in their academic classes, and were more likely to attribute any positive educational (academic and career) outcomes of their high school experience to their occupational classes.
Neither the career magnet nor the comprehensive graduates reported a significant number of contacts with their teachers while in high school. The career magnet graduates identified only the teachers in their occupationally related classes as influential in their career choice or development. Neither the career magnet nor the comprehensive graduates were likely to talk to a counselor or necessarily attribute any specific influence to the encounter.
Neither the career magnet nor the comprehensive graduates attributed a great deal of specific importance in their career choice or development to their extracurricular or volunteer experiences or to any single person they encountered in the community, although more of the career magnet graduates than their comprehensive peers thought that participating in extracurricular activities affected their thinking.
Many of the career magnet and comprehensive graduates worked while in high school in jobs related to their schoolwork; although the comprehensive high school graduates were more likely to hold a job while in high school. In general, more career magnet graduates than comprehensive graduates reported that they did class assignments or changed a class project because of their job experiences. The comprehensive graduates felt that their work experience only helped them develop specific technical occupational skills, not necessarily knowledge of future careers or work norms.
The graduates of the career magnet high schools reported that most of their friends were fellow students in their classes who did not live in their neighborhoods. More of their social life, then, was centered in the school, and with school friends rather than with friends in their neighborhood. By contrast, the graduates of the comprehensive high schools had friends in their schools and in their neighborhoods both, and they identified their social life with their neighborhood.
The career magnet graduates, more than the comprehensive graduates, believed that their parents thought their going to college was the most important part of their plans for the future, and felt that their parents believed that it was important for the family to make sacrifices to send them to college. The comprehensive graduates reported that while their parents thought going to college was a good idea, their family had few financial resources to send them to college, and they should not expect to be supported if they chose to attend.
More of the graduates of the career magnet high school planned to go to college than the comprehensive graduates did, who postponed such thoughts. Of those graduates who attended college after graduating from high school, the career magnet graduates took more college credits. They also said that they had already declared a major, unlike the comprehensive graduates.
Most of the graduates quit their high school jobs right after graduating, but the comprehensive graduates did so at a greater rate. Of those working in their third job after graduation, however, the career magnet graduates were more likely to be working full-time than the comprehensive graduates. After graduation, career magnet graduates indicated a starting wage that was one dollar higher per hour than the comprehensive graduates, and it remained higher at the time of the study.
In a related study of the effects of attending a career magnet high school, using the data set created for this study, Zellman and Quigley (1999) developed two models of variables pointing to differences in the experiences of the career magnet and the comprehensive graduates. The analyses revealed that the influence of the career magnet graduate is transmitted through peer relationships and parent support. The career magnet graduates were more likely to have a best friend who has a career interest, and thus very likely to have been exposed to an environment where career thinking and career planning were the norms. Consequently, friendships in the new environment, away from the neighborhood, were more likely to form around mature interests than might be otherwise possible; in turn, graduates might have come to believe that they were developing and using marketable skills in their career-oriented classes and at work. In addition, the career magnet high school, with its emphasis on the rewards of current efforts in the future, likely influenced the youth and his or her peer group to avoid at-risk behaviors. The analyses also revealed that a student who graduated from a career magnet high school is 30% more likely than a comprehensive graduate to perceive that his or her parents would be willing to make sacrifices to send him or her to college. These same students were 19% more likely to believe that they would be in their desired careers within the next six to ten years. Importantly, these models suggest that of all the variables, attendance at the career magnet high school itself may have led to parents' assumptions about their children's seriousness of efforts because it required extra physical and academic effort to attend. This coupled with other variables in the models, such as career confidence, avoidance of at-risk behaviors, and career-related college plans, likely led to parental commitment to their children's education.
Magnet schools have been part of the Nation's educational system for a number of years, first as a desegregation strategy, and now as one of a variety of focus schools with a curriculum theme, course content, specific pedagogy, special allied activities, student selection policies, scheduling procedures, or school organization that attract or "magnetize" students and teachers with interests in the school's theme and practices. In principle, magnet schools project a clear educational ideal and goal for the students. In no magnet schools is this recognizable outlook more prominent than in the increasing number of career magnet schools nationally.
One of the purposes of high school is to prepare students for life and work. Those who oppose traditional comprehensive high schools often ask, "How can schools in which students merely master academic (or general) knowledge and perform under rote conditions to meet universal requirements have a beneficial effect on students' adult educational and occupational attainment?" (Jencks et al., 1972). Career magnet high schools represent an important alternative to comprehensive high schools. By combining career preparation with traditional college preparatory courses, students interested in career opportunities do not have to choose between college and an entry-level job after high school graduation. What is more, the career magnet high schools can draw students from neighborhoods of various income and ethnic populations; thus, they not only can improve the quality of education but can also advance the values of diversity and educational equity throughout a school district (Blank, 1989).
From research carried out by Crain, Heebner, and Si (1992) in high schools in a large city, we now know that attending a career-oriented magnet school positively affects student outcomes, as measured by grades and attendance--but not dropout rates (Crain & Thaler, 1999)--when compared with the academic outcomes of students attending comprehensive high schools. But there are further questions to be answered: "Do career-oriented magnet schools, as compared with comprehensive high schools, also positively affect the career development process?" and "Will there be differences in career development outcomes for the students attending each type of school that can be attributed to the practices in the schools?"
This paper is a report of a study of the effects of career magnet high schools on its graduates' educational and career orientation. In conducting the study, we hypothesized that students in the career magnet, as opposed to those in the comprehensive high school, would be exposed to more directly relevant and better-integrated influences on their career development. This would mean that students in career magnet schools would differ from their comprehensive school counterparts in an array of psychological achievements and behavioral and educational outcomes.
In the past, it has been too narrowly thought that the career development process occurs only within several discrete events, sometimes isolated from other aspects of schooling. We felt that better explanations of the career development process were needed so that we could better understand which events and student experiences, and in what relationship, contribute to the students' academic and career future.
Numerous studies already point to the benefits of magnet schools. In general, magnet schools have been found to increase student achievement, student motivation and satisfaction with school, teacher motivation and morale, and parent satisfaction with the school (Blank, 1989; Crain et al., 1992; Gamoran, 1996; Heebner, 1995; Metz, 1986; Musumecci & Szczypkowski, 1991). Almost all the studies reviewed by Blank (1989) show that average test scores of students in magnet schools are higher than scores for non-magnet schools.
But the label of "magnet school" is applied to schools which can be considerably different in purpose, curriculum, pedagogy, and standards; for example, in some school districts, highly selective academic high schools, schools with programs for students with particular talents, reduced size elementary and middle schools with a particular focus, and alternative schools for students with academic and behavior problems may all be called magnet schools. These schools may differ in entrance requirements and selection criteria; even more, they may attract students (and their parents) interested and motivated enough to act to take advantage of an opportunity to attend a magnet school, often at a great geographical distance. Several studies of large numbers of students in many schools--studies which were designed to overcome the selection bias usually raised about the results of research on magnet schools--offer evidence of their success. In a longitudinal study of over 1,000 students in four school districts, Musumecci and Szczypkowski (1991) found that those who spent a longer period of time in magnet schools had a better promotion rate and enrolled in more college prep courses than those who spent only a relatively brief period of time. In general, on all measures of academic success, behavior, attendance, and participation in school activities, the long-term magnet school students outperformed their short-term (or non-magnet) counterparts.
Crain et al. (1992) studied the career magnet high schools which enrolled almost a third of the students in the high schools in a large city, who were admitted by lottery. They compared the lottery winners--those who attended the career magnet high schools who might not otherwise without the lottery--with the lottery losers--those who attended comprehensive high schools, likely in their own neighborhoods. They found that the students planning to attend career magnet high schools were less likely to drop out during the transition to high school, made greater gains in reading, and earned more credits toward graduation than their comprehensive school counterparts. The academically weakest students, those with the lowest test scores, did not succeed, however. But in a related study of the lottery winners and losers, Crain and Thaler (1999) found that comprehensive high schools proportionally are graduating four students for every three graduated from a career magnet high school. The authors suggest, paradoxically, that this may be due to the high standards in the traditional academic subjects in the career magnet high schools, which do not have sufficient resources for remedial services.
In other studies, Gamoran (1996), in estimating the educational effects of magnet schools, comprehensive schools, and Catholic schools, found that for the average student magnet schools appear to produce higher achievement in reading and social studies. Finally, a national study of magnet schools by Blank, Dentler, Baltzell, and Chabotar (1983) showed that 80% of the magnet schools had average reading and math achievement scores that were above their district's average. These were studies of many different kinds of magnet schools, not just academic career magnets with random selection procedures. Some highly selective or desirable schools which students and their parents actively chose may have been included in the sample.
For many, then, career magnet high schools are thought to have the potential to positively affect measurable educational outcomes, such as student grades and scores on standardized tests, but there are other academic benefits as well: students in career magnet high schools have better attendance records, earn more credits toward graduation, and think in more sophisticated ways about their career futures than their counterparts in comprehensive high schools (Blank, 1989; Crain et al., 1992; Heebner, 1995).
The shortcomings of many urban comprehensive schools signal why many educators hope career magnet high schools will be more successful in educating urban youth. Comprehensive high schools typically lack specific programs of study and offer little academic counseling, leading to students' lack of engagement with schoolwork. What follows is weak performance and discipline problems, resulting in a poor and sometimes an unsafe climate for learning (Gamoran, 1996). The traditional curriculum of the comprehensive high school often seems irrelevant to many students, and many of their teachers agree that the curriculum is excessively academic (Crain et al., 1992). Many comprehensive high school students do not understand the connection between school and the rest of their lives and do not see school as contributing to their future well-being by improving their occupational chances (Alpert & Dunham, 1986; Hendrix, Sederberg, & Miller, 1990; Valverde, 1987).
It is thought that by meeting students' career as well as academic needs, a career magnet school can make education meaningful and motivate students to learn more in their academic classes because they are spending a part of their day learning material relevant to a possible future (Crain et al., 1992). One should not assume, however, that high expectations for academic work are not the norm in a school with a career-oriented curriculum (Crain & Thaler, 1999). Students in career magnets see academic as well as career-related course material as more relevant and, therefore, tend to take more classes, work harder, and learn more (Gamoran, 1996). The culture of the school supports this behavior. With the importance of higher education in the United States, it would be difficult to recruit students to a career magnet high school at the beginning of high school if attending meant jeopardizing the option of attending college later (Heebner, 1995).
In addition to increasing student motivation, career magnet high schools can encourage students to stay in school. Heebner (1995) found there was a lower dropout rate among lottery winners in medium and high reading-test-score groups in public career magnet high schools in a large city, but, importantly, not in the lowest. Similarly, studies in Rochester, New York, and New York City comparing career magnet high school attendance with district averages generally found higher attendance at career magnets (New York City Public Schools, 1988; Rochester City School District, 1988). In their analysis of a magnet school system in a large city, Crain et al. (1992) explain why this may be the case; for example, career magnet programs that provide more hands-on computer work encourage student attendance among those students with average reading scores, and programs with strong placement efforts encourage students with poor reading scores to stay in school, although not always successfully.
The social and economic problems of families add an additional educational burden to the problems of educating urban youth. Students who come from poor families face a host of academic and career challenges. Living in poverty is associated with low academic achievement, an increased risk of dropping out of school, and a decreased chance of pursuing postsecondary education (Entwisle, 1990; Stedman, Salganik, & Celebuski, 1988; Velez, 1989). These conditions seriously constrain the job entrant's options in the labor market. What is more, although economically at-risk students have educational and occupational aspirations similar to those of students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds, at-risk students, particularly in traditional, comprehensive high schools, are less well-prepared to pursue their educational and occupational objectives (Mortimer, Dennehy, & Lee, 1992).
This is so for a number of reasons. At-risk students have feelings of less self-efficacy than other youth. Poor students also feel that they would be less likely to have a job they enjoy, or that pays well, and less likely to own a home. They also report less intrinsic motivation to do schoolwork (Mortimer et al., 1992). Students living in impoverished circumstances may also not receive the same level of parental support as more advantaged youth. The social support network and economic resources of minority and low socioeconomic status students are too often not conducive to building and sustaining college aspirations (Hotchkiss & Borow, 1996).
A large share of the estimated twenty million young Americans who do not include college attendance in their plans are from the disadvantaged sector of the youth population. For young adults without a college degree, job opportunities are shrinking, real earnings are declining, and prospects for unemployment are greater (Hotchkiss & Borow, 1996). Given parents' economic difficulties, high-risk students may not find educational and vocational guidance in their homes (Mortimer et al., 1992). These are the students that are largely enrolled in comprehensive urban high schools, with few educational options, except a career magnet high school, since private schooling is not economically feasible.
This study was designed to determine the effects of attending such a career magnet high school on these students, who otherwise would have attended a comprehensive high school. Particularly, it examined the differential impact of the curriculum and instruction in the school, students' extracurricular experiences, work experiences while in school after graduation, peer relationships while in school, and family attitudes toward schooling on the postsecondary education and career development of the graduates of the career magnet and comprehensive high schools.
Since the 1970s, the Board of Education in the large urban school district under study has created a number of career magnet high schools to provide integrated academic and vocational education as a strategy to attract a racially, economically, and socially diverse group of students. They are considered "educational options schools" and they provide a dual curriculum of academic and vocational coursework to prepare students for work without foreclosing their opportunities to attend college and for a career for which they have received initial preparation. These schools operate both as "schools-within-a-school" in zoned comprehensive high schools (currently 95) and as stand-alone career magnet high schools (currently nine). (These numbers frequently change because of the program's evolution.)
Unlike many other magnet schools, these career magnets (sometimes called "academic career magnets") do not have a totally selective admissions policy. Since the 1980s, all eighth-grade students in the city schools can apply to any high school they might choose to attend in any neighborhood in the city, including the career magnets. This especially allows minority parents to exercise choice in their children's education, usually only an option available to middle-class white families. Students are assigned to the magnet schools according to reading scores, although one-sixth of the applicants reading above grade level and one-sixth of the applicants reading below must be admitted. Additionally, in 1987 the Board of Education mandated that one-half of all students must be admitted to a career magnet high school by lottery. Thus, students with a full range of reading test performance are admitted through a selection process, with one-half of any entering class assigned randomly through the lottery. The lottery then has ensured that the student body of the career magnet high schools is representative of the high school student population in the city (Zellman & Quigley, 1999).
Previous studies of the institutional effects of career magnet and comprehensive high schools, made possible by the uniqueness of a database of school records of students randomly assigned to the different high schools, have examined outcomes like grades, attendance, and transfer and dropout rates, and address only a limited number of questions such as those regarding school and post-graduation experiences (Crain et al., 1992; Crain & Thaler, 1999).
The subjects of the study were 110 graduates of four career magnet high schools and four comprehensive high schools. A total of 51 students who attended and graduated from a career magnet school--the "lottery winners"--and 59 who attended and graduated from a comprehensive high school--the "lottery losers"--were included in the study. Because the subjects were drawn from a database for the study constructed in an experimental design format, the graduates were selected in pairs in which one graduate was randomly admitted to a career magnet high school while the other was randomly rejected from the same school, and subsequently attended and graduated from a comprehensive high school. In our study, then, the random selection process assured group equality and eliminated the initial differences between the groups known as selection bias. Since the pairs of graduates were constructed by random assignment and matching, any consistent difference between career magnet and comprehensive high schools can be attributed to the schools they attended. We considered these differences between the groups to be institutional effects.
The subjects were chosen by a careful matching plan. They had to have graduated from high school within the previous two years; have scored in the mid-range on standardized citywide reading tests; and have been enrolled in high school in regular classes, with no special education placement. The potential interviewees were also matched on age and first choice of high school; however, it was not possible to match the pairs by the junior high school they attended, nor was it possible to match them perfectly by gender because two of the four career magnet high schools from which the lottery winners were identified had a substantial female population and needed to match with females attending the comprehensive schools. This meant that males from the other two career magnet high schools were overrepresented in the study. Race and ethnicity were balanced in the selection of interviewees. Out of the 110 students, 72 were female graduates and 38 were male graduates. Their ages ranged from 19- to 22-years-old.
| Demographics | Frequencies | Percent |
|---|---|---|
| Sex | ||
| Males | 38 | 34.5 |
| Females | 72 | 65.5 |
| Age | ||
| 19 years | 36 | 32.7 |
| 20 years | 61 | 55.5 |
| 21 years | 9 | 8.2 |
| 22 years | 3 | 2.7 |
| School Type | ||
| Career Magnet | 51 | 46.4 |
| Comprehensive | 59 | 53.6 |
The participants were located through lists obtained from the Board of Education. Permission from the Board of Education was received to interview the students. The graduates were contacted through a letter from their high school counselors and asked if they were willing to participate and be interviewed. Those who agreed were paid $40. The interviewers were graduate students who were specially trained for the study and who matched with the interviewees in race or ethnicity, age, and gender in almost all cases. The interviews were each two to three hours long.
All 110 graduates were surveyed using closed-ended (Likert scale and yes/no) structured interviews; a subset of the graduates (n = 21) were also interviewed in greater depth using a semistructured interview protocol that allowed for follow-up and probe questions, which are being separately analyzed as case studies. The report of the study in the body of this report is based only on the responses of the high school graduates to the structured survey. The interview schedule contained 440 questions with a large number of skips.
The graduates were questioned about their educational, occupational, social, and family experiences from eighth grade through high school, their experience on-the-job while in high school and after graduating, their experience at college or a postsecondary education institution, and their experience at home and in the community. The questions elicited information about the students' experiences in the following categories:
Questions about career identity and career self-efficacy were distributed through these sections. The students also responded to separate inventories to determine the degree of their internal or external locus of control and their responses to stressful life events.
As part of the study, the research staff visited all the schools attended by the graduates and interviewed the academic and vocational teachers and counselors currently working in the schools. The research staff also collected all administrative and program information about the schools available from the district and the school itself.
Administratively, and even programmatically, the career magnet and the comprehensive high schools attended by the graduates shared a number of characteristics, except, importantly, the career magnets required that students satisfy an array of both academic and vocational requirements to graduate. Both the career magnet and the comprehensive high schools in the study were large urban schools with a mix of new and veteran faculty; although teaching in a magnet school was considered a more desirable assignment, and faculty often asked for a placement or transfer to one of the schools. During the time the graduates were attending the high schools, the faculty and administration were free to adopt innovative curriculum; for example, although students were required to take a subject like English for a determined number of years in all the high schools, the content of the course could vary. However, at the time of the research, a new school superintendent had imposed stricter academic requirements and mandated that all the high schools offer specific academic coursework. This was in response to the demand for national standards and the new city college policy that graduates of the city high schools would have to meet higher traditional academic standards and demonstrate mastery of particular academic coursework in order to matriculate at any of the four-year colleges in the system.
There was little or no formalized integration of academic and vocational coursework or any integration between students' classwork and their work experiences in either type of school during the time the graduates were in high school. The idea of integrated curriculum and integrated work experience was a new school reform at the time, even in career magnet schools. Such reforms likely existed only as partially articulated and unorganized program efforts in schools like the career magnets. This might be due to the perceived status differences in the professional preparation and experiences of academic and vocational teachers: traditionally, vocational teachers have a lower status in the comprehensive high school, which is often perceived as an academic school in the school system. In the career magnets in the study, however, the vocational teachers had a particular status as instruments for carrying out the school's career focus and as emblems of its identity. The academic teachers generally were under pressure to prepare students for statewide tests in the traditional academic subjects, which even in schools with strong career focuses could not be ignored. In the career magnet, it was a matter of thorough academic and vocational education, not integrated academic-vocational education.
All students in the study had to meet common requirements for graduation and a state diploma. Unlike students in the comprehensive high schools, students in the career magnet high schools were required to take a full complement of coursework in their career major in their junior and senior years--as well as all the academic courses required to graduate or receive a regents diploma. Even before this, certainly by their sophomore year, they also had to have taken an introduction to careers course. The career magnet students were encouraged to declare a career area early, and given very little latitude to switch after making the decision precisely because they would be accumulating course credit in a technical career area which could not be transferred to another area if they switched; they would endanger their chance to graduate if they switched career concentration.
Not all of the career areas were of equal prestige or difficulty in the career magnet high schools. A school might have a reputation for a particular career area, often expressed in its name; for example, business and finance, health careers, aviation, and so forth. Within each, however, there could be many career strands, requiring different levels of aptitude and academic ability; in one school with a health sciences focus, for example, there was coursework of increasing difficulty--for future dental technicians, laboratory technicians, and doctors. Most of the career magnets offered coursework in a number of career-related subjects, here too for students of different interests and ability--technology and law for some, but communication and cooperative education (work/study) for others such as for those who might potentially drop out. (Because it was not possible to include students from a representative mix of majors with curricular difficulty, we could not compare the differential impact of the choice of a particular career track on the students' educational and career development.)
The comprehensive high schools, although often considered the academic high schools in the city, also offered a variety of programs, including vocational education coursework (a student could receive vocational education in a designated vocational education high school, in a career magnet, or in a comprehensive high school); general education, usually applied academics; and a traditional academic education, including advanced and honors coursework. Also, students could pursue their special interests, including career interests, through clubs and extracurricular activities. The students in the comprehensive high schools like those in career magnet high schools were given opportunities to follow their career interests, although less intensely, comprehensively, and consistently.
The schools had a latticework organization, which identified and placed the student by grade level, house, and track (academic, vocational, or general in the comprehensive high school) or career focus (career magnet high school). This organization determined which adults a student would encounter during his or her high school years. In practice, however, the house plan was only an artifact for organizing these very large high schools into smaller administrative units, and appeared to have no formal or informal educational purpose or to substantially increase opportunities for students to interact with faculty or others in the school. The abundance of extracurricular activities in the schools, however, created other structures in which students could develop their educational, career, recreational, and personal interests. These after-school clubs (many organized for students with particular career interests in both the comprehensive and the career magnet high schools) and the schools' intramural sports and athletic teams provided venues for free informal contacts between students and faculty or coaches without the programmatic, time, and space constraints of the formal instructional programs.
Students in both kinds of high schools were assigned to a counselor, often identified with a particular house; the career magnet graduates encountered them more often. The counselors were responsible for dealing with the logistical, discipline and attendance, and family and other nonschool problems affecting the students' educational lives while in high school. They did not, however, consider themselves career counselors, although they might arrange vocational testing. Some schools had a faculty member who was assigned to an office that coordinated student employment. In the career magnet high schools, career counseling was vaguely left to the housemasters or most likely to the head of a particular career strand or to individual occupational teachers. Each of the schools had a college counselor.
Students were not guaranteed a school-related work experience in either the comprehensive or the career magnet high schools in our study. The availability of jobs for adolescents, the vicissitudes of job placement, and a conviction among some that work may interfere with academic studies made it difficult for many students to have an educational work experience while in high school. At the time the graduates attended their respective high schools, even in the career magnet high schools, there was no organized program to place students in a job, yet alone one in their career area, although many students did work in a part-time career-related job or served in an internship. Informally, the staff attempted to place the students in jobs, but the students found many of their own jobs. Internships within the school were a requirement in many of the career focus programs, however.
In general, the career magnet high schools were perceived as being safer and freer of the violence identified with a number of the city high schools, although this may not necessarily have been true. Clearly, though, many of the students in the career magnet high school believed they were attending a safer school; a guidance counselor could always threaten a failing student or one with a poor school or class attendance record with a transfer back to his or her neighborhood school and expect a reaction. Finally, despite their career focus, the career magnet high schools were perceived to have high academic standards and to send their graduates on to postsecondary education, as well as to jobs. Many people even referred to them as academic career magnet schools.
As urban high school students from similar backgrounds, both "lottery winners" and "lottery losers" could have perceived their high school experiences in much the same way; however, the graduates of the career magnet and the comprehensive high schools in our study differed in their high school educational and work experiences, career choice and development, post-high school work and educational experiences, and peer and family relationships, which points to the influence of the career magnet experience. But even these specific differences must be thought of first more broadly. In most of their responses to the closed-ended interview questions, the graduates of the career magnet high schools were more articulate than the graduates of the comprehensive high schools: they gave more answers to questions when given a chance to make a second or third choice on a scale (p < .01), and their responses were more specific and comprehensive to open-ended questions. The comprehensive graduates, in turn, gave fewer answers and also gave answers that were more socially and psychologically expected and desirable. This suggests that the career magnet graduates had thought more about their experiences and were more aware of themselves and more analytic than their comprehensive high school peers, and probably more realistic and confident enough to give a personal answer to the questions during the interview. In thinking retrospectively about their high school (and post-high school) educational and work experiences, the career magnet graduates displayed a greater understanding of the factors impacting their growth and development. In attributing their successes and failures, they indicated a greater feeling of self-efficacy and a greater willingness to trust their own abilities and skills.
Although the career magnet high schools and the comprehensive high schools in the study were similar in curriculum, teaching practices, school organization, opportunities for school-related employment, availability of counseling, and availability of extracurricular activities, the career magnet graduates in the study retained stronger positive feelings toward their high school than the graduates of the comprehensive high schools. The career magnet graduates were also twice as likely as the comprehensive graduates to indicate that they would choose the same high school again because of its career focus and reputation as a safe school. They were also more than four times as likely to rate their school's reputation as "good to excellent" as their comprehensive counterparts. The comprehensive graduates did not indicate that they would want to return to their high school because of the value of the education it offered; however, they would return because of the appeal of the location, its safety, or the fun they had. What is more, the career magnet graduates felt that their high school maintained a good reputation in the community, unlike the comprehensive graduates who felt that the reputation of their high school was only fair (p < .002). This may be a consequence of selectivity, however, because the career magnet graduates actively chose the school they attended. In terms of this study, we do not know the perceptions of the students who either dropped out or transferred from the career magnet high school to another school, possibly a comprehensive high school. We can assume, however, that those who stayed to graduate shared the common values and perceived common opportunities that characterize these schools.
For the most part, the graduates did not differ in their overall perception of the impact of their coursework on their career development. The career magnet graduates were also more likely to attribute any positive educational (academic and career) outcomes of their high school experience to their occupational classes, which seemed more useful and coherent than their academic classes; although among their academic classes they felt most confident in their English classes. As expected, the career magnet graduates took more career-related courses than their counterparts: they averaged 13.4 hours/credits of career-related coursework during high school as compared with the comprehensive graduates who averaged 5.2 hours/credits (Zellman & Quigley, 1999). Given the school's theme, it is not surprising that the career magnet graduates would assign the greatest real and symbolic value to their occupational courses. For the comprehensive graduates, however, including those also enrolled in vocational classes, it was not clear whether academic or occupationally related coursework (for those who took such courses) was the more valued.
In terms of their academic behavior, the comprehensive graduates cut classes more frequently (once a week) than their career magnet peers (a few times a semester). Concerns about passing courses and graduating inhibited both groups from cutting class, but the career magnet graduates felt a greater peer pressure not to cut class and were concerned that they would upset their parents if they did (p < .05). For the most part, the career magnet graduates never cut their occupational classes.
We found that the career magnet graduates did not report a significant number of contacts with their teachers while in high school. They identified only the teachers in their occupationally related classes as influential in their career choice or development (but not as strongly as predicted). The fact that they are influential is not surprising: The occupational teacher has a longer and more sustained relationship with the student and is associated with a coherent sequence of instruction, which is practical and highly utilitarian. The occupational teacher, someone who has had a career in the area in which he or she is teaching, can be perceived as a master who legitimately can transmit knowledge and competencies to the learning novice, where the academic teachers cannot. The student and the occupational teacher also occupy a common space in the shop, laboratory, studio, or restructured classroom, conducive to more informal and unrestricted interactions. And often, student and teacher are jointly performing a task. These are the ideal conditions for the students to learn a task: to internalize the norms, values, and language identified with work and a particular career; to orient themselves to career exploration and planning; and to develop their self-concept as a worker.
Within the school, neither the career magnet nor the comprehensive graduates were likely to talk to a counselor or necessarily attribute any specific influence to the encounter; however, the comprehensive graduates were more likely to report having spent time talking to a counselor about a career or future work than the career magnet graduates and, generally, to get to know an adult while in high school. The career magnet graduates did not connect their counselors, the heads of their houses, or the chairs of the department of their career focus with their career development. As in almost all urban high schools, counselors in career magnet high schools rarely function as career counselors, even informally to any significant degree; however, even teachers administratively designated to foster a school's career focus did not have a direct impact on the students, except indirectly through their influence in the school's curriculum or extracurricular activities.
Both the career magnet and comprehensive graduates engaged in volunteer and community service, although the comprehensive graduates had more experience. The career magnet graduates reported that they became less absorbed with themselves as a result of the experience; the comprehensive graduates thought that they now had more information as a result of the experience. More of the career magnet graduates than their comprehensive peers, however, thought that participating in extracurricular activities affected their thinking (p < .02). In neither case, however, did the graduates attribute a great deal of specific importance in their career choice or development to the extracurricular or volunteer experience or to any single person they encountered in the community.
This was an unexpected finding. Mentors associated with school-related or community experiences, coaches, and teachers identified with extracurricular activities are often sources of influence on the development of adolescents' vocational maturity. Like the occupational teacher in the career magnet high school, they are in a position to directly influence the youth's career development. They are perceived as experts in an area of the students' interest. They also relate in less formal, quasi-social circumstances conducive to open-ended, unrestricted interactions. Again, the youth and the adult are often doing something together, under ideal conditions for the students to use them to assist in their career development. Even so, their influence was not distinctive in this study. The career magnet graduates did not single out any of these adults as having been more influential than they were to the comprehensive graduates. This suggests that despite popular belief in the myth of the influence of a single powerful adult, youth develop a career orientation globally through many sources in their high school experience, without needing to identify any one specific experience or person as the sole source.
We found that the career magnet graduates were significantly less likely to engage in behaviors associated with poor school performance. They were less likely to have been in a fight, to smoke, to drink alcohol, to use drugs, to be pregnant or make someone pregnant, or to be arrested by police on serious charges. Overall, 41% of the career magnet graduates reported these no-risk behaviors as compared with only 19% of the comprehensive graduates. The reduced incidence of academic risk behaviors was the biggest difference in the two groups while in high school. We can assume that the strong academic and vocational curriculum, the belief in the importance of work, and the acceptance of the legitimacy of the social requirements of the workplace characteristic of the career magnet high school experience motivated the students to avoid or reduce any high-risk behaviors.
Given that occupational values form in adolescence, high school students are particularly responsive to work experiences that provide learning opportunities (Mortimer et al., 1992). Because they try to provide high-quality work experiences, many believe that career magnet high schools can be particularly successful in fostering adolescent career development experiences which can have a positive effect on adolescent career development (Stern, Stone, Hopkins, & McMillion, 1990; Wijting, Arnold, & Conrad, 1977).
Many
of the career magnet and comprehensive graduates worked while in high school in
jobs related to their schoolwork, but the comprehensive high school graduates
were more likely to hold a job while in high school (p < .01). In general,
more career magnet graduates than comprehensive graduates reported that they
did class assignments or changed a class project because of their job
experience. What is more, understandably, they felt freer talking about their
job experience in their occupational classes than in their academic classes. On
the job, the career magnet graduates were more likely to work alone
(p
< .01) but also to become more acquainted with and relate to adults more
than their comprehensive peers. The career magnet graduates found the job
experience valuable for career awareness, knowledge of work norms, and the
development of cognitive skills necessary for performance on-the-job and
interpersonal abilities. They felt that their work experience was important and
could be connected to future work (p < .05). In general, as noted
previously, in talking about their job skills and job experience, future career
plans, and the relationship between job experience during high school and in
later careers, the career magnet graduates were more articulate and gave second
and third answers to questions while the comprehensive graduates gave only one.
The comprehensive graduates felt that the work experience only helped them develop specific technical occupational skills, not necessarily knowledge of future careers or work norms. Unlike their career magnet counterparts, they did not connect their high school employment with their future work, nor did it help them develop a concept of themselves as workers or help them understand the demands of the workplace. For them, their current work was a job, not a step toward a career.
The career magnet graduates may have benefited more from their work experience in high school than the comprehensive high school graduates largely because they had an avenue to use it in their occupational classes, although they may actually have had less experience. They had more opportunities to talk about their job skills and job experience, future career plans, and the relationship between job experience during high school and later careers. They also may have used their work experience distinctively to enhance their career development. They not only became more skilled in a task so that they could increase their performance on the job, but, more maturely, they learned work norms and acquired interpersonal abilities. Consequently, they came to be more aware of the demand of a career and could relate their work experience to future work. This explains why the career magnet graduates were more articulate about their work experience during the interview and gave more and fuller answers to the questions than the comprehensive graduates. We can assume that attending a high school with a career focus helped the career magnet graduates turn their adolescent work into a career development experience.
The graduates of the career magnet schools reported that most of their friends were fellow students in their classes who did not live in their neighborhoods (p < .01). More of their social life, then, was centered in the school, with school friends rather than with friends in their neighborhood. For many of the career magnet graduates, leaving the neighborhood (and the possibility of attending the neighborhood zoned high school) to attend the career magnet high school in another part of the city, a necessity for most of the students, meant that they changed their peer group. By contrast, the graduates of the comprehensive high schools had friends in their schools and in their neighborhoods both, and they identified their social life with their neighborhood (Zellman & Quigley, 1999).
Peer groups are a highly adaptive context in which to negotiate the uncertainty of adolescence. Securing one's place in a clique prevents a student from having to confront a much larger, constantly shifting array of peers in high school, many of whom are strangers. This is especially true of students in career magnet high schools. Here students are often brought together from several different geographic areas, and the probability of not knowing someone is higher in career magnet high schools than in neighborhood comprehensive high schools.
The friends of the career magnet graduates had more plans for the future, including college, but especially for future careers, than the friends of the comprehensive graduates (p < .03). In our study, many of these peers shared an academic and career orientation, marked at this stage of development as academic and career plans for the future. The career magnet graduates reported that it was pressure from their peers that influenced them not to cut classes. Within their peer group, the students understood that their high school, in addition to its career focus, was academically demanding, more so than the comprehensive high schools in their neighborhoods (Crain & Thaler, 1999).
Having friends serve as academic and social resources can have a direct and positive influence on achievement outcomes at school (Wentzel, 1991). Several studies have shown that peers in high school can positively influence academic achievement, career plans, future goals, and vocational identity (Alexander & Eckland, 1975; Clasen & Brown, 1987; Delgado-Gaitan, 1986; Johnson, 1987). In general, pressure to finish high school was the single strongest influence from friends that responded to Brown's (1982) survey of adolescent peer pressure; Delgado-Gaitan (1986) demonstrates that peers influence each other to perform to their highest ability. Studies of the interaction between adolescents and their respective peer group indicate that the peer group is also capable of influencing the student to return to school as well.
Perhaps positive peer influence is one explanation for the higher attendance rates found at career magnet high schools. Heebner (1995) suggests that students who stayed in career magnets, rather than dropping out, benefited from the new and varied group of students brought together because they had a chance to continually interact with heterogeneous, career-oriented peers who were more likely to complete high school. Those who stayed in the neighborhood comprehensive schools interacted with many of the same students with whom they attended middle or junior high school.
It is important to note that peer influence is also an important determinant of nonconforming behavior. It contributes substantially to the power of a model presented by Alpert and Dunham (1986) for keeping academically marginal youths in school. These researchers recommend that insulating children from the negative influences of peers should be built into policies aimed at preventing school dropouts. Career magnet high schools offer that possibility: They can insulate students from gang members, drug dealers, and other violent offenders in their neighborhood schools because of their geographically, racially, ethnically, and academically diverse student populations.
Peer influences differ in many urban schools, but in these career magnet high schools, with a more heterogeneous social class mix possible than in the neighborhood comprehensive high schools, students could more easily cross any social class and cultural boundaries inhibiting their academic aspirations or behavior and academic motivation.
The graduates of the career magnet high schools and the comprehensive high schools experienced their parents' interest in their educational future very differently. More than the comprehensive graduates, the career magnet graduates believed that their parents thought their going to college was the most important part of their plans for the future (p < .01). The comprehensive graduates reported that while their parents thought going to college was a good idea, their family had few financial resources to send them to college, and they should not expect to be supported if they chose to attend (p < .01). The career magnet graduates felt that their parents believed that it is important for the family to make sacrifices to send them to college, specifically that their parents would pay their expenses and support them if they attended a state or city college (not a private college), pay their tuition and books while they lived at home, and occasionally give them money. Of all the students' feelings about their high school experience, and its possible contribution to their career development, parent support was most powerfully associated with the students' career magnet experience (Zellman & Quigley, 1999).
Family members are also among the most important forces in preparing youth for their future roles as workers. Sociologists, psychologists, and child development researchers all agree that the family exercises a powerful socializing force on the youth work experience (Hotchkiss & Borow, 1996). Among the family influence factors that affect career decisionmaking and career development, family socioeconomic status and parent education are particularly significant. The socioeconomic status of the family helps to shape values, educational expectations, and career aspirations, all of which are important to career development. Individuals from better-educated, higher income families expect to attain significantly more education and aspire to higher status occupations.
The variable found to have a particularly strong effect on educational plans and occupational aspirations is parental education level. Lower levels of parent education can hinder adolescent career development. Mortimer et al. (1992) found that low socioeconomic status parents are less likely to have completed high school than higher socioeconomic status parents and are less likely to have gone to college. Students who come from families with limited education, then, are less likely to go to college or achieve a professional occupational goal (DeRidder, 1990). In general, the disadvantaged students who attend career magnet high schools tend to view college as something out of their grasp, both financially and educationally. They do not have the funds to begin school right away and, since money is of paramount importance, they opt for a paying job out of high school rather than a college education. Low-income students also often have genuine and justifiable fears about unemployment and economic failure. In this situation, as Heebner, Crain, Kiefer, and Si (1992) speculate, a student may avoid thinking about the future because obtaining professional training is economically and perhaps even cognitively out of reach. Many inner-city students do not have the luxury of deferring paid work in favor of advanced schooling and internships and plan to stop formal schooling after they receive their high school diplomas in order to get a paying job. What may have helped the career magnet graduates in our study overcome their fears about their economic future and to become more motivated to go to college and to be confident about the economic returns of the investment was the perception of the potential support of their parents.
Thoughts about the future--college, the world of work, the benefits of a career, and personal independence--occupied the minds of the career magnet graduates during high school; these thoughts were less so in the minds of the comprehensive graduates. No clear sense of the plans of the comprehensive graduates for the future emerged from their answers to the survey questions. More of the career magnet graduates planned to go to college than the comprehensive graduates did who postponed such thoughts. Of those graduates who attended college after graduating from high school, the career magnet graduates took more college credits (p < .009). They also said that they had already declared a major, unlike the comprehensive graduates. The career magnet graduates left high school believing that they were good at something which could help them in the future, and found that taking tests and other inventories were useful in learning about their skills and abilities.
Most of the graduates quit their high school jobs right after graduating, but the comprehensive graduates did so at a greater rate (p < .04). There was, however, no significant difference in the number of months the career magnet graduates and the comprehensive graduates worked in the first, second, or third job after graduation. Of those working in their third job after graduation, however, the career magnet students were more likely working full-time and the comprehensive graduates part-time. What is more, after graduation, career magnet graduates indicated a starting wage that was one dollar higher per hour ($7.27) than the comprehensive high school graduates ($6.28). Their current wages varied in the same way: $8.00 for the career magnet graduates as compared with $7.01 for the comprehensive graduates (Zellman & Quigley, 1999).
To a degree, economic factors affected the thinking of the two sets of graduates. The comprehensive graduates tended to feel a need for security in any job they held. The career magnet graduates appeared more ambitious: They were more willing to forego security in a job if it led to higher-level work later which paid more money. Currently, more career magnet graduates wanted to follow professional careers than the comprehensive graduates, who were also interested in technical and management careers.
A question remains, however. Most of the graduates of both the career magnet high schools and the comprehensive high schools were not enrolled full-time in college, and even the career magnet graduates, who had accumulated more credits and declared a major were still part-time students, working full-time in work not necessarily related to their current education or future careers. For the career magnet graduates, it meant that despite their increased educational aspirations and targeted vocational training, they were still having economic problems reaping the benefits of their ambitions.
In a related study of the effects of attending a career magnet high school, using the data set created for this study, Zellman and Quigley (1999) developed two models of variables pointing to differences in the experiences of the career magnet and the comprehensive graduates. For the first model, the researchers chose variables explaining institutional effects (e.g., self-efficacy, career identity, institutional characteristics, student at-risk behaviors, and parental and family characteristics). To create the model, the researchers collapsed some of the variables and created scales from the others. For the second model, they chose variables in the literature predicting parental willingness to make sacrifices for their child's education (absence of risk behaviors, good academic performance in high school, specific occupational interests, and self-efficacy). They chose these variables because they would indicate the child's seriousness of purpose to warrant financial sacrifices.
To understand the interactions and individual impact of the variables, the researchers ran regression analyses on each model to predict career magnet or comprehensive high school graduation. The regressions were also run to identify variables significant at the p < .05 level. Both of the models were tested for multicollinear and influential data points affecting the fit of the regression model.
The analyses revealed that the influence on the career magnet student is transmitted through peer relationships and parent support. The career magnet students were more likely to have a best friend who has a career interest, and thus very likely to have been exposed to an environment in which career thinking and career planning were the norms. Consequently, friendships in the new environment, away from the neighborhood, were more likely to form around mature interests than might be otherwise possible; in turn, students might have come to believe that they were developing and using marketable skills in their career-oriented classes and at work. In addition, the school, with its emphasis on the rewards of current efforts in the future, likely influenced the youth and his or her peer group to avoid at-risk behaviors.
The analyses also revealed that a student who graduated from a career magnet high school is 30% more likely than a comprehensive graduate to perceive that his or her parents would be willing to make sacrifices to send him or her to college. These same students were 19% more likely to believe that they would be in their desired career within the next six to ten years. Importantly, these models suggest that of all the variables, attendance at the career magnet high school itself may have led to parents' assumptions about their children's seriousness of efforts because it required extra physical and academic effort to attend. This coupled with other variables in the models, like career confidence, avoidance of at-risk behaviors, and career-related college plans, likely led to parental commitment to their children's education.
Magnet schooling began as a desegregation strategy to provide opportunity through racial and social heterogeneity, and that still is its greatest value for youth. Career magnet high schools reduce the detrimental effects of social isolation because students who might not yet have future educational plans find friends who do. This makes it easier to avoid the academic risk behaviors that characterize the adolescence of many low-income urban students, behaviors we found more prevalent among the comprehensive graduates in the study. By bringing together more students preparing for college and by increasing their expectations of future educational and career opportunities, the youth shared an ethos of academic and vocational achievement in the schools. Higher achievement, we know, may result from the students' greater sense of membership, or social bonding, in career magnet high schools (Hill, Foster, & Gendler, 1990; Whelage, Rutter, Smith, Lesko, & Fernandez, 1989). In turn, parents are then perceived as more willing to sacrifice to provide more opportunities for their children. More than comprehensive high schools, career magnet high schools can help students acquire the social capital we recognize as instrumental to career development.
Everything good about career magnet high schools is identified with the social climate it creates. Career magnet high schools can provide adolescents with experiences, types of relationships, and involvements not usually encountered in other settings. They can transmit information, skills, and motivation and permit the adolescent to perform adequately in adult roles even while in high school. They can also provide a socially supportive and academically focused setting as they combine academic and career goals.
Despite their promise, however, career magnet high schools have not yet found a way of making more adults available to students who can influence their career development. Only the frequent and consistent interactions with their occupation teachers have such an effect. Career magnet high schools need to provide more opportunities for youth to enlarge their social networks. This will not only reduce the students' social isolation but also provide resources to complement, or supplement, the opportunities that their family and community background and education provide. This helps develop a sense of membership in career magnet high schools that increases students' commitment to and engagement with schoolwork, and is likely to promote achievement (Gamoran, 1996). Thus, students who might be overlooked and neglected in conventional classrooms may be more willing to participate in their education in a career magnet high school (Whelage & Smith, 1992).
The climate of the career magnet high school for career development must be nurtured. The power of the career magnet high school rests with the articulation of its many parts with each other. Currently, they are loosely coupled, despite their promise for proper integration. Clearly, the career magnet graduates still profited from their school experience, would return to their high school given a chance, and, in general, felt that they received a good education. An opportunity to harness all the elements of the career development process for the students' benefit could be missed, however, if the career magnet high schools do not aggressively link all of their elements together.
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