Almost unnoticed by the American public, the educational system is undergoing profound change. Teachers and administrators from across the country who are creating this change gathered in Berkeley in July for a five-day summer institute. These educators are asking: how can we keep students in school? How can the recent innovations in work-related education inspire students and better prepare them for both further education and a rapidly changing job market?
Participants at the institute, which was sponsored by NCRVE with the Hands and Minds Collaborative, heard from leaders of three organizations at the vanguard of these reforms. Each speaker caught the pulse of the changes in education from a unique perspective. Paul Weckstein, co-director of the Center for Law and Education in Washington, D.C., highlighted "all aspects of the industry," a powerful model for work-related schooling. Larry Rosenstock, executive director of the Rindge School of Technical Arts in Cambridge, Massachusetts, reported from the front line on tough questions encountered in school restructuring. And David Stern, director of NCRVE, discussed the background and future of the Urban Schools Network, NCRVE's coalition of schools engaged in reform.
What is all aspects of the industry (AAI)? AAI describes industries in terms of eight aspects, and says that effective work-related schooling must instruct students in all eight aspects. Historically, vocational education has focused only on technical and production skills. The other aspects are planning; management; finance; underlying principles of technology; labor issues; community issues; and health, safety, and environmental issues.
Weckstein pointed out that an AAI approach is crucial for educational, economic, and employment reasons. Unless we rely on an AAI paradigm, we risk creating merely "applied academics, a dumbing down" of both academic and vocational elements. AAI opens up endless possibilities for integrated curriculum in science, social studies, math, and literature. And AAI makes good sense economically as well. In today's volatile business world, the "perfect match" model of employment is defunct. An AAI approach, by contrast, allows the students to gain the skills needed to shift from one area to another, to operate in a high-performance work setting, and to transfer knowledge and skills across industries.
Weckstein sees two faces to AAI. On the one hand, AAI is an enormously open-ended and flexible model. "Although legislation has described eight aspects of AAI, there is actually no right way to apply them. The only requirement is to dig deeper." On the other hand, AAI does provides "some sensible standards for holding education and work sites accountable. These standards ensure that we're not creating separate and unequal tracks in school, and that there is genuine educational content in work-based activities."
AAI is a way of reconciling our democratic ideals about education with our obligation to prepare students for the world of work, which is in many ways unequal and undemocratic. Including all aspects of an industry means we can avoid preparing students for only one career track, which curtails their options in the rapidly changing labor market.
Weckstein's final point was the connection to community. "We tend to focus on the fact that it is increasingly hard to do well in our economy without a high level of educational skills; however, we ignore the fact that education alone isn't enough, because enough good jobs don't exist. As educators concerned with human development, we must be equally concerned with community development. We must encourage our students to study and explore their communities, and to create ways to engage the community's untapped resources to address its unmet needs."
Larry Rosenstock, who runs the Rindge School of Technical Arts, offered four principles to open up participants' learning and planning at the institute and in the future. The first principle is to eliminate programs for the non-college-bound. Such programs, Rosenstock believes, are set up to fail. Second, quoting from the philosopher John Dewey, we are seeking to transform society, not to reproduce it. Third, work-centered education must be for all students. If it's not for all students, it's for some students, and we're back in the dark ages of "tracking." Fourth, there is no one right way to integrate. Manifold approaches flourish.
Rosenstock has learned that numerous barriers confront practitioners who are working toward applying models like AAI, integrated academic and vocational curriculum, and school-to-work. He clarified these conflicts in a series of tough questions. His questions served as fields of inquiry for institute participants, and as topics for continued investigation.
Given the formidable challenges to systemic reform, what keeps Rosenstock going? "Denial, and sabotage." His biggest frustration is that "the educational system is essentially risk-averse. We are asking students to explore and to be adventurous within an institution which is itself fearful of experimentation." At the same time, the summer institute offered him the encouraging reminder that many people within public education are "continually hopeful, and continually reinventing themselves." The best hope for education lies in this expanding network of change agents.
NCRVE's Urban Schools Network is an example of such a network. This coalition of thirty teams is dedicated to implementing, reflecting on, and sharing the change process within their own institutions and with other teams.
The network's original charter, the 1990 Perkins Act, has been followed by the School-to-Work Opportunities Act (STWOA). This recent legislation provides a much broader vision, and seeks to unite secondary schools with colleges and with employers. David Stern, NCRVE's director, realized that it was important at this point to step back and ask "what is our network really about?"
The recently developed "Agreement for Program Improvement," which will be mailed to member schools in the fall, outlines the goals. The first goal is the heart of the agreement. It states that the school or college will "offer at least one career-related course sequence in which every participating student has the opportunity to accomplish both of the following objectives: (a) achieve high academic standards and satisfy course requirements for admission to post-secondary education, including four-year college or university; and (b) gain strong understanding of and experience in all aspects of an industry and prepare for highly paid employment and potential advancement in that industry." (See Agreement for Program Improvement)
Why is this important? "Because it's so hard to do," Stern says, "and so different from what's traditionally been done. In few other countries would people seriously consider combining those two objectives. Historically, vocational education has been limited to preparation for jobs that don't require a bachelor's or an advanced degree. It's been a dividing pointÑacademic or vocational. But there's no good reason for work-related education to have any different status. Work is a noble activity, and everyone has to do it. Work calls for all the highest qualities of the human mind and heart. We seek a new kind of integrated education that keeps the best of both worlds, so that education becomes both more rigorous, and more work-based.
"This is also a better way of preparing people for the kind of work many of us have to do, work that requires continual learning. This is more true in professional and managerial occupations than it has ever been, and is becoming more true in other sectors. Entry-level job skills become obsolete faster than in the past. The straight academic route doesn't prepare you for continual on-the-job learning, because you're not learning in the context of application. The limitation of academic education as it's traditionally done is that people don't really understand something unless they can use it, unless they can apply it. "
The "Agreement for Program Improvement" designates ways to work toward this goal of pre-paring students both for further education and for meaningful employment. The triad of practices from School-to-Work legislation and from Perkins are: (1) integrating academic and vocational curricula; (2) connecting classroom studies to work-based learning; (3) linking secondary to postsecondary education. Stern emphasizes that "NCRVE's approach is 'try it and see.' All of this is an experiment. We're reinventing education. The evidence we have so far suggests that these principles hold great promise. But we want schools to approach them in the spirit of learning. The network is a shared learning experience for everybody."
Stern stresses that we must avoid the compliance mentality. "It's not that we're simply substituting the new School-to-Work checklist for the old Perkins checklist. We're trying to articulate essential and enduring objectives. Our network goals are general enough to encompass changes in federal, state, or local mandates. It doesn't really matter what the reform is called, whether it's Perkins or School-to-Work or career academies or tech prep. Our goals for our students are what's important, in terms of their preparation for postsecondary education including four-year college or university, and for meaningful employment."
The way to change the world, Stern remarks, is to make some changes, deliberately and thoughtfully, and then watch carefully to see what happens. "The learning is in the working."