The last issue of CenterWork told of two major conferences NCRVE has helped to produce. On May 22-24 NCRVE, the U.S. Department of Education, and more than 60 cosponsoring organizations held a conference in Washington, D.C. on the "new American high school." (See related stories in this issue.) On June 30 through July 2, NCRVE and Jobs for the Future cohosted the "National Leadership Forum on School-to-Career Transition" in Long Beach, California.
These events are dealing with the same set of ideas, but you would never know it from their names. Why "new American high school" and "school-to-career," rather than "school-to-work" or "vocational education"? Why did Congress, in considering recent block grant bills, struggle with whether to use the term vocational education? Why did the 1990 Perkins Amendments carry the cumbersome title of "vocational and applied technology education"?
The confusion over names reflects a deep change in the nature and purpose of vocational education. In federal law, vocational education has been defined as preparation for occupations not ordinarily requiring a bachelor's or advanced degree. Yet today, in the United States and around the world, there is a growing desire to combine vocational education with preparation for further schooling, including the option of a four-year college or university. More and more parents, students, and policymakers are coming to the conclusion that compulsory education must equip young people for a lifetime of work that includes continual learning.
The 10 high schools featured at the May 22-24 conference have all developed a kind of integrated curriculum that uses occupational themes to deepen the study of academic subjects, preparing students for both college and careers. Graduates of these high schools can go directly to college or directly to full-time work. If they change their minds later, it will probably be easier for them to switch from one to the other than if they had graduated from a conventional college-prep or strictly vocational program.
What should we call this kind of education? Maybe it would be wise not to call it anything for now. "If we name it we kill it," warns Gene Bottoms, leader of the Southern Regional Education Board's High Schools That Work initiative. Old definitions take a long time to change. The expectation persists that students in vocational education cannot be "college-bound," and that same negative expectation sometimes attaches to "school-to-work" or even the "new American high school." For instance, when Education Week printed a news item about the May 22-24 conference, the headline was "Vocational Honors." The report was accurate, but the headline writer apparently missed the point, and many readers probably did, too.
Changing the old definitions will take more time and more work, more persuasion and more research. Conferences honor the innovators and encourage others to follow. Every school and community that adopts and adapts the new ideas must grapple with names and definitions. It is helpful to point out that rigorous research on New York City career magnets and California career academies has found gains in academic as well as technical performance for students in integrated academic-vocational programs. However, we must also acknowledge that no research has yet tested specifically whether such programs benefit students who take a high concentration of honors and advanced-placement courses. The parents and teachers of these students sometimes fear that a career focus will detract from academic quality. At this point, the only reassurance we can offer is the example of schools where enrollment in advanced academic courses has increased after a reorganization of the curriculum into career majors.
If none of the college-bound students enroll in integrated academic-vocational programs, there is a danger that these programs will be short-changed and that they will have greater difficulty meeting high academic standards. In effect, the new curricula, whatever they are called, would be serving the same purpose as traditional vocational education: pointing students toward work, not college. But it is even doubtful that students will be well prepared for work if they have not mastered basic academic subjects.
NCRVE is trying to make high-quality, career-related curricular options available to students in all American high schools. Every career major, career academy, pathway or cluster--whatever it is called--should be designed to enroll a broad cross-section of students, and to prepare them for both college and careers.
Let's not try to pin any particular name on it: let's just do it.