It is hard to believe that 10 years have passed since the current NCRVE consortium started work. In this issue, we take the opportunity to reflect on some of the changes that have occurred, and on the Center's contributions.
Charles Benson, who led this consortium from 1988 until his untimely death in 1994, wrote in the first issue of CenterWork:
"We believe that vocational education of high quality ought to be the program of choice to raise standards in high schools and colleges as well as to open access for all students to life-long learning."
In some ways, this vision is starting to be achieved, though there is still much more to do.
Several articles in this issue describe how the field is changing, and how NCRVE activities have contributed. My article with Mayo Tsuzuki Hallinan tells how high schools have responded to the challenge of preparing students for a lifetime of continual change. NCRVE research helped make the case for including the integration of academic and vocational education in the 1990 Perkins Act. An influential 1991 paper by Norton Grubb and associates pointed the way for high schools, from academically enriched vocational instruction to horizontally and vertically integrated course sequences, pathways, and self-contained career academies. More recently, NCRVE has described how some high schools are now trying to prepare all students for college and careers, by reorganizing the whole school as a set of career pathways or academies. If these efforts succeed in raising student achievement, they may well represent a new beginning for the American high school.
The article in this issue by Norton Grubb and Deborah Bragg summarizes NCRVE work on community colleges. During the past decade, these have continued to grow and consolidate as the nation's major civilian provider of technical education and training. They are also the main institutional supplier of lifelong learning. Among other things, NCRVE research has documented the unfolding of innovations like tech prep, and has clarified the effects of community college courses on students' earnings.
Structural changes in high schools and community colleges may not benefit students unless they affect teaching and learning. Carolyn Maddy-Bernstein's article highlights some of NCRVE's work on this central topic. NCRVE research has explained some of the barriers teachers face in integrating academic and vocational instruction, and how some teachers have overcome them. Other research has described forms of work-based learning, including how classrooms can be organized to teach generic work skills, and school-based enterprises that involve students in producing goods or services for other people. These strategies for teaching and learning become more important as work and learning are increasingly intertwined in the information age.
As integrated academic-vocational curricula and work-based learning diversify students' educational experiences, standard course labels become less useful, and new methods must be developed to keep track of what students are actually learning. Gary Hoachlander's article recounts how new sets of standards have proliferated in the past 10 years: program accountability standards, academic content standards, and industry skill standards. NCRVE has contributed to the development of some of these standards, but there is still more work to be done before educators and employers have standards that are coherent and practical.
It is evident from these summaries that NCRVE has not just stood on the sidelines as an outside chronicler and evaluator, though we certainly have done a fair amount of chronicling and evaluating. We are also in the arena, debating policy, helping to advance practice. In education, as in science, you understand the world better if you can interact with it. One of the major interactions we have had is with the Urban Schools Network, which Charles Benson initiated in 1992. Regular readers of CenterWork have seen several accounts of this effort, in which NCRVE researchers and staff worked closely with teams of teachers and administrators from big cities to promote tech prep and integrated curriculum. We learned a huge amount from that, helped support some significant changes, and formed lasting friendships with colleagues around the country.
As we head into 1998, we know there is still much to be done toward improving students' preparation for the challenges that await them. Looking back on what has been accomplished, we renew our confidence that progress is possible, over the long haul.
David Stern is the director of NCRVE and a professor of education at UC Berkeley.