This synthesis piece updates research on generic work skills, cooperative education, school-based enterprise, career academies, and other forms for providing work-based learning experiences. Recommendations for enhancing the quality of work-based learning opportunities in both high schools and community colleges are included.

• Additional resources on work-based learning

This synthesis describes how professional development can help instructors meet the challenges of contemporary educational reform. Topics include: teachers' new roles and functions in settings where reform and restructuring has occurred; horizontal and vertical curriculum and teaching collaboration to better meet students' needs; ways the educational institution, workplace, and community can be utilized to assist instructors in their professional development; and promising models for providing more effective professional development.

This paper focuses on what a coherent local "system" of education and training programs would look like, and what this implies for community colleges, job training and welfare-to-work programs, adult education, private institutions, and other providers. The implications for state and federal policy are examined.

This report, primarily addressed to an audience of state and federal policymakers, provides an update on performance standards and assessment in vocational education and the issues surrounding implementation, especially in light of the newly passed Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act of 1998 (Perkins III).

This paper synthesizes what NCRVE has learned about processes, policies, and practical approaches to enhancing the linkages between secondary and postsecondary (four- as well as two-year) institutions. The emphasis is on what we are learning in research about mature tech prep and school-to-work systems where articulation/transition practices are most fully developed.

This CenterPoint synthesizes what has been learned about designing high schools for the twenty-first century, recognizing the design process as a learning experience itself. The design process moves participants beyond studies of single aspects of the high school, to consensus around one aligned, twelve-element system. This publication also discusses the process of moving from the present school toward the new design.

This brief summarizes NCRVE research on integration and the implications for successful local strategies. It stresses that integration is a means toward an end and not an end in itself. Policy history, implementation lessons, and the effectiveness of integration efforts thus far are covered.

This piece describes how context matters in determining skills, and provides examples incorporating "generic" skills (problem solving, teamwork, communications), work dispositions, and academics (math/science/technology). Also discussed are the contextual nature of skill demands and their use in the workplace as well as the resulting implications for teaching and learning.