CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

This report is based primarily on an examination of the relationship between existing sets of academic and industry skill standards. Much of its content was based on the discussion at the NCRVE conference on integrating these standards. The two sets of standards have so far been developed almost entirely independently of each other. Nevertheless, there is some relationship between the two sets, although that relationship is often only implicit. Both academic and industry skill standards could be improved by more collaboration and coordination. The experience at the conference and subsequent workshops shows that even existing standards can be used to develop interesting projects and curricula that integrate academic and vocational instruction.

But despite great potential, there remain serious obstacles to a system of more effective and more coordinated academic and industry skill standards. In this section, conclusions and suggestions are presented in the form of seven recommendations. Each of these recommendations can serve as guidelines for the development of systems of standards. For example, the National Skill Standards Board or state bodies overseeing standards, in their Requests for Proposals and guidelines, could encourage these measures. Each suggestion is also fertile ground for additional research and development.

1. Promote the continued collaboration among academic and vocational educators and employers both in the development of standards and in the use of standards to develop curricula.
   
   Experience during and after the conference indicates that this collaboration is possible and useful. Indeed it is a requirement for effective implementation of all of the recommendations listed below. For many of the participants, the conference was the first opportunity to interact with members of the other "camp" and many were surprised to find how much the groups had in common. This collaboration has several benefits. First, it can improve the accuracy and relevance of the standards, particularly the academic content of the industry skill standards. Second, when academic standards are divorced from the workplace context, the academic standards miss the motivational and pedagogic benefits that come from being embedded in a broad and coherent application. Collaboration between academic teachers, employers, and workers can help overcome this problem. Third, a better understanding of the workplace could help academic teachers plan curricula that would be both academically sophisticated and more closely related to the needs of the workplace. There was widespread agreement at the conference that teacher internships in business and other forms of exposure to the workplace were an important component of collaboration.

2. Improve the definition and measurement of the levels of academic skills within the industry skill standards, including more emphasis on differentiating between the standards for entry-level and higher- level jobs within the same area. Ideally, industry skill standards should be able to refer explicitly to appropriate academic standards.
   
   For the most part, students could learn the academic skills contained in the industry standards short of high school graduation. This was clearest for mathematics, but less obvious for science. Academic skills from the other disciplines were often defined in the industry skill standards in such general terms that no precise level could be discerned.

   What is the significance of the low level of academic skills defined in the industry skill standards? At the very least, it gives ambiguous messages to students about academic skills. Employers state that they prefer high school graduates, yet the academic skills that they list can be learned prior to high school graduation. One possibility is that employers do not understand the specific benefits that students gain from high school and are, therefore, incorrectly specifying the academic content of skill needs. This is precisely the type of problem that improved collaboration could address.

   Alternatively, it may be that the industry skill standards are indeed accurate for entry-level work. In this case, it is important for students and teachers using the standards to realize that higher-level skills will be necessary for subsequent career advancement. Thus, it is important that standards be expressed in such a way that they specify the underlying academic and work-related skill base that will be necessary for success in a career path rather than simply in an entry-level job.

   In many cases, the academic components of the industry skill standards are stated in such vague and abstract terms that they provide little guidance to educators and students. Thus, defining the academic content of the industry skill standards is an area that clearly needs much more work. One possibility would be for the industry skill standards to make explicit reference to relevant academic standards.

3. Develop academic standards so that meeting those standards will indicate that a person is able to apply the relevant academic skills outside the classroom in the workplace and in the community, and so that they specify levels of academic achievement.
   
   Much of the discussion at the conference and in this report was focused on the strengths and weaknesses of the industry skill standards. This is partly because the National Skill Standards Board provides an institutional direction for these standards. The academic standards lack an equivalent national organization that can provide a forum for a general reevaluation. Nevertheless, some implications for academic standards did emerge from the conference. Some conference participants criticized the academic standards for being too focused on skills needed for a student to proceed to the next level of education rather than on the ultimate usefulness of those skills, whether they involve work, cultural activity, or citizenship. Students should only be able to meet standards for a particular academic area if they can apply the academic skills outside of the education system. Embedding some academic standards within industry-related applications through projects or scenarios (to be discussed below) may be one way to make progress in this area.

   Although this report has criticized the industry skill standards for calling for rather low levels of academic achievement, some of the academic standards fail to specify levels of achievement. The English standards offer the best example. We have suggested that the industry skill standards refer explicitly to academic standards in defining required academic skills, but this will be impossible if levels are not defined.

4. Encourage the use of standards to promote the integration of academic and vocational education. Create a clearinghouse for curricula and projects developed through collaborative use of academic and industry skill standards.
   
   Better coordination between the two sets of standards should be part of a strategy to achieve the broader goal of the integration of academic and vocational education. The experience at the conference demonstrated that the standards can be used to create projects and curricula that bring academic and work-related material together in an interesting manner that does not compromise the level and sophistication of the standards from either area. As we have argued in this report, an integrated approach to teaching and learning can strengthen the academic base of work-related skills and can provide a context and motivation for learning academic skills. In the exercises conducted at the conference and in subsequent workshops, participants were able to develop these integrated projects with standards that were not written with this goal in mind.

   One possibility would be to develop and fund a broader program to encourage and facilitate the use of standards to develop curricula and projects using academic and industry skill standards. Material developed in that way could then be collected and disseminated for wider use.

5. Systematically experiment with different approaches to coordination of the two sets of standards.
   
   The discussion at the conference suggested that there should be better coordination between academic and industry standard setters. But what form should standards take and how should they be coordinated? No firm comprehensive answer to this question was developed at the conference; nevertheless, several promising alternatives were discussed.

   One option is to link existing standards through crosswalks that identify the academic content of different industry or occupational skills. Indeed, among the industry skill standards that we examined, the bioscience and auto technician standards included such crosswalks. These consisted of matrices in which relevant boxes were checked when a given academic skill was used in a particular vocational task. Participants agreed that crosswalks were useful, but were only a first step. Nevertheless, this approach will not necessarily generate the benefits that could derive from closer coordination in the development of both sets of standards. Crosswalks identify the academic content of industry-related skills and illustrate the use of academic skills in industry contexts, but we have suggested that both sets of standards would be strengthened if the developers worked closely together. This would not necessarily happen if the efforts at integration were limited to the development of crosswalks for existing sets of standards that were developed independently.

   A more difficult approach would be to develop scenarios, or complex examples, that make use of academic and generic skills to accomplish realistic tasks within the context of a given industry. The scenarios naturally integrate academic and vocational material and can lead easily to curricula and projects that can be used by teachers. The bioscience standards examined at the conference were presented in the form of scenarios and while there were specific criticisms at the conference of those standards, there was general enthusiasm for the approach.

   A more comprehensive approach might be to design the academic and industry skill standards together, combining both industry needs and a more comprehensive view of an academic program, including attention to the academic foundations required for advancement beyond entry-level positions. Thus, for a given industrial or occupational area, educators and employers would design a comprehensive set of standards that would include academic as well as vocational skills. This would not be practical for a very large number of narrow occupations. It would be more feasible for a smaller number of broadly defined industrial or occupational sectors such as those developed by the National Skill Standards Board.[8] In this case, it might make sense for the academic teachers to develop a general framework for each discipline and then work with representatives from the broad industry groups to develop comprehensive standards for each group. These standards would at least partly incorporate the academic skills within the specific skills and knowledge needed by the industries. Some parts of the academic standards might not be affected, but it may be that the academic standards would evolve as teachers gained insights into how academic skills are actually applied in the workplace. Standards based on broad industry clusters might involve a set of scenarios that could change given different specialties within the clusters.

6. Use the development of standards and the collaboration among standard setters to refine our understanding of generic (or SCANS) skills and to develop better means to teach and assess them.
   
   The most overlap was in the area of generic or process skills. Since generic skills vary in different contexts, it is important to go beyond the general descriptions and language of SCANS and understand the nature of generic skills in the different disciplines and industry settings. Without this specific information, it is difficult to translate the need for skills into a process that has meaning and application in the classroom. One productive strategy would be for representatives from the different groups to work together to develop more consistent methods to articulate, measure, and assess generic skills. Attempts to develop a common language and format are particularly relevant here.

7. Focus on the development of appropriate teaching strategies and associated curricula and materials and on effective ways to prepare teachers to use those strategies.
   
   Standards can be both a means to define and signal required skills and important teaching tools. The conference was based on the premise that there is great potential in combining academic and vocational education and that standards could play a role in that strategy. Current pedagogy has been organized around compartmentalized curricula that preserve sharp distinctions among the disciplines, between academic and vocational learning, and even among different vocational areas. Neither the integration of academic and vocational education or the development and use of standards have had a strong educational tradition in this country. Combining an integrated educational approach with standards is even less common. While the conference and the ongoing work in this field have suggested some possible directions, a great deal of work remains to be done to determine the optimal form of the different sets of standards and the best ways to use them for teaching and learning. Therefore, the reforms suggested here are unlikely to have any effect or even to be implemented unless we have a better understanding of the teaching strategies that would be required and unless we develop and use appropriate methods for preparing teachers to use those new teaching strategies. This is certainly an area that could benefit from more research and development. Designing learning environments that support sophisticated applications based on coordinated academic and industry skill standards and preparing teachers to create and use them may be the biggest challenge.