During the last decade, education reformers have increasingly emphasized the importance of standards. Although there remains a great deal of controversy about the nature and scope of standards, there is consensus that students should be held to high standards in whatever area they are pursuing.[1] Moreover, standards have become a central aspect of reforms in both academic and vocational education. Academic teachers have developed standards in many academic subject areas and educators and employers are working together to develop industry and occupational skill standards. Until recently, however, there has been little interaction and communication between those who have been working on academic standards and those working on industry skill standards.
This report focuses on the relationship between the two sets of standards. It asks what the current relationship is between them and whether there should be more interaction and coordination. It also makes some suggestions about what that coordination might look like.
The first section describes the source of the information used in the report. Much of that information was developed at a conference convened in 1996 by the National Center for Research in Vocational Education. Although this report is not a summary of the conference, many of the arguments, conclusions, and recommendations were developed and discussed at the conference. The subsequent section argues that there are important educational reasons to coordinate academic and industry skill standards and that it is particularly important that the groups that are developing the two sets of standards work together. The report then assesses the current state of coordination between academic and industry skill standards and identifies the extent to which industry or work-related materials are incorporated into academic standards and the extent to which academic skills appear in industry skill standards. Examples are then presented that show how academic and industry skill standards can be used to develop rich curricula that integrate academic and vocational education. The report ends with some suggestions about how academic and industry skill standards could be coordinated to strengthen both the standards themselves as well as education in general.