APPENDIX D
SITE PROFILES

The East Central Illinois Education-To-Careers Partnership is headquartered at the Danville Area Community College (DACC) in Danville, IL. The consortium is located in a rural region of East Central Illinois serving twelve high schools, a regional vocational center, and the community college. The Tech Prep initiative is directed at grades 9-14. Over 70 business and labor partners are involved, several of whom sponsor youth apprenticeships for Tech Prep students. Although not all of this consortium's Tech Prep programs offer youth apprenticeships, many do. Tech Prep/youth apprenticeships are available in the areas of manufacturing, accounting, banking, health occupations, and food service.

The consortium sponsors a Tech Prep Student Leadership organization that prepares students to play an ambassador-like for Tech Prep. The Leadership program provides special training in communications and team building. In addition, faculty and peer mentoring are emphasized by this consortium. Faculty mentoring occurs at DACC so that every apprentice receives special attention and guidance from a faculty member; peer mentoring occurs when a community college student apprentice is paired with a high school student. Since 1993, this consortium has been recognized as a demonstration site for the state of Illinois for Tech Prep and Education-to-Careers (Illinois' terminology for School-To-Work.)

Thus far, the consortium has been selected by the state as a demonstration site for rural Tech Prep, postsecondary Tech Prep, and youth apprenticeships. Besides the program evaluation conducted for local and state purposes, this site has engaged in benchmarking activities involving several nationally-recognized Tech Prep/STWOA sites, including two of the New American High Schools, several U.S. Department of Education demonstration sites, and two of the Parnell Tech Prep Award winners. In 1996, this site was selected to pilot a School-To-Work audit procedure conducted by the Gallop Organization for the Center on Occupational Research and Development (CORD) in Waco, TX.

The Miami Valley Tech Prep Consortium is headquartered at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, OH. This consortium is located in an urban area, but the large geographic region served is suburban and rural as well. Besides the community college, eight vocational education planning districts (involving 64 comprehensive high schools) are part of the consortium. Over 100 businesses (manufacturers, automotive dealers, hospitals) are engaged as well.

This consortium is noted for its efforts to coordinate Tech Prep and STWOA through the dedicated use of advanced-skills curriculum where students progress to higher levels of competence in academic and technical subjects at both the secondary and postsecondary levels (without the provision of dual credits). The consortium awards scholarships to most students who matriculate from the secondary to postsecondary level in a 2+2 curriculum sequence (grades 11-14). The University of Dayton participates in the consortium, offering students the opportunity to complete the final two years of college with a baccalaureate degree.

This consortium has received state and national recognition, most notably the 1996 Parnell Tech Prep Award of the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC). Data collection is extensive, due partly to the consortium's selection as one of ten sites for the national evaluation of Tech Prep conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. The consortium also piloted the School-To-Work audit for the Gallop Organization and CORD. Since 1995, the site has provided data for the Ohio Tech Prep evaluation, one of the most extensive state-level evaluations conducted in the nation (Bragg, 1997). Ohio's evaluation of Tech Prep is conducted by MGT of America, Inc. of Tallahassee, TX.

The Golden Crescent Tech Prep/School-To-Work Partnership is headquartered at Victoria College in Victoria, TX. Like many of the partnerships in Texas, the region served by the Golden Crescent Partnership is expansive and primarily rural. It involves nearly forty high schools or independent school districts (ISDs) directly, and another twenty high schools or ISDs outside of its region. Since passage of STWOA, this consortium has developed a governance structure and supporting policies to fully combine Tech Prep and STWOA activities.

Utilizing the curriculum structure required by the state of Texas, the Partnership has defined seven Tech Prep pathways that are approved by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. These Tech Prep pathways are offered in such areas as electronics/instrumentation advanced technology, associate degree nursing, and microcomputer technology. Dual credit is a key feature of articulation agreements worked out between the area secondary schools and Victoria College; over twenty high-school vocational-technical courses provide college credit. Although not the recipient of national acclaim, the evaluation process conducted by this local consortium is as extensive as any site in this study.

Under the direction of the Partnership's full-time coordinator, Roger Johnson, a database is maintained of all participants in Tech Prep/STWOA since the earliest days of the formation of the local Tech Prep consortium in 1991-92. Much of the data is collected using a "student enrollment/intent form" filled out by students when they enroll in high-school classes and these forms are sent to the Partnership Office on the Victoria College campus. Annual follow-up surveys are conducted with 20% of all Tech Prep high-school graduates. Besides the student data, information collected by the Partnership addresses administrative and curricular concerns, including documenting the number of state approved pathways and the number of active high school articulated courses available in each participating high school.

The Hillsborough School District/Community College Tech Prep Consortium is located in a large and growing metropolitan area in central Florida. Thus far, twenty-six different programs of study have been articulated between Hillsborough Community College and the fifteen comprehensive high schools, one technical high school, one alternative high school, and several adult vocational centers that feed students into the college. At the secondary level, the School District of Hillsborough County has designated several courses of study that have a Tech Prep focus, including the Tech Prep course of study where students take appropriate community college preparatory courses, plus applied technical courses; the College/Tech Prep course of study where students meet College Prep and Tech Prep requirements; and the Florida Academic Scholars/Tech Prep course of study where students take specific academic course requirements along with Tech Prep to qualify for college scholarships.

In 1997, this consortium received national acclaim when it won the Parnell Tech Prep Award from the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC). The consortium's extensive use of evaluation was one reason given for the award. As a participant in Florida's evaluation of Tech Prep and STW, this site has provided leadership statewide in student outcomes assessment. (Like Ohio, Florida is noted for having one of the most extensive evaluation processes in the nation. It is one of only a few states that has combined Tech Prep and STWOA into one assessment process.) Utilizing the expertise of the Hillsborough School District and the Hillsborough Community College, the consortium has been able to track students from the secondary to postsecondary level, often examining academic performance in core subjects such as mathematics and English.

The Mt. Hood Regional Cooperative Consortium is headquartered at Mt. Hood Community College in Gresham, OR. Located in a suburb of Portland, OR, this consortium serves seven district high schools as well as Mt. Hood Community College. The consortium has a long history with Tech Prep having started such curricula nine years ago, contributing to its selection as a national demonstration site for Tech Prep for the U.S. Department of Education in the early 1990s. The consortium was also one of the earliest winners of the Parnell Tech Prep Award from AACC. To date, Mt. Hood Community College has articulated thirteen professional/technical areas with its feeder high schools. It serves over 30,000 students each year, one-third of whom are graduating high school seniors from inside the district.

A major secondary school partner, Reynolds High School, consistently matriculates 35% of its graduates to Mt. Hood Community College, and has a particularly strong Tech Prep/School-to-Career initiative in the career pathways of business management systems, industrial and engineering, and natural resource systems. Currently, several high schools in the consortium are involved in whole-school reform. Noteworthy among these is the aforementioned Reynolds High School. Reynolds has moved aggressively to changing the learning environment by re-organizing around four houses or families, named after the mountains that surround the community--Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens, and Mt. Jefferson. Goals of the house organization include to assist students in achieving academic and career goals, to support students in making successful transitions, to assist students in meeting Certificate of Initial Mastery (CIM) standards, and to integrate instruction that connects learning to real world application.

As a U.S. Department of Education Demonstration site for Tech Prep, this consortium contracted with Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL) to conduct several program evaluations. Although these evaluations have been useful to the consortium, the chief institutional researcher for Mt. Hood Community College, Dan Walleri, has pointed out that more evaluation is needed. Walleri stated, "an analysis of transcripts is needed to understand and evaluate continuity in the Tech Prep curriculum and identify which courses are proving most difficult once the student continues at the College" (Walleri, 1994, p. 3).