In addition to state and federal legislation and policy, impetus for the STW movement has come from networks of individual schools, localities, and states. Although networks varied in their focus on student populations (at-risk, general track, or college-bound youth) or scope (program model, schoolwide, or systems change), these networks provided human and information resources, training and technical assistance, and program models to advance STW transition initiatives nationally. This section of the report discusses the significance of government-funded and foundation-sponsored networks in promoting the development of a broad STW movement.
In educational reform initiatives, networks have emerged as particularly effective staff development strategies. "Teachers choose to become active in collegial networks because they afford occasion for professional development and colleagueship and reward participants with a renewed sense of purpose and efficacy" (Lieberman & McLaughlin, 1992, p. 674). Fullan (1996) also supports the development of networks as a particularly powerful strategy to "bring about the changes at the bottom that will be necessary for systemic change to occur on a large scale" (p. 422).
The concept of a network encompasses diverse activities and participants, but all networks share common features, including a clear focus and sense of identity in pursuing common goals; a variety of activities such as workshops, institutes, and conferences to support ongoing, multilevel staff development; discourse communities that encourage members to share ideas; and leadership opportunities within the network and at home school sites (Lieberman & McLaughlin, 1992). The "strategic and tactical features" of networks also include a "commitment to and a preoccupation with inquiry, assessment of progress, and continuous improvement" (Fullan, 1996, p. 422). While sharing most of these characteristics, the networks described in this section illustrate the range of possibilities in network structure, from loose collections of sites with minimal site-to-site contact to networks that have a central goal of site-to-site support, sharing, and peer assistance.
The public/private nature of the STW movement has been reflected in the mixture of funding sources for network-building. While government agencies have significantly contributed to the expansion of the STW movement, foundations have played an essential role in moving the agenda ahead through program demonstrations, policy research, public education, leadership development, staff training, program evaluation (Mendel, 1994, p. 21; Rahn, 1995). Foundations have helped to develop the vision of STW for all students, especially those at risk. As the movement has progressed from think tanks and policy debates into widespread implementation, foundations have continued to play an important role (Mendel, 1994).
Different networks have had different purposes, however. Some have promoted STW for particular groups of students, especially the "middle 50%" or "forgotten half" of students in K-12 schools (William T. Grant Foundation, 1988). Other networks have more recently been supporting STW for all students as a strategy for systemic reform of education and/or workforce development. These differences of intent and rationales have contributed to the confusion about whether STW serves some or all students.
The U.S. Departments of Education and Labor both became involved in workforce development and facilitating new STW approaches before the 1994 STWOA. Several of the initiatives that led to the joint administration of STW activities and closer linkages between school and labor participation are described here. Examples of networks supported mainly by public funds are sets of career academies, youth apprenticeship demonstrations, and two initiatives funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE): (1) demonstrations of integrated curriculum and (2) an Urban Schools Network.
Career Academies
STWOA refers to career academies as one of the "promising practices" on which to build new STW systems. Career academies have been designed for either high-achieving or low-achieving students, or for heterogeneous combinations. What all career academies have in common is that they are self-contained schools within schools, usually containing 100 to 200 students from grades 9 or 10 through grade 12, and using an occupational or industry theme to organize a whole course of study, including academic subjects. Frequently occurring academy themes are health careers, business and finance, natural resources, graphic arts, communications media, and manufacturing or engineering technology. Students stay together with the same group of teachers for three or four years.
The Philadelphia Academies began in 1969 with the original purpose of reducing high school dropout rates by making the curriculum more relevant and focused. The number of Philadelphia Academies have steadily grown over time, and they have evolved so that many of their graduates now go on to postsecondary education. While operating within the Philadelphia public schools, the academies have received continuous support from employers through Philadelphia High School Academies, Inc., a not-for-profit organization.
In the early 1980s, the academy model was replicated with significant modification in the Sequoia Union High School district near Silicon Valley in California. Anticipating the subsequent evolution in Philadelphia, the California academies were deliberately designed to allow students to satisfy requirements for admission to a four-year college or university. In the mid-1980s, the State of California began providing funds for local districts to operate academies, with the requirement that they recruit mainly disadvantaged students. Nevertheless, the proportion of academy graduates who attend college is about the same as for the whole population of California high school graduates. As of 1997, there were about 150 state-funded career academies in California, and about 50 to 100 more not receiving state support.
Also in the early 1980s, New York City began its Academies of Finance in collaboration with the American Express Company, catering mainly to students bent on four-year college. This initiative grew into a national effort under the aegis of the National Academy Foundation (NAF), and added academies focused on travel and tourism, public service, and manufacturing. As of 1997, the NAF network contained about 200 academies around the country.
Other states, including Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, and Illinois, have followed California's lead and provided state funding for career academies. Numerous academies have also sprung up around the country without any outside support. In the mid-1990s, some high schools began to remake themselves entirely as career academies. The idea of dividing a high school into "wall-to-wall" academies, where every student and teacher is affiliated with one, has been put into practice at Encina High School in Sacramento, California, and at Patterson High School in Baltimore, among others. Now Baltimore, Oakland, and other districts are beginning to implement this strategy districtwide. These efforts are beginning to transform career academies from a special program for a few students into a strategy that can be used for organizing entire high schools.
Office of Vocational and Adult Education, U.S. Department of Education: Curricular Integration Demonstration Sites
The passage of the 1990 Amendments to the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Education Act emphasized the "integration of academic and vocational education through coherent sequences of courses so that students achieve both academic and occupational competencies" (Section 235 (c)(1)(B)). While the Congressional charge was clear, the exact meaning of curricular integration was not. In 1994 and 1995, the Office of Vocational and Adult Education allocated approximately $8.7 million to eleven demonstration sites to "develop, implement, and operate programs using different models of curriculum that integrate vocational and academic learning" (Federal Register, June 11, 1993).
Funds allocated per site annually ranged from $590,000 to $1.2 million, and the projects were diverse in almost every dimension. They involved various segments of the student population, though all of them focused on the noncollege-bound. They were located in high schools, community colleges, and universities. They covered a range of topics including design of integrated curricula, professional development, and dissemination of materials. They used a variety of models (Grubb, 1995c), but most did not attempt ambitious restructuring of the school (Venezia, 1996).
The OVAE demonstration sites provided impetus to the STW movement by increasing awareness of the integrated curriculum concept and developing actual examples of what curricular integration could look like. Since integrated curriculum continues to be a central component of STW reform, such examples can offer valuable guidance to local schools, and in particular to local vocational education programs.
Department of Labor and Council of Chief State School Officers: Youth Apprenticeship Demonstration Grants
To promote and evaluate youth apprenticeship as a model for STW transition, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) in 1990 awarded School-to-Work Transition/Youth Apprenticeship Demonstration grants to six states (California, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Oregon, and Wisconsin) in the amounts of $200,000. In fall 1992, DOL extended funding to five of the initial grantees and made new grants to ten additional local organizations to focus specifically on the development of youth apprenticeships. The new grants ranged from $250,000 to $1.2 million. Jobs for the Future, which had launched the first set of youth apprenticeship demonstrations (Stern et al., 1995), also provided assistance to some of the DOL sites.
In an interesting collaboration of public and private sectors that demonstrated the confluence of interests relating to STW, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) also awarded $20,000 demonstration grants to ten states (Arkansas, California, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin) to develop statewide youth apprenticeship systems. CCSSO, a nationwide nonprofit organization of 57 public officials who head departments of public education in every state, the District of Columbia, and extra-state jurisdictions, had placed its highest priority in 1991 on the topic of connecting school and employment.
Named the "New Career Paths Through Youth Apprenticeship," the two-stage competitive process for implementation grants yielded one-year $25,000-50,000 grants to five states (California, Maine, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Wisconsin) for planning and implementing statewide systems of youth apprenticeships (Reisner et al., 1994, p. ix). The project was funded by four sources: (1) The Pew Charitable Trusts, (2) The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, (3) the Exxon Education Foundation, and (4) the state grant programs. Given the similar purposes of the DOL and CCSSO grants for youth apprenticeship, the DOL allocated additional funds for technical assistance for sites and evaluation of both programs.
Youth apprenticeship was defined as an experience "in which schools provide integrated academic and vocational education that is linked to employer-provided paid work experience and training at a work site" (Corson & Silverberg, 1994, p. ix). Additional elements include a planned sequence of learning opportunities extending over two or more years; collaboration among secondary schools, employers and postsecondary institutions; and continuing assessment of both students and programs to ensure that education and training meet high standards of relevance and quality (Reisner et al., 1994, p. 1).
Process evaluation of the DOL and CCSSO demonstrations showed that administrators in the eight sample states used the demonstration funds to support three priorities: (1) development of state-level infrastructure needed to involve all the relevant parties in a state system of youth apprenticeship (e.g., interagency councils, joint training opportunities, and cross-agency sign-offs); (2) support for pilot sites; and (3) development of the technical and advisor support (e.g., curriculum, standards, and employer recruitment) needed locally to ensure that local youth apprenticeship projects adhere to key principles.
The evaluation also identified some weaknesses in the state-sponsored systems for school-to-work transition, including "organizational challenges, funding constraints, and limits on available time" (Reisner et al., 1994, p. 69). Organizational challenges to developing a system of school-to-work transition stem from the tradition of thinking in terms of programs and not of systems; the limited role that state government plays in education and economic development; the lack of consensus on a clear, compelling vision at the local and state levels; and the limited power of newer governance structures that bridge education, employee training, and economic development systems. The challenge of funding arises from the direct competition for scarce dollars in education and workforce development; "[m]oreover, redirecting existing resources alone is unlikely to generate the funds required for systemic change" (Reisner et al., 1994, p. 70). The final weakness, limits on available time, speaks not only to the limits on public officials' terms in office (and thus potential limits of political support), but also to the enormous amounts of time required to design governance systems, to garner consensus, and to solve new challenges in implementation (Reisner et al., 1994).
The youth apprenticeship demonstration grants from the DOL and CCSSO contributed important new ideas to the national STW movement. They emphasized the key role of employers as providers of learning opportunities for young people; increased awareness of STW as a national issue with the support of the President's bully pulpit; incorporated learning from other countries with strong apprenticeship systems; and stimulated the search for new alternatives in many communities with the initial implementation of youth apprenticeship systems.
National Center for Research in Vocational Education: Urban Schools Network
In 1992, NCRVE received $2 million from OVAE to help urban school districts implement the 1990 Perkins Amendments. NCRVE convened 30 teams from large cities which became the Urban Schools Network (USN). This initiative has complemented NCRVE's research and development efforts with direct assistance to schools and colleges.
USN's purpose was to foster "team-based project development, cross-team communication, and practitioner `owned' reform movement" (Katz, 1993). Following initial summer institutes in 1992 and 1993, additional national institutes were held in 1995 and 1996. Staff and field consultants continued to work with district teams to develop and implement comprehensive plans. Assistance from NCRVE to the sites has occurred through site visits, progress reports, and newsletters. Regional meetings have brought site representatives together to exchange information and learn about strategies for successful program development and implementation. Following the requirements of the 1990 Perkins Amendments, the focus of the USN was initially on Tech Prep and integrated curriculum. However, after 1994, the focus shifted to support more systemic approaches for school-to-work transition.
The USN helped spark the implementation of Tech Prep, integrated curriculum, and STW partnerships in a number of urban centers. Initiatives occurred sometimes within individual schools, and sometimes between a community college and its local high schools, sometimes at the level of an entire school district or inter-district consortium. Major challenges include the formation of new partnerships, staff development, curriculum development, and evaluation. Political turbulence, fiscal instability, and personnel turnover in some cities make these challenges especially formidable (Dornsife, 1995).
The foundation-sponsored networks described in this section illustrate some of the various contributions private foundations have made to the STW movement. Their work has built public awareness of STW issues, and has given practical context to theoretical ideas. These networks represent examples of STW for some students or for all.
Council of Chief State School Officers: State-Urban Teams
With support from private foundations, CCSSO brought together state officials and representatives of big cities within those same states to develop STW plans. In 1994 and 1995, CCSSO designed a series of state-team conferences to promote inclusion of all students in STW systems. After each conference, CCSSO provided follow-up monitoring and special focus workshops or meetings for state teams. The goal of the technical assistance was to improve the capacity of cities and states to structure comprehensive STW systems. Through collaboration, urban and state leaders established a vision of a successful STW continuum for urban youth; identified the stakeholders, structure, and resources necessary to advance the vision; developed practical strategies for meeting challenges and overcoming obstacles; and built a plan of work that identified tasks, personnel, expected outcomes, and a time frame for moving forward. Fourteen urban-state teams participated in this network.
CORD: National Tech Prep Network
Tech Prep is one of the important precursors and building blocks of the STW movement. Developed in 1985 as a strategy to reach the "neglected majority--the middle fifty percent of the high school population," the original version of Tech Prep included requirements for core academic and technical curriculum and 2+2 articulation agreements leading to an associate degree (Bragg, Layton, & Hammons, 1994, p. 11). Since then, other Tech Prep models have emerged, and in some places the concept has broadened to the point where it has become synonymous with STW. The Tech Prep model continues to be promoted and implemented through federal funding, state plans, and the National Tech Prep Network (NTPN) administered by the Center for Occupational Research and Development (CORD). Edling and Loring (1996) explain how CORD's conception of Tech Prep has evolved into an Integrated System for Workforce Education Curricula in grades 9 through 14, which includes traditional courses, contextualized courses, project-based learning, and worksite learning all grouped around career clusters and majors.
A nonprofit organization, CORD is "dedicated to excellence in education and training for highly skilled workers through new and integrated curriculum materials and processes" (CORD brochure, n.d.). Whether it is conducting research, developing curriculum materials, or training teachers, CORD's mission is to "equip learners with the academic foundation and flexible technical skills that enable them to function successfully in the contemporary workplace" (CORD brochure, n.d.).
One of CORD's primary technical assistance activities has been the National Tech Prep Network which assists members in planning, implementing, evaluating, and improving workforce education programs. Established in 1991, by 1995 the NTPN had grown to include approximately 2,500 individual members, 150 corporate affiliates, and 20 organizational affiliates (Bond, 1997). National conferences, workshops, publications, and an electronic network provide the forums and networking opportunities to discuss trends and innovations in Tech Prep and other viable educational reforms (CORD brochure, n.d.).
Sustained by individual membership fees, the network is unusual in that it receives no foundation or government support. Network staff distribute newsletters, offer several Internet services, collect and share Tech Prep resources, and are currently involved in a research project to develop the Tech Prep/School-to-Work Index, a joint effort with the Gallup Organization. The index serves as a resource for local and regional programs in identifying and evaluating the various components essential to the success of a particular site or program" (CORD brochure, n.d.). The emphasis of the NTPN is on providing timely information and fostering partnerships so that practitioners can receive solutions to implementation challenges both from NTPN staff as well as other NTPN members.
Evaluations of Tech Prep have found that implementation is widespread (Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., 1996a, 1996b; see Section III.3 below). NTPN has helped to promote the adoption and continued evolution of the Tech Prep concept.
Southern Regional Education Board: High Schools that Work Initiative
The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), established in 1948, is the nation's first interstate compact for education (SREB, 1995). The 15 member states include Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. As described in the mission statement, SREB helps education and government leaders work cooperatively to advance education and improve the social and economic life of the region. Specifically, SREB "assists state leaders by identifying and directing attention to key issues; collecting, compiling and analyzing comparable data; and initiates studies and discussions that lead to recommendations for state and institutional action" (SREB, 1996, p. 2).
Launched in 1987 with 13 states and 28 sites, SREB's High Schools that Work initiative is the nation's first large-scale effort to combine challenging academic courses and modern vocational educational studies to raise the achievement of high school students who were not enrolled in college-prep courses. By 1995, HSTW had expanded to 21 states (15 SREB states and Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania) and more than 500 schools. The HSTW initiative was designed to strengthen vocational programs, abandon the watered-down coursework associated with the general track, and rescue the "forgotten" students who make up more than half the population of most high schools in America (SREB, 1995).
Two major goals of the initiative are (1) to raise the math, science, communication, problem solving and technical achievement of these youth to the national average; and (2) to blend the essential content of traditional college-preparatory studies--mathematics, science, language arts, and social studies--with quality vocational and technical studies by creating conditions that support school leaders, teachers, and counselors in carrying out the key practices (Bottoms & Presson, 1995; SREB, 1995). HSTW's specific target is to close by one-third the gap in reading, mathematics, and science achievement between career-bound youth and college-preparatory students nationally.
A four-pronged approach includes (1) connecting the school house to the state house with a shared vision of improvement; (2) getting the school faculty, administrators, and community to buy into that vision; (3) developing a system of internal and external technical support to focus on policies and practices for achieving the goal; and (4) helping schools adopt the practice of keeping score of their progress in getting students to learn higher-level content (Bottoms & Presson, 1995). The emphasis on data collection and analysis enables teachers and school leaders to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their efforts for purposes of program improvement and needed changes. SREB has designed a
rigorous evaluation system that provides evidence to support the implementation of their key practices. They have a trend line system which connects process to outcomes. This helps them recruit new members to their consortium, gain support from other national organizations and receive funding from foundations looking for effective improvement strategies. (Rahn, 1995, p. 98)
Center for Law and Education
The Center for Law and Education's (CLE) mission is to provide leadership in improving the quality of public education for low-income students throughout the nation, and to enable low-income communities to address their own public education problems. CLE serves as the national support center on education law for all the neighborhood attorneys and advocates who serve low-income clients. Since its creation in 1969, CLE has played a role in securing enactment and implementation of federal legislation, establishing the educational and decisionmaking rights of low-income, minority, disabled, and homeless students.
One of CLE's national projects is called Vocational Opportunity for Community and Economic Development (VOCED). With support from private foundations, this project has sought to align vocational education policy and programs with the following set of principles: vocational-academic integration linking high-level academic content with experiential learning, engaging students in learning all aspects of the industry, ensuring that students have the access and services needed for success, and promoting community participation in planning. In addition to advocating for these principles at the policy level, the VOCED project has provided assistance to selected cities.
One of the eight sites involved in the VOCED network is the Rindge School of Technical Arts in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Under the leadership of Larry Rosenstock, a staff attorney at CLE who taught carpentry at Rindge before becoming its director, Rindge Tech became one of the leaders in the STW movement before it was called STW (Rosenstock, 1991). The reform effort at Rindge emphasized (1) the integration of vocational and academic education, (2) instruction that provides students with experience in and understanding of all aspects of an industry, and (3) the creation of links between vocational education and community economic development. The bold innovations at Rindge have attracted much attention. In 1992, Rindge was selected by Jobs for the Future as one of its youth apprenticeship pilot sites. Rindge was also one of the exemplary programs described by Pauly, Kopp, and Haimson (1995), and by Olson (1997).
Rindge and CLE collaborated in organizing another network--Hands and Mind Collaborative--which also obtained private foundation support. The Collaborative shared information, sponsored summer institutes, and offered on-site assistance for teachers seeking to develop new STW programs. Innovations at Rindge added momentum to CLE's campaign to revitalize vocational education, especially for low-income students in big cities.
National Center for Education and the Economy: New Standards Project/ National Alliance for Restructuring Education
The National Center for Education and the Economy (NCEE) "engages in policy analysis and development, institutional design, technical assistance and professional development" in its efforts to develop "a comprehensive system of education, employment, and training second to none in the world" (Tucker et al., 1995, p. 148). While NCEE's portfolio of programs is varied, major contributions from the NCEE to the STW movement include the development of national standards and assessments (in partnership with the Learning Research Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh) and the advancement of the concept of the Certificate of Initial Mastery (CIM). One of NCEE's partnerships, the National Alliance in Restructuring Education (NARE), was one of nine "break the mold" programs funded in part by the New American Schools Development Corporation.
NARE was founded in 1989 as a partnership of states, school districts, corporations, universities, foundations, and nonprofit organizations. Its goal was to enable all students to reach high standards and achievement. Only commitment to fundamental change at the school, district, and state levels will allow NARE and its partners to achieve its goal through a "bottom-up reform with top-down support" (NCEE, n.d.). And successful schools alone are not enough: "Only when the system itself is designed for high performance will large numbers of schools produce students who can achieve at high levels" (p. 1).
Current NARE partners include the states of Kentucky and Arkansas; the cities of Chicago, Pittsburgh, Rochester, San Diego, Seattle, and White Plains; and a cluster of districts in the metropolitan Seattle area. Collectively, current partners teach nearly five million students in over 9,000 schools. Other partners in the effort include corporations such as Apple Computer and Xerox; universities such as Harvard University and the University of Southern California; and national nonprofits and research centers such as the New Standards Project, the Center for the Study of Social Policy, the Learning Research Development Center, JFF, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, Public Agenda, and the Texas Industrial Areas Foundation. These national partners bring a variety of skills and expertise to support the schools, districts, and states. NARE is funded by grants from The Pew Charitable Trusts of Philadelphia, the New American Schools Development Corporation, and by membership fees from partner districts.
Five design tasks organize the work of the partners:
Work on these design tasks has influenced the conception and implementation of STW in NARE sites, and in other places where NCEE is providing policy analysis and technical assistance.
Jobs for the Future: Benchmark Communities Initiative
"Part think tank, part on-site consultant, part advocate, part communicator, part catalyst and part broker," Jobs for the Future (JFF) (1995) is a nonprofit organization that conducts research; provides technical assistance; and proposes policy innovation on the interrelated issues of work, learning, and economic development (p. 4). Having assisted 20 states and over 100 demonstration programs over the past five years, in 1995, JFF became more actively involved in a small number of strategic locations through the Benchmark Communities Initiative (BCI) as an effort to "add greatest value to the next phase of school-to-work reform and to ensure that there are compelling models of best practice to guide school-to-work system development" (p. 7).
The BCI represents a partnership with five communities to produce the following results: large-scale systemic restructuring of the K-16 educational systems; the involvement of significant numbers of employers in work and learning partnerships; and the infrastructure necessary to connect high schools, postsecondary educational institutions, and employers in a coherent system. While school-to-work encompasses a broad range of program strategies, including cooperative education, Tech Prep, career academies, and other initiatives, the challenge of the BCI is to integrate separate programs into a comprehensive education reform strategy that will reach all students within the participating school districts. The five communities that have already undertaken significant steps toward building a STW system are Boston, Massachusetts; Jefferson County, Kentucky; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; North Clackamas, Oregon; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Their approaches differ, but their goals are consistent--designing, implementing, and sustaining school-to-career systems (Martinez, Goldberger, & Alongi, 1996).
JFF views its role as a convenor and provider of assistance to the BCI communities. It seeks to create a network of communities to share what works and what does not in the fields of education reform, youth policy, and community development. The stated goals of the five-year initiative are
Key issues faced during the first year of implementation have focused on building consensus around a common vision, crafting and implementing staff development plans to reach that vision, scaling up employer involvement, and identifying appropriate governance structures for the system-building process. Challenges over the next four years include managing the change process in a dynamic environment; involving schools boards, parents, and state efforts; evaluating the system-building process and progress; and sustaining momentum (Martinez et al., 1996).
The BCI is significant because it was the first attempt at a community-wide approach to STW system-building. The five communities are also upgrading the quality of learning available in workplaces so as not to rely completely on changes within the educational system to sustain workforce preparation for all students. These communities will provide lessons for other schools and communities that are committed to building better systems for school-to-work transition.
Along with state and federal grants and mandates, these networks have contributed energy to the STW movement. By actively engaging practitioners and policymakers at the local level, the networks have spurred efforts to translate state and federal legislative language into concrete action. Each network is offering a different brand of STW reform, however. The fact that these networks are all broadcasting somewhat different messages, and that they are sometimes even working in the same localities, can, therefore, add to the confusion created by various state and federal laws. On the other hand, as in a supermarket, the competing claims of different STW vendors can be seen as offering local schools and partnerships a positive choice among different concepts and models, leaving it up to local decisionmakers to decide what makes the most sense in terms of their own priorities.