I. INTRODUCTION
The curriculum of American high schools--a mix of academics, arts, vocational preparation, and physical education--has remained essentially unchanged over the past 70 years. Courses in each subject range in difficulty from low-level introductory or remedial courses to highly demanding academic or technical ones. This wide array of offerings stems, in part, from a nearly century-old belief that high schools should prepare students for work. Because the workforce is highly differentiated, with workers in different sectors requiring different knowledge and skills, high schools have developed a correspondingly differentiated curriculum. Demanding academic courses aim at preparing students for occupations that require college degrees; more rudimentary academic classes and vocational programs try to ready students for less-skilled jobs immediately following high school graduation or for postsecondary technical training.
Educators and the public have typically judged this range of curriculum choices as an appropriate and fair way to accommodate differences in students' intellectual abilities, interests, and aspirations. Thus, a high school curriculum divided into college-preparatory, general, and vocational programs or "tracks" has been viewed for most of the twentieth century as both functional and democratic--an educationally sound way to provide students with an education that best suits their abilities and to provide the nation with the array of workers it needs (Grubb and Lazerson, 1974; Kantor, 1986).
Today, however, many policymakers are challenging the traditional split between the academic and vocational sides of the curriculum. This challenge stems from the growing perception that, with the profound economic and social shifts currently facing the nation, a curriculum divided into distinct academic and vocational halves is no longer either useful or fair. On the economic side, employers have become increasingly disenchanted with the extent to which high schools prepare students for work. With rapidly changing work technology and the high cost of keeping equipment up to date, high schools have lost their ability to prepare students for the technical aspects of many jobs. And, as employers anticipate that more jobs in the future will require sophistication in literacy, numeracy, and problem solving (as opposed to simply knowing how to perform a few procedures accurately and efficiently), high schools have come under fire for not providing entry-level workers with sufficient intellectual competence. For these reasons--many of them beyond the control of schools--the nation's old confidence that most students will leave high school ready to work has been shattered.
Moreover, the nation is also losing faith in the fairness of the idea that high schools should place students with different intellectual capacities into different programs that will lead them to quite different opportunities after high school, with some students eligible for four-year colleges and others not. This diminishing confidence in high school "tracking" results, in part, because immigrant, low-income, and minority youth more often take low-level academic and vocational training, and middle- and upper-class whites more often take academic, college-prep programs. From the inception of a differentiated high school curriculum, the matching of students to programs carried with it racial, ethnic, and social-class overtones. Early on, vocational training was thought to be appropriate for immigrant, poor, and minority youth, and academic preparation was seen as meeting the needs of more affluent whites (Carnoy and Levin, 1985; Cohen, 1985; Grubb and Lazerson, 1974; Kantor, 1986; Oakes, 1985). The links between high school programs and students' background characteristics remain; they can be observed in differences among contemporary high schools' curriculum offerings and in students' enrollment in various courses. Few questioned the "rightness" of this pattern of unequal access to college preparation before the 1960s, just as few questioned the many other social and economic barriers faced by many immigrants and native-born minorities. Today, however, most Americans find these curriculum differences disturbing.
It is not surprising, then, that the recently reauthorized Carl Perkins Vocational Education Act requires that schools seeking federally funded program improvement funds develop programs that integrate academic and vocational curricula. Other reformers, seeking to improve both sides of the high school curriculum, hearken back to John Dewey's ideas that learning that takes place in the head can be enriched by that done with the hands--an idea remarkably similar to those proffered recently by cognitive psychologists (e.g., Sternberg, 1984). These reformers view a blending of academic and vocational studies as a promising approach to making the essential concepts from the college-preparatory curriculum more accessible to all students and enabling students to see connections between "school" knowledge and the world around them. Thus, such reforms are not aimed solely at benefiting those students who are poorly served by the current structure of the high school curriculum; they are also seen as having the potential to improve the high school curriculum for everyone (Oakes, 1986).
Obviously, blending academic and vocational studies in high schools is a daunting task. The most obvious difficulty is the purely technical challenge of redesigning the high school curriculum and staffing patterns so that students experience courses where essential academic concepts are taught in the context of functional and applied processes (see, for example, Stasz et al., 1990; in press). However, other obstacles may bring even tougher challenges to those trying to blur the boundaries between academic and vocational students and what they learn. These obstacles lie in the culture of American high schools--in the form of beliefs about why academic and vocational programs should be kept separate, in the form of beliefs about the limited intellectual capacities of some groups of kids, and in the policies and politics that shape everyday life in large high schools.
The research reported here aims to illuminate some of these obstacles in the culture of contemporary high schools. It is grounded in the premise that those who wish to upgrade the role and status of vocational education and to integrate academic and vocational curricula must understand current patterns of curriculum differentiation, student assignment practices, and the dynamics that keep current practices firmly in place.
CURRENT PATTERNS OF CURRICULUM DIFFERENTIATION
Differences in Schools' Course Offerings
Across the nation, students' access to and participation in vocational and academic curricula differ considerably, depending on the school they attend. Some schools focus on academic preparation and offer only a smattering of vocational courses; others are heavily vocational (NCES, 1985). Some schools' vocational offerings emphasize agriculture; others focus on business; others on industry and trade-related skills.
Some recent evidence suggests that the differences in schools' vocational offerings may relate less to local labor market needs than to the social and economic characteristics of students and their neighborhoods. For example, schools with large concentrations of disadvantaged students often offer the greatest number of vocational classes. However, these classes are less likely to be part of intensive, well-articulated programs than the classes offered at schools with more advantaged students. For example, the most recent National Assessment of Vocational Education found that only 45 percent of disadvantaged schools had access to area vocational centers, compared with 65 percent of schools with more advantaged students. Additionally, these disadvantaged schools tended to have a restricted range of program offerings (an average of 29 distinct credits offered) and fewer advanced courses (an average of 8 credits). In contrast, schools serving the most advantaged students have far richer vocational programs (e.g., course offerings, on average, of 46 distinct credits, with 15 of these credits in advanced courses). Yet students at these schools, on average, take only half the number of vocational courses as their peers at the most disadvantaged schools (NAVE, 1989).[2]
These findings echo work observing that the content, class length, and location of vocational courses vary with the racial and socioeconomic characteristics of a school's student population, with the most impoverished programs at schools serving low-income students (Goodlad, 1984; Oakes, 1983).
Academic programs also vary among schools with dissimilar student bodies. For example, schools enrolling the most advantaged students typically offer the most extensive and well developed science and mathematics programs (Oakes et al., 1990).
Differences in Students' Participation
Within schools, students' participation in vocational and academic courses differs, as students take various paths through the curriculum (NCES, 1985; Oakes, 1985; Ekstrom, Goertz, and Rock, 1988). In 1982, 38 percent of high school seniors reported that they were enrolled in the academic track (courses that meet college-entrance requirements), another 27 percent reported being enrolled in the general track (typically not thought of as a college-preparatory program), and 35 percent said they were in the vocational track (courses that prepare for entry-level work in a particular occupation) (Ekstrom, Goertz, and Rock, 1988). But students do not always report their curriculum tracks accurately (Rosenbaum, 1980), perhaps because the boundaries between programs may be fuzzier than such labels as "academic," "general," and "vocational" suggest. For example, recent analyses by the National Assessment of Vocational Education found that 97 percent of all high school students enroll in some vocational education (Hoachlander, Brown, and Tuma, 1987). And, students who plan to graduate from college earn a surprisingly large share (about 29 percent) of all vocational education credits. Their coursetaking extends beyond consumer, homemaking, and general vocational to include occupationally specific classes as well (NAVE, 1989). Moreover, the number of semesters of vocational courses taken by students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds is quite similar, except for Asian American students. For example, Asian American students in the HS&B sample took an average of 3.22 semesters of vocational education; whites, 5.5; African Americans, 5.82; and Mexican Americans, 6.12 (Ekstrom, Goertz, and Rock, 1988).
Despite these coursetaking overlaps, we find consistent racial and socioeconomic differences in track participation. Low-income and minority students participate in vocational curriculum tracks at higher rates and in academic curriculum tracks at lower rates than affluent and white students (NCES, 1985). For example, 48 percent of the white 1982 seniors who were a part of the federal High School and Beyond Study reported being in academic programs, compared with 32 percent of the African Americans and 23 percent of Mexican Americans (Ekstrom, Goertz, and Rock, 1988). In contrast, 29 percent of these white seniors reported participating in the vocational track, compared with 39 percent of the African Americans and 44 percent of the Latinos (Braddock, 1990). Even high-achieving African American students take more vocational education than do their white peers (NAVE, 1989). Perhaps this is because they often attend schools that offer larger numbers of vocational classes.
More interesting than racial and socioeconomic differences in overall vocational and academic participation are differences in the type of courses taken in the two domains. Case study data suggest that low-income and minority students are disproportionately enrolled in vocational courses that lead to jobs requiring only minimal skills (e.g., agricultural field work, institutional cooking, and housekeeping), whereas whites and more affluent students take vocational courses that impart more general skills (e.g., keyboarding) or courses with considerable academic content (e.g., aviation, agricultural science) (Oakes, 1983). Similarly, national data show that African American students, more than whites, enroll in courses designed to teach them specific skills for jobs in occupational home economics, health occupations, and construction (Hoachlander, Brown, and Tuma, 1987). And, academically disadvantaged black students spend more time than their white counterparts in work-based courses (e.g., work experience programs) and in courses preparing for low-level service-related jobs (NAVE, 1989). Across racial groups, economically disadvantaged students take a relatively larger percentage of occupationally specific courses and a somewhat smaller percentage of classes providing more general employability skills (e.g., typing and introductory courses in industrial arts) than do their more affluent schoolmates (Hoachlander, Brown, and Tuma, 1987).
Even more dramatic than differences in vocational coursetaking is the consistent overrepresentation of low-income and minority students in low-level and remedial academic courses. Racial differences are the most pronounced in the very highest college-preparatory tracks--honors class subjects such as English and mathematics--with white and Asian participation far outdistancing that of African Americans and Latinos (Braddock, 1990). These academic coursetaking differences, more than vocational course differences, explain racial differences in college eligibility (Oakes, 1987; Oakes et al., 1990).
COMPETING THEORIES
Despite our knowledge of these contemporary patterns and their historic roots, prior research provides little insight into the decisionmaking processes that shape the curriculum offerings and student coursetaking patterns in today's high schools and the rationale that support the patterns we observe. However, a number of theories have been offered to explain them.
Functionalist Theories
Most explanations of curriculum and placement patterns contend that curriculum offerings and coursetaking decisions are functional, that is, they serve important educational or social purposes. The most traditional of these explanations are "human capital" theories suggesting that schools (as primary agents for preparing students for work) offer a wide array of opportunities that students can "invest" in as they prepare for different sectors of the workforce. With such investments, students increase their human capital--their education and training--which will determine how much they can attain (income, status, etc.) as adults. Human capital theory recognizes that various education and training opportunities do not provide an equal return. However, it does suggest that the competition for various opportunities is fair and open, that the primary mechanisms for allocating various opportunities are meritocratic (e.g., decisions based on ability, effort, and achievement rather than race, social class, or other privileged status), and that usually students and their parents are free to choose among alternative curricula. Attainment of high-status education and the highly rewarding occupations that follow, then, results from an open contest based on merit. Thus, students who are able, ambitious, and hardworking can use schooling as an avenue for social and economic mobility (see, for example, Rehburg and Rosenthal, 1978).
Finally, more deterministic functionalist theorists suggest that curriculum decisions are quite directly influenced by society's expectation that schools play a central role in social and economic stratification. Not only do curriculum opportunities in schools mirror occupational opportunities in the larger society, schools' curriculum decisions maintain the occupational and social advantages of children from families with high-status positions. At the same time, schools provide lower-status students with curriculum opportunities that prepare or certify them for occupations much like those of their parents. Such theories are supported by work showing that guidance counselors' recommendations do not stem solely from educationally relevant criteria such as ability or achievement; sometimes their advice appears to be influenced by factors related to race and class--dress, speech patterns, and behavior. Under these conditions, low-income students may be more likely than others to be placed in lower-level classes (Cicourel and Kitsuse, 1963). Some argue that this reproduction takes place in an almost mechanical way (Bowles and Gintis, 1976). Others suggest that schools' contribution to social and economic sorting is not straightforward and argue that schools are also the battleground on which struggles for greater opportunities and equality for disadvantaged groups take place. Therefore, curriculum decisions are full of contradictions and tensions that reflect both democratic impulses and real inequities in society, even as they result in social and economic reproduction (e.g., Apple, 1982; Giroux, 1981; Carnoy and Levin, 1986).
Structuralist Explanations
In contrast to this view of an open contest or a rather mechanistic class-based allocation to the best schooling opportunities and attainments, other functionalist explanations argue that factors other than an open, meritorious contest determine students' access to various curricula. These other factors come into play as high schools enact society's intent to provide a comprehensive and differentiated program at each high school. Accordingly, curriculum opportunities are constrained by ideological (belief in the comprehensive high school), structural, and organizational regularities of schools and by students' characteristics. Such arguments center on the fact that schools allocate a limited number of places in each type of curriculum, including the high-status curriculum (high-ability groups in elementary school and the academic curriculum in high school) that provides students with access first to college and later to high-status jobs, regardless of the abilities of their student bodies (Hallinan, 1987; Sorensen, 1987). Moreover, the number of positions in any one curriculum are relatively fixed at a school, given staff and resource availability and norms suggesting that the number of students enrolled in each curriculum should not exceed or fall below particular limits. Thus, the chances of any individual student participating in the academic curriculum are not only a function of his or her own abilities and choices but also of locale--the most important feature of which is the characteristics of those students with whom a student must compete for limited positions in the high-status curriculum (Sorensen, 1987).
Not only are the number of high-status places in a school limited, but a considerable stability in individual students' placements prevents most students from moving from low- to high-status classes or groups. This stability results from two factors: First, students' early placements and status are used to signal their ability (Rosenbaum, 1986). Second, students assigned to low-status curriculum are often locked into such programs because they miss out on learning experiences considered prerequisite to moving into a "higher" curriculum (Hallinan, 1987; Oakes, 1987). Thus, students' early assignment to a curriculum largely determines their later curriculum opportunities. Rather than participating in a wide-open competition for slots in particular curricula, then, students follow rather narrow curriculum paths that are established quite early in their school careers by factors not limited to their ability to benefit from a particular path. Moreover, when movement between groups or tracks occurs, it is likely to be downward to lower tracks. Consequently, Rosenbaum (1986) suggests that curriculum opportunities function rather like a sports tournament, where access to the high-status curriculum is maintained only by a series of student "wins" (demonstrations of ability, effort, and achievement). In contrast, any "loss" (demonstration of less ability, etc.) removes students from further consideration for these curriculum opportunities.
These structural limits on the number of high-status courses that schools offer and, consequently, any one student's chances of being placed in them may reflect the longstanding and widely held belief that few American students are really capable or interested in rigorous academic work (e.g., Cohen, 1985). Although some argue that these limits are not necessarily a function of students' race and class (Sorensen, 1987), others contend that these characteristics interact in important ways with structural constraints, since educators' judgments about students' social class and racial characteristics link to judgments about students' abilities and their likely postsecondary destinations. Thus, students' background characteristics may affect both the number of high-track positions that a school makes available and the placement decisions about individual students within schools (Oakes, 1987; Rosenbaum, 1986).
Accounting for the Untidiness of Schools' Practices
The views discussed above all suggest that schools act rationally and consistently, even if their decisions sometimes appear biased or grounded in educationally irrelevant factors. Human capital, structural, and reproduction theories all imply that schools employ implicit or explicit models of attainment and well-reasoned decision rules. Further, they suggest that schools are able to carry out these decisions rather consistently. Other work, however, highlights considerable discrepancies between the tidiness of these functionalist perspectives and the less-orderly nature of what often happens in schools.
Close scrutiny of the inner workings of schools reveals irregularities and inconsistencies in the structure of schools' curriculum offerings, in the distribution of students among curricula, in the placement processes used to allocate students to various programs, and in attitudes toward placement in various tracks (Oakes, 1985; Garet and DeLany, 1988; Kilgore, 1991). In some schools (and in some subjects within schools), students do move into higher curriculum tracks. As a consequence, considerable overlap exists in the characteristics of students (e.g., in race, social class, and achievement) enrolled in various tracks at some schools. In some schools, high-achieving college-preparatory students take vocational courses without compromising their high status.
Such divergences from general (and rational) patterns may occur because schools are so constrained by the vagaries inherent in the management of their day-to-day operations that they are unable to make or carry out curriculum and placement decisions in the rational way that functionalist theories suggest (Garet and DeLany, 1988; DeLany, 1988). Some of these constraints are beyond schools' control, such as demographic changes (e.g., declining enrollment) or changes in state policies and resource allocations. In some states, for example, recent declines in student enrollments and increased academic requirements have acted in combination to virtually eliminate a "vocational track" in comprehensive high schools. In many schools, what remains is a smattering of vocational elective courses (e.g., Kirst, 1984; Clune, 1989; Selvin et al., 1990).
Within schools, other circumstances constrain staffs' best efforts to carry out curriculum and tracking policies. The logistics of creating a schedule each year can wreak havoc with schools' efforts to offer well-developed vocational programs and frustrate efforts to have students follow a well-defined sequence (or track) of courses across subject fields (Garet and DeLany, 1988). Lack of staff expertise and limited resources force other compromises (Kilgore, 1991). Additionally, other dynamics in the school culture can work against the implementation of formal policies. For example, in some schools peer influences on student choices, teachers' recommendations, the general climate of expectations for student achievement (Kilgore, 1991), and parent demands (Useem, 1990) all press schools to admit students to classes for which they may be under- or overqualified, according to more formal placement criteria. Thus, both the availability of courses and student placements in them may more likely result from constraints and organizational tradeoffs than from the rational processes that theories of predetermined societal intentions or individual choice would suggest (Garet and DeLany, 1988).
Accordingly, students' track placements--even when they reflect social stratification or the students' own choices--are undoubtedly far more constrained than widely believed. At the same time, these curriculum paths are probably far more open and serendipitous than functionalist theories claim. Schools do not simply offer a wide range of offerings from which students and their parents choose. But neither do they simply match students to curricular and occupational opportunities in ways likely to reproduce their current social and economic status.
ORGANIZATION OF THIS REPORT
The theories outlined above suggest that the courses schools offer and students' assignment to them reflect a wide array of factors: social expectations that schools will prepare students for work; beliefs about students' abilities and what educational programs are most appropriate for students of different ability levels; conceptions of how schools can distribute opportunities fairly; and the vagaries of managing large organizations. The remainder of this report describes research conducted in three high schools over a two-year period. This research sought to better understand the various influences on curriculum and student assignments and what they imply about efforts to reform high schools by creating programs that attempt to blur the distinction between academic and vocational subjects and students.
Section II outlines our strategy for better understanding curriculum differentiation in comprehensive high schools and the processes that sustain it, and it describes the schools and students we studied. Section III presents the results of our year of field work in the three high schools and the questions that work raised for our subsequent analysis of students' transcripts. Section IV includes results from our transcript analyses that help explain vocational coursetaking at the schools. We describe the extent and nature of student participation in vocational education programs, i.e., which students take how much of various types of vocational education. We also present analyses of the probability of vocational participation for students with different demographic and achievement characteristics. Section V focuses on what the transcripts revealed about students' academic coursetaking and track placements, including the relationship between their placement in "signal" English and math courses and their participation in vocational courses. Section VI brings together the results of our first and second years' work. It places the results of the transcript analyses in the context of the findings from our field work. We present this synthesis in the form of a framework for better understanding high school curriculum decisions and their consequences. We conclude with a discussion of the consequences of what we found for reforms that attempt to upgrade the quality and status of vocational education.
[2]Schools in the upper to middle range of academic and social advantage scored even higher on two of these variables. Seventy-five percent had access to area vocational centers, and these schools offered an average of 49 credits in vocational education.