VI. AN ECLECTIC EXPLANATION OF MATCHING
STUDENTS TO CURRICULUM
The analyses in this report sought to shed light on the complex and dynamic processes that high schools use to match students with various courses. Specifically, we hoped that our close look at three large high schools might provide a better understanding of the effect on curriculum offerings and students' assignments of educators' judgments about students' capacity and motivation, students' and parents' preferences, and the constraints and opportunities generated by schools' own cultures and their larger social and policy context. We were especially interested in how these factors might contribute to the racial, ethnic, and social-class patterns of curriculum participation so consistently found in national studies--patterns showing that immigrant low-income, and non-Asian minorities are more likely than their more advantaged peers to take low-level academic courses and vocational education. And, we were interested in what these patterns and practices might portend for reforms that are attempting to integrate academic and vocational studies at the high school level.
Our work was guided by a number of theories that have been proffered to explain this matchmaking process--theories attending to human capital development, those focusing on institutional constraints embedded in the ideological and structural regularities of schooling, and those grounded in ideas of cultural and economic reproduction. We also kept in mind recent work suggesting that the matching process is more serendipitous than such theories would suggest, as a result of the untidiness and unpredictability of educational policy and practice.
In this final section, we bring together the findings from the two phases of our study--the field work and the transcript analyses. Placing our findings about vocational and academic coursetaking in the context of the findings from our interviews and observations, we blend existing theories into an eclectic framework for better understanding the culture of high school curriculum differentiation--i.e., the values, traditions, and structures that underlie curriculum offerings and student assignments. This framework suggests a number of constraints that face policymakers and educators who are attempting to improve the quality and status of vocational education in comprehensive high schools.
AN ECLECTIC EXPLANATION
Our observations and interviews in our case study high schools supported a picture of curriculum and student assignment decisions that combines as well as elaborates elements from a number of theoretical perspectives. As we detailed in Sec. III, educators often articulated "human capital" considerations as they described their course offerings and student assignment practices. At the same time, structural and ideological considerations (e.g., state policies emphasizing academics and the tradition of offering a comprehensive program) also affected what courses schools thought they should offer and how they placed students in them. Finally, students' race and social class proved to influence faculties' decisions about what courses to offer and students' assignments, partly as a result of educators' judgments about particular groups and partly stemming from parent or student pressure. However, we conclude that the schools' course offerings and patterns of student assignments were not simply the result of rational planning about what the school should offer or what individual students need, either in terms of human capital development, predetermined structural arrangements, or social stratification. Some of what happened seemed to result from the vagaries of everyday life in schools--juggling resources, staffing, and schedules and responding to pressures from outside. It is important to note, however, the effect of this mix of well-considered decisions and ad hoc responses was not the same at all schools, nor for all students within any one school. Our transcript analyses supported this eclectic view.
Setting our qualitative work next to the analysis of student transcripts, we can elaborate this eclectic explanation of school decisions regarding curriculum offerings and student assignments. Our elaborated perspective consists of eight propositions that we set forth below.
Proposition 1: Schools View Students' Abilities, Motivation, and
Aspirations
As Fixed
High school faculties make assumptions about the abilities, aspirations, and educational "needs" of their incoming students. As described in Sec. III, each school had a quite elaborate procedure for gathering relevant information on which to base these judgments--e.g., obtaining achievement test scores and recommendations about students' abilities and motivations from their junior high school teachers. Information about a student's past record is viewed as important, since it is assumed that students' prior achievement is a good indicator of what they can be expected to learn in the future and that the motivation they have demonstrated in the past is also likely to continue.
Although making these judgments may seem a sensible and rational process for schools to undertake, it is important to note that these judgments lead to crucial decisions about what courses incoming students can choose to take and opinions about what track or ability level seems most appropriate for them. They also drive students' assignments through high schools, since choices made as a result of the well-rationalized and articulated student placement policies when students enter high school are seldom revised in subsequent placement decisions. What makes these initial judgments so powerful is the widespread belief that a student's educational prospects are virtually set by the time he or she gets to high school. Motivation and ability are considered by many in schools to be fixed attributes that educators cannot modify. This theme echoed in the words of administrators, teachers, and counselors in all three of our schools. Some told us directly that they felt that it was "all over" by high school. Others told us indirectly, in their inability to recall examples of students who had made notable shifts in their achievement or motivation.
Proposition 2: High Schools Seek to Accommodate, Not Alter, Student
Characteristics
Probably as a consequence of the pervasive belief that students' abilities and motivations are unlikely to change much as a result of their experiences in high school, schools make curriculum decisions that are designed to accommodate students' abilities and dispositions, not to alter them. As our field work indicates, in most cases this approach reflects a sincere wish to provide all students with courses in which they can be successful and maximize their potential. This is most evident when educators talk about providing courses where low-ability students will not fail or feel pressure to drop out of school.
The variation in overall course offerings among schools--i.e., the number, type, and ability levels of academic and vocational classes offered--stems, in part, from this effort to accommodate the abilities and needs of the student body as a whole. Educators' perceptions about what their student bodies need vary from school to school. Course offerings at a particular school, however, appear to be fairly stable from year to year. This happens, in part, because of resource and staffing constraints (see below) but also because schools use their judgments about the abilities of past cohorts of students to make predictions about the likely characteristics of those students who will attend in the future. The judgments schools make about the abilities and motivations that characterize students in their community influence decisions about how the curriculum should be structured. This is particularly noticeable when schools reconsider the appropriateness of their curriculum as their community changes.
However, educators are mindful of the fact that their schools enroll students with a range of abilities and motivation, even if the community is seen as generally high, average, or low in achievement and/or motivation. Schools accommodate these individual differences by providing an array of academic and vocational courses and offering academic classes at different ability levels. The student assignment process, then, is the mechanism by which students are matched with courses that seem appropriate for them. At this point, however, parent and student preferences also come into play. Students are usually free to choose their elective courses, and they are often permitted to opt for academic courses at lower ability levels than what the school might see as the best match. Usually, schools are willing to accommodate parents who express a strong preference for enrolling their child in more difficult courses than those prior teachers or the guidance counselor might recommend. However, in these cases, schools often protect themselves from liability for the failure that they anticipate by asking parents to sign a waiver. Such practices reveal the strength of the schools' confidence in their judgments and assignment practices.
Proposition 3: Academically Able Students Reap the Benefits of Curriculum
Accommodation
As schools tailor their curriculum to their perceptions of what their students need, students attending schools with lots of high-achieving classmates reap the curricular benefits of high expectations. The curricular differences among our three schools reflect patterns found in national data. The curriculum at high-achieving Washington High offered the most developed vocational programs, more advanced placement academic classes, and an extensive and interesting array of college-preparatory courses. The latter is reflected both in the printed description of the curriculum and in the number of college-preparatory "slots" found in our transcript analyses. Access to a well-developed regional vocational center enhanced Washington students' vocational opportunities far beyond what could be supported by the school's relatively low vocational enrollment.
Opportunities at Coolidge, our school where students' incoming abilities were somewhat lower, were neither as rich nor as extensive as those at Washington. In the vocational domain, the school listed an array of vocational offerings. However, stringent academic graduation requirements prevent many of these courses, especially the advanced sections, from being offered. The offerings in the regional occupational program to which Coolidge was attached are somewhat more limited than at the center serving the other two schools.
Curriculum offerings were least developed at McKinley, our school where incoming 9th graders had achievement scores below the national average. McKinley provided the fewest positions in college-preparatory classes, and the comments of teachers and counselors indicated that few of these classes were academically challenging. Additionally, even though McKinley was connected to the same regional vocational school as Washington, and thereby had access to its rich array of offerings, McKinley's policies constrained its students from taking advantage of the wide range of courses offered there. For example, McKinley required the greatest number of academic courses for graduation, which made freeing up the three-hour blocks required by the regional center a near impossibility for students. Additionally, the chaotic atmosphere on campus prompted administrators to discourage students from leaving for any reason, even to attend the regional center. Despite these curricular constraints, the greatest vocational coursetaking took place at McKinley.
Within the three schools, counselors worked with students to ensure the best fit between them and their courses. And, as one would expect, at all three schools a student's probability of taking college-prep courses (those courses that lead to the greatest post-high school opportunities) increased as his or her relative standing in the school's test score distribution increased. For example, a student at the 75th percentile was more likely than one at the 50th percentile to be in college-prep math, and a student at the 50th percentile was much more likely than one at the 25th percentile to be in a college-prep math course.
Moreover, within schools vocational education is largely the purview of low-achieving students. Although most students took some vocational courses, our analysis of college-prep math and English participation revealed significant differences between students taking six or more vocational courses (vocational concentrators) and non-concentrators in their participation in college-prep courses. At most schools, concentrators were less than half as likely to participate in college-prep math or English as non-concentrators. And further analyses showed that, generally speaking, college-prep students at all schools participate less frequently in vocational courses and particularly in occupational courses where this difference in group participation is significant.
The term "dumping ground" is harsh, but that is the word our respondents used over and over again to explain an important function of vocational classes at their schools. At Coolidge and McKinley particularly, no one claimed that the vocational program (the on-campus courses, in particular) provided a coherent training program. Rather, business classes were viewed as a good place for college-bound students to gain some general skills, and the trade-related courses (woods and auto, primarily) were seen as classes where low achievers and misbehaving students might have a positive school experience.
Much of this thinking seems rational and sensible, but it is critical to see this process as part of a larger set of assumptions that schools base students' curriculum opportunities on judgments of their ability and motivation; that schools see ability and motivation as unlikely to be altered by their high school experiences; and that those students who have demonstrated high achievement and motivation in the past are those students who are provided with the richest curriculum opportunities at their schools and those that lead to the greatest opportunities after graduation.
Proposition 4: Race, Ethnicity, and Social Class "Signal" Ability and
Motivation and the Curriculum Accommodations to Them
In all three of our schools, judgments about ability and motivation and the
academic and vocational opportunities most appropriate to accommodate them
broke down fairly consistently by race, ethnicity, and social class. At the
school level, the middle-class white and Asian students at Washington were
judged to represent a high-achieving, highly motivated community. The school
responded by offering the richest curriculum in both the academic and
vocational domains. The mixed population at Coolidge was perceived as
representative of a community growing increasingly diverse in achievement and
motivation. The school curriculum paralleled this judgment, offering a
college-oriented curriculum but one with fewer advanced courses than at
Washington. Coolidge's vocational program was also less extensive than
Washington's, and the school offered fewer sequences of related vocational
courses. However, the school did offer a wide range of business courses that
were seen as appropriate for the large proportion of students with average
levels of achievement who probably would not go to college. And, all Latino
and African American McKinley saw itself as an institution determined to do the
best it could for students from low-achieving and, in the case of Latinos,
less-motivated communities. This was the school with the weakest curriculum,
with the fewest college-preparatory classes, and the narrowest range of
vocational offerings, even as the school enrolled the largest percentage of
students in vocational classes.
Both Washington and Coolidge illustrate some of the dynamics of these links between community demographics and perceptions of students' abilities, motivations, and needs. As described in Sec. III, as their school populations changed, so too did perceptions of the appropriate content and rigor of the courses these schools offered. Of course, these schools were probably responding, in part, to community demand. At Washington, at least, the influx of Asian students brought with it pressure to offer more math, science, and computer science classes and to pull back on the "practical arts" requirement.
Faculty perceptions of the abilities of students who were members of various racial, ethnic, and social class groups corresponded fairly consistently to average group differences in performance on standardized tests, as evidenced in our transcript analyses. But, our interviews revealed that generalizations about group tendencies were often extended to all students with particular status characteristics. In our conversations with them, faculty justified their views of group differences with explanations about how different cultures either enhanced or impeded students' prospects for academic success. For example, Asians were uniformly considered likely to succeed, because of a combination of high motivation, family support, and a cultural value for learning. In contrast, Latino students were thought to be handicapped by an absence of family support, little value for postsecondary schooling, and a disinterest in working hard at school.
Within the schools, faculty reported racial or social-class differences in students' track placement--perceptions largely borne out by our transcript analyses. For example, our transcript analyses of participation rates in college-prep math (defined as students taking Algebra 2 by 11th grade) demonstrate significant differences in coursetaking by race/ethnicity. Participation rates in college-prep math were almost twice as high for Asians as for whites at Washington and Coolidge. Latino students participated at a much lower rate at these two schools. At McKinley, no significant differences were found in the college-track participation rates for African Americans and Latinos, the two dominant groups. However, across our schools, African American and Latino students took more vocational education than white and Asian students.
Although these patterns parallel group differences in prior achievement, judgments made about students who belong to different groups sometimes influenced individual course assignments, even when their past achievements may have merited different decisions. We saw evidence of the latter in our transcript analyses showing the enhanced probabilities of Asians enrolling in college-preparatory programs and the diminished chances of Latinos enrolling either in college-preparatory programs or in a concentrated vocational curriculum, even when their scores on achievement tests were comparable. For example, Asian males at the 75th percentile in the test score distribution had about a 95 percent probability of taking college-prep math at both Washington and Coolidge, whereas a white male with the same standing in the test score distribution had only an 81 percent probability of taking college-prep math at Washington and an even lower probability (62 percent) at Coolidge. Again, at both schools, Latino males were least likely to be in college-prep math at each point in the score distribution. These results show that even after controlling for test scores, a student's race/ethnicity was often important in determining his or her probability of participating in college-prep math and English courses. This result did not hold at McKinley, where, for both subjects, African American and Latino males have similar probabilities of being in college-prep courses.
However, despite the fact that the vocational program at McKinley was the least coherent or well developed among our three schools, McKinley students were most likely to be concentrators in vocational education--even those enrolled in college-preparatory programs and those with equivalent achievement test scores. For example, African American boys at McKinley were more than twice as likely (and girls four times as likely) as their African American peers at Coolidge to concentrate in vocational education. And, even those students in the top 25 percent of their class had a greater probability of concentrating in vocational courses there than their counterparts at the more advantaged schools. If McKinley is representative, it may be that schools with larger concentrations of minorities and low-income students are disproportionately vocational--in size, not quality. The result is that students of all backgrounds attending those schools were more likely to be vocational concentrators than their peers with comparable achievement scores who attended schools with larger numbers of white and middle-class students.
Some Coolidge staff made explicit reference to racial discrepancies in students' assignments. One teacher, for example, felt that Asians were routinely placed too high, whereas African Americans and Latinos were placed too low. A few Coolidge teachers noted that their predominantly middle-class African American students could be found across all academic levels, although they were less likely to be in the fast track or honors courses. These somewhat conflicting perceptions are given further complexity by our transcript findings that with achievement levels held constant, African American students who completed 12th grade were somewhat more likely than whites to be enrolled in college-preparatory programs.
Despite the clear links between students' status characteristics and curriculum
offerings at the school level and student placements, only one of our
respondents reported instances where a student's placement was based on race,
ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. Rather, educators credited student
placement to a combination of student choice (Latino girls' preference for
cosmetology, for example), motivation, and ability, although many recognized
indirect effects of student background characteristics. Thus, they tended to
justify existing
differences in student placement as resulting from a
self-selection and a fair competition for the available slots in the
college-prep track. In keeping with a human capital perspective, faculties
treated the opportunity structure as open with individual placements dependent
on student effort, ability, and prior achievement. Disproportionate racial,
ethnic, or social-class representation in track placement (given equal
achievement) was attributed to differences in students' choices; these choices
may be culturally determined, but if so, they are beyond the ken of the
educational system. Most insisted on the fairness of placement practices, even
in the face of evidence that race and social class affect placements over and
above test scores and other indicators of students' potential.
However, many of our respondents also voiced considerable ambivalence about ability grouping and tracking. Although most believed that tracking was necessary to accommodate student differences, many also regretted the racial and social-class separation that resulted. Yet, few at the schools expressed any confidence that the needs of either the high-or low-achieving students could be met without tracking.
The juxtaposition of these widespread views of the fairness and openness of the placement process and the considerable regret about the racial segregation it can create cautions against a simplistic view of schools as deterministic sorting agencies. Schools do not mechanistically sort students into college-prep or vocational programs and into high or low academic courses in ways that blatantly discriminate against low-income and non-Asian minority students and reproduce the economic and social order. Tracking may contribute to this end, but students and their parents may also play an active role in producing it. As noted above, students exercise choices about their elective courses, and they are often permitted to enroll in "easier" courses. It may be that low-income and Latino students, in particular, are simply less confident about their ability to manage difficult courses. Or they, along with their African American peers, may see vocational courses as providing them a safety net from joblessness, should college or post-high school training not be possible. They are far less likely than their more advantaged white and Asian peers to have the economic resources to sustain education beyond high school. Thus, these students may have played an active role in enrolling in non-college-track classes and vocational courses that promise to give them job-related skills.
Nevertheless, our interviews suggest that the schools seemed to accept these choices and only rarely pressed low-income and minority students to stretch beyond their own or others' low expectations. These findings suggest that race, ethnicity, and social class do, as Rosenbaum suggests, "signal" ability. Once signaled, the judgment about ability triggers assignments, insofar as the school's curriculum structure will allow an "appropriate" placement to be made.
Proposition 5: Curriculum Adaptations to Students' Needs Are Constrained
by Structural and Ideological Regularities in the School Culture
So far, our explanation has focused on how school responses to students' characteristics shape both the curriculum offerings at a school and individual students' assignments to those courses. However, we also found that longstanding beliefs about how the high school curriculum should be structured and recent policies mandating increased academic requirements for high school graduation and pressing schools to offer more college-preparatory courses affected the structure of the curriculum at the schools. By influencing the type and number of courses that the schools offered, these pressures also affected students' assignments. Additionally, the belief, detailed above, that students' abilities and motivation are set by the time they reach high school influenced the structure of the tracking systems at the schools. In particular, structural obstacles to upward track mobility mirrored the view that students would not learn enough to manage more difficult classes. As we describe below, these "ideological" positions lead to structural regularities at schools that affect the matches between students and courses.
Despite the differences among their student bodies, the curriculum offerings and tracking systems at our three schools were more alike than different. This similarity was driven, primarily, by a belief shared by all of the schools that each high school should provide a comprehensive set of offerings to accommodate a very diverse student body--academic courses that range from remedial to advanced placement and a comprehensive set of vocational offerings that range from introductory, avocational industrial arts classes and business courses that teach generic skills appropriate for students of all abilities to sequences of occupationally specific courses that prepare non-college-bound students for work. Each school attempted to offer such a range.
Further, in recent years the curriculum at all three schools has become even
more similar as a result of new state policies emphasizing academics and
college preparation. During the past two decades, the state had enacted
recommended curriculum frameworks, graduation requirements, proficiency
examinations, university admission requirements, and accountability systems
that embody assumptions that all students need considerable academic
preparation and that schools should press as many students as possible toward
rigorous academic courses. Such policies not only provided a formal statement
of what educational practices should meet these needs, they also limited
schools' flexibility in making curriculum
decisions to address perceived
individual differences.
For example, increased state graduation and university admissions requirements had a powerful influence on the structure of course offerings at all three schools, pressing all three schools toward more academic and fewer vocational offerings. However, the effect of these factors varied, in part, with the degree to which the assumptions of state policies matched the assumptions of those at the schools. For example, Washington traditionally emphasized college preparation and made few changes in response to state graduation requirements, but these requirements resulted in an increasingly narrow and rigid curriculum. Coolidge and McKinley, on the other hand, have not weathered some of the same influences as well. As at Washington, increased graduation requirements combined with a strong academic tradition have narrowed the curriculum focus at Coolidge. Although Coolidge has maintained its academic focus, many perceive this focus to be poorly suited to the needs of the current student population. And, the extensive social problems faced by many of McKinley's students are seen as severely limiting that school's ability to promote achievement and college attendance, despite its attempts to maintain an academic, college-preparatory curriculum and image.
Because our schools were subject to state policies emphasizing academics, each offered a full-fledged college-prep program regardless of the needs and abilities of their students. In fact, as noted in Sec. III, the percentage of courses offered in each area was remarkably consistent across schools. Reports from our respondents further substantiated this academic emphasis and underscored the structural rather than individual factors supporting it.
However, these structural constraints did not completely limit the schools' discretion in their course offerings or standardize the curriculum across the three schools. Despite similarities in the overall percentage of academic courses offered and the state's emphasis on college preparation, our transcript analyses revealed significant differences between schools in the total percentage of students participating in college-prep math and English. The school with the highest average test scores, Washington, had the most students participating in college-prep math, and the school with the lowest average test scores, McKinley, had the fewest students participating. Similar results were obtained when participation in college-prep English was examined. More Washington students than Coolidge students participated in college-prep English, and Washington had higher average achievement scores in English than Coolidge.[75] These participation results contradict a purely structuralist hypothesis, as they support the view that individual and group factors--such as perceptions of students' ability--also play an important part in determining curriculum offerings.
However, one effect of this structural constraint on local schools' ability to make placements that they believed would accommodate lower-achieving and less-motivated students' needs was that students of equal ability had the best chance of being placed in a college-prep course at a school with lower average achievement levels than they had at a school with higher average achievement levels. These findings are consistent with structuralist theories (Hallinan, 1987; Sorensen, 1987) and some previous research (Garet and DeLany, 1988) indicating that schools treat a fairly fixed fraction of their students as college-bound.
Such structural constraints worked in favor of the coursetaking opportunities of low-income African American and Latino students at McKinley. Even though McKinley had fewer "slots" in the college-prep curriculum overall, the achievement scores required for a non-Asian minority student to qualify for a slot were considerably lower than at either Washington or Coolidge. Thus, structural constraints worked to counterbalance beliefs about accommodation that might have otherwise led to even fewer college-prep opportunities for the minority students at McKinley.
However, even though these analyses support the notion that structural factors affect course offerings and placement decisions over and above those indicated by student factors alone, the number of courses in a particular school also corresponds to widely held beliefs about the ability levels of the student body. This complex set of findings directs us toward Rosenbaum's (1986) tournament model of high school tracking, a model that can help explain the interaction of efforts to accommodate differences in ability and structural forces.
Rosenbaum argues that structural factors dominate over individual attributes, but he also describes the cumulative way that structures and individual characteristics affect selection decisions as students make their way through secondary schools. First, status characteristics and past attainments "signal" ability, and these are used to select students into curriculum paths. But, the structure of the grouping system is such that once students miss out on a high track placement, they are rarely, if ever, considered again--thus, the metaphor of a "tournament." At each point in the schooling process where student assignments are made, students are classified as winners or losers; winners proceed to compete for the next level, whereas losers are declared less able and denied the opportunity to compete for the highest-status outcomes. Thus, the model implies stability in classifications with a winnowing down of high-status contenders and unidirectional mobility. Any loss sets a "ceiling" on ability for an individual and leads to downward mobility. High-status assignment requires consecutive wins, and any win sets a "floor" on ability.
Our case study data also lend support to the tournament model. We learned that placements were relatively stable, with middle-school performance exerting a strong influence on initial track placement. As noted in Sec. III, few respondents could provide examples of upward mobility. Instances of improvement were rare. When track switching occurred, movement from a higher to lower track was much more common, but stability in curriculum placement was most pronounced. In addition to individual judgments about ability such structural factors as prerequisites, course sequences, and formal policies regulating course offerings constrained opportunities and set ceilings on student attainments.
Proposition 6: Declining Resources and Demographic Shifts Also Constrain
Curriculum Offerings and Student Assignments
Throughout our study, we found considerable evidence supporting a rational, if complex, explanation of curriculum offerings and student assignments--i.e., an interaction of efforts to accommodate students' differences in ability and motivations, structural constraints on these efforts, and the role of race and social class in signaling ability and motivation. Schools appear to engage in a rational process of designing curriculum offerings and placing students in courses that balances their efforts to accommodate with the constraints they face from structures imposed by policy (e.g., increased academic requirements imposed by the state) or tradition (e.g., a "tournament" approach to tracking).
However, like Garet and DeLany (1988), we found other factors that intercede and affect what schools actually do. Such factors as declining enrollments and demographic shifts can lead to fewer resources (as well as to the perception that existing resources are a poor match with what students currently need). These, in turn, affect staff expertise, counselor load, and scheduling. Such contingencies often affect schools in unpredictable ways and interfere with their best efforts to make and carry out rational decisions.
We saw the effects of limited staff expertise most evident in the schools' vocational offerings. Declining enrollments had made impossible the hiring of new teachers in any but required academic subjects, and vocational retirees were not replaced. As a result, the vocational offerings were at the mercy of the teachers remaining at the school. At none of the schools did this lead to a coherent set of vocational offerings. Such vagaries in staff expertise contributed to the considerable lack of fidelity we found between the curriculum as offered and as envisioned in the minds of educators. For example, vocational education teachers at all three schools told us that recent budgetary and programmatic cuts had resulted in the elimination of most advanced vocational courses. Some teachers told us that as a result, students who could take only introductory courses in, for example, auto shop or industrial drawing would not acquire training sufficient to move directly into a job in those fields. Most McKinley students in our sample did not apply to two- or four-year institutions, and very few applied to technical schools. Given their relatively poor academic achievement and their relatively high rate of participation in a vocational curriculum that may no longer serve as a training ground for the workforce, McKinley's students appear to face a clouded future.
The enormous increases in counselors' student loads illustrate the effects of across-the-board staffing shortages. At each school, counselors had to provide advice and make placement decisions about hundreds of students. At none of the schools was it possible for them to carry out this function with more than the most superficial attention to each student. This constraint contributed to a considerable "slippage" between the rational model of student assignments that persisted in the minds of the school faculties and the results of the actual process evidenced by students' transcripts.
Finally, we also became aware of the enormous logistical difficulties inherent in the attempt to create a master schedule that offers all of the required courses at a number of track levels and enables the appropriate placement of hundreds of high school students into those courses. At each school, we were told that some student assignments and tracking resulted from constraints in the scheduling process, such as cohorts of low-level students winding up in the same (non-tracked) elective classes. These glitches in the placement system were viewed as unintentional and regrettable, but unavoidable.
Proposition 7: Irregularities in the Distribution of Curriculum
Opportunities Often Work to the Advantage of the Most Advantaged Students
Although constraints interfered with the schools' ability to carry out decisions in the ways they would have liked, not all schools and students were affected in the same way. Some schools (like our advantaged Washington) appeared to be more resilient to external forces--perhaps because of community stability or the school's firm and consistent administrative style. Others (like McKinley) seem constantly rocked by changing internal policies, limited staff, and inadequate resources.
Within schools, external and internal constraints affected students on different curriculum paths differently. Those in the highest-status academic curriculum appeared to have the best defined and most carefully sequenced programs available and the most stable placement patterns. Those at the very bottom seemed to have access to few coherent programs (especially in their vocational options), but they appeared to experience considerable stability in their placements (especially in their low-level academic courses). School constraints appeared to provide those students in the middle with neither the coherent programs experienced by those at the top nor such stable placements as those found at either the top or the bottom. These students' placements seemed to receive less time and careful planning--either by students or their counselors. However, when individual placements were made by happenstance, the effect seemed to be lesser rather than greater opportunity. For example, when a counselor needed to fill an empty slot in a student's schedule, unless the student was outstanding or assertive, the placement was far more likely to be in vocational education than in a rigorous academic class. This means that the scheduling process was less likely to optimize the educational program of each student by "stretching" him or her academically and vocationally.
Moreover, we found some combined between- and within-school factors that further enhanced the advantages of academically advantaged students. Although course placements were quite stable in all three schools, in the more smoothly functioning and academic schools (Washington and Coolidge) high-achieving students appeared to be more willing and able to "push the system" to get the schedule and curriculum choices they wanted. The schools seemed to accommodate these students' choices or their parents' preferences. Low-achieving students and many midrange students appeared less willing to challenge their curriculum placements. If they or their parents did, they often met resistance and skepticism about their ability to handle more advanced, academic work. In the less-smooth-running school (McKinley), mobility among classes appeared to be be less frequent overall. The changes we noted at McKinley were changes downward as a consequence of poor performance or because a student reported to a counselor that a placement in a difficult course was a mistake. As a consequence, more advantaged students at more advantaged schools appeared to have considerably more opportunities to exercise their "choices" than did other students.
In sum, then, our analyses do not support a simplistic view of curriculum offerings and student assignment either as neutral, achievement-based processes of building human capital or as deterministic processes of consigning students to a curriculum that will reproduce social and economic inequalities linked with race and social class. Both our field work and our transcript analyses reveal far too much sloppiness in the patterns of offerings and assignments than either explanation would require. Nor, however, did we find that apparent "mismatches" between students and curriculum could be adequately explained by structural constraints or "open admissions" policies where curriculum decisions were determined by students' choices. What we conclude, then, is that curriculum offerings and student assignments result from a mix of efforts to match talent with opportunities, cultural assumptions about the effects of race and class on school success, structural characteristics of high schools, and political maneuvering by efficacious students and their parents. Our explanation, then, suggests a complex dynamic in large diverse high schools that bundles together achievement, choice, race, and class--a dynamic that has important commonalities across schools but that does not operate identically at all schools or for all students within schools. However, both the regularities and irregularities in this dynamic seem to consistently work to the advantage of the most advantaged students, providing them with the greatest access to the curriculum most likely to enhance their educational outcomes and their life chances beyond school.
IMPLICATIONS FOR REFORMING VOCATIONAL EDUCATION
The findings we have reported in the previous sections make clear that efforts to reform high school vocational education cannot be understood apart from their role and status relative to the rest of the comprehensive high school curriculum. Similarly, efforts to better serve clients in both academic learning and workforce preparation must also consider the larger context in which these programs exist and compete for resources and status.
The Context of High School Vocational Education
Perhaps most striking as we explored curriculum at the three high schools was the fact that vocational education commanded very little of our attention. Neither our examination of the curriculum and coursetaking decisions nor our queries about salient curriculum issues yielded much about vocational education. Rather, academic concerns dominated each of our schools. We scrutinized each piece of printed material the schools provided and approached each of our interviews with an eye to uncovering as much as we could about the nature of schools' vocational programs and the students who participate in them. Simply put, there was little to be found. Vocational education was nearly invisible in each of our three quite different high schools; staff reported that few courses were offered on campus, few students took advantage of specialized area vocational programs available to them, and little attention was given to students' vocational course choices. Consequently, although issues of curriculum differentiation and placement were uppermost in the minds of those who worked in our schools, issues about vocational education per se did not loom large.
The combination of a press for academic courses from the state with the overall shrinkage in school resources seems to have led at best to the neglect of vocational programs and vocational students, and at worst to disdain for programs, teachers, and students. In either case, vocational programs are unlikely to receive school-level support or resources for program or staff development, or to be perceived or presented as offering exciting curriculum challenges to any but the least-motivated and least-skilled students. At the same time, these programs are likely to be the first casualties of resource constraints or changes in curricular polices. Even at McKinley--the most "vocational" of our schools and, judging by their academic achievement scores, the school that contained the most students who need to be job-ready when they leave high school--vocational programs took a back seat in the minds of school adults. "Everyone at this school should be aiming for college" was the prevailing theme in the counseling and administrative offices. This expression of high expectations for low-income and minority students is laudable. In fact, the school was unable to marshal the effort and resources to enable more than a very few students to realize this goal.
Ironically, the only school that seemed to judge vocational education as
something more than fall-back courses for students not able enough or motivated
enough to prepare for college was Washington, with its practical arts
requirement for graduation. The contrast between Washington and McKinley is
somewhat baffling, given Washington's relatively high achievement and college
attendance rates. Perhaps Washington's confidence about the quality of its
academic programs and its students' academic success was such that it had the
latitude to move away from a single-minded academic focus and stress the
importance of a comprehensive set of high school experiences and an interest in
developing "well rounded"
students. Even so, parents and students at
Washington were not entirely persuaded by Washington's policy. Community
pressure had the effect of subverting the intent of the practical arts
requirement when it secured permission for students to substitute advanced,
math-oriented computer science courses for vocational courses--an option
exercised by a number of highly able students.
We noted in Sec. IV that, consistent with national findings, nearly all students at our three schools took some vocational education in high school. However, other data from our schools suggest that just because most students subscribe to vocational courses does not mean that vocational courses are valued equally to academic courses, nor that time constraints alone explain the differential amounts of vocational coursetaking by college-bound and non-college-bound students. Because schools explicitly identify vocational education as more appropriate for lower-than for higher-achieving students, it is not surprising that at all three schools concentrated vocational education coursetaking was largely, but not entirely, reserved for the least academically able students in the school. However, even when we account for achievement differences, low-income students and disadvantaged minority students take more courses, and particularly more occupationally oriented courses, than do whites and middle-class minority students. These differences appear both within and between schools. Our least-advantaged group within our socioeconomically diverse school (Latinos at Coolidge) was far more likely to take a concentration of vocational courses. And, across the schools, the least-advantaged students were more likely to take courses related to the trades, whereas more-advantaged students leaned toward courses in business. In fact, among vocational offerings, only business courses appear to escape identification with the lowest-income or African American and Latino students.
As this section has elaborated, schools seem to muddle through their curriculum and placement decisions, juggling their efforts to adapt the curriculum to their students' abilities and motivation with constraints imposed by structural and ideological regularities. In the midst of the decisionmaking muddle, efficacious, advantaged students can often push the system to exercise greater choice in the courses they take and the track levels to which they are assigned. Unlike their high-status peers, less-advantaged or less-aggressive students or their parents are unlikely to be able to capitalize on this wiggle room in the curriculum decisionmaking process. And, the negative perceptions about vocational programs and students, combined with the absence of an aggressive counseling system for non-college-bound students, appear to act synergistically to drain the little remaining vitality and cohesion from existing vocational offerings and to relegate those students who concentrate in vocational education to the lowest positions in the academic curriculum as well.
The Prospects for Reforms That Integrate Academic and Vocational
Education
What, then, are the prospects for improving vocational education and
improving both the academic and vocational preparation of students identified
as "vocational?" They are not good, perhaps impossible, unless changes are
undertaken as part of a larger effort to reconstruct the curriculum and
coursetaking patterns at high schools generally. Currently, some reforms are
under way that aim to do just that. Many of the efforts falling under the
rubric "integrated academic and vocational education" intend to move beyond the
infusion of more academic content into vocational classes and attempt to
reconstruct the high school curriculum in ways that break down the distinctions
between the two domains. This, however, is not a plan to make vocational
education "better" but to develop a new curriculum that blurs the distinction
between academic and vocational studies. Proposals for integrated curricula
propose teaching the abstract concepts of the academic curriculum in the
context of hands-on, problem-solving pedagogy characteristic of vocational
classes. The hope is that the curriculum that now seems beyond the reach of
many students in its abstract form may, in fact, be considered attainable if
taught in a more concrete context, where students engage in activities that
allow them to connect and apply what they learn in the classroom to its context
outside the classroom. And, not inconsequential, some hope that the large
number of college-prep kids who are fairly good at mastering abstractions for
the test, and then quickly forgetting them, might come to understand the
meaning of what they have learned, and perhaps even be able to remember and
apply it later on.
These "strong" versions of academic and vocational integration are based on two hypotheses: first, that this kind of integration is likely to be essential if the nation is to educate a labor force capable of solving problems and making analytical judgments in the workplace; and second, that an integration of academic and vocational studies can benefit both those high school students who go directly into work or postsecondary occupational training and those postponing their entry into the workforce until after finishing college.
The idea of integrating academic and vocational studies and shifting to more general concepts of vocational education is not new. Reform ideas date back at least to the manual training movement of the 1880s and have reappeared in virtually every examination of vocational education since then. Late nineteenth century advocates, for example, claimed that manual training would complement academic studies in a balanced education. Their argument stressed that students should learn mechanical processes rather than prepare for particular trades, and that they should master general principles rather than specific skills. They argued that processes requiring skill with the hands would simultaneously present problems for the mind. Dewey and the Progressives later made a similar claim: If students worked with wood, metal, paper, and soil (or, by extension, textiles and foods), they could achieve alternative and important "ways of knowing" (Oakes, 1986).
Obstacles in the School Culture
However, until recently there have never been serious attempts to understand what integrating academic and vocational education might mean in practice. And until recently there has been little more than the "good idea" to support such reforms. Now we are beginning to see how various lines of research and analysis bolster the idea of integration--research on the changing nature of work and the needs of future workers; research on how people learn in and out of school; and research such as that reported here on the problems created by a high school curriculum split into two artificial halves--the academic and the vocational.
However, when we look carefully at what went on in the three schools in our study, we can identify some formidable obstacles to blurring the boundaries between the academic and vocational sides of the curriculum and to breaking down the boundaries between college-bound and non-college-bound students. These obstacles reside in the culture of the school. They are found in deeply held and widely shared beliefs about students' intellectual capacities and longstanding structures and traditions that dictate what high schools "ought to be like."
One obstacle stems from the widespread belief that schools judge students to be quite different in their abilities, motivation, and aspirations, and that by the time students reach senior high school, these characteristics can not be changed much. Perhaps most pervasive is the view that some students simply are neither motivated nor able to learn rigorous academic ideas. These beliefs work against efforts toward integrating academic and vocational studies and the suggestion that, under very different conditions, schools can teach all students essential academic concepts.
A second obstacle is that nearly every high school acts on its beliefs about students' differences by creating a split curriculum designed to accommodate students' various dispositions toward school work, not to alter them. Schools develop separate programs that divide those students who are thought to be well-suited for a college-prep curriculum from students who are not. High schools generally pride themselves on having a differentiated curriculum that meets the range of abilities of their students. This traditional pattern creates an obstacle to integration, since it is not only the curriculum that must change, but the institutional structure that supports it.
A third obstacle stems from the fact that this split curriculum of high schools does not have separate but equal sides. Higher status goes to the college-prep courses, teachers, and students, and lower status to general academic and vocational programs, teachers, and students. At best, high school vocational education is characterized by benign neglect of both its programs and students, and at worst by disdain for programs, teachers, and students. These programs are likely to be the first casualties of resource constraints or changes in curriculum policies, and, with the possible exception of business courses, they are often used as a safe haven for students with serious academic or behavioral problems. To put it quite harshly, this unequal status creates obstacles to blending the curriculum, since many on the academic side worry that vocational content, teachers, and students might taint their courses. And, many vocational programs are so strapped for resources that they can not even offer access to high technology to entice academic concentrators.
Also, the procedures used to make the best match between students and courses are not only strongly influenced by students' prior performance in school and on standardized tests but also by judgments about the ability and motivations of different racial, ethnic, and social-class groups. As a result, schools serving low-income, minority students tend to be more vocational (and have low-level basic skills), whereas schools serving more affluent students (particularly whites and Asians) tend to have larger college-prep programs. This creates a further obstacle, since efforts to blend academic and vocational studies may also have to confront stereotypes about what students from different racial and social class groups are like and what they need.
A Note of Optimism
At the same time that our study reveals considerable obstacles to the integration of academic and vocational education, it also provides support for such reforms. First, and perhaps most important, our study makes clear that reform is sorely needed--given the often dysfunctional nature of the split curriculum and the low status of vocational programs and students.
A second note of optimism from our study can be found in the fact that, even though tracking practices are deeply entrenched, many high school faculty would welcome reform, if they could be persuaded it is possible. Many of the faculty at the three schools felt considerable discomfort about how the tracked curriculum and assignment practices promoted race- and class-related differences in course placements. A number of others expressed considerable ambivalence about the limits that tracking practices place on the opportunities of students who are not in the college track, whatever their race or social class. Others felt the unfairness of a system where affluent, "squeaky wheel" students and parents can often get placed on higher tracks, even if they do not "belong" there based on their past school performance.
A third source of optimism lies in the fact that even educators who believe that a split, tracked curriculum is necessary are aware of the frustrating breakdowns in the system. Limited resources and staff and scheduling constraints often make it impossible to place students accurately. Moreover, parent and student politicking often overloads upper-track classes with underprepared students, and teachers' inclinations to move "bright" kids with behavior problems out of the college track saddles the vocational and general classes with a combination of kids with learning problems and those who are disruptive. The result is that many classes--both college-preparatory and vocational--are extraordinarily heterogeneous groups. Yet, the fact that schools are tracked supports an unrealistic illusion that all of the students in a class are at about the same "level." Consequently, teachers (especially on the academic side of things) face a frustrating curriculum that expects all the students in the class to be ready and able to learn the same things on the same schedule in the same way. Reforms attempting to blend the college-prep and vocational curriculum might just provide a welcome way out. This approach just may enable high school faculties to entertain the possibility that, under those conditions, all (or nearly all) students (even though they are different from one another) can learn the essential concepts of the college-prep curriculum.
The Need for Research and Curriculum Development
However, neither researchers nor practitioners have made much progress toward understanding what it really means to develop and implement a fully integrated academic and vocational curriculum in schools--the kind of work that is necessary to provide assistance to schools that are likely to undertake these activities in the near future. Some studies have identified the types of integrated programs currently operating in schools (Grubb, 1991), and others have evaluated existing programs to learn more about what they are accomplishing (Mitchell, Russell, and Benson, 1988). However, many of the extant curricula that are the subject of these investigations fall far short of being integrated curricula in which academic and vocational topics, pedagogical approaches, teachers, and students have been merged fully, or in which principles of cognitive science have guided the development of the instructional content and processes.
What we think is needed is experimentation and research that provide a clearer understanding of the actual processes of developing and implementing this more mature version of integrated curricula. Such projects might focus, for example, on curriculum development--e.g., by creating and then studying the process of bringing together academic and vocational teachers, cognitive psychologists, and curriculum specialists to design programs. Other work might consider implementation of such curricula--e.g., by examining schools where teachers and administrators are attempting to introduce, develop, and sustain the concept of integration. Although both of these lines of work would of necessity focus on specific curricula, teachers, and schools, their major contribution should be those generic features of developing and implementing integrated curricula that one could reasonably expect to arise in a variety of subjects and schools.
Our recommendation that schools press forward to experiment with and evaluate the possibilities of a "strong" version of integrated academic and vocational education does not emerge directly from the findings of this study. However, reconstruction of the high school curriculum seems a promising approach to overcoming the unfriendly disposition toward vocational education and the unwarranted assumptions about vocational students. A secondary school with a curriculum split into "academic" and "vocational" halves seems to be fundamental to current educational troubles--not only in vocational education but in educational quality and equity more generally. As long as this split is maintained, vocational educators will be consigned in large part to acting out the belief that some children, often those who are poor and minority, are unable to learn the things most valued by schools and society.
The Need for More "Good" Schools
Finally, we must acknowledge that the problems presented in this report stem, in large part, from the uneven distribution of good schools as well as from an uneven distribution of opportunities within schools. Consequently, the integration of academic and vocational studies promises to improve the quality of schooling if it is done as an effort by school systems to increase the overall supply of challenging courses and to reconceptualize vocational education as imparting the knowledge and skills required by the higher-performing sectors of the labor market. The problems identified here can be solved only by a serious effort to increase the supply of good schools and to use the placement process within schools to expand, not limit, students' academic and vocational opportunities.
[75]McKinley, deviating from this pattern, had the highest participation in college-prep English courses, despite its lowest average test scores. As noted above, this result may be an artifact of the tracking designations at McKinley. Unlike the other two schools, McKinley had no middle-level tracks. All students were assigned either to an ESL, low, high (college-preparatory), or honors/AP English track.