Stern, D., Finkelstein, N., Stone, J. R., III, Latting, J., & Dornsife, C. (1994). Research on School-to-Work Programs in the United States (MDS-771). Berkeley: National Center for Research in Vocational Education, University of California.

Elements of School-to-Work Programs

School-to-work programs could conceivably include any and all efforts that contribute to successful school-to-work transition. This definition would encompass all kinds of schooling and non-school education that help in any way to prepare for working life.

However, the definition adopted here is narrower and more manageable. It equates school-to-work with school-for-work--that is, education and training programs in which preparation for work is explicitly a major purpose. Furthermore, baccalaureate and advanced degree programs are not discussed here. The focus is on work-preparation programs that serve students in high schools or nonbaccalaureate postsecondary institutions or out-of-school youth.

A key element of many, though not all, school-to-work programs is that they combine school and work during the same period of time. This may mean some hours of work each day, some days of work during the week, or some weeks working during the year. Combining school and work serves two purposes. First, it helps young people learn skills and knowledge to qualify for a full-time job in the near future. Second, it gives them the experience of using work to foster their own learning and thus contributes to their capacity for change and continued growth in the longer run.

Specifically, among the main programs discussed here are cooperative education, youth apprenticeship, other work experience, school-based enterprise, Tech Prep, career academies, and school-to-apprenticeship. Combining school and work is an important element of all of these except Tech Prep. These school-and-work programs are discussed in the "School-and-Work in Secondary Schools" and "School-and-Work Programs in Two-Year Colleges" sections. Tech Prep is discussed in the "Relevance of Vocational Education to Subsequent Employment" section along with other school-for-work programs.

According to a survey of secondary schools and two-year public postsecondary institutions conducted for the National Assessment of Vocational Education (NAVE) (Stern, 1992), the estimated percentage of U.S. secondary schools, including comprehensive high schools and vocational schools, that offered each program in 1990-1991 was

The NAVE survey did not specifically ask whether secondary schools operated career academies, but that information is known from other sources (Stern, Raby, & Dayton, 1992) that in 1990-1991 there were approximately one hundred career academies, representing less than one percent of the nation's secondary schools.

Figure 1 lists major features of these programs. Some features are present by definition and are therefore said to appear "always." For example, a program would not (or should not) be called a co-op or youth apprenticeship if it did not include structured work-based learning while in school. However, the frequency of most other features in practice is not known. Local authorities have wide discretion in designing programs and deciding what to call them. Figure 1 thus offers only a fuzzy profile of each program, based on published accounts, interviews, and the authors' experience of what "usually," "sometimes," or "rarely" exists. Appendix A supplements this general description with a listing of thirty specific school-to-work projects in particular localities and provides additional detail about programmatic features from published descriptions and telephone interviews. Appendix B gives the full names and geographic locations of these thirty examples.

Three of the programmatic features in Figure 1 are especially important in determining the nature of the program and the kinds of students who participate. These three are also among the required elements of programs to be supported by the School-to-Work Opportunities Act. They are

1. integration of school-based and work-based learning
2. combined vocational and academic curriculum
3. linking of secondary and postsecondary education

A structured work-based learning experience is seen as grounding students' coursework in the practical reality of production and preparing them for lifelong learning in the context of work. Integration of classroom-based and work-based learning is the essence of apprenticeship. However, formal apprenticeships in the U.S. generally take people in their late twenties or older, not high school students. The absence of apprenticeship opportunities for high school students is what motivates the current attempts to create new "youth apprenticeships," "career pathways," or "career majors." Prior to the current youth apprenticeship initiative, the program that most closely integrated work-based and school-based learning in American high schools and two-year colleges was cooperative education (co-op). The research on co-op is summarized later in this report.

Both apprenticeship and co-op offer paid employment linked to students' schoolwork and organize students' learning on the job by means of written training plans and written agreements with employers to provide the necessary supervision and instruction. School-based enterprises also provide a structured learning experience in the workplace; usually, however, the work takes place on school premises and students are not paid. Career academies ordinarily arrange paid jobs for students related to their field of study; but typically, there are no written training agreements or training plans. In a school-to-apprenticeship program, the structured work-based learning would usually not begin until after high school graduation. Some individual Tech Prep programs may include structured learning in the workplace, but this is not an integral part of the Tech Prep model.

Success of current efforts to build a new school-to-work transition system will depend on whether a sufficient number of employers are willing to make high-quality work-based learning available to high school students. Given the general scarcity of career jobs in the U.S. labor market, there are grounds for skepticism (Bailey, 1993). Finding enough well-designed training placements will be a major challenge for the new school-to-work initiatives.

A second major strategy of school-to-work programs is combining the vocational and academic curriculum. This is believed to offer more effective instruction for a broad range of students. Potentially it can improve students' learning in academic subjects by placing that learning in a practical context that gives concrete meaning to theories and abstract information (Berryman & Bailey, 1992; Raizen, 1989; Resnick, 1987a, 1987b). At the same time, it can deepen the intellectual content of vocational subjects.

The question of whether to integrate or separate high school vocational and academic courses has been hotly disputed during most of this century (Lazerson & Grubb, 1974), as the high school evolved from an elite institution to a comprehensive one. The traditional academic curriculum did not seem relevant or appealing to students who were likely to go to work full-time after leaving high school. On the other hand, John Dewey and others argued that a vocational curriculum created especially for non-college bound students might limit their learning unnecessarily. In spite of that risk, the 1917 Smith-Hughes Act began to provide federal support for vocational education, and separate programs were created.

Employers generally supported vocational education when it started and up until the 1980s. Then, in an important shift, some business leaders began to express concern that vocational programs were not giving students sufficient intellectual preparation for the emerging learning-intensive workplace (Committee for Economic Development, 1985; Kearns & Doyle, 1988; National Academy of Sciences, 1984). Evaluations of secondary vocational programs also failed to find that vocational programs helped most participating students get jobs; that research is reviewed later in this report. The upshot was that in the 1990 Perkins Amendments, Congress restricted the federal basic grant for vocational education to be spent only on programs that integrate vocational and academic education.

Combined vocational and academic curriculum is a defining characteristic of career academies. It is also usually present in Tech Prep and youth apprenticeship. These and other programs that include an integrated vocational/academic curriculum are reviewed later in this report. Some school-based enterprises apply and develop ideas from both vocational and academic subjects, but most have been tied to vocational classes. Similarly, at the secondary level, co-op usually has been reserved for vocational students.

Although some programs that include a combined vocational/academic curriculum have received positive evaluations and many schools are making efforts in this direction, this element of school-to-work reform also represents a major challenge. Some degree of integration can be achieved relatively easily, but creating a coherent curriculum that ties together several courses over a period of several years is a large task.

A third major common element of school-to-work programs is explicit linkage between high school and postsecondary studies. This provides access to careers requiring higher education and prevents the school-to-work program from being stigmatized as an option only for students who lack the ability or ambition to attend college. Secondary-postsecondary linkage is a defining feature of Tech Prep and is also emphasized in youth apprenticeship. Although the majority of career academy graduates go on to two- or four-year colleges, there are not usually any explicit articulation agreements. Co-op and school-based enterprise at the secondary level have tended not to be college-oriented because they have been tied to a traditional vocational curriculum.

In contrast to the widespread agreement among school-to-work program advocates on the goals of integrating work-based with school-based learning and combining vocational with academic curriculum content, there is some disagreement about whether linking high school with postsecondary education should mean ensuring access to four-year institutions or only to two-year colleges (Berryman, 1992). Among high school students themselves, half or more aspire to attend a four-year college or university. Although Secretary of Labor Robert Reich (1993) and others correctly point out that 75% of young Americans do not graduate from college, it is also true that 63% of the high school graduating class of 1992 went directly to colleges or universities (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1993b). This was "an all-time high." Of those new high school graduates attending college in October 1992, 63% (coincidentally) were starting four-year programs. Since a large proportion of those enrolling in two-year programs also intend to transfer to four-year institutions, the total proportion of new high school graduates who are going right to college with the intent of obtaining a bachelor's degree is about 50%. Many of these do not achieve their goal, but the goal is at least strong enough to get them started.

One reason so many high school students want bachelor's degrees is the monetary payoff, which also recently reached an all-time high (Katz & Murphy, 1992; Levy & Murnane, 1992). The additional earnings associated with a bachelor's degree are much greater than with a two-year associate's degree. For instance, Grubb (1993b) analyzed annual earnings of male graduates from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972. Earnings were reported for 1985, thirteen years after graduation. The regression analysis controlled for family background, high school grades, and work experience. A bachelor's degree was associated with additional earnings of $2,957 for salaried workers and $11,541 for self-employed individuals. An associate's degree in a vocational field was correlated with additional earnings of only $358 for salaried workers, and self-employed workers with vocational associate's degrees actually earned $3,076 less, holding other variables constant. An associate's degree in an academic field was also correlated with lower earnings: a reduction of $1,875 for salaried workers and $3,500 for the self-employed. None of the differences in earnings correlated with associate's degrees was statistically significant when work experience was statistically held constant.

This makes it important to consider whether linking secondary and postsecondary education means that new school-to-work opportunities will lead to two-year or also to four-year colleges. Tech Prep programs authorized by the 1990 Perkins Amendments encompass the last two years of high school and the first two years of college, creating a "2 + 2" sequence. These are tailor-made for two-year colleges offering vocational courses. Although four-year institutions are also eligible to participate either by themselves in a "2 + 4" sequence or with a two-year college in a "2 + 2 + 2" plan, most Tech Prep programs in fact are linking high schools with two-year colleges only. Many new youth apprenticeship programs are also combining work-based learning with a Tech Prep 2 + 2 curriculum leading from high school to a two-year college.

Programs linking high schools with two-year, not four-year, colleges are unlikely to attract high school students who want bachelor's degrees. That is a problem, not only because the number of students who want bachelor's degrees is large, but more importantly because students who want bachelor's degrees are in some ways more ambitious and are more likely to perform well academically. If these students reject school-to-work programs, the new programs could acquire a second-rate image. This has been a problem with traditional vocational education. A bad image can make it difficult also to attract good teachers and may make employers reluctant to provide training placements on which the programs depend. In the worst case, the programs could come to be seen as another kind of dumping ground for the non-academically inclined, where poor performance and low expectations would reinforce each other.

Discussion of these strategic questions will be taken up again in the final section of this report. The next four sections present what is known about school-to-work programs in actual practice.

Stern, D., Finkelstein, N., Stone, J. R., III, Latting, J., & Dornsife, C. (1994). Research on School-to-Work Programs in the United States (MDS-771). Berkeley: National Center for Research in Vocational Education, University of California.