Crain, R. L., Allen, A., Thaler, R., Sullivan, D., Zellman, G., Little, J. W., and Quigley, D. D. (1999). The Effects of Academic Career Magnet Education on High Schools and Their Graduates (MDS-779). Berkeley: National Center for Research in Vocational Education, University of California.

CHAPTER  4
The Design of Career Magnet Programs and Students' Experience of High School

Debora Sullivan and Judith Warren Little

• The "Magnet Advantage"
• The Magnet Model
• Curriculum and Pedagogy
• Support for Student Achievement
• How the Graduates Fared: High School Performance and Postsecondary Directions
• References
• Appendices

      Programs built on a model of integrated academic and vocational preparation have multiplied steadily following the 1990 amendments to the Perkins Act and the 1994 School to Work Opportunities Act. In crucial respects, these programs parallel other efforts to reform American secondary education, responding especially to the problems of curriculum fragmentation, "passive" pedagogy, student disengagement, and the anonymity spawned by the large comprehensive high school (Kemple & Rock, 1996; Olson, 1997).

      Encouraged by evidence gleaned from various discrete programs such as career academies, school-based enterprises, partnerships with community colleges or local employers, advocates of a "new vocationalism" emphasize the philosophical and programmatic resources they bring to a wholesale reinvention of the high school (Olson, 1997; Stern, Raby, & Dayton, 1992). The prospects for such a convergence rest in part on persuading educators, parents, the wider public, and the students themselves that there is something to be gained by "scaling up" these small models, and by making the connection between school and work a more central feature of secondary education. Yet, through the act of "scaling up," we run the risk that it will be assumed that structural similarities will ensure comparability of student experience.

      Few studies of restructuring schools do much to investigate student experience in any depth. In this paper, we make such an attempt, albeit in retrospect. In reconstructing the experiences of 14 low- to middle-achieving graduates of career magnet programs, this study speaks especially to two converging strands of reforms in secondary education: "personalization" of student experience, and closer integration of academic and vocational aims.[6]

      Three career magnet schools account for the 11 career magnet school cases. Two of the schools offer a range of programs related to a single career theme (i.e., Health Careers magnet and Business magnet). Four career magnet school cases are derived from each of these two "single theme" schools. The third school is organized around programs in various occupational areas, including aviation, computer technology, law studies, and communications. Three career magnet school cases come from this "mixed-theme" school. (Earlier in this report, this school is referred to as the Engineering magnet.)

      Three comprehensive schools with career programs (school-within-a-school models) account for the three comprehensive career magnet cases. Two cases come from Business Careers programs, and the third from a Health Careers program. The three students were lottery losers, who were able to get into a career magnet program in their neighborhood comprehensive high school.

The "Magnet Advantage"

      In principle, career magnet schools and programs present a systematic alternative to the prevailing conditions of large scale, curricular fragmentation; passive pedagogy; student anonymity; and institutional neutrality regarding student effort and performance. They organize students in small cohorts that remain together through a sequence of courses over a two- to four-year period (Olson, 1997; Stern et al., 1992). The schools or programs embrace a "dual mission" of college and career preparation, achieved in part via explicit curricular connections between occupational and academic curricula. Teacher teams afford the possibility of more concentrated and coordinated student support. Students' academic and social progress can be collectively monitored as teachers share knowledge they have acquired about students' academic aptitudes and needs, as well as their personal goals and interests (Elmore, Peterson, & McCarthey, 1996; Meier, 1995; Stern et al., 1992). The information teachers gain over time about students' aptitudes, goals, and interests also positions them to offer meaningful advice and assistance regarding future careers and educational goals and to create appropriate instrumental support for academic success (McCharen, 1995; Newmann, 1981).

      Based on a review of the literature in this area, we theorized that career magnet schools would differ from traditional comprehensive high schools by altering the organizational conditions associated with student engagement and success. Career magnets were thought to provide greater personal and academic supports for student achievement. We hypothesized that a small student cohort and consistent teacher team would enable more "personalized" social and affective relationships between students and teachers that would prove conducive to student effort and achievement. We expected that students' level of success and engagement in school would be heightened by the presence of one or more school-based adults who knew the student well; who demonstrated care and interest; and who were structurally positioned to provide academic assistance, personal support, and college and career guidance.

      We also reasoned that career magnets would stimulate student commitment to schooling through their dual mission of career and college preparation. Prior interviews with school administrators responsible for the career magnet programs led us to expect students of those programs to have experienced curriculum integration in two ways: via connections between academic and occupational coursework within school, and through well-structured links between coursework and work-based learning outside school. We hypothesized that the combination of curricular focus and integration, active pedagogy, and structured work-based learning experiences would engage student interest, stimulate a "planful" orientation toward the future, and result in a connection between graduates' early career or educational trajectories and their high school career magnet program.

      To evaluate the high school experiences and postsecondary outcomes of our 14 career magnet graduates, we specified these broad assumptions as a set of seven criteria presented below as the Magnet Model.

The Magnet Model

• Program definition: A structured program of classes and related activities focused around a clearly discernible occupational field (e.g., health, business, or law) or around a specific occupation (e.g., nursing, secretarial studies, or computer technology).
  
  
• Personalization: Close student/adult relationships. Program adults know students well and communicate care and interest in them. Meaningful career and college guidance provided, based on adults' knowledge of students' needs and goals.
  
  
• Curriculum focus: Coherent sequence of classes leading to a body of knowledge/set of skills in a given occupational area.
  
  
• Curriculum integration: Emphases on connections between academic and occupational classes, and connections between school curriculum and students' experience in school-connected work placements or internships.
  
  
• Active pedagogy: Hands-on experience in occupational labs or classes. "Real life" experiences in program-connected work placements, project-based pedagogy, student-initiated work, and cooperative assignments.
  
  
• Program design in support of student success: Teacher teams sharing responsibility for student cohorts; structure for monitoring academic performance.
  
  
• Career/college guidance: Mechanisms for informing and advising students about postsecondary options related to program's occupational focus.

      To the degree that students experienced these features of a Magnet Model, we anticipated that they would demonstrate the following:

• Engagement:High level of interest in school and schoolwork based on stated interest in the occupational focus area and affiliation with the program. A view that curriculum is relevant to outside world and to future endeavors.
  
  
• An instrumental view of school: A seriousness of purpose with regard to schoolwork and a planful orientation toward the future during high school. A retrospective view of high school as instrumental to post-graduation status.
  
  
• Postsecondary outcomes associated with program focus: Trajectory of experiences evident two years after graduation which reveal continued connection with program's occupational focus.

      Using this conceptual framework as a guide, we set out to investigate the high school experiences of our 14 career program graduates. We found that not all magnets attract.[7]

      Poor-fit cases reported far more tenuous connections with their career magnet programs, and looked back with a more critical eye. All but one of the poor-fit cases reported program ties that were weak or non-existent. In five cases, there is some indication from graduate and adult interviews that the program itself was weakly designed; in the remaining three cases, a variety of circumstances made it difficult for students to derive much benefit from more well-defined programs. In two cases, we are unable to detect in the student's record any pattern of course-taking consistent with the career magnet assignment. In three other cases, the career magnet assignment is evident in transcripts but was described by graduates as a mismatch with their interests and talents ("I didn't like accounting. . . . I knew that accounting wasn't really for me," P7).

      When asked to identify the one adult who had been most important and influential for them in high school, each of the graduates in the good-fit cases named teachers in the programs to which they were assigned. Furthermore, three of the graduates identified two or three program teachers or program counselors as influential, and three graduates said that the program teachers in general were important to them during their high school years. These graduates portrayed strong relationships with adults who knew them well by virtue of a program context--that is, they tended to experience these relationships not as idiosyncratic ties between an individual student and a particular teacher, but as part of a pattern of teacher-student interaction characteristic of a program. Thus, a graduate of the secretarial studies program (G2) recalled that program teachers, "make the students united . . . and they really show that extra caring." Similarly, a graduate of a health careers program (G5) said program teachers were "available if we needed any help . . . or if we wanted to talk to any of them" about personal issues. She continued, "They knew what you were striving for, and they tried to help you."

      By contrast, the poor-fit graduates did not look to their career magnet programs as the source of their most significant adult contacts and were less likely to single out teachers as having been influential. These graduates found it more difficult to name adults who had been influential for them, with whom they had talked outside of class, or who knew them well. Only two poor-fit graduates nominated teachers as influential, but they were not teachers connected with their career magnet program. Two graduates (P4, P7) established a connection with adults in administrative or extracurricular roles who exhibited a personal interest without specifically influencing the students' academic progress or performance, or their career plans or preparation. Thus, Case P4 recalled a dean as someone who shared his interest in basketball, but who also helped him cut classes. Case P7 found her basketball coach to be someone who recognized and rewarded her athletic talents, who was easy to talk to, and who told her about the possibility of athletic scholarships. She did not expect that her accounting program teachers would know her well--indeed, that they would even know her name. Four of the poor-fit relationships resulted from special efforts made by an individual teacher or counselor to push a student through to graduation in the face of persistent failure. Only one poor-fit graduate (P1) named a sizable constellation of adults outside her program from whom she derived steady support over four years: a voluntary student counseling program coordinator, who provided the graduate with leadership and peer counseling opportunities; and academic teachers who constantly "pushed her" and "opened doors." By contrast, she described her law studies program teachers as inconsequential. To derive more support from them, she speculated that she would have had to take the initiative: "I didn't think they were very [supportive] . . . but I, maybe I didn't give them a chance. Maybe I didn't knock on their door and sit down with them and talk to them. I didn't." In the remaining cases, we find relationships that center on some specific aspect of student interest (e.g., basketball), are weakly linked to the student's program of study, and/or have little bearing on the student's preparation for college or career.

      One measure of the intensity of the relationship between the graduates and the adults they identified as influential was the degree to which the retrospective accounts they gave of the relationship matched. In all six good-fit cases, we find stories that match. In four of the cases (G3, G4, G5 and G6), the nominated adults remember the graduates vividly and describe strong personal and academic relationships with them while they were students. The graduates echo these accounts. For instance, a graduate of a clerical procedures program (G3) said that the adult he nominated "constantly reminded" him he had to do well in school and made him feel "important, exceptional." The adult in this case speaks proudly of the academic turnaround this student made when he entered the program. She describes ongoing academic encouragement, culminating in an award for "most improved" student in the program. Adults in the other two cases (G1 and G2) speak in terms of their relationship with the graduates' cohort rather than with the graduates specifically. Nonetheless, adults and graduates in these cases used strikingly similar terms when describing their relationships. Thus, a teacher in a nursing program (G1) recalls the graduate as one of "the group (who) could come to me with anything." The graduate confirmed this account saying that this teacher developed personal relationships with all program students, "so she seemed more tough being that she took it on a personal level."

      With one significant exception, the adults nominated by the poor-fit cases all recall the graduates, but they do so with varying degrees of clarity. At one extreme, we find a graduate of a computer technology program (P3) who singles out a social studies teacher as the most "caring" of his instructors. Although his transcript shows that he took three courses with her, the teacher confesses to having no memory at all of the student. At the other extreme, we have a law studies program graduate (P1) and her counseling program advisor who both speak of almost daily contact arising from student leadership and peer counseling activities. They both describe a "social and personal" relationship which included frequent discussions about college preparation. Between the poles we find three cases (P5, P7, P8) in which the adult interviews portray relationships in ways that closely parallel the graduates' accounts; one case (P6) in which the adult and graduate knew each other only briefly and superficially during twelfth grade; and two cases (P2, P4) in which the adults' accounts differ wholly or substantially from the graduates.' In the latter two cases, the adults portrayed the graduates as more academically successful and the relationships as more significant than the graduates' academic records or interviews would indicate.

      After our initial designation of the cases as good or poor fit based on program definition and personalization, we turned to an investigation of the curricular aspects of the model, to see if the two groups were differentiated by these criteria as well.

[6] For graduates' gender and race, and their parents' education and occupation, see Appendix 1 (this chapter).

[7] It is important to emphasize that the model is not a tool for evaluating the programs in this study. Rather, it helps us understand the experiences of these 14 graduates of career magnet programs.

Crain, R. L., Allen, A., Thaler, R., Sullivan, D., Zellman, G., Little, J. W., and Quigley, D. D. (1999). The Effects of Academic Career Magnet Education on High Schools and Their Graduates (MDS-779). Berkeley: National Center for Research in Vocational Education, University of California.