| Bailey, T., & Merritt, D. (1997). School-to-work for the college bound (MDS-799). Berkeley: National Center for Research in Vocational Education, University of California. |
Even if the school-to-work strategy is effective in teaching the academic skills needed to prepare for college or in motivating students to apply for college, parents and teachers fear that colleges will not recognize the achievement of those competencies. Indeed, despite efforts to reform high school graduation requirements in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Oregon, and Minnesota over the past few years, the college admissions process is still firmly rooted in Carnegie units, a framework that poses strong obstacles for school-to-work programs. As one researcher, critical of the Carnegie approach, notes,
The Carnegie unit continues today to exert formidable influence over much that is crucial to teaching and learning--the length of the class period, the school day, and the school year, as well as the time expended to get a diploma, the way knowledge is organized for instructional purposes, what students learn and, of course, admission to college (Maeroff 1994).
Because of the time needed for internships or other types of work experience, school-to-work programs, as many are presently constituted, also make it difficult for students to take advanced placement (AP) courses. School-to-work activities often compete with extracurricular activities, which, along with AP courses, are important for college admissions. Thus, counselors in even some of the best known school-to-work programs often advise students with selective-college ambitions not to enroll in school-to-work programs. In fact some of the programs that the Institute on Education and the Economy has investigated preclude students from participating in AP courses. In one case, a student we interviewed said that everyone involved, including her teachers, parents, and counselors, thought that educationally the school-to-work program would have been best for her, but they decided not to enroll her because it would prevent her taking the AP courses that she needed for college admissions.
Nevertheless, reformers have taken a variety of approaches to reduce the conflict between participation in school-to-work activities and admission to selective colleges. These strategies can be grouped into three broad approaches. The first is accommodation of the school-to-work program within the existing college admissions system, the second involves the communication between individual schools and colleges, and the third includes attempts at broad change in assessment and college admissions procedures.
This approach attempts to fit school-to-work activities into a traditional college preparatory program. It involves a combination of trying to "shoe-horn" school-to-work into traditional Carnegie units and including school-to-work activities with other traditional school activities.
For example, at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in Cambridge Massachusetts, applied courses retain familiar academic labels to preserve the university's understanding of student transcripts--a course such as applied technology was relabeled physics and applied technology. In other cases, teachers in interdisciplinary courses give separate grades for the traditional subjects, that is, students in integrated social studies and language arts courses will get separate grades for English and social studies.
In some schools, internships are additional activities that take place after school or during summer vacation. Many students we interviewed have been willing to devote extra time to their school-to-work internships. Certainly in this strategy, internships can compete with sports or other extracurricular activities, although the internship can itself be seen as an extracurricular activity and treated as such on college applications. Some schools start internships during the second half of the senior year after college applications are complete. Moreover, many high school students already work. When this is true, internships, if they are paid, can replace typical youth jobs with less educational value than internships.
These attempts to accommodate school-to-work initiatives within a traditional college preparatory system have allowed the initial growth of school-to-work reform. Nevertheless, the compromises often create severe constraints. This has led to attempts to get colleges to recognize the value of the school-to-work approach without trying to make it look like the traditional system--to convince colleges that the work component of their program has been effectively coordinated with the academic curriculum. Schools have tried to do this either through working with individual colleges or by working towards broader reform in college admissions procedures.
Relationships between individual schools and colleges are important to the college admissions process. The specific knowledge gained in these relationships is used by admissions committees to evaluate the significance of grades, recommendations, and extracurricular activities. In some cases, high school teachers and counselors have been able to take advantage of these individual relationships to overcome the skepticism among college admissions personnel regarding students' non-traditional records.
Many programs, especially those that are geared toward high academically achieving students, have had to open up communication channels with colleges on an individual student basis. Programs in the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School as well as the Blair Science, Mathematics, and Computer Science Magnet have found it necessary to include a cover letter with their students' transcripts and college applications explaining the details of a student's work experiences, research projects, and the interdisciplinary and applied curricula.
One example of the potential for connections between colleges and secondary institutions is the growing relationship between Fairdale High School Public Safety Magnet Career Academy and the University of Louisville. Students from Fairdale who are not admitted to the University based on academic credit and ACT scores can challenge the University's decision using their writing and math portfolios.[18] In 1995, seven students received admission based on their portfolios. One of the school's administrators stated that the openness of the University to this nontraditional method of admissions has had a positive impact on those students who are intellectually able to function in the university environment but simply fail to perform well on timed tests. Similar benefits occur for females whose writing abilities often lift their math portfolio to a high level not indicated by test scores.
Several states are now developing assessment and admissions systems that can more effectively evaluate the achievements of school-to-work students. For example, the Oregon State System of Higher Education (OSSHE) is developing a new approach to admissions that "replaces the traditional time-based proxies for learning, such as the Carnegie unit, with clearly specified statements of the knowledge and skills which students must master to be accepted into any of Oregon's seven baccalaureate-granting institutions" (1994, p1). The Proficiency-Based Admission Standards System (PASS) is a list of the knowledge and skills students need to be admitted to college. These standards, developed from an attempt to understand the relationship between school reform and college admission, were adopted in May 1994 by the State Board of Higher Education and will be used as a basis for freshman admission to OSSHE institutions in fall 2001. They involve six content areas and nine process areas.[19] A complete prototype of the assessment system, including detailed descriptions of the proficiencies and plans for an electronic transcripting and advising system, is planned for fall 1997.
The University of Maryland system has developed an Office of Articulation whose primary goal is to "facilitate the movement of students between and among the educational segments" (Giles-Gee 1996). Faculty and administration at the University of Maryland have worked with the Maryland State Department of Education, Community College faculty, and business and industry leaders to identify knowledge, skills and employment opportunities; review curriculum; and create strong career pathways for students which include all branches of the State's educational system. Although the stakeholders have not reached agreement on credit for work experience and transfer credit for college work performed in high school, they are working, like the Oregon system, to create a state system of high school assessment with an emphasis on academic proficiency and "skills for success" to replace the traditional Maryland Functional Tests.
Wisconsin is now in the process of studying alternative assessments by slowly integrating them into the college admissions system. A state study is now using both portfolios and traditional assessment methods in admitting prospective students as a way for colleges to get more comfortable with alternative assessments.
Faculty at Boston's Pro Tech are currently working with the North East Association of College Admissions Counselors to give colleges a different perspective on the work component in students' schooling experience. The school is using the success of preceding students as examples to state their case and show that a work component, tied to a strong educational curriculum, is more significant than mere after-school jobs.
Ultimately, the problems of connecting secondary and postsecondary institutions will have to be addressed through innovations in standards and assessment. All of the state programs mentioned above involve developments in competency-based assessments. Moreover, this is also consistent with a much broader movement in education towards the development of "authentic" assessment (Darling-Hammond 1995). If assessments include more complex material such as papers, projects, and portfolios, then it may be that students with a well designed school-to-work experience will look better than students in traditional programs. Colleges already appreciate outside interests and commitments. In principle, school-to-work tries to integrate such interests with academic learning. Assessments that can capture that integration should be of particular interest to colleges.
[18] According to a state mandate, all students in Kentucky must develop portfolios.
[19] The six content areas are math, science, social studies, foreign language, humanities/literature, and fine and performing arts. The nine process areas include reading, writing, communication competence (listening, speaking), critical/analytic thinking, problem solving, technology, systems/integrative thinking, teamwork, and quality work.
| Bailey, T., & Merritt, D. (1997). School-to-work for the college bound (MDS-799). Berkeley: National Center for Research in Vocational Education, University of California. |