EXAMPLES OF SCHOOL-TO-WORK PROGRAMS THAT TEACH ACADEMIC SKILLS AND PREPARE STUDENTS FOR COLLEGE

We have argued that the school-to-work model can be used to teach rigorous academic skills and to prepare students for college. Indeed, some of the most highly regarded school-to-work programs are explicitly designed for college-bound students. The internships in these programs are seen as assets for college applicants.

Many of these school-to-work programs have competitive admissions processes which consider attendance; test scores (PSATs or some sort of behavioral or critical thinking tests); writing samples; personal statements; GPAs; minimal levels of math and science such as algebra and chemistry; and teacher and guidance counselor recommendations. Internships usually involve work on a research project including formal presentations of the results and conclusions. This combination of activities not only gives students the opportunity to work (alone and/or in teams) on original problems but to develop and integrate many of the academic and technical skills they have learned. In many high schools, the more successful students can complete most of their regular high school graduation requirements in their junior year, and program administrators believe that well-designed internships can keep successful students interested in school during their last years.

The nature of student projects demonstrates the level of learning that is taking place. The Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Maryland, for example, offers an integrated program of studies in biology, English and technology linked by an environmental issues forum. Students work as partners with resource managers at the Mason Neck National Wildlife Refuge and the Mason Neck State Park to collect data and monitor the daily activities of various species that inhabit the region. Students search existing literature to establish a hypothesis related to a real world problem, design an experiment to test their hypothesis, run the experiment, collect and analyze data, draw conclusions, and produce a written document that communicates the results of the experiment. The students are even responsible for determining what information and resources are needed and how to access them. Student projects have included making plans for public education programs dealing with environmental matters, finding solutions to problems caused by encroaching land development, and making suggestions on how to handle the overabundance of deer in the region. A sight-impaired student used computer-aided design to propose structural changes to the outdoor environmental center that would make it more accessible to students with disabilities.

At the New Visions Careers in Health program in Rochester, New York, a student in a medical internship studied the intra-aortic balloon pump and prepared a presentation on this subject to the class. She was assigned a great deal of reading to help her understand the cardiac unit and a patient to follow every day. She gave daily reports to the staff on the patient's condition. It is a very demanding department and the student said that at first she did not want to do all of the extra reading, but then she realized that she was getting a head start on college. She is reading the same medical texts that medical students read.

Students at the Blair Science, Mathematics, and Computer Science Magnet Program in Maryland work at research institutions such as the Carnegie Institute, the National Oceanic and Aerospace Association, the National Institutes of Health, the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, Goddard Space Flight Center, Walter Reed Army Center, and Army Research Labs. They begin developing their year-long research projects during the second semester of their junior year and have the option of completing them either off-campus at one of the local laboratories or at the on-campus lab. If they choose to work off-campus, each student is required to have a mentor that he/she interviews and selects. Senior projects during the 1996 school year included "Computerized Design of the Maryland Functional Math Test;" "The Role of Surfactants in Sonodynamic Therapy;" "Two-Way Videal Transfer Over Fiber Optic Cable;" "Operation Understanding, D.C.;" and "The Effects of Parental Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Police Officers' Siblings."

In schools and programs such as Thomas Jefferson, New Visions, and Blair, students present their work orally in symposium format to parents, teachers, peers, employers, and prospective students. These presentations allow them to begin developing the kind of communications skills that they will use throughout their lives--speaking to a range of audiences with different interests, uses of information, and levels of expertise. In the traditional classroom setting, the teacher is the only audience, which makes the communication less dynamic and true-to-life.

Even the prestigious Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts requires all of its students to work at the school for two periods a week. More than half of the students at the school participate in community service activities, and a modest number choose one semester off-campus internships (Office of Technology Assessment 1995).

For students with well-formed interests and goals, participation in these types of activities can strengthen their educational experience. In our field work, we have met students who joined a school-to-work program because they wanted to be pediatricians, executives in the travel industry, nurses, or engineers. Through school-to-work programs, these students get a chance to develop their interests and to try out their aspirations. They sometimes find that their original career goals are not what they wanted. Additional, practical knowledge of career demands, when gained prior to college entrance and the declaration of a major, has the potential to eliminate many wasted dollars and years spent (by parents and students) on "changed majors." Work-based experience can give students a chance to focus their classroom work as well. Furthermore, these types of activities can strengthen a student's college application. One teacher from a highly competitive high school told us that colleges receive many applications from students with excellent academic records. Participation in internship programs can help differentiate among these many applications.

Another group of students that can benefit from school-to-work are those who are disaffected by the standard academic curriculum and pedagogy. Many potentially talented students are uninterested in school work and consequently do not do well in their classes. They often become convinced that they do not have the ability to succeed in an academic environment. These types of students can be found in even the most college-oriented secondary schools. In our own field work we have found cases in which students, with no intention of going on to college, joined school-to-work programs because they saw them as an alternative to boring class work. Once they began to work in a more concrete setting that sparked their interest, they found that in fact they were effective learners and could take on real responsibilities.

In interviews that we conducted with students in internships, we found many who stated that the program had changed their attitudes about school. They had been thinking about dropping out, but were now enthusiastic, and D's and F's changed to B's and even A's (see Olson, forthcoming, for many examples of improved academic performance as a result of workplace experiences). Many students value the chance to be treated as adults, and many appreciate their relationships with the counselors and teachers who work with them to relate their academic learning to the worksite experience. These positive experiences influenced their academic learning as well. In one hospitality program, we interviewed two students who, according to themselves and their teacher, had been completely uninterested in school. They had both hoped to open a business (perhaps at a ski area) after high school. These students found an internship with an individual who was starting a catering business, and they both became deeply and enthusiastically involved with all aspects of this business and were actually running the business for periods when the owner was out of town. While they still complained about the reading they had to do in their program, they persevered. Through this experience they realized that it might make more sense to work in the management of another company before they started their own, and they realized that for this they needed more education. Thus their experience gave some reality to their ambitions and also provided them a reason to continue their education.

As Michael Jackson, director of Fremont High School's Media Academy in Oakland, California, stated, "Many of my students come to me at-risk and leave college bound." Perhaps this type of change in goals and aspirations of the student is the most obvious case in which school-to-work promotes academic learning and enhances a student's chances of going to college.