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| Flaxman, E., Guerrero, A., & Gretchen, D. (1999). Career development effects of career magnets versus comprehensive schools (MDS-803). Berkeley: National Center for Research in Vocational Education, University of California. |
Magnet schooling began as a desegregation strategy to provide opportunity through racial and social heterogeneity, and that still is its greatest value for youth. Career magnet high schools reduce the detrimental effects of social isolation because students who might not yet have future educational plans find friends who do. This makes it easier to avoid the academic risk behaviors that characterize the adolescence of many low-income urban students, behaviors we found more prevalent among the comprehensive graduates in the study. By bringing together more students preparing for college and by increasing their expectations of future educational and career opportunities, the youth shared an ethos of academic and vocational achievement in the schools. Higher achievement, we know, may result from the students' greater sense of membership, or social bonding, in career magnet high schools (Hill, Foster, & Gendler, 1990; Whelage, Rutter, Smith, Lesko, & Fernandez, 1989). In turn, parents are then perceived as more willing to sacrifice to provide more opportunities for their children. More than comprehensive high schools, career magnet high schools can help students acquire the social capital we recognize as instrumental to career development.
Everything good about career magnet high schools is identified with the social climate it creates. Career magnet high schools can provide adolescents with experiences, types of relationships, and involvements not usually encountered in other settings. They can transmit information, skills, and motivation and permit the adolescent to perform adequately in adult roles even while in high school. They can also provide a socially supportive and academically focused setting as they combine academic and career goals.
Despite their promise, however, career magnet high schools have not yet found a way of making more adults available to students who can influence their career development. Only the frequent and consistent interactions with their occupation teachers have such an effect. Career magnet high schools need to provide more opportunities for youth to enlarge their social networks. This will not only reduce the students' social isolation but also provide resources to complement, or supplement, the opportunities that their family and community background and education provide. This helps develop a sense of membership in career magnet high schools that increases students' commitment to and engagement with schoolwork, and is likely to promote achievement (Gamoran, 1996). Thus, students who might be overlooked and neglected in conventional classrooms may be more willing to participate in their education in a career magnet high school (Whelage & Smith, 1992).
The climate of the career magnet high school for career development must be nurtured. The power of the career magnet high school rests with the articulation of its many parts with each other. Currently, they are loosely coupled, despite their promise for proper integration. Clearly, the career magnet graduates still profited from their school experience, would return to their high school given a chance, and, in general, felt that they received a good education. An opportunity to harness all the elements of the career development process for the students' benefit could be missed, however, if the career magnet high schools do not aggressively link all of their elements together.
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| Flaxman, E., Guerrero, A., & Gretchen, D. (1999). Career development effects of career magnets versus comprehensive schools (MDS-803). Berkeley: National Center for Research in Vocational Education, University of California. |
