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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. |
As part of the study, the research staff visited all the schools attended by the graduates and interviewed the academic and vocational teachers and counselors currently working in the schools. The research staff also collected all administrative and program information about the schools available from the district and the school itself.
Administratively, and even programmatically, the career magnet and the comprehensive high schools attended by the graduates shared a number of characteristics, except, importantly, the career magnets required that students satisfy an array of both academic and vocational requirements to graduate. Both the career magnet and the comprehensive high schools in the study were large urban schools with a mix of new and veteran faculty; although teaching in a magnet school was considered a more desirable assignment, and faculty often asked for a placement or transfer to one of the schools. During the time the graduates were attending the high schools, the faculty and administration were free to adopt innovative curriculum; for example, although students were required to take a subject like English for a determined number of years in all the high schools, the content of the course could vary. However, at the time of the research, a new school superintendent had imposed stricter academic requirements and mandated that all the high schools offer specific academic coursework. This was in response to the demand for national standards and the new city college policy that graduates of the city high schools would have to meet higher traditional academic standards and demonstrate mastery of particular academic coursework in order to matriculate at any of the four-year colleges in the system.
There was little or no formalized integration of academic and vocational coursework or any integration between students' classwork and their work experiences in either type of school during the time the graduates were in high school. The idea of integrated curriculum and integrated work experience was a new school reform at the time, even in career magnet schools. Such reforms likely existed only as partially articulated and unorganized program efforts in schools like the career magnets. This might be due to the perceived status differences in the professional preparation and experiences of academic and vocational teachers: traditionally, vocational teachers have a lower status in the comprehensive high school, which is often perceived as an academic school in the school system. In the career magnets in the study, however, the vocational teachers had a particular status as instruments for carrying out the school's career focus and as emblems of its identity. The academic teachers generally were under pressure to prepare students for statewide tests in the traditional academic subjects, which even in schools with strong career focuses could not be ignored. In the career magnet, it was a matter of thorough academic and vocational education, not integrated academic-vocational education.
All students in the study had to meet common requirements for graduation and a state diploma. Unlike students in the comprehensive high schools, students in the career magnet high schools were required to take a full complement of coursework in their career major in their junior and senior years--as well as all the academic courses required to graduate or receive a regents diploma. Even before this, certainly by their sophomore year, they also had to have taken an introduction to careers course. The career magnet students were encouraged to declare a career area early, and given very little latitude to switch after making the decision precisely because they would be accumulating course credit in a technical career area which could not be transferred to another area if they switched; they would endanger their chance to graduate if they switched career concentration.
Not all of the career areas were of equal prestige or difficulty in the career magnet high schools. A school might have a reputation for a particular career area, often expressed in its name; for example, business and finance, health careers, aviation, and so forth. Within each, however, there could be many career strands, requiring different levels of aptitude and academic ability; in one school with a health sciences focus, for example, there was coursework of increasing difficulty--for future dental technicians, laboratory technicians, and doctors. Most of the career magnets offered coursework in a number of career-related subjects, here too for students of different interests and ability--technology and law for some, but communication and cooperative education (work/study) for others such as for those who might potentially drop out. (Because it was not possible to include students from a representative mix of majors with curricular difficulty, we could not compare the differential impact of the choice of a particular career track on the students' educational and career development.)
The comprehensive high schools, although often considered the academic high schools in the city, also offered a variety of programs, including vocational education coursework (a student could receive vocational education in a designated vocational education high school, in a career magnet, or in a comprehensive high school); general education, usually applied academics; and a traditional academic education, including advanced and honors coursework. Also, students could pursue their special interests, including career interests, through clubs and extracurricular activities. The students in the comprehensive high schools like those in career magnet high schools were given opportunities to follow their career interests, although less intensely, comprehensively, and consistently.
The schools had a latticework organization, which identified and placed the student by grade level, house, and track (academic, vocational, or general in the comprehensive high school) or career focus (career magnet high school). This organization determined which adults a student would encounter during his or her high school years. In practice, however, the house plan was only an artifact for organizing these very large high schools into smaller administrative units, and appeared to have no formal or informal educational purpose or to substantially increase opportunities for students to interact with faculty or others in the school. The abundance of extracurricular activities in the schools, however, created other structures in which students could develop their educational, career, recreational, and personal interests. These after-school clubs (many organized for students with particular career interests in both the comprehensive and the career magnet high schools) and the schools' intramural sports and athletic teams provided venues for free informal contacts between students and faculty or coaches without the programmatic, time, and space constraints of the formal instructional programs.
Students in both kinds of high schools were assigned to a counselor, often identified with a particular house; the career magnet graduates encountered them more often. The counselors were responsible for dealing with the logistical, discipline and attendance, and family and other nonschool problems affecting the students' educational lives while in high school. They did not, however, consider themselves career counselors, although they might arrange vocational testing. Some schools had a faculty member who was assigned to an office that coordinated student employment. In the career magnet high schools, career counseling was vaguely left to the housemasters or most likely to the head of a particular career strand or to individual occupational teachers. Each of the schools had a college counselor.
Students were not guaranteed a school-related work experience in either the comprehensive or the career magnet high schools in our study. The availability of jobs for adolescents, the vicissitudes of job placement, and a conviction among some that work may interfere with academic studies made it difficult for many students to have an educational work experience while in high school. At the time the graduates attended their respective high schools, even in the career magnet high schools, there was no organized program to place students in a job, yet alone one in their career area, although many students did work in a part-time career-related job or served in an internship. Informally, the staff attempted to place the students in jobs, but the students found many of their own jobs. Internships within the school were a requirement in many of the career focus programs, however.
In general, the career magnet high schools were perceived as being safer and freer of the violence identified with a number of the city high schools, although this may not necessarily have been true. Clearly, though, many of the students in the career magnet high school believed they were attending a safer school; a guidance counselor could always threaten a failing student or one with a poor school or class attendance record with a transfer back to his or her neighborhood school and expect a reaction. Finally, despite their career focus, the career magnet high schools were perceived to have high academic standards and to send their graduates on to postsecondary education, as well as to jobs. Many people even referred to them as academic career magnet schools.
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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. |
