THE IMPETUS AND CAPACITY FOR COMPREHENSIVE VOCATIONAL REFORM IN TWO SCHOOLS

At the outset, we speculated that the prospects for closer ties between academic and vocational education rested on the impetus provided by specific reform initiatives to take work preparation seriously as part of education for all students, and on a school's capacity to undertake the necessary structural and cultural changes. Concentrating on the internal environment of the school, we assessed the impetus and capacity for such movement by examining the fit between comprehensive programs of restructuring and specific reforms targeted at vocational education. Our major findings may be summed up in five points:

1. The multiple currents of reform in these schools run along separate channels. Although they are given a comprehensive and coherent face in public documents, each has its own internal advocates and its own external sources of pressure and support. Each pursues its own strategies for building the capacity to act--professional development activities, collaborative curriculum planning, appeals to administrative support, and the like.
2. These separate channels parallel one another in important ways. That is, the directions pursued by vocational reform activities--seeking curricular connections, broadening students' understanding of occupational possibilities, building students' capacity for independent work and cooperative endeavors, and emphasizing assessment based in performance--are compatible with the spirit of school restructuring more generally. The restructuring environment is assuredly conducive to new forms of vocational education.
3. The distinction nonetheless remains between a "work-bound" and "college-bound" curriculum. We find little indication of support for wholesale rethinking of the high school experience in ways that would broaden the conception of work education for all students. Although the principals of both schools consistently signaled their support for the career academies and for career education more broadly, they supplied equally consistent reinforcement for efforts to strengthen the traditional academic curriculum. Many academic teachers remained skeptical of a curriculum that would emphasize practical applications, especially if they believed that the search for practicality would take precedence over academic priorities--the key concepts or topics typically associated with core academic subjects.
4. To the extent that these restructuring schools have pursued an altered conception of vocational preparation, they have done so by means of a rather tightly bounded school-within-a-school program. In each school (though to a greater extent at Prairie), such programs have earned a measure of internal and external support by embracing a "dual mission" of academic and career preparation, and by demonstrating the ability to strengthen students' attendance and performance records. Both academies succeeded in attracting a fairly heterogeneous population of students who enrolled voluntarily in the academy, and who accepted rather stringent conditions and requirements in doing so. (That is, this does not have the feel of a dumping ground either to teachers or to students.) Students have completed graduation requirements in the core academic subjects, but tend not to complete the requirements needed for admission to the state's four-year colleges and universities. Neither academy was able to construct structured work experiences for students on a scale (number of students) or for a duration that would enable us to examine the "value added" of a career focus in the academy. To the extent that the program supplied students with an understanding of career or of a particular industry (printing, for example), it did so almost entirely through a sequence of elective courses, in-school projects, and extracurricular activities. In effect, the promise of a "dual mission" is both central to the improved image of work preparation and proves challenging to fulfill.
5. Restructuring has made schooling more "public" in these schools. Both in the school-level governance structures and in the exchanges underway in teacher teams, we find more frequent discussion of curricular priorities, school and classroom practices, learning outcomes, and student work than has been typical in schools previously studied. In the development of portfolios, "exhibitions," and senior projects, we find a move toward more visible demonstrations of student work. However, these discussions and new forms of student assessment have not served as the basis for re-examining assumptions about the nature of vocational preparation and its relationship to academic study.