Selected national officers of teacher organizations, directors of mathematics and vocational-technical education, and state education department consultants were contacted in the spring of 1995. They were asked to nominate schools and two-year postsecondary institutions that were implementing the NCTM Standards and engaged in integration practices linked to occupational contexts. A total of 86 program nominations were received during the search, including 80 high schools and six two-year college programs.[1] To determine the general nature and extent of integration efforts, a survey was conducted during the fall of 1995 asking site representatives (mathematics-vocational teachers and program coordinators) to describe integration formats, extent to which NCTM Standards were being implemented, activities supporting integration, and demographic information describing the institutional profile. Survey instruments were based on work conducted by the National Center for Research in Mathematical Sciences Education and designed to examine how schools were implementing mathematics reforms (Secada & Byrd, 1993). After two follow-up reminders, a total of 41 sites returned surveys (47.6% return rate). This return rate was influenced by the fact that some sites were indeed integrating mathematics and academic education but not emphasizing the NCTM Standards. In contrast, a number of sites were using the NCTM Standards in their mathematics program but had no integration efforts. These sites did not return surveys because they did not feel qualified to participate. Thus, the 41 respondents including 37 high schools and four two-year colleges were considered as the pool of programs offering the best framework for selecting promising sites.
The majority of respondent sites were public high schools (78%) located in rural settings (43.6%) and serving an average student population of 1,302 students. On the average, high school students were predominantly Caucasian (82.8%) with a small representation of African-American (10.4%), Hispanic (3.8%), and other ethnic groups (3.0%). Also, the majority of high schools reported high compartmentalization of instruction. About 76% of high school programs had both mathematics and vocational-technical education departments with 40.6% of all faculty teaching either math or vocational courses.
Two-year colleges were all public institutions located in either urban or suburban areas with an average student body of 23,583. Overall, respondent colleges reported a more diverse student population with 48% Caucasian, and 22.2% Hispanic, 13.2% African-American, 9.4% Asian, 4.7% American Indian, and other ethnic groups (2.5%). Given the nature of postsecondary institutions, departmental lines were a bit blurred but at least half had both departments clearly defined. In general, colleges reported that 46.3% of all instructors taught either mathematics or technical courses.
Given the small sample of two-year colleges, no statistical comparisons were possible. Thus, the intent was to describe in general terms the state of implementation of integration practices conducted by respondent sites as a preliminary step for developing four case studies of promising efforts. The analysis relied on basic descriptive statistics (e.g., frequencies and averages) to represent response patterns for each question or sets of related questions.