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Perspectives of School-to-Career Programs

Posted on: Saturday, 15 October 2005, 03:01 CDT

By Doughty-Jenkins, Bonnie-Marie

There are a variety of programs available throughout the nation in regard to school-to-career initiatives. The focus here is to identify and examine ways in which school-to-career education is perceived in a variety of school districts, programs and differing viewpoints.

The following are representative of the various viewpoints. They are meant to act as a sampling of the kinds of issues that arise via the focus of the various views.

Rural

Plymouth, Connecticut, is one of the 81 out of 169 districts in the state that can be deemed rural by cross referencing information concerning the Economic Reference Groups (ERG) on the Connecticut State Department of Education's Web site with the Eligible Connecticut Rural Communities Web site. The Litchfield County town considers itself a "small school district" based on information from its 2003 Strategic School Profile (SSP). It has a population of 11,634, an average per capita income of $23,244 per year, and a total school enrollment of approximately 1,901 with 95 percent of those students being Caucasian.

Plymouth has a very active school-to-career program that is extremely enmeshed within the town itself. According to Plymouth's school-to-career mission statement, "School-to-career is an integral part of the educational process in the Plymouth School District. It offers all students in grades K-12 the opportunity to explore programs relevant to their career goals through work-based, school- based and connecting activities. This initiative includes a direct relationship between businesses, schools and community."

This distinct reciprocity between the school and the community helps to unify the town and is beneficial to all parties involved. According to Lisa Aiudi, the school-to-career coordinator for Plymouth, the program is a necessity to the district and town. It ties the students to their futures and gives them another purpose for coming to school.

Aiudi says that one of the most important aspects of a rural school-to-career program is that everybody needs to be "on board." There should be a continuum of support from the teachers to the administration to the school board. This support system should emanate from the school system into the community at large. According to Aiudi, this is vital for a rural program to be able to survive. It is important that the community knows and understands what school-to-career education is all about and that the students are directly involved in the community in which they live.

One of the greatest obstacles that a rural school-to-career program encounters is that of finances. Federal funding for school- to-career programs was only available for a limited amount of time, and it was up to the districts themselves to put programs into play that could last far beyond the finances originally provided. Some districts kept this information in mind and used the money for professional development and to create working relationships with business partners in the communities. Aiudi says that these set a foundation that helped keep programs running even after the funding was cut. Unfortunately, there are other districts that did not take this same direction and utilized the money to fund positions and obtain short-term items rather than look at the big picture. Because of the small size of these districts and the limitations on funding, many programs were forced out or downsized dramatically. Aiudi notes that this is one of the areas where the federal government was not as diligent as it should have been with keeping track of funding and for what the monies were specifically used. Accountability and follow through were lacking, especially in the smaller districts.

It is a belief, especially in the rural districts, that setting a solid foundation in the school-to-career programs, and getting the students involved in the community as well as the community involved in the school system, makes the work easier when it comes time to pass and/or increase budgets and programs. The Plymouth School system., not only has a 30-hour community service requirement for high school graduation, but also it states in its commitment in education excellence that, "Through a bonding of family, school and community, we will develop a partnership in education, providing an opportunity for high achievement and excellence, while recognizing different learning styles."

According to Aiudi, school-to-career is part of a "domino effect" in the community that is helping it to grow stronger as a whole, from the students on up to the senior citizens. Communities, especially rural communities, need to realize that school-to-career opportunities are for all students and not just those who are not planning to go to college. School-to-career programs teach skills that are transferable to a variety of situations in the college arena and life in general.

Urban

Urban programs are essentially based as a resource that works with the larger cities throughout the state.

According to the Governor's Prevention Partnership Web site (2004), the focus of this program, as well as many other urban programs, is to reduce "risk factors" in students in urban settings in order to help these students be successful. These types of programs are divided into three basic entities. These are environmental, consisting of support systems in relationships, meaningful activities and expectations of success; individual, consisting of social competence, interpersonal skills, problem- solving skills and autonomy skills; and resiliency, which consists of acts of helpfulness, optimism, interventions, caring connections and opportunities.

Because the urban population is large and inherently consists of many "at-risk" students, the focus of many urban-based programs is on the mentoring process. Mentoring programs essentially develop positive relationships and give real-world opportunities to explore careers. The main focus of these programs includes keeping kids safe, healthy and drug free.

According to the Connecticut Mentoring Partnership's Web site (2004), The mentor develops a working relationship with a student, models appropriate workplace behavior, and coaches the student regarding behaviors, attitudes and skills. The mentor also helps the student understand the value of each task, how the student's work contributes to or influences the goals of an organization, and how the requirements of the workplace relate to what the student is learning in school."

This helps create that much needed connection between school and a successful future that many urban students don't often see.

Its Web site also notes that the Governor's Prevention Partnership has joined "a collaborative partnership ... to study the impact of mentoring on fostering school-to-career readiness and reducing substance abuse and other risky behaviors in urban youth to facilitate replication of the project."

The Governor's Prevention Partnership believes that in order to make a student successful, the risky behaviors have to be reduced, which helps to reduce the dropout rate that is usually higher in urban districts. With the mentor program being at the hub of the dropout prevention program, there is a need for more empirical data to show if these types of urban programs actually help at-risk students to have success.

According to Stefanie Nicholas from the Governor's Prevention Partnership Career Mentoring Program, most of the data at this time is anecdotal. People seem to "know" or "believe" that the program is helping students, but there needs to be more proof. Unfortunately, it is often that way with urban programs. Many students are difficult to track, and because of the great numbers, follow through is often extremely difficult.

According to Michael Mongillo, the director of Area Cooperative Educational Services, the urban districts are the districts that truly need school-to-career programs. Mongillo advocates that, with the No Child Left Behind legislation, districts are going to be more concerned with assessment tests than ever before. A school-to- career program can help them with this. It gives the students a tie- in between their schooling and their futures as well as a greater purpose for coming to school. According to Mongillo, this purpose will help increase attendance, and by being in the classroom more often, they will absorb more of the information that is being taught; therefore, it is a logical consequence of this that they will do better on these important state tests.

Mongillo also notes that school-to-career as an entity has changed quite a lot over the last several years from what was traditionally considered "vocational education." The original term and programs were geared more for job training. More recently, these programs, which have changed from using the term school-to-work to using the term school-to-career for the same reason, are focused on lifelong skills that can transfer into any career as well as into any college situation. These include interviewing skills, interpersonal skills, etiquette, and being on time and responsible.

According to the New Haven Workforce Board grant application (1994), the goal of an urban community is to create a quality system that is "accessible and appealing to students, responsive to the needs of the private sector, easily aligned with a developing statewide \system, expandable to serve all interested students within each district and replicable."

The community sector is tapped for the purpose of providing placement for the various internship and externship opportunities that the program makes available in order to assist its students.

It is relatively easy to see the stark contrast between the rural- based programs and the urban-based schoolto-career programs. Kural programs are focused more on creating a sense of "community" and volunteerism, while the urban programs are more focused on improving the chances of the students to have successful futures.

Career-Oriented

For the purposes of this study, careeroriented program refers to a program that is not traditionally in the public schools arena. These types of programs are those that are already considered focused on careers.

According to the Connecticut Regional-Technical School System's Web site, The state of Connecticut funds and operates the Connecticut Regional Vocational-Technical School System, a statewide system of 18 regional vocational-technical schools and two satellite programs with comprehensive education and training in 37 occupational areas.

There are approximately 11,021 students statewide who are attending a school in the vocational-technical system. Of these students, more than 41 percent are minority and more than 36 percent are on free or reduced-price lunch. These students not only receive a Connecticut high school diploma upon graduation, but also they receive a certificate stating that they have received training in a specific occupation. According to its mission statement, the Connecticut Regional Vocational-Technical School System is dedicated to providing "a rigorous educational program meeting the needs of Connecticut's citizens and employers through academic instruction, intensive occupation-specific training and apprenticeship credit."

Connecticut State Department of Education Assistant Superintendent of Trade, Technologies and Adult Education Judy Thompson says the Connecticut Regional Vocational-Technical School System is currently going through a restructuring process in order to create a system where all of the vocational-technical schools in Connecticut have the same criteria and curriculum for both their traditional courses as well as their career-specific courses. They are also unifying both the entrance and exit criteria for the vocational-technical high schools in Connecticut.

The Connecticut Vocational-Technical School System offers certifications in a total of 39 fields, but more than 30 percent of its graduating seniors also go on to further education. In conjunction with a college that participates in a tech prep program, students also can earn up to 14 college credits while attending a vocational-technical high school.

According to Thompson, the new standardization of the system means that all of the schools in the system are now running with the same format, which consists of a six-day rotation, with students taking academic classes for six days and shop classes for six days. The freshmen participate in an exploratory program where they spend time in each shop that is available at their particular school in order to get an understanding for what is required. After completing this exploratory program, students choose the shop that they are going to be focusing on for the remainder of their time at the school. This helps the students to focus on what they are truly interested in pursuing as a career and gives them a purpose to come to school on a regular basis. This is demonstrated in the SSP by the low dropout rate of only 1.2 percent as compared to the state average of 2.1 percent.

Thompson also notes that the requirements for admission have been revamped to focus on students who would work well in the type of environment that the schools provide, and the graduation requirements are becoming more structured.

The Vocational-Technical School System is able to keep current by having a technical advisory group that utilizes industry representatives to work cooperatively with the system in order that teachers may learn and understand the newest trends in the industry. The schools are also able to do this through their use of apprenticeships, adult education, professional development for teachers, work co-ops, job shadowing and "virtual views."

Another type of career-oriented program is that of a career high school. These high schools focus on specific career areas such as the arts, medical fields or technology. Although the principal of Career High School in New Haven, Connecticut, says that the best thing to come out of the school-to-career initiatives was the onset of the recognition that many students may opt not to further their education, and that school-to-career makes it viable to find substantial income for those students, the school itself boasts that more than 90 percent of its graduates go on to higher education. In addition, more than 20 percent of its juniors and seniors are enrolled in courses for college credit.

According to the 2003 SSP, there are several aspects that make Career High School different from traditional high school experiences: "Suburban students attend Career for its high curricular standards, instruction, partnerships, student achievement and extracurricular opportunities and records in addition to the school's theme focus on careers in either health/science or business/ computers."

This focus is emphasized through its community relationships with local companies, colleges and universities. For example, students in the Anatomy and Physiology courses and Advanced Biology courses spend one day a week studying at Yale University alongside medical students, and nursing students work with faculty and students at Southern Connecticut State University.

In contrast to the public school systems, which put more of their focus on the academics and often treat schoolto-career programs as secondary to what the students need, schools in Connecticut's Vocational-Technical School System emphasize skills and practices that will lead toward a specific career goal. Proponents of school- to-career programs try to show that the skills and strategies taught in school-to-career classes, as well as those taught at career- oriented schools, are transferable to countless situations that the students may encounter in their lifetimes.

Tech prep is a system that has its base in the community college system. The tech prep system is one that works in cooperation with school districts, especially those with a high-risk population. The tech prep system works with districts to try to connect them to local businesses and with students to keep them from having an "isolated" view of what careers are. It works to give both teachers and students an expanded view of what the reality of a career is and to educate teachers on how to tie in the subject matter to the workplace and future careers rather than just teaching a subject for the subject's sake.

Tech prep tries to work within the school systems to get students pointed in the right direction. In addition, it assists students with applications and even prerequisite fulfillment for attending the local community colleges. This is done with the hopes that the students will not only complete their degrees at the community college but also continue their education at a local college or university.

Other Viewpoints

Not all constituents feel that school-to-career programs are good for all students. As a matter of fact, there is some very strong opposition to schoolto-career programs across the United States. The Eagle Forum, an organization that has existed since 1967, is one of the strongest opponents of school-to-career legislation in the United States. Phyllis Schlafly has been the president of the Alton, Illinoisbased organization since its inception.

The Eagle Forum has spoken out against school-to-career initiatives often, especially between 1995 and 1997 when most of the initiatives were beginning to take root. In 1995, in the first of a series of articles written by Schlafly, she states that the School- to-Work Opportunities Act (STWOA) of 1994 was "one of the worst Clinton bills passed [in 1994]."

She goes on to criticize Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy for being an impetus behind STWOA, saving that, "Tucker's plan would change the mission of the public schools from teaching children knowledge and skills to training then to serve the global economy in jobs selected by workforce boards."

This viewpoint is in contradiction to those who believe that President Clinton and the lawmakers who wrote STWOA were trying to create a system in which students would be able to explore opportunities and learn transferable skills that will assist them in making the choices for their futures.

One's viewpoint of school-to-career programs and their importance may depend on what one's place is both geographically and philosophically. The needs of the surrounding community and the reciprocity between the school system and the community often dictate the perspective that one will have regarding school-to- career programs. This give and take between the district and the community at large is necessary to ensure the success of the future of the students that we serve.

References

Connecticut Regional Vocational-Technical School System (2004), Mission Statement, www.cttech.org/central/ about-us/mission.htm

Connecticut State Department of Education (2004), Career High School's Strategic School Profile, www.csde.state.ct.us/public/der/ ssp/sch0304/sr073.pdf

Connecticut State Department of Education (2004), Plymouth's Strategic School Profile, www.csde.state.ct.us/ public/der/ssp/ sch0304/dist076.htm

CT Mentor, CT mentor.org, http://ctmentor.org/career/ careercenter/whatis.asp

The Governor's Prevention Partnership Web site, www.preventionworksct.org/ infostats/resstrategy.html

NewHaven Area Initiative for School-to-Work Opportunities (1994), Grant Proposal

Schlafly, P. (1995), "Is the government planning your child's career?" The Phyllis Schlafly Report, 28(3)

School-to-work Opportunities Act of 1994, PL 103-239, 108 Stat 568 (1994)

Bannie-Marie Doughty-Jenkins teaches eighth-grade science at Fisher Middle School in Terryville, Connecticut. She can be contacted at bdoughtyjenkins@hotmail.com.

Copyright Association for Career & Technical Communications Oct 2005

Source: Techniques

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