Heading Students Towards Career Horizons
Tech-Prep Implementation Progress, 1993-1995

Analysis and Highlights
1997

The report, Heading Students Towards Career Horizons, is the third in a series based on one major component of the evaluation--surveys of local Tech-Prep consortia. The report presents findings about the status of Tech-Prep at the time of the third survey and about changes observed since the earlier surveys in 1993 and 1994.

Study Findings

• The Tech-Prep infrastructure is widespread, but a small fraction of students participate. Most school districts in the United States now belong to a Tech-Prep consortium. Local consortia have expanded in number and size, increasing the percentage of all districts included from 51 percent in 1993 to 69 percent in 1995. Along with this expansion in secondary school membership has come an increase in the involvement of postsecondary institutions. From 1993 to 1995, the number of community college members has risen from 975 to 1,412, and the number of four-year postsecondary institutions identified as consortium members has risen from 420 to 725.

  These consortia and the school districts they include encompass the overwhelming majority of students attending American high schools. With the expansion in district membership in Tech-Prep consortia, the percentage of U.S. secondary students who could potentially be exposed to the changes associated with Tech-Prep has risen from 71 percent in 1993 to 88 percent in 1995.

  The percentage of students who actually participate in Tech-Prep, however, remains relatively low. Using the definitions of Tech-Prep participation that consortia themselves have adopted, study findings indicate that participation has risen from 4.7 percent of all secondary students in school year 1992-1993 to 8.4 percent in school year 1994-1995. (This participation rate is based on those consortia that provided counts of Tech-Prep students; it is assumed that consortia that did not report on participation have approximately the same rate of student involvement in Tech-Prep.)

  Despite this low participation rate, a large and growing number of students are involved in Tech-Prep. In school year 1994-1995, the 586 consortia (65 percent) that reported on participation identified almost 740,000 Tech-Prep high school students, an increase of more than 300 percent from school year 1992-1993. Growth in participation reflects in part the increase in the number of Tech-Prep consortia from 812 to 1,029 in two years. Enrollment in existing consortia is also increasing. Consortia are on average reporting more participants (up from 692 in 1993 to 1,259 in 1995).

• Tech-Prep still takes diverse forms, but it is more defined than in earlier years. The definitions of Tech-Prep and of participation in it are slowly becoming more focused, but they remain quite diverse. In 1995, 75 percent of all consortia reported that there was a defined core program of activities for Tech-Prep students in at least one of their member districts, up from 63 percent in 1994. Moreover, definitions of core programs vary not only across but within consortia; just 56 percent of consortia reported in 1995 that they had a single consistent definition of a Tech-Prep core program that was used in all their member districts. Only 28 percent of consortia that reported a definition of a participant described Tech-Prep student involvement in a way that comes to fulfilling the concept of a defined program of study as promoted by Title IIIE of the Perkins Act.

• Attention to career development is gradually increasing for Tech-Prep students and others. Survey findings suggest that schools are gradually giving greater emphasis to career awareness activities and career counseling, in an effort to help students make informed choices about Tech-prep programs, postsecondary programs, and career goals. The 1995 survey showed continued increases in the availability of these career development activities, which are in some cases targeted specifically to Tech-Prep students and in other instances to students in general.

• Availability of career-focused programs of study, and participation in them, have risen sharply. Programs of study that specify or simply recommend appropriate academic and vocational courses for a particular career focus are becoming more widely available, and participation in them has grown substantially since 1993. The percentage of consortia in which at least some schools offered such programs has risen from 67 percent in 1993 to 75 percent in 1995. Although Tech-Prep participation continues to account for a small fraction of all high school students, participation in such programs has more than doubled since 1993 in all broad career areas.

• Curriculum changes continue to focus on applied academics, but not in all schools. Almost all Tech-Prep consortia reported in 1995 that they were implementing applied academic curricula, and more than 40 percent of consortium resources are spent on either curriculum development or staff development, which often focuses on teaching methods. Commercially available curriculum packages continue to be the most common vehicle for introducing applied instruction.

• Articulation continues to expand. Articulation agreements are specifically required under the Perkins legislation as a key component of Tech-Prep programs funded under Title IIIE. Articulation agreements promote coordination between secondary and postsecondary institutions to eliminate unnecessary redundancies in course work across institutions and, where possible, to facilitate collaboration on curriculum development and ongoing working relationships. Articulation agreements take a variety of forms. General agreements between secondary and postsecondary institutions involve only the broad principle of cooperation and collaboration, or the general concept of the transfer of credit. They often are the starting point for developing specific articulation agreements. Specific agreements may include details on the specific conditions for transfer of credit or other matters, such as joint teaching arrangements or guarantees of space for students entering particular postsecondary programs. Ideally, agreements articulate secondary and postsecondary programs, create comprehensive pathways with increasing specialization and skill levels.

  Although articulation of high school and college programs is a long-standing practice, 82 percent of Tech-Prep consortia reported that new agreements were signed between 1993 and 1995. The number of postsecondary institutions involved in articulation (most often community colleges) has continued to increase, reaching more than 1,500 in 1995. Although some colleges are inevitably double-counted because they sign articulation agreements with secondary schools in multiple consortia, it appears that most of the nation's community colleges are involved in articulation. By far the most common feature of articulation agreements is a specification of the conditions under which students can receive college credit for courses completed in high school. Much of the articulation most likely remains focused on awarding credit for individual courses rather than for programs of study.

• Workplace activity is becoming more common as an element of Tech-Prep. Although not originally required in Title IIIE of the Perkins Act, workplace activities are more commonly identified by consortia as a core element of Tech-Prep than in earlier years. In 1995, 65 percent of the consortia that have a consortium-wide definition of Tech-Prep (36 percent of all consortia) reported that it includes occasional workplace exposure experiences, such as worksite visits or assignment to a mentor, up from 45 percent in 1993.

• Lack of Tech-Prep data bases continues to limit tracking of student outcomes. In all three years of the Tech-Prep survey, many consortia have lacked data required for tracking participation and outcomes of Tech-Prep students. This difficulty is particularly pronounced with regard to reporting on outcomes such as high school graduation, entry to postsecondary education, and employment in occupations related to secondary programs of study. Many consortia have planned Tech-Prep evaluation data bases that might mitigate this problem; in 1993 75 percent of all consortia reported that they expected to develop a computerized data base with information on individual Tech-Prep students. In 1995, however, few had done so: only 21 percent of consortia had even partially implemented such databases, and just 22 consortia out of 897 said they had done so fully.

• Consortia may be seeking to broaden appeal of Tech-Prep. Although Tech-Prep began as an initiative to enhance the preparation of students interested in technical careers, its objective and focus may be shifting somewhat in practice. This change is driven in part by the association parents and students make between Tech-Prep and vocational education. Even after several years of implementation, consortia continue to report that their efforts to introduce career-focused programs of study that link secondary instruction with technical degree programs at community colleges are hindered by negative attitudes toward vocational education. The survey data, supported by site visits, suggest that some consortia are trying to widen the scope of Tech-Prep initiatives to include a broader segment of the student population.

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