A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Tech-Prep reform concepts were developed over the past decade by educators and have now been incorporated into federal legislation. The Tech-Prep model was first clearly formulated and popularized by Dale Parnell (1985). It emphasizes creating career pathways, programs of study that link high school programs to advanced technical education in community colleges and other institutions. These pathways would help high school students plan their studies to lead to a postsecondary credential in a high-skill, high-demand occupation, and avoid redundant course work. The model stresses the use of applied academic curricula--materials and instructional approaches that give students practical, hands-on ways to learn and apply concepts in math, science, and communications. In 1990, the Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act was amended by Congress; one amendment added Title IIIE, known as the Tech-Prep Education Act, which set forth seven elements that should be included in local Tech-Prep programs developed with the support of federal Title IIIE funds:

1. Articulation Agreements. Agreements between secondary and postsecondary institutions, to establish links between students' high school and higher education programs

2. A 2+2 Design. Including a common core of math, science, communications and technology in high school, followed by more advanced specialized courses in a four-year program sequence spanning high school and postsecondary study

3. A Tech-Prep Curriculum. Tailored to local student needs and institutional constraints

4. Joint Staff Development for Secondary and Postsecondary Instructors. To promote cooperation and maximize the "seamlessness" of overall curriculum content for students making the transition from high school to postsecondary study

5. Training for Secondary and Postsecondary Counselors. Training on how to attract students to Tech-Prep, promote retention, and guide students to career employment

6. Measures to Ensure Access. For special populations such as minorities and at-risk students

7. Preparatory Services. Services such as recruiting, counseling, and assessment, to help students understand Tech-Prep and make decisions about programs of study and career direction

To chart progress in the development of programs with these features, ED is conducting a five-year national Evaluation of the Tech-Prep Education Program, mandated by Congress in the 1990 Perkins Act amendments. The evaluation, which is being conducted under contract by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR) and its subcontractor Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL), has two objectives. First, it will describe Tech-Prep programs--documenting their numbers and characteristics, the institutions involved, the populations served, and planning and implementation efforts. Second, it will identify effective implementation practices, over the full period of the evaluation, to provide guidance for state agencies and local consortia. These objectives are being pursued in three major data collection efforts:

1. A survey of state-level Tech-Prep coordinators--in fall 1993 and fall 1996

2. A survey of local Tech-Prep consortia--annually for four years beginning in fall 1993

3. In-depth studies of 10 selected local programs---involving four annual rounds of data collection beginning in the 1993-1994 school year

^a In fall 1993, no students at any of the sites had progressed from the secondary to the postsecondary level.

^b Components of Tech-Prep in Dothan have been phased in over several years. The first group of Tech-Prep students was identified in spring 1994.

^c The estimate of participation in the Hartford consortium includes only the Hartford schools.

The 10 consortia included in the in-depth study were selected to reflect the diversity of Tech-Prep program settings and of the stages of development the programs have reached. Emphasis was placed on choosing sites from different geographic regions and from both urban and rural locations. We also sought to include some relatively mature programs as well as some in earlier stages of development. The evaluation team solicited nominations of study sites from state coordinators, an evaluation advisory group that included state and local educators active in developing and monitoring Tech-Prep programs, and other informed parties. These parties nominated local consortia that had already made outstanding implementation progress and some that had developed strong implementation plans.² The evaluation team, in consultation with ED, then chose 10 sites in diverse locations from among these nominees.³

This report represents a first step in documenting the progress of these 10 consortia and identifying effective implementation practices. It presents a basic description of the status of each consortium, as determined in the initial fall 1993 site visits. In the following 10 chapters, a profile is presented of each consortium, focusing on four dimensions of Tech-Prep development efforts: (1) articulation; (2) enhancement of curriculum and instruction; (3) approaches to recruiting, guidance, and career development; and (4) the governance structures created to organize consortium activities and coordinate use of grant funds. These four broad categories provide a consistent framework for describing the very diverse ways that local consortia approach Tech-Prep implementation, and encompass all of the key Tech-Prep concepts. Table I. 2 summarizes the features of the 10 consortia with regard to the first three of these dimensions, which represent their major programmatic characteristics.

We have drawn the following preliminary findings about these four dimensions of program development from the first round of site visits:

• Articulation and Programs of Study. Articulation agreements are a major defining feature of Tech-Prep in most sites. Most consortia have built their Tech-Prep development on earlier articulation, and some are currently expanding articulation to new schools and occupational areas. A few consortia have adopted articulation of academic courses. In most sites, articulation links individual courses at the high school and college level. A few consortia have created broader programs of study that include sequences of technical and academic courses for students with particular career interests, but others are making progress toward that goal.

• Changes in Curriculum and Instruction. Although most of the ten consortia have taken some steps to upgrade vocational curricula, most curriculum change has focused on the introduction of applied approaches to teaching math, science, and English. Most sites have adopted commercially available curriculum packages or incorporated modules from them into existing courses. Consortia have used applied curricula quite differently. Some encourage all vocational students to take applied academics classes, or just those students who are enrolled in vocational programs designated as Tech-Prep. Other consortia make applied courses generally available to all students, and rely on counselors to guide into these courses the students for whom they seem most appropriate. Applied math and English classes, under this latter approach, are most commonly serving lower-ability students, whereas applied science courses in some cases are attracting a mix of students with diverse abilities and educational aspirations.

• Recruiting, Guidance, and Career Development. Some of the ten consortia have defined Tech-Prep as a distinct, high-tech form of vocational education, for only some occupations and a small, carefully selected group of students. These sites have paid close attention to recruiting well-qualified students, who consciously choose a Tech-Prep occupational program. In other sites, Tech-Prep is primarily an upgrading of vocational programs with the addition of applied academics courses; students in those sites are much less conscious of being in a special program. A few sites treat Tech-Prep as a foundation for general school reform and do not recruit students at all; instead, they provide career development activities for all students, and are promoting the value of career-oriented programs of study for all students, whether or not they include vocational courses.

• Governance and Resources. The in-depth study sites have a variety of structures for planning and coordinating Tech-Prep development. Several consortia have formal and quite extensive structures of committees and specialized subcommittees, including secondary and college staff, and teachers, administrators, counselors, and employer and community representatives. In other sites, responsibility for Tech-Prep has been folded into regular school district operations, and there is little ongoing interaction between secondary and college staff. All the sites have at least one staff person serving as a consortium coordinator, and in a few sites several individuals serve as a collective coordinating body. Annual implementation grants to the local consortia vary widely in amount, from as little as about $20,000 per year to more than $260,000, reflecting differences in consortium size and complexity as well as state funding practices.

These findings, we must caution, provide only an initial interpretation of what these ten consortia are achieving. They are based on only the first of four site visits. In many cases, the profiles draw heavily on information pertaining to only some of the member schools or colleges, because of inevitable limits on what could be explored in a first visit. Moreover, each consortium is developing from year to year; subsequent visits will provide a basis for reporting on changes, as well as for exploring more thoroughly the range of approaches and implementation progress within each consortium.

The likelihood that considerable change remains to be observed makes it useful now to identify issues that merit particular attention in the future. In the final chapter of this report, we identify and discuss six issues that are likely to affect the longer-term strength of Tech-Prep implementation:

1. Whom is Tech-Prep for?

2. How central is articulation to Tech-Prep development?

3. How can consortia make programs of study a meaningful feature of Tech-Prep?

4. What are the implications of alternative strategies for introducing applied academic instruction?

5. How much will Tech-Prep change postsecondary programs?

6. What contributions can be expected of employers in the development of Tech-Prep programs?

Although we have identified these issues in the initial observation of the ten in-depth study sites, they are likely to arise in the development of Tech-Prep in many other consortia. These issues will be analyzed further in later reports, as more information becomes available on how the in-depth study sites address them. These later analyses will highlight particularly effective approaches to common challenges of Tech-Prep implementation.

²However, we excluded from consideration consortia that had been designated as federal demonstration sites, since they are already being showcased and their staff challenged by the demands of widespread interest.

³Consortia were only considered for the in-dept study, however, if it appeared that they would be able to identify, in the fall of 1993 and 1994, groups of 11th grade Tech-Prep students whose school outcomes could be tracked over the subsequent years of the evaluation. A goal was set of studying 75 students from a single school in each cohort at each site, but this standard was relaxed, as shown in Table I.1, to allow inclusion of promising small consortia still in the early stages of implementation.

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[The Diverse Forms of Tech-Prep: Implementation Approaches in Ten Local Consortia]

[II. Dayton, Ohio]