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

The Emergence of Tech-Prep at the State and Local Levels - 1995

High School Graduation

Graduating from high school can be an intermediate or "exit" outcome. For most Tech-Prep participants, high school graduation represents a mid-way point in their program of study. For others, it may mark the end of their education--at least temporarily--either because of financial constraints or career goals that do not require postsecondary education.

Counts of Tech-Prep high school graduates can be affected by several factors. Many consortia have not defined what it means to participate in Tech-Prep and thus cannot identify participants and their outcomes, either because they are still in an early stage of development or because they have chosen not to implement Tech-Prep as a distinct program with identified participants. Some consortia could identify Tech-Prep students but none were yet in the 12th grade during the school year for which we were collecting data--SY 1992-1993. Some consortia could not report Tech-Prep participation because they lacked the resources to assemble data from all the relevant sources.

The ability to count Tech-Prep high school graduates is relatively recent

Most consortia that have graduated Tech-Prep students from high school have begun to do so only recently. A total of 114 consortia (16 percent of all consortia) reported that at least one of their member districts graduated Tech-Prep students from high school in spring 1993. Of these 114 consortia, 94 could actually report the number of Tech-Prep high school graduates. Districts in 66 of the 94 consortia (70 percent) had graduated students defined as in Tech-Prep for the first time in spring 1993.

Some consortia have been developing Tech-Prep for some time and reported that Tech-Prep students began graduating from high school before the consortia had received their first Title IIIE grant. Fourteen of the 94 consortia with Tech-Prep high school graduates reported beginning to graduate students before receiving their first grant. These consortia probably had some kind of program or component of Tech-Prep in place before Title IIIE funds were awarded. This finding confirms research indicating that districts awarded Title IIIE grants in the early years of the federal program were more likely to have begun already to implement Tech-Prep (see Chapter VII; NAVE 1994). Because most grants to consortia were awarded on a competitive basis, it is not surprising that consortia receiving early grants would have been most advanced.

Reporting of outcomes reflects the fact that implementation is occurring in stages in most consortia. Among the consortia that reported having graduated Tech-Prep students in spring 1993, graduating students came from only about half of member districts.

Tech-Prep high school graduates have had diverse program experiences

Consortia with Tech-Prep high school graduates have different definitions for participation and for their core programs. Twenty-three of the 94 consortia that reported the number of graduates (about 25 percent) did not have a consortium-wide definition of participation. Of the other 71 consortia, 39 include completion of vocational and applied academic course work in their definition; 17 of these use a definition of participation that is similar to the Hull and Parnell model, in which a student chooses to be in Tech-Prep, develops a four- or six-year educational plan, and takes both applied academic and vocational courses.

Consortia have reported more than 12,000 Tech-Prep high school graduates

A relatively large number of Tech-Prep students graduated from high school in the small number of consortia reporting data on spring 1993 graduates. The 94 consortia reported a total of 12,265 Tech-Prep seniors graduating from high school in spring 1993, an average of 130 Tech-Prep students per consortium that reported graduates.

The number of Tech-Prep high school graduates varied widely across states. Consortia in 11 states had more than 500 reported Tech-Prep graduates, whereas those in 19 states reported no Tech-Prep graduates in spring 1993. Small numbers of graduates were reported in other states, usually by a single consortium in that state.

A majority of 12th-grade students who are defined as in Tech-Prep graduate from high school. The 12,265 spring 1993 graduates represent 64 percent of the Tech-Prep high school seniors reported in the 94 consortia for school year 1992-1993. This computed percentage is a lower-bound estimate, however. Consortium coordinators could report counts of Tech-Prep high school graduates for only 364 of the 417 districts for which they could report counts of Tech-Prep participants. The 64 percent is an accurate estimate of the proportion of Tech-Prep seniors that graduate from high school only if we assume that the 53 non-reporting districts did not have any Tech-Prep graduates. However, it is likely that many of these non-reporting districts with Tech-Prep participants graduated Tech-Prep seniors since, nationally, more than 90 percent of all seniors graduate.2 Consortium coordinators may simply have been unable to collect data on graduates for those 53 districts.

A better estimate of the proportion of Tech-Prep seniors that graduated from high school would include some measure of the number of graduates in districts that could not report them, but could report the number of seniors. One adjusted estimate is 74 percent.3 This estimate assumes that the 53 non-reporting districts had the same number of graduates, on average, as the 364 reporting districts. However, if reporting districts had fewer graduates than non-reporting districts, the adjusted measure is too low. It seems likely that smaller districts would be better able to track and report on Tech-Prep students' progress; thus, the computed 74 percent may still not be an upper bound estimate of the proportion of Tech-Prep seniors that graduated from high school. Data from the national survey do not allow us to compute a more precise measure.

The estimated rate at which Tech-Prep seniors graduated from high school varies with metropolitan status. A much lower proportion of 12th-grade Tech-Prep students in urban consortia than in suburban or rural consortia were reported to have graduated. This difference may arise because Tech-Prep participants in urban consortia are more likely to be economically or educationally disadvantaged.

2 This figure was computed using ED-INFO data on the number of 12th-grade students and the number of regular diploma graduates.

3 This figure was computed by dividing the computed proportion--64 percent--by the proportion of districts that could report on graduation (364 of 417, or 87 percent).
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