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The school-to-work partnerships we evaluated all provided participating students with work-site experiences such as job shadows and paid or unpaid internships of varying duration. Other than this, projects differed significantly. For example, in an attempt to influence teaching practice, one project included paid private-sector internships for high school teachers in relevant content areas. The goal was to increase work application relevance in science and math instruction. Some projects provided career awareness speakers or events. Others had job shadowing or internship experiences that included formal counseling or mentoring to delineate training and educational needs for career paths associated with the job experience. Still others had more formal structures for creating career paths such as "tech-prep" or "2+2" programs, articulating high school and postsecondary work.
The following descriptions provide examples of five successfully implemented school-to-work activities for both middle and high school students. Career-related awareness, skills, experience, and educational paths are illustrated.
Articulation agreements between a Regional Occupational Program (ROP) center and local colleges and universities allowed students to take vocational training courses for college credit. Articulation agreements covered a broad range of coursework from computer-aided drafting to fashion and merchandising. Ninety-seven percent of the students in articulated classes remained in school, and many went on to college.
At the end of the project, 300 articulation agreements were in place. Local evaluation data indicated that articulation agreements allowing students to earn college credit for high school classes was one reason students remained in school. The high school retention rate of students in the articulated classes was 97 percent. Participants could enter college as second semester freshmen, as participants earned up to 15 college credits by high school graduation. The project established an annual scholarship program with a local university from which six of the students earned university scholarships to complete their training. Further, although the depressed local economy affected job opportunities in the service area, 84 percent of these vocationally trained students were placed in jobs.
The Business and Education Partnership (BEP) Cooperative provided vocational, academic, and support services to at-risk students in a metropolitan area of Los Angeles. Partnership goals were to increase high school completion rates and ensure successful transition to employment or further education. Partners included a multidistrict ROP, four community and technical colleges, five state universities, and national, state, and community agencies. A promising practice in this partnership was the development of articulation agreements between the ROP and academic and technical colleges and universities, so students taking vocational education courses through the ROP earned both high school and college credits. The ability to earn college credits while completing a high school vocational program provided these students with additional incentives to graduate and go on to career-ladder jobs or college.
The process of forging articulation agreements involved an in-depth analysis of the proposed course curriculum. ROP and college curriculum specialists compared course demands to ensure equivalency at the different institutions, often resulting in revisions that made curricula more relevant to the workplace. Articulation agreements could have been made independently from student demand, as articulated courses needed to have a logical and apparent relationship to higher education. Articulated courses, however, had more credibility than nonarticulated courses.
The articulations were designed to be combined ROP/community college and combined ROP/community college/four-year college programs. In the former, called a 2+2 program, students completed two years of ROP training with articulated courses, and two years at a community college, receiving college credits for some vocational work completed in high school. In the latter, or 2+2+2 programs, the student's career path included transfer to a four-year institution from the community college with articulation credits. Articulated courses included: automotive, business, computer technology, law enforcement, apparel/marketing merchandising, floral, graphic arts, guidance and tutor training, job coaching, and retail sales.
A staff member, the articulation specialist, had primary responsibility for negotiating articulation agreements. This individual built credibility by: (a) presenting articulation models at regional and national conferences; (b) working closely with the business community to ensure that course equipment and focus were up-to-date and relevant and to show local businesses that this was true; (c) serving as a member of a local community college committee on articulations; and (d) working closely with local colleges and universities to negotiate criteria and to diminish problematic "turf" and competition issues.
Two other features enhanced the success and promise of this project's articulation practices. First, the signed articulation agreements with each college participating in the partnership included provisions for follow-up and support services for students after college entry. This ensured continuity as well as helped meet the needs of these at-risk students. Second, articulated courses often led to college credit in more than one area. Although an integrated curriculum frequently is part of the vocational courses in tech-prep programs, students do not always earn credit for more than the specified vocational areas. The BEP articulated courses, however, included embedded math and English components. For example, a student earning college credits in construction while completing high school could simultaneously earn college credits for applied math through these construction courses.
This partnership was housed and integrated into the operations of an ROP serving secondary school students in a multidistrict area. The surrounding area is a working-class community on the outskirts of Los Angeles. The ROP serves a diverse student body, including potential dropouts and parenting teens, whom may have one or more social or behavior problems. Many students come from poor, high-crime neighborhoods filled with alcohol and other drug use, family violence, and gang activity. Students enrolling in the ROP's vocational programs often were undermotivated with relatively high probabilities of dropping out. The success of the articulation program in enrolling, retaining, and transferring or placing these students into work, colleges, or universities under these conditions indicates the promise of this practice for other settings.
In addition to federal funding, the partnership won several federal grants including an Employment Department Job Training Partnership Act grant, a Perkins Tech-Prep grant, a School-to-Work Transition grant, and a grant to Demonstrate the Integration of Vocational Learning. These awards added credibility and provided additional leverage in negotiations for articulation agreements. Local community colleges also received funding for tech-prep program development, which provided incentives for their involvement in the 2+2 articulations. These funding opportunities may have increased the likelihood of securing articulation agreements.
The articulation agreement forms are available for replication. A written guideline is available entitled, TECH PREP: What, When and How.
Non-college bound seniors participated in summer training institutes for job readiness and job search skills. Parent and student orientation were provided prior to each three-day institute, as well as follow-up one-day student workshops during the school year. Students responded positively, continuing on in a job shadowing program sponsored by this school-to-work transition project and attributing later success in job hunting to participation in the institute.
Twenty-seven high school seniors participated in summer training sessions in job readiness and job search skills. All students continued on in a job shadowing program the following year. Students surveyed believed the workshops helped them acquire job skills and met their expectations for learning job search skills. Students who found employment after the institute attributed their success in job hunting to participation in the institute. Additionally, students reported increased confidence in handling the college application process.
The Omaha Job Clearinghouse (OJC) was a school-to-work transition project whose primary partners were the local public schools, community college, and Chamber of Commerce. Project objectives were to increase the skill level of the unskilled labor pool made up of non-college bound students and to raise their expectations to career-ladder jobs, or jobs requiring additional education and training. The project provided multiple job shadowing experiences for each participating student, ongoing job readiness workshops during the school year, and an annual Summer Skills Institute. All Omaha public high schools participated.
The Summer Skills Institute was designed to support student readiness for job shadowing and entry into the work force. The institute consisted of a brief orientation session for students and their parents, followed by three full-day student sessions. The orientation workshop focused on self-esteem, the value of work, and interviewing strategies. The institute presented a variety of self-esteem, self-presentation, and job search and interview strategies with an emphasis on role-playing and practicing newly acquired skills. The culminating activity was an opportunity to interact with a panel of businesspersons and participate in an individual interview. The institute was taught by an outside consultant with experience in conducting these types of seminars. Student response was positive and all of the participants continued on in the program as job shadowing students. The interviewing activities were liked best, but students also believed that the institute helped them acquire job skills and job search skills. Although students were given a monetary incentive for participation, several students commented that they would have participated even if they had not been paid.
As a follow-up to the institute, full-day Saturday workshops were provided during the school year. The first two workshops focused on networking in the job market and the third concerned job search strategies. Students were required to attend whether or not they had participated in the institute. Because less than one quarter of the job shadowing students attended the institute, this allowed more students the opportunity for training before they participated in the job shadowing component.
Workshops were offered individually, rather than as a series, with the capacity to serve 30 students. Staff members arranged transportation for the students to attend the workshops.
The Summer Skills Institute and follow-up workshops provided job readiness and job-seeking training for students. Participating businesses indicated satisfaction with the job readiness skills of students in OJC. Participation in the institute helped prepare students for job shadowing and job retention, as well as eventually smoothing their transition from school to work. The OJC was extremely successful in placing students into jobs; all students seeking employment after completing the program in 1992 were placed in jobs.
Prior to the partnership, an economic development study commissioned by the local Chamber of Commerce suggested that inadequacies in work-related education contributed to the lack of economic development opportunities. The project was shaped in direct response to the findings of this study. Businesses were concerned with enhancing the work force, and colleges were motivated to increase the number of students seeking a postsecondary education. These concerns were viewed as vital to maintaining and improving the city's economic development. Although not all cities were focused on economic development, the need to enhance entry-level skills and general job readiness among first-time job seekers has been expressed commonly in all economic environments. This would indicate the promise of this approach in other contexts.
A secondary motive was the communitywide desire to keep young people from leaving the area; this contributed to local commitment to the partnership. The local Chamber of Commerce also credited the national attention focusing on school-to-work transition programs as a significant factor in partner commitment.
Information on devising similar contracts with local agencies is available.
The Job Shadow Program helped middle school students improve job readiness skills and assisted local small businesses to create linkages with their local public schools and neighborhood students. The program offered work experience and job readiness workshops and helped make school relevant to students at a pivotal time in their lives. Students also were given opportunities to visit job sites in order to build career awareness. The program expanded to other school districts. It partnered Brooklyn, NY's Community School District 15 with the South Brooklyn Local Development Corporation (SBLDC), a community-based organization (CBO) that works with over 600 blue-collar industrial plus 600 more retail small businesses scattered throughout the same neighborhoods.
The original program grew over four years to serve 12-60 students in the participating district. Many of the participating students believed they gained a new sense of self-confidence and responsibility from the program. The New York City Office of Business Services (a partner) helped to replicate the Job Shadow Program in four other districts. Further, in its contracts with local development corporations, the Office of Business Services now includes clauses encouraging such linkages between local businesses and schools. The New York City Department of Youth Services now partially funds the SBLDC's Shadow Program. Additionally, the Shadow Program received national recognition and won funding from the U.S. Department of Education to help it develop a "how-to" kit and encourage replication in other neighborhoods. Two variations on the theme of the Job Shadow Program are being initiated in the district by the SBLDC.
Using the SBLDC's extensive relationships with the full spectrum of local small businesses, the Job Shadow Program provided middle school students with opportunities to work closely with real-life merchants, contractors, and industry tradespeople--making the connections between school and work from their own neighborhoods. The Brooklyn School and Business Alliance was a partnership among the Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation, the South Brooklyn Developmental Corporation, the Methodist Hospital of Brooklyn, the Office of External Programs of the New York City Board of Education, and the New York City Office of Business Services. The project aimed to improve the prospects and employability of students and ensure a work force adequately educated and skilled enough to attract and retain both business and industry in Brooklyn.
School counselors have described middle school grades as "pivotal." They see this as the point at which students first start to lose interest in school. Job experience and reflection, as provided by the Job Shadow Program, were one means of reattaching students to school by demonstrating the relevance of education. Students were required to attend three workshops (job readiness and sharing session) prior to and while being placed in one of 60 participating businesses. The Job Shadow Program placed the middle school students into small local businesses, usually for a once-a-week, 12-15 week afterschool work experience. Each student was matched with an employee who oversaw the experience. Students also were required to keep a journal and to write an essay about their experience. The inclusion of the journal and essay assignments were important in tying the job shadow back to academic studies. This enabled students and teachers to reflect on the lessons learned at the business site and refocused students on the necessary accompaniment of academic learning.
The Job Shadow Program was co-coordinated by a teacher who worked with the SBLDC. The school district paid the SBLDC for these extra duties. The local small businesses were extremely receptive to this opportunity to serve a good cause in the community. The guidance counselors in each participating school selected the participants and offered important day-to-day support.
The SBLDC Job Shadow Program took place in a challenging environment characterized by poverty and unemployment. Although the area is economically depressed, some industries are thriving and growing. There are some employment opportunities with small- and medium-sized businesses; however, many applicants from the area were considered unemployable. It was relatively easy to secure one-to-one job shadow placements. Other similar areas with similar business profiles should find the project's success heartening. On the other hand, the support of major services and organizations was a boon to the project and might not be as easily obtained elsewhere. For example, the support of the school district and the partnership relationship it has with CBOs requires highly enlightened school boards and school administrations. The support of the Department of Business Services added an important endorsement from the city's Business Development office.
Job shadow "how-to" kits and videotapes are available.
The Scholars Program provided high school students with mentoring and real job experience through health care internships. This program directly supplemented occupational education, addressed the desired school-community link, and was particularly pertinent because the participating high school had a health care focus. The health care internship program was one aspect of a partnership project that used community and private sector resources to structure activities that complemented academic and occupational education for middle and high school students.
Approximately 200 students completed health care internships each year. Teachers reported observable increases in math and science study among participants, particularly among minority females. This increase was attributed to student experiences with role models in a hospital setting and to greater student awareness of the relationship between studying math and science and pursuing careers in health care.
Additionally, the hospital began to develop relationships with other schools. An independent study program with another high school provided health care workshops to local private schools. Hospital staff also made health care careers presentations at local middle schools. Students could have selected specialized high schools to attend, such as those with a health care focus, based on such presentations. The hospital became involved in local commissions and task forces working to improve health care curricula and promote health care careers among students.
The Brooklyn School and Business Alliance was a partnership among the Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation, the South Brooklyn Developmental Corporation, the Methodist Hospital of Brooklyn, the Office of External Programs of the New York City Public Schools, and the New York City Office of Business Development. The project aimed to improve the prospects and employability of students and ensure a work force adequately educated and skilled enough to attract and retain both business and industry in Brooklyn. The primary strategy of the project was to connect employers with middle and high school students and schools.
The health care internship program was located in the partner hospital's Department of Educational and Volunteer Services and was directed by the head of that department. Mentors were recruited from hospital staff voluntarily. Mentors were required to complete an orientation and were given program materials. Students then were placed with mentors who oversaw their volunteer work, as well as provided career planning advice. Mentors made students aware of opportunities to view various hospital demonstrations. Students learning English as a second language were placed in internships with mentors who spoke the students' native languages.
The program offered staff development to school counselors to increase awareness of math and science needs for various health care careers. A core group of mentors conducted the staff development sessions and provided ongoing technical assistance as resource persons for the high school. Formalizing this link between career experiences and academic requirements was an important component of the program. The counselors were unable to keep abreast of the rapidly changing details of academic preparation for every field of interest to their students. The mentors provided concrete, current information that was of great value to counselors and students. This enabled students early in their high school years to identify the relevance of math and science studies in pursuit of given careers, and was an ongoing resource support for the counselors.
The Brooklyn School and Business Alliance health care internships took place in an environment where other employment opportunities have diminished while health care employment needs have increased. There is an increasingly large immigrant population, and therefore an increasing number of students who were learning English as a second language. The majority of students were from poor or near-poor families, and the school dropout rate is high, as is the teen pregnancy rate. Although the area is economically depressed, the health services industry is growing. Employers were concerned about being able to recruit entry-level employees with sufficient training and education to cope with the increasingly technological nature of the health care industry. This situation provided a positive climate for soliciting hospital involvement in educational partnerships. As similar concerns have been expressed by employers in numerous fields about the technological and related math competencies of entry-level employees, successful strategies might include establishing partnerships with targeted growth industries that need workers with technological skills.
The orientation worksheets and program materials for mentors are available.
A business and instructional internship program was a pivotal point of overlap for a complex partnership incorporating three program components including dropout prevention, school-to-work transition, and increased minority college entrance and retention. To maintain meaningful connections between internships and potential career goals, students were placed in six- to eight-week internships that matched declared career interests. Students wrote papers and kept journals about their experience for course credit. Businesses were provided with sample curricula and training materials.
Eighty students completed the internship process to date. Required student papers and journals provided feedback for students and project staff. Students reported increases in self-esteem. They also reported having learned a great deal, considering they had very little practical business knowledge prior to the internships. Teachers also mentioned observing increases in student self-esteem and interest in school. Several of the participating businesses subsequently hired their interns.
The Massachusetts Youth Teenage Unemployment Reduction Network, Inc. (MY TURN) project was an alliance of public schools, institutions of higher education, corporations, and small businesses seeking to improve educational opportunities for disadvantaged young people. The MY TURN project director and a staff member managed the internship program. They recruited internship sites, introduced the student to the contact at the internship site, ascertain whether the employer developed an appropriate on-site curriculum, followed up with the employer during the internship, and ensured the employer formally evaluated the student and reviewed the evaluation with the student. This multistage involvement and tracking were important in controlling the quality of the experience, forestalling any frustration by providing an ongoing avenue of communication, and reinforcing the learning context of the experience for the student.
Students learned about the overall workings of a business by spending four to six hours each week training in a different area of the business (e.g., sales, human resources, shipping and receiving, telemarketing, billing, payroll). One or two sessions with the chief executive officer or a senior vice president also was included as a means of acquainting students with organizational philosophies and missions.
Students were required to keep a journal of their work experience. This was turned into their MY TURN advisor at the end of the internship. Student journal keeping was a developmental aid for participating students and project staff. First, journal keeping enabled students to trace their own gains in understanding across the course of the experience. It provided a means whereby students could process and reflect on their experience. Second, it provided more extensive feedback than might be obtained through follow-up surveys, allowing staff to pinpoint areas of failed expectation or inappropriate experience.
Students also were required to write a three- to five-page paper on their experience. The paper and the journal led to course credit for the internship, further motivating the student to succeed in the work-site endeavor and to learn from the experience.
The business point person was provided with a manual prior to any student contact. The manual includes sample curricula on which the firm could model the curriculum required as part of the student's internship experience. This was an important feature because it formalized an actual training component and focused the firm's commitment to teaching the student rather than just expecting the student to absorb what was needed through simple observation. The manual also provided student evaluation materials.
MY TURN was established in an economically depressed urban-suburban region without a large industrial base and without a history of school-business partnerships. Additionally, schools recently experienced a series of cutbacks. Establishing a similar internship program should be less challenging in sites with more business and industry, or with some history of school-business relationships upon which to build.
An extensive manual, Business/Education Internship Program, is available that includes the following information: guidelines and detailed liability information for businesses, student guidelines, applications, contracts, evaluation forms, and sample curricula designed to be adaptable to different business environments.
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[PartII: Section IV: Community Involvement]