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The following provides an overview of the Business and Education Partnership (BEP) Cooperative as a promising partnership. The BEP successfully institutionalized all activities and relationships. Some of the activities receiving only summary treatment below are thoroughly described earlier in this document as promising practices. This project also is included because it was developed with an eye to providing a model for replication. Staff, therefore, are able to disseminate handbooks, materials, and curricula related to various project activities. They also have experience in providing workshops and in-services related to many of the project efforts, and have experience with a broad array of pertinent staff development training.
The BEP was a promising partnership addressing the transition from school to adult responsibility. Partnership staff consciously developed this project as a model that could be replicated by other agencies.
The BEP served students in an economically depressed, metropolitan area of Los Angeles County. The student population consisted of educationally and economically disadvantaged high school students who were placed at risk, and included the non-college bound gifted and talented, potential dropouts, pregnant and parenting teens, and special education students. This project encompassed: vocational, academic, and curriculum-based assessment; career guidance; specialized tutoring, mentoring, and job coaching; individualized academic skills development; personalized job-specific skills development; and supportive services. It also provided opportunities to continue a program of education after graduation through 2+2 and 2+2+2 articulations. The goal was to increase high school completion rates and ensure successful transition to employment or further education.
The partnership was managed by the East San Gabriel Valley Regional Occupational Program (ROP) and included businesses, community organizations, a technical college, two state universities, the National Council on Aging (NCOA), and a Rehabilitation Training Center. BEP was partnered with the Employment Development Department, the Department of Rehabilitation, the Department of Health, local police, the Los Angeles County Library, and the local Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA).
Approximately 2,400 students participated in the BEP, tech prep, school-to-work, and integration of academic and vocational learning projects. Nineteen hundred and thirty-six of those students were placed in occupations leading to career advancement positions. More than 300 participating businesses provided volunteer tutor and mentor support, job coaches, and job placement. Sixteen hundred and fifty students continued their education either at the community college level or at the four-year university level. Three hundred and thirty-six students secured employment that led to management responsibility.
The average dropout rate across participating high schools was 26 percent and reached 55 percent in some schools. In contrast, the dropout rate among project participants was only 5 percent. Further, 95 percent of the students completing the program and taking full-time jobs remained successfully employed beyond the 90-day follow-up period.
The partnership was recognized by funding agents as successful. Impact measures verified these perceptions. Questions remain: Can others follow the same process? How was this partnership implemented so successfully? The following describes how the BEP exemplified the guidelines for developing successful partnerships.
Participants understood their roles and responsibilities. Partnerships often neglect to educate parents and guardians fully about the new activities in which their children are going to participate. In some partnerships, this led to the parent undervaluing the activity and failing to support the child's efforts. BEP involved the parents and required their informed consent. Students and their parents or guardians attended orientation meetings to learn about the partnership, understand the guidelines for participation, and review individual student goals. Parents were given a letter explaining the partnership and requesting their signature denoting support. Students were given a participation agreement, which was explained to them in one-on-one meetings with partnership staff, and required their signature indicating participation.
The partnership held large quarterly meetings attended by staff and all partners, including representatives from each school district. Specific topics were addressed. Each partner also provided an update. One purpose was to reinforce project objectives and clarify partner roles. Another was to monitor progress. A third was to be able to identify and cope with problems as they arose. Smaller subgroup meetings were held weekly.
Partnership staff included coordinators, who oversaw particular components of the project, acting as recruiters, consultants, liaisons, or monitors. They were the guidance and assessment specialist, the job placement and career assessment technician, the partnership project coordinator (who recruited business partners, and monitored business participation and student job-site activities), the at-risk student liaison (who monitored students in vocational courses), and the articulation specialist (who negotiated and obtained signed articulation agreements with partner institutions). Partnership staff responsible for particular project components met weekly.
Student services were individualized, formal assessments were conducted, and commitments were formalized. School-to-work transition projects often serve diverse student populations with varying social and academic needs. Quite often this population has a disproportionate number of troubled youth or youth placed at risk who require different kinds and amounts of support. Too often these populations are provided with undifferentiated treatment. The individualization of participant experience contributed to this partnership's success. This was time consuming and required significant preparation. Activities had to be individualized before the student was enrolled and official participation could begin. Backlogs in the first year taught the BEP to design survey and assessment forms that could be scanned by computer for easier entry into a student database and for speedier analysis. The assessment process is described below.
After enrollment, but prior to official participation, there was a 3-5 day preparation period in which the student was assessed and participation plans were defined.
Within 15 days of enrollment, participants completed an in-depth vocational and basic skills assessment including a school performance and educational goals questionnaire and an employability skills and career interest survey. High school counselors were provided with these results. In addition, the assessment process and types of results were discussed in the classroom to facilitate student understanding. Most students could work with staff to build a Personal Career and Education Plan (PCEP) at this point. However, some received a second level of assessment, including aptitude testing and basic academic skills testing, prior to developing a PCEP.
Within 15-20 days of the assessment, a PCEP was developed. BEP staff solicited input from business and agency partners. Then, students met individually with the BEP vocational assessor, the high school counselor, and a parent or guardian to develop their PCEP. The PCEP embodied a set of strategies matched to individual client needs. PCEPs detailed planned coursework, specific learning activities, possible work site or community experiences, tutoring assistance, job coaching, home-to-school or home-to-tutoring transportation, infant and child care, and postsecondary options, including college articulation and career goals. The plan was signed by the student, a parent or guardian, and a partnership staff member. The signed PCEP served as a performance contract.
Students began participation within five days of signing the PCEP. Each learning plan consisted of some combination of the following: specific job skills training in vocational courses, job shadowing (student visits to job sites), job coaching (on-the-job training), work experience (part time, monitored employment), employability skills instruction, basic skills instruction, general equivalent diploma preparation, and completion of high school coursework. Support services also were assigned at this time and could have included such servicing as peer tutoring and mentoring, job site tutoring and mentoring, community-based literacy tutoring, transportation, and day care.
Formal ongoing feedback and monitoring procedures were in place. The provision of ongoing support to participants carrying out new activities is one crucial element in successfully implementing and maintaining a partnership. Another important element is the willingness to confront and cope with problems. Linked to this is the need to engage in evaluation and adaptive planning. All three elements rely on some form of information gathering or monitoring. Without adequate feedback and response loops, needs might go unrecognized or might not be addressed in a timely fashion.
Without an appropriate monitoring system, problems that might be addressed easily could grow to unmanageable proportions, alienating participants, diminishing partner commitments, and ultimately defeating project goals. Ongoing monitoring is particularly important in partnership projects that include service delivery to clients perceived as potentially problematic, as with BEP. Consequently, BEP staff included positions with ongoing monitoring responsibilities. "At-risk student liaisons" were an example of such positions.
Partnership staff included at-risk student liaisons, who monitored and assessed student progress. In addition, they acted as a resource for partnership instructors, who might have contacted them directly or by completing a referral form delineating problem areas where assistance was needed. Liaisons arranged for counseling, tutoring, mentoring, and job placement. Students with PCEPs that included part-time jobs were monitored to ensure the placement provided a viable learning experience. Ongoing monitoring at the job site also communicated to business partners that working with this student population constituted less of a risk than they might have anticipated.
Monthly meetings between local high school counselors and the partnership staff helped to facilitate school-partnership interaction and involved the counselors in the monitoring system. Specific student problems were discussed at these meetings.
Student follow-ups were conducted 30 and 90 days after they left the program. This enabled project staff to ascertain whether job placements and higher education experiences were appropriate and were adequately prepared for. Counseling, including offers of student reassignment, might have resulted. Follow-up also allowed the partnership to make retrospective assessments of the partnership's preparatory and support services fit with subsequent jobs and higher education coursework.
Finally, the local evaluation was extensive and included participant outcome data tied to particular project goals.
Support was provided to those charged with carrying out partnership activities. It was crucial to provide support to participants expected to change behavior or take on new roles in partnership activities. Further, support was most effective when it was ongoing and could help staff meet challenges as they arose. Instructors and staff were familiar with their specific tasks; however, working with such a diverse population of at-risk and often troubled and problematic youth is always challenging. The monitoring and feedback loops described above represented one form of ongoing support. The partnership also provided ongoing in-services.
The partnership devoted a staff development committee to the task of keeping abreast of in-service needs. Ongoing staff development was provided for large and small groups. In-services included "Effective Interventions for Working With At-Risk Students," "Working With Students Belonging to Gangs," "Interpreting Student Assessment Results for Parents and Students," "Working With High School Personnel Interfacing With the Partnership," and others.
Another means of providing support was through specialized training opportunities. Staff and volunteers in the BEP had a variety of such training opportunities. Following is a description of three training opportunities:
Partnership goals were integrated well with the responsibilities of the established organization administering the partnership. The multidistrict ROP administered the BEP. This facilitated the activities of the project for several reasons.
First, ROP staff already had long-standing relationships with area high schools, community-based organizations, social service agencies, and local businesses and colleges. Although many partnerships may not have access to such a well-developed network, the key is to build on already established connections. Sustained commitment from participating partners may rely, in part, on the strength of the relationship between the partnership staff and the partner organization. Partnerships that are formed entirely among individuals without any previous ties often dissolve before partnership activities are fully implemented. This is less likely to occur where partners share a common history. Also, key partners may be brought to the table more easily and may bring others as well.
Second, ROP staff already worked with a student population that included the partnership's target group. The more closely aligned the partnership staff roles are to extant job responsibilities, the less burdensome the additional partnership tasks are likely to be. For example, a business partner engaged in job coaching or job site mentoring does not need to adjust to wholly new environments in entirely unfamiliar roles to aid in tasks for which she or he has little direct experience. However, the opposite is true of, for example, business partners engaged in curriculum development tasks in educational settings. In addition, sustained partner commitment is most probable when partnership roles become the means whereby participants may fulfill responsibilities they already hold, but previously have pursued through other means. For example, enrollment officers in two-year colleges might have encouraged articulation agreements with the BEP as a means of fulfilling recruitment responsibilities and drawing on particularly suitable candidates. Businesses participating in the job coaching, mentoring, and tutoring might have seen participating in the partnership as fulfilling their own human resources responsibilities. Vocational education teachers might have seen participation in the partnership as providing a means of better serving their students while receiving better support.
Third, the ROP as an established organization had clerical and accounting personnel, office equipment, and other daily operations support already in place that could be drawn upon by the partnership because partnership activities helped fulfill the ROP mission. This reduced external funding and initial equipment needs.
The BEP addressed real problems. It was important that partners not only had suitable roles, but that they agreed on the value of the activity and the need to address the identified issues. Sometimes partnerships are formed or programs are undertaken merely to attract funding. Such opportunism does not generate sustained interest or inspire committed effort. Consequently, this is generally an unstable foundation on which to build partnerships and seldom results in fully implemented projects with worthwhile outcomes. Much more likely to succeed are partnerships where participants commonly recognize the problem or goal.
This partnership operated in a depressed working class area plagued by youthful violence, teen pregnancy, and unemployment. The high local dropout rate is generally considered to be a contributing factor. As a result, partners agreed that the dropout rate should be decreased and that young adults should be better prepared to compete for jobs. The ROP was charged with serving various special needs students in this context. It has long-standing relationships with businesses and colleges pertinent to teen occupational education, training, and placement. Thus, partners shared the perception that something needed to be done to make these young people more employable, to increase their attachment to school, and to ultimately provide them with opportunities to live responsible adult lives.
On specific activities. This document includes descriptions of three Business/Education Partnership Cooperative project activities. These can be found among the promising practices cited. Business recruitment practices for a school-to-work transition project are described in Section III, Initiating Activities. The peer tutoring/mentoring activity is described in Section V, Student Support Services, as is business partner recruitment. Also helpful is a description of the 2+2 and 2+2+2 articulations, discussed in Section VI, School-to-Work Transition. Project materials providing replication guidelines may be available from the contact person.
The following publications are available: Non-Traditional Assessment Strategies and Guidance Handbook: With an Emphasis on Career Preparation.
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