Raising the Educational Achievement of Secondary School Students - Volume 1 Summary of Promising Practices - 1995

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

Linking Schools to the Future

One of the primary functions of secondary education is to prepare students to function as informed and productive citizens. Students should graduate as skilled learners, able to continue their education in college, technical school, or work-based programs and acquire the skills they need to achieve their adult goals. To help students make the transition from secondary school to adult life, many schools have developed specialized school-to-work programs. These programs include a school-based component integrating academic and vocational coursework and a work-based component providing an overview of the opportunities, rewards, and demands of real jobs.

Inaugurating school-to-work programs can stimulate systemic reform of secondary schools because making the programs effective poses challenges to traditional school arrangements. Developing a high-quality, school-based component for a school-to-work program requires that schools upgrade the low-track academic classes often associated with vocational programs. Developing a productive work-based component requires new approaches to learning that take advantage of opportunities for motivation and discipline offered in the workplace. Some advocates of secondary school reform hold that trying to develop work-based components without reforming the high school curriculum as a whole creates two serious problems. On the one hand, schools might adopt program designs with low admission standards that attract only low achieving students, thus dooming the programs by relegating them to low-track status. On the other hand, schools might invent challenging programs with selective admissions requirements that only the ablest students can meet while doing nothing to bring interested lower-track students up to the standard.

For school-to-work programs to serve all students--including those now trapped in lower tracks--they must help transform the entire high school. Many schools that have succeeded in making such a transformation have built whole-school or school-within-a-school programs around one or more occupational focuses. Some have opened career academies; others have chosen a limited array of vocational programs; and still others have distributed vocational programs among schools in their district so that each has a single concentration in addition to the core program. The occupational focus of the schools facilitates the connection to work-based learning and improves overall effectiveness by generating clearer missions, more contextualized instruction, and, often, smaller, more personalized student grouping arrangements. Schools achieving successful transformations that choose to emphasize a broad cluster of related occupations--including highly skilled occupations and related high-level academic competencies--offer substantively challenging content and a variety of career options, ranging from those requiring further formal education to those providing employment immediately after high school graduation.

School-to-Work Programs

The new School-to-Work Opportunities Act calls for local programs with the following three components:

Work-based experiences are designed to reinforce and supplement concepts learned in class and are directly related to possible career paths. Strong linkages between school and work components reinforce the lessons of each. The results may include improved career guidance; more effective preparation for job-hunting; cultivating appropriate attitudes, behaviors, and expectations about employment; and explicit and useful explanations of the relationship between schoolwork and the demands of adult life. Students participating in school-to-work programs say that the experience is helpful because many of the hands-on activities apply directly to the work world. Furthermore, students report that the applied classes are more interesting than regular classes and that their teachers and classmates are more supportive than others outside the program.

Several program models have proven successful in recent years.

Tech Prep

Tech Prep programs are sometimes called "two plus two" programs because they connect the last two years of high school with two years of postsecondary education. They involve high schools, community or technical colleges, and sometimes employers. A typical Tech Prep curriculum enhances academic courses by focusing on applications of mathematics, science, and communications in the occupational area. Academic experience is often coupled with opportunities for work experience, although students receive most of their training in the classroom. Tech Prep training features a significant amount of hands-on and problem-solving activities in the technical field of concentration. Administered by the U.S. Department of Education, the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Act of 1990 provides states with targeted funding for Tech Prep.

For example, students in the Tech Prep program at Liberty High School in Liberty, South Carolina, take career-related courses at both the school and the district's career center. At the school, students take courses similar to their peers' but with a particular emphasis on workplace skills. The district's career center supplements the curriculum with two-year courses in specific fields, including agricultural mechanics, business management, computer electronics, cosmetology, and graphic communications.

Youth Apprenticeship

Youth apprenticeships also involve secondary and (sometimes) postsecondary education and work-based experiences. However, in youth apprenticeships the emphasis is on employer-provided training. During their work experience, participants are paid for their work and monitored by a skilled professional at the job site. A typical youth apprenticeship program also involves classroom instruction tailored to and building on the job experience. Youth apprenticeships sometimes encourage students to take advanced studies both academic and technical. Students see an immediate cause and effect: if they take the prerequisite courses, they can qualify for an apprenticeship that provides an income and eventual eligibility for a skilled job. In career-oriented programs, students benefit from first participating in related academic experiences before tackling a youth apprenticeship program. A solid academic foundation supports success in the job placement.

Youth apprenticeship and Tech Prep programs sometimes work in tandem. For instance, Liberty High School's Tech Prep program has a youth apprenticeship component. Three-year apprenticeships are available for advanced vocational students in four fields, beginning in the senior year. Students take classes at the high school and technical college to earn their associate degree while also working 20 hours a week at a local business.

Career Academies

Career academies, which may use a school-within-a-school model, focus on a specific career field, such as health or finance, usually chosen because it presents good employment opportunities in the local market. Academies often receive significant public and private (e.g., corporate) funding beyond the regular school budget. By design, private sector partners participate in academies' management and policy making.

Most academies recruit students to join their program, and students typically apply to participate. Academies may serve a wide range of students, including those at risk of school failure and those who are college bound. Student cohorts stay with the same teachers over an extended period of time, often for several years throughout high school. With common planning periods, teachers are able to organize interrelated, team-taught lessons that flow from one year to the next.

Supplemented with training at the workplace, academies offer curricula that integrate career topics with applied, hands-on activities and rigorous academic courses. In California, where the academy model is widespread, students take four classes a semester with their cohort; generally, three courses are academic and one is technical. The academy curriculum prepares students for immediate employment after graduation, but it is sufficiently rigorous that they may enroll in postsecondary schooling, if they choose.

Some academies are physically attached to regular high schools, and others are housed in separate units, usually close to the targeted business or field, for ease of access to employment-related facilities (e.g., a hospital laboratory or restaurant kitchen).

Philadelphia founded the nation's first career academy in 1969, and now the school district sponsors academies in nine fields: business, health care, environmental technology, electrical science, automotive science, fitness and health promotion, horticulture, law and public administration, and the hospitality industry. Operating as schools-within-schools, these academies serve about 4,300 students, most of whom are disadvantaged, minority inner-city youth with low prior achievement.

Each academy is an independent corporation governed by its own board of directors. Philadelphia High School Academies, Inc., an independent organization representing a collaborative of local businesses, manages the academies. In addition to contributing $1.5 million each year, these businesses provide technical expertise for planning, developing, and refining the academy programs, and they offer academy students career exposure through site visits, speakers, and after-school, summer, and post-graduation work experiences. A prescribed sequence of academic and technical classes relates academic coursework to the career focus.

After more than 20 years in operation, the Philadelphia academies boast a 90 percent-plus average daily attendance rate, a student dropout rate of less than 4 percent, more than 90 percent employment after graduation, and high postsecondary enrollment rates.

Career Exploration

For schools successful at linking schooling to the future, exposing students to careers and postsecondary education options is an important part of their mission. They arrange experiences that are exploratory, including both in- and out-of-class learning and involving members of the business and higher education communities. Among their career awareness activities are field trips to workplaces, job shadowing programs, and career days. To broaden their awareness of formal postsecondary education options, schools hold classes on college campuses, use college tutors for remedial or enrichment activities, and offer college-prep classes that challenge students to reach their highest potential. They typically begin career and postsecondary education exploration programs in the middle grades. As the students progress through high school, these exploration activities accommodate individual preferences and talents.

College Prep Programs and Support to Attend College

Seattle Middle College High School, the Urban Collaborative Accelerated Program, and Thurgood Marshall Middle School in Lynn, Massachusetts, are among the schools profiled in the companion volume to this idea book that act on their conviction that introducing students to an array of postsecondary educational options is important. They expand students' visions to include formal schooling after the twelfth grade and encourage them to continue their education. Many create a climate of lofty academic ambitions by raising standards, eliminating the general track, and challenging students to explore increasingly complex learning opportunities. Some schools have discovered that enabling dropouts and potential dropouts to succeed in advanced classes generates and sustains students' belief that they can and should pursue postsecondary education.

For students from disadvantaged backgrounds, enrolling in college prep classes and performing well in them are only the beginning in raising educational attainment. In some cases they must also deal with deep-rooted family and cultural expectations that they will obtain a job immediately after high school graduation--if not before--and in other ways assume more adult responsibility for family welfare. Schools can help students and their families find ways to make the long-term investment in higher education while preserving important family values.

Tuba City High School on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona has used outside funding, first from Macy's Ventures in Education program and now from RJR Nabisco's Next Century project, to help its community cope with the tension between the familiar and the new demands of contemporary education. A dedicated and stable core group of faculty members--about half of whom are Native Americans from the community--have worked with students and their families over the past decade to make significant structural changes in the school. They have developed and implemented rigorous academic courses that require a significant amount of homework and extended hours of the school day, holding some classes on weekends and during the summer to help students meet high standards. These changes have implications for everyday life on the reservation. Although town-dwellers live in modern homes, others live in camps in the high desert, where daily chores include hauling water, cooking and heating with wood, and using other time-consuming, resource-extending practices. Furthermore, homesteads are far-flung, and many families rely on traditional, labor-intensive enterprises for part or all of their income. Students' commitment to schoolwork in grades K-12 and their ambitions to go to college may have a profound impact on their families. At Tuba City High, faculty, students, and parents have a long history of balancing the opportunities associated with school attainment with other values important to the community.

Now in its fourth year, projects of Ventures in Education, sponsored by the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, involve more than 30,000 students in grades K-12 at about 70 schools in eight states and the District of Columbia. Projects target economically disadvantaged students--more than 70 percent of the participants are African American, Hispanic, or Native American. Ventures projects support these students in tackling a rigorous curriculum emphasizing mathematics and science. Students take four years each of English, mathematics, science, and social studies and at least two years of a foreign language. Supporting elements are Advanced Placement courses, summer workshops, longer school days, and postsecondary school guidance. Staff development workshops offered twice a year extend teachers' skill in using approaches such as problem-based learning, cooperative learning, and hands-on activities, and in helping students prepare for standardized tests.

By 1993, nearly 90 percent of the 3,000 graduates from Ventures projects had enrolled in four-year colleges. Forty percent of these students are pursuing college degrees or careers in mathematics and science.

Once they have met the requirements for admission to postsecondary programs, students from disadvantaged backgrounds typically find the costs prohibitive, especially in light of their need to defer full-time employment. Families with little college-going experience may not know how to take advantage of resources available to low-income students or how to help them prepare successful college applications. A program coordinator at the Socorro High School for the Health Professions commented, "Many of these students come from homes where neither parent has a high school education. These parents aren't able to help them fill out college applications or compile portfolios of their work. . . . A lot of this program is really about just taking someone by the hand and showing him or her how to make the system work for them."

The Ohio Department of Education, the city of Columbus, and several local universities, colleges, corporations, and associations collaborate to support "I Know I Can," a program to help public school students apply for college admission and financial aid. More than half of the students served by the program come from homes where the family income is less than $24,000 a year; more than half are minorities and the first in their family to attend college.

Now in its sixth year, "I Know I Can" has four major elements. First, 200 trained volunteers run a daytime advising program in 17 city high schools. They discuss options and goals for college participation with students and their parents, assist them in preparing applications for admissions and financial aid, and help them interpret results from the forms they submit. Second, the program awards "Last Dollar Grants" based on needs unmet by financial aid packages. About 1,400 students have received grants so far. Third, the program sponsors one-week summer camps on college campuses to introduce middle and high school students to the possibilities there. Finally, "I Know I Can" runs PSAT test preparation classes to help students raise their scores. In a special "I Know I Can" project, students attending one school annually visit two colleges, attend college fairs, and participate in Alumni Day to see what their peers have done with further education.

Support from "I Know I Can" is credited with raising the college acceptance rate in one school from 28 percent to 63 percent in a short period and with increasing fourfold the number of students taking the PSAT. The program has reached more than half of the district's high school seniors. Speaking about the program, one former participant said, "You're surrounded by people who want to be educated. They make you want to study."

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