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

Study of School-To-Work Initiatives
Cross-Site Analysis June 1995

CRITICAL ELEMENTS OF SCHOOL-TO-WORK REFORM

ELEMENT EIGHT: INTEGRATED CAREER INFORMATION & GUIDANCE SYSTEM

Another critical component for effective transition systems is the integration of career counseling into the system. In addition to career information, assessment, and guidance, many of these programs provide mentoring and personal counseling activities. These services are not appendages but essential components of the system. Services must be ongoing, and every student should have an individual educational and career plan that is regularly reviewed and updated.

One of the most important factors in the development of effective career counseling is that it is at the hub of the larger, student-centered school-to-work transition system. As part of the system, career counseling must link back into earlier grades; age- appropriate activities should start in elementary school. It is essential that the career counseling system be person-centered and integrated around the student. The special education system serves as a model, as an area of education in which state and federal education mandates have influenced the quality and depth of counseling and transition support services. To best serve each student, there must be multiple points at which counseling can occur, and it must be ongoing and consistently available to students. Equally important is the necessity that the school's counseling system tie into reliable, up-to-date labor market and job information sources.

School-to-work systems utilize a variety of delivery systems and roles which incorporate the above elements. Career counseling involves shared responsibility among counselors, teachers, parents, employers, and others such as rehabilitation counselors and job coaches. Some schools have chosen to redefine the roles of their counseling staff; others have created entirely new positions such as a transition specialist. The role of the transition specialist is to serve as a liaison between students and their school- and work-based learning experiences. The specialist matches students with work experiences, supervises or evaluates those experiences and links them back to school, serves as a resource to employers, and coordinates with counselors and teachers.

Roy High School, Roy, Utah

The core of the restructuring process in Roy High School is the comprehensive career guidance and counseling process. All students have an individualized Student Education and Occupational Plan (SEOP), which maps out their areas of career interest and classes designed to help them attain a job in that field. Starting in the ninth grade, students meet one to four times a year--more if necessary--with counselors, teachers, student guardians or parents, or other relevant partners to exchange information and help students structure an individualized learning plan. The SEOP is a living document, created through a process that allows for continual change as a student's needs and directions change. The process is student-driven, but counselors provide information, options, and choices. The typical process, which unfolds over the course of each student's time in high school, involves: meeting to discuss initial plans; career exploration; assessment; determining a course of study to meet career goals; providing information about supplementary courses or activities; and acceleration, enrichment, or remediation. A SEOP conference can be convened by a counselor, student, parent, or administrator at any time. The SEOP process has provided incentives, direction, and meaning to students' courses of study.

The academic advisement program supports counselors and the SEOP throughout the year. Each student selects an advisor from the teaching staff. Advisors are trained to provide assistance to students in evaluating credits, planning schedules, meeting graduation requirements, and making education and career choices. They also serve as liaisons between school and home.

The SEOP process is supported by the career lab as the hub of a comprehensive career information system offering assessment tools and labor market and occupational information to students via a network accessible at computer stations throughout the school. A number of user-friendly computerized career information and exploration software programs are available to students. In addition, students can explore college and scholarship possibilities and go through a personal assessment of attributes, abilities, and interests. The Career Lab also houses print materials on job opportunities, resume writing, job interviewing, and other career related areas of interest to students.

Student Career Opportunity Paths in Education, Veradale, WA

Central Valley High School initiated its school-to-work transition reform with a rethinking of the school's career guidance system intended to transform the curriculum, the school's connections with its community, and the school environment itself, as well as the guidance and counseling process. Called SCOPE, or Student Career Opportunity Paths in Education, it has: reorganized the curriculum around six career paths designed to eliminate the vocational/academic split, paths organized around such principles as "business marketing and management," "technology in society," and "creative and applied arts." SCOPE also reorganized the guidance process around the development of individualized five-year plans designed to set student goals at least one year beyond high school graduation, and reorganized the curriculum and pedagogical approach so as to infuse classrooms with people and perspectives brought from the community and its workplaces.

Guidance and counseling services develop a five-year educational plan for each student, a specific and individualized course of study directed towards the student's career goals. The school adapted American College Testing's DISCOVER software, a comprehensive career guidance system that incorporates assessment and self-awareness with up-to-date information about postsecondary education and employment areas. Based on information obtained through an interest inventory students take in ninth grade, they decide on one of six career paths, with the result that they are placed on a career path before they actually enter high school. Students are not locked into this initial selection; they are free to change career paths at any time in high school.

Beginning with the student's career path enables the guidance counselor and the student to devise a five-year plan that sets forth the courses the student will need to take in order to pursue employment successfully in the chosen career. The fifth year could be military service, trade school, community college, a baccalaureate program, employment, or some combination that supports the student's career goal, but specifying the purpose of the fifth year, it is hoped, sets the sights of students beyond the limited goal of graduation. This approach reflects the new vision of Central Valley's staff, that rather than assuming that their purpose is to graduate students prepared for four-year college or university programs, they recognize that there are many paths towards preparing for work and life after high school. Each year at registration, students complete a new five-year plan, a process that requires them to reconsider their career objectives and the path to achieving those objectives.

Performance-Based Diploma Program, Fort Pierce, FL

A major component of the Performance-based Diploma Program is peer counseling. Students of different ages are grouped together with one teacher/facilitator to help one another cope with academic stress, personal problems, and social issues. The teacher, trained in peer counseling, coordinates with the PBDP guidance counselor on specific student or group process issues. The peer counseling groups are formed based on student time schedules. Every student, in addition to three academic lab periods, has a fourth period for peer counseling. Topics discussed include work, employment skills, money, finances, living conditions and arrangements, treatment by other students in the school, and classes.

Students are also able to informally access career information and counseling through mentors. Many students are matched to an adult mentor who meets with the student on a weekly basis throughout the year. Their employers provide release time to the mentors in order that they may spend time with their students. The mentors serve a variety of functions, including being a role model, offering strategies and formulas for achievement, passing on values of the business community, and helping students understand the links between education and work. For some students, the mentors are a critical support person who listens to their problems and concerns and helps them arrive at strategies and solutions. They help students set short-term and longer range goals and show them how to break the cycle of failure that many have experienced.

Competitive Employment Work And Transition, Charlottesville, Virginia

One of the underlying themes uniting CEWAT is the "Comprehensive Transition Planning" process, which offers students career awareness, academic preparation, assessment, training, placement, and follow-up. CEWAT students conduct career awareness and exploration through a multitude of activities, including vocational assessment, individualized counseling, job shadowing, and mentoring.

CEWAT's individualized services and counseling utilize three stages of planning. The first stage is the development of the Individualized Education Plan (IEP), which forms the core of services designed for students with disabilities, with every student and their parents. Once students are formally accepted into CEWAT, they participate in an intake interview and the development of training agreements. If it is determined that a student will not complete the requirements for a high school diploma, students and parents explore options through a third process, the Certificate of Completion. Once a student is assigned to an employment specialist, program planning and monitoring are individually designed. Employment specialists assess student work readiness, assist in a job search, maintain information about jobs in the community, serve as liaison with employers, provide intensive support and instruction to students in the skills necessary to maintain employment, and conduct evaluations and follow-up.

CEWAT has developed a workbook provided to each student enrolled in the program. The book gives students an overview of the CEWAT program, enrollment procedures, and information about their employment specialist. Several sections guide students through job seeking, getting, and maintenance that reinforce the hands-on experience and assistance they receive from the staff and employment specialists.

Baltimore Commonwealth, Baltimore, Maryland

One element of the Commonwealth operating in all twenty-one Baltimore high schools is the career club. These are mostly attended by seniors, some juniors, depending on the school. Most schools support one career club of about thirty students, depending upon the Commonwealth staffing level for that school. Students attend the career club one hour a week.

Career clubs offer a very structured, competency-based curriculum that covers communication, life skills, and such employability skills as resume writing, job procurement, workplace behavior, and socialization. There is an attendance and minimal grade requirement for students who take part in career clubs, but students who show improvement are also accepted. Commonwealth staff also conduct one-on-one instruction, especially in working with students with learning disabilities or physical or emotional impairments.

The Commonwealth youth coordinator facilitates the career club and advises students, trying to match individuals with appropriate elements of Commonwealth programming. Because the youth coordinators are employed by the OED rather than the schools, and do not formally report to the guidance department, there was some concern that they would be regarded by school staff as outsiders. It appears, however, that, in at least some schools, the coordinators have so successfully fit in that they are revered, as one principal remarked, as "part of the family," functioning somewhat as adjuncts to the guidance department.


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