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The findings of the case study process have many implications for future practice and for further research. The twelve elements summarized in the main body of this report, obviously, represent the heart of what we hope to convey practitioners. As states and local districts design and implement new school-to-work systems, the challenge will be both to recognize the importance of these twelve elements, and to devise strategies for integrating them into effective systems.
Commonly, however, implementers of school-to-work reform encounter regulatory and other legal barriers. Such barriers interfere, for example, with workplace learning opportunities (i.e., FTEs, occupational safety, child labor laws), and with admission to postsecondary institutions, which often have admission requirements that accept academic but not occupational courses for credit, regardless of the actual content of the course. Practitioners in some states have eased these barriers in the interests of school-to-work system building; in others, much remains to be done.
The case studies found one group of partners conspicuously absent from school-to-work programs: parents. Because parents are so important in their children's lives, and because they often emphasize admission to a baccalaureate program above other career and educational goals, it is crucial for practitioners to engage parents in school-to-work.
By contrast, the case studies document many examples of business partners contributing in important ways. Practitioners cannot expect that many businesses, most of which operate on a close margin of profit, will participate in school-to-work out of altruism. Practitioners should anticipate the need both to actively woo business, and to educate business about the range of benefits that may accrue to them through participation.
The case studies found many devoted teachers applying themselves to the implementation of school-to-work reform in their classrooms, with varying amounts of assistance. Most of these teachers had little previous exposure to the profound pedagogical, curricular, and assessment reforms they were being asked to implement. To ensure the long-term success of school-to-work reform, both inservice and preservice teacher training should incorporate instruction concerning school-to-work and offer internships and other opportunities for teachers and prospective teachers to explore firsthand a variety of workplaces.
Even though the intent of the case studies was to examine school-to-work programs, the research teams often encountered people who knew little about it. Publicity about school-to-work needs to be expanded to reach parents, students, prospective employers, policy makers, and other leaders at the local, state, and national levels. People who do not understand school-to-work, let alone how it could benefit themselves, are unlikely to make great efforts to facilitate the development of new systems.
In addition to these immediate implications for practice, our findings suggest a number of areas in which further research would be beneficial: to clarify the impact of school-to-work reform on students, the impact on employers, the relative effectiveness of various reform strategies, the development of systems for school-to-work, and the implications for financing school-to-work systems.
We recommend several avenues for exploring the impact of school-to-work reform on students. First, additional long-term follow-up studies of student outcomes are needed: the ideal study would examine students six months, eighteen months, three years, five years, and ten years after graduation, seeking information about their employment status, pursuit of postsecondary education, income level, independent living, and evidence of connection between their school-to-work experience and these outcomes. Second, we recommend studies that consider student outcomes in youth development terms--such psychological and social characteristics as motivation, self-determination, responsibility for oneself and others. Adults and students often reported to the AED/NIWL research team dramatic instances of such change among students. Third, we recommend cognitive studies of the impact on students of "contextual learning": educational settings in which students learn in real-world contexts, a basic aspect of school-to-work learning. Fourth, we recommend intensive case studies of students in workplaces over time, enabling us to learn more about the relative effectiveness of different strategies for integrating learning into workplaces, the types of skills transmitted, the quality and clarity of assessment practices, and the perceptions of students and their workplace supervisors about these experiences. Fifth, we recommend further research concerning access to and equity of STW programs: studies of student tracking, equal educational and occupational opportunity, and gender and racial stereotyping. Sixth, we recommend analyses of the costs and benefits to students of working, both in terms of the impact of working while in school and public perceptions of students who work. Seven, we recommend further case study research on pedagogical and curricular changes, focusing on direct relationships between specific interventions and specific learning or developmental changes in students.
Based on our findings, we also suggest research to examine how employers and postsecondary institutions perceive the impact of school-to-work experiences on students who arrive at their doors as workers or college students. These studies will be important simply to discover how important partners in the school-to-work effort perceive the results of these initiatives, but also as a source of comparison data with other outcome studies.
As noted earlier, the research teams found scarce evidence of parent involvement in school-to-work, leading us to recommend examination of effective strategies for engaging parents. The research literature provides ample evidence that students whose parents are engaged in their learning perform better in school. Given the tendency of many parents to emphasize college education to the exclusion of occupational preparation, parent involvement could be key to the long-term success of school-to-work systems.
In addition to research related to learning, we recommend research concerning the costs of school-to-work reform, both real costs and costs calculated in terms of cost-benefit analyses. Remarkably little is known about the real costs of school-to-work, considering the importance of budget issues to policy makers and practitioners. And if we set aside the analysis of real costs for cost-benefit analyses--considering such factors as the costs to society, business, and personal lives of unemployable high school or college graduates (and dropouts)--we will add another level to our ability to discern the most effective financing strategies for education.
Finally, we recommend two areas of research related to system building. First, the case studies indicate the school-to-work system building unfolds over many years, indicating that research that tracks systems development over time could offer important lessons to architects of school-to-work as well as to other system builders. Second, we recommend research that documents more and less effective practices for aligning educational systems across levels, eliminating traditional dividing lines between elementary school, middle school, high school, and postsecondary education.
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