School Lessons/Work Lessons:
Recruiting and Sustaining Employer Involvement in School-to-Work Programs
A Forum — July 22, 1994
Increasingly, American educators and policy-makers see "work-based learning" as a necessary tool to add relevance to American schooling and ease youth's transition from school to careers. The federal School-to-Work Opportunities Act is now law, and at the state and local levels school-to-career program experimentation is the order of the day.
Yet a critical question remains: Will American employers be willing to join with public schools to create a school-to-work transition system in this country? Will employers sign onto high-quality programs in sufficient numbers?
To shed light on the subject, the American Youth Policy Forum invited Joan Wills and Irene Lynn, longtime experts on education policy, to discuss employer involvement and present the findings of their new study, "School Lessons/Work Lessons: Recruiting and Sustaining Employer Involvement in School-to-Work Programs."
Their news was generally positive. At least in cooperative education programs involving a relatively small percentage of students, employer recruitment is not a major obstacle. Employers are generally well-satisfied with the programs and view students as productive workers; and employers place a high value on schools' role in screening students for employment. Though the programs studied typically did not employ many best practices recommended by school-to-work advocates, the research yielded several recommendations for policymakers and educators to foster increased employer involvement in school-to-work programs.
The Study
Irene Lynn, a member of the Onestop Career Center implementation team with the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration, led off by outlining the purpose of the "School Lessons/Work Lessons" study.
Employer involvement is not new in American education, Lynn said. "There's not only a long history of employer being involved with the schools on some level, but also a long history of the federal government in some way directing that involvement." Yet much of the recent research on school-to-work issues has focused on a relative handful of very new programs. Mostly ignored have been older, more widespread (if less exemplary) work-based learning programs that have been operating in many high schools for years.
"Let's not forget lessons from the past," Lynn said. What lessons can be derived from longstanding work-based learning programs about why employer choose to participate? What are the business incentives? How satisfied are employers with student workers? How do schools recruit and support employers to participate? What is the turnover rate among employers?
Lynn and Wills set out to address these questions using a three-tiered approach. Part One was a literature review, which Lynn said revealed a 12-15 year gap in significant research on employer involvement beginning in the late 1970s and continuing until the current interest in school-to-work issues began to mount in the early 1990s. Part Two consisted of surveys of school and employer representatives connected to 18 secondary schools in six metropolitan areas: Atlanta, Indianapolis, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland (OR), and York/Harrisburg (PA). Investigators interviewed 21 employers in-person plus another 224 by telephone. Part Three was a series of supplemental focus groups with employers not involved in school-to-work programs.
Mixed Quality of Programs Studied
The study included a mix of urban and suburban schools, plus one essentially rural school outside Pittsburgh. They included a mix of comprehensive high schools, full- and part-time vocational/technical high schools, plus one alternative high school.
Each of the schools operated programs providing students with work experience (generally paid). These programs incorporated at least some of the following: training plans spelling out the specific objectives (work-readiness, and job-specific skills) of work-based learning; close supervision of students at the job-site; frequent coordination between school and employer personnel; and periodic evaluation of the students' performance at the worksite and their progress in meeting work-based learning objectives.
The vast majority of programs were cooperative education, the oldest and most widespread of the school-to-work program models, which each year involves approximately 430,000 (8 percent) public school juniors and seniors nationwide. Though evaluations of co-op education have found that it has some modest positive effects, however, co-op programs typically fall short of the comprehensive integration of school and worksite learning envisioned by school-to-work advocates. Just two of the schools included in the study operate more ambitious school-to-work models such as apprenticeships or career academies.
Lynn explained that all of the schools had standard forms and procedures staff were supposed to use with employers. But most of the schools employed only one person half-time to place students, formulate training/learning plans for students on the job, and monitor students' work-based learning. As a result, school staff admitted that links between school and work-based learning were not always made.
Employer interviews illustrated the mixed quality of work-based learning in the programs. In the six cities studied: 50-100 percent of employers said that the school required students to sign a training contract; 50-67 percent said the school had a written training plan for students; 85-100 provided students with a workplace mentor; 64-91 percent rotated the students to different tasks; and 82-100 employed a formal method to measure students' work performance for the schools.
Schools have had little problem recruiting employer involvement for programs of limited size, the study found. The programs have generally remained small however, typically involving less than five percent of the student body. And the programs often suffer under the weight of administrative problems: many are understaffed and rank low on the priority list for school funds; occupationally focused programs within schools are often not connected to one another; co-op programs may or may not relate to the local labor market; and the quality of occupational skill training varies greatly from one worksite to the next.
Praise for Student Workers
Using lists of employers provided by the schools, investigators conducted a phone survey of 426 local employers that employed students in work-based learning programs. From that list 224 surveys were completed, including a broad mix of small, medium, and large businesses representing all major industry groups.
Asked why they chose to participate in a work-based learning program, employers offered two reasons: to perform a community service, and to recruit new workers. Large employers, more concerned than smaller firms with project a positive image in the community, were particularly motivated by the community service rationale. But even for large employers, finding qualified and motivated workers was also a major reason for participation. In fact, more than one-fourth of employers admitted frankly that they used work-based learning programs to fill vacant part-time positions. Employers expressed few concerns with problems over child labor law, workers' compensation, or health and safety regulations which have been cited as possible impediments to expanded employer participation.
Participating employers expressed near universal praise for the quality of student workers. More than 90 percent either agreed or strongly agreed that "students are productive workers." Even those firms that were no longer participating in the program had good things to say about student workers: 26 of the 28 nonparticipating firms surveyed expressed satisfaction both with student workers and the work-based learning program.
This positive view of student workers stood in marked contrast to the opinions offered in focus groups by employers not involved in work-based learning programs. These employers expressed "extremely negative" views of students -- whom they characterized as undisciplined and unmotivated, lacking respectful attitudes as well as basic communication and thinking skills.
Perhaps because finding qualified and motivated young workers is so difficult for employers, those participating in work-based learning programs placed great value on the schools' role in screening, recruiting, and overseeing youth. This screening function is extremely valuable to employers, and it provides a strong motivation for employer involvement.
Implications and Recommendations
When Joan Wills took over from Lynn, she focused her comments on the central challenge facing school-to-work initiatives: "Going to scale."
"Employers are willing to participate," said Wills, director of the Center for Workforce Development at the Institute for Educational Leadership. "But we're not providing an infrastructure for them to fit into. Government must be a facilitator, a prodder, in that process." Wills summarized her findings in two sets of recommendations:
Roles for Public Institutions:
- The first critical job for government will be to build a national structure to support the development of integrated school and work-site curricula. Individual schools lack the resources and expertise to build integrated curricula from scratch on a case-by-case basis. Rather, educators and policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels should work with employer organizations to identify appropriate content standards and best practices for work-based learning programs.
- Make learning plans a more vital tool for work-based learning. The learning plans now used by schools and employers are seldom a "serious tool," Wills said. "[There is often] no effort to connect what they might be learning at the worksite with what they're learning in school." Federal, state, and local government should all play a part in making learning plans more useful. The federal government should convene experts and synthesize research to help develop models for translating workplace requirements into effective learning plans. States should take the lead in developing common skill standards used in learning plans -- based on a hierarchy of core academic and applied skills. Local school officials would retain responsibility for tailoring learning plans to local needs and conditions.
- Recognize gradations in learning opportunities. "There are lessons to be learned in a franchise, and there are lessons to be learned xeroxing," Wills said. "The crime is not necessarily placing young people into those jobs initially. The crime is not having a system to recognize the learning opportunities in those jobs, and then in not providing the opportunity to move on."
- Recognize and support teachers' role in screening and oversight of student workers. "I agree that we don't want high schools to become employment services," Wills said. "But that screening role is an important service to employers" -- a key reason for employer participation. When asked if disadvantaged and minority students might be discriminated against, Lynn noted that several of the programs studied had heavy participation from minority students. "So long as there is no financial incentive for schools to participate," she added, "you're going to have to send them students who are ready to work."
- Other recommendations: Wills briefly mentioned several other necessary reforms:
- construct more flexible schedules and graduation requirements;
- convene focus groups with local school officials and employers to identify barriers to employer participation and opportunities for improved cooperation;
- clarify legal issues perceived as barriers to employer participation -- workers compensation, child labor laws, etc.; and support staff development throughout the school so that all personnel support work-based learning programs.
- Keep it simple. Employers have little patience for cumbersome, time-consuming, or paper-laden transactions. In fact, employers prefer not to receive wage government subsidies for young workers for fear that "red tape" would inevitably follow.
- Enlist national organizations for the development of common occupational skills standards and a strong employer-based network to promote school-to-work programs nationwide. Wills and American Youth Policy Forum director, Samuel Halperin, explained that one new organization, the Employer Council, is being created for just this purpose. This Council, to be comprised of leading corporate CEOs, will organize and develop model work-based learning programs and recruit employers for "flagship" programs encouraged by the School to Work Opportunities Act.
- Use -- or create -- employer-based organizations at the state and local levels. "Until we get organized mechanisms to involve employers, we're not going to go to scale, and we're not going to create mechanism to provide [high quality] learning opportunities," Wills said.
- Cover all industries. Wills noted that several sectors, particularly government, were underrepresented in the work-based learning programs studied.
- Be informative, inclusive, and deliberate. Work with local business organizations to develop and distribute to employers clear and concise materials explaining work-based learning programs; recruit participation from all employers, large and small; and assign specialized staff -- not busy teachers -- to recruit employer participation.