School-to-Work: Are We Making Progress?
A Forum — June 28, 1996
Overview
Passed by Congress in 1994, the School-to-Work Opportunities Act was designed to build a framework for a "system" of school-to-work (STW) programs across the nation. Today's forum, featuring J.D. Hoye, Director of the National School-to-Work Office, and two state STW directors, focused on the implementation of the Act, the progress of state and local school-to-work grantees and the development of the federal STW system.
Hoye discussed causes for concern regarding young people attempting to make the transition from school to work. These included the fact that although 86 percent of all 25 to 29- year-olds had completed high school in 1994, 60.5 percent had attended college for one or more years and only 27 percent had completed four or more years of college. Hoye noted, however, that the majority of jobs projected to be available by the year 2005 will require some formal education and training beyond the secondary level, with nearly one-third of all new jobs requiring at least a bachelor's degree. At the same time, workers aged 20 to 24 are less likely to receive on-the-job training than any other age group, except workers age 65+.
The Act aims to assist young people in obtaining this formal education and work-based training by connecting education reform, workforce development and economic development to provide youth with both the academic and workplace skills required for the careers of the Information Age. The Act, however, provides state and local grantees with great freedom to design and implement school-to-work systems that fit their individual needs, including the demands of their local labor markets.
Funding under the Act was designed to follow a bell-shaped curve over its lifetime. That is, grantees will receive diminished federal funding over the five-year lifetime of the Act as they work to achieve self-sufficiency and leverage local funds to support the system. Further, 92.5 percent of the federal funds are mandated for appropriation directly to the grantees, with the remaining 7.5 percent used for national programming activities, such as the provision of technical assistance to grantees, public education and outreach and the assessment of progress. National School-to-Work Office staff and operating expenses are covered jointly by the Departments of Education and Labor.
To date, 27 states have been awarded implementation grants, with the remaining states having received development or planning grants. The states are responsible for allocating funds to local partnerships within their state. In addition, 47 local STW partnerships, 53 urban and rural partnerships, and 20 Native American partnerships have received implementation funding directly from the National School-to-Work Office. These grants have allowed over 500,000 young people to participate in STW. Over 150,000 employers have been involved in system design and in providing work-based learning opportunities.
The 27 states receiving federal implementation grants exhibit wide variety in their governance structure. For example, 38 percent of these states have created STW councils and interagency teams to oversee implementation, while in another 38 percent workforce development and human resource councils perform the same function. In 15 percent of the states, a governor-appointed task force operates the initiative and in eight percent, it is overseen by the state commissioner of education. State STW staff sizes range from one to 15 members, with the largest percentage of states (41 percent) employing only three to six staff members. Hoye explained that the small staff sizes encourage multi-tasking, allowing members a role in all aspects of implementation of school-to-work.
Examples from the States
Following Hoye's discussion from a national perspective, two state directors of school-to-work, Katherine Oliver, from the State of Maryland, and Mary McCullough, from the State of Ohio, discussed how implementation of the Act has progressed in their states. Oliver began with an overview of the key system elements that have driven school-to-work in Maryland. At the center of the system is a governance structure that relies heavily on public-private partnerships and strong connections to economic development, particularly through the use of local labor market teams. Maryland emphasizes the incorporation of existing education reforms, such as K-12 and teacher reform, into STW. Maryland has also worked to link academic, career and technical skill standards to STW system development and to develop new methods of system and student performance assessment. Another key is that employers have been involved in all aspects of design and implementation, particularly in the development of career clusters. The state has also provided planning grants to local partnerships not currently receiving federal implementation funds to foster the continual infusion of new sites into its system.
McCullough focused her discussion on Ohio's use of the state's 12 existing economic development regions as a foundation for implementation of the STW initiative. In Ohio, each of these economic development regions is served by an executive council, consisting of representatives of business, labor organizations, educational institutions, community-based organizations, parents and students. The Ohio school-to-work initiative has sought to include a STW coordinator in each region's council. These school-to-work coordinators focus on expanding the existing economic development strategies to include the key elements of STW, such as work-based learning, professional development for teachers and fostering the participation of all students. This is being done to ensure that school-to-work is an integral part of the state's economic development strategy and also serves to promote regional awareness of how STW benefits participants, employers, the community and the economy-at-large.
System Building
Following the state examples, Hoye described the key components of a national system of school-to-work programs, emphasizing that to succeed, school-to-work must operate not as an individual program, but as one piece of a broader movement to serve all involved partners. These elements are:
- Ensuring that all students means all.
- Actively engaging employers and other business and labor associations in design and implementation.
- Building the capacity of STW staff.
- Ensuring that career education occurs from kindergarten through adult life.
- Developing a system of assessment and accountability.
- Creating career majors and career pathways that are connected to comprehensive skill standards.
- Fostering state and local control of school-to-work.
- Developing contextual learning activities that encompass all aspects of an industry.
Discussion Period
Several questions focused on the role of postsecondary institutions in STW, asking specifically how college-bound students could benefit from participation, if there is added value to postsecondary institutions for participating, and for examples of formal connections with postsecondary institutions. According to Hoye, both students and postsecondary institutions can benefit from participation in STW. Students gain from continued participation in learning activities that help them to determine their academic and career paths. Postsecondary institutions benefit from enrolling these students who are more focused in their studies and, as a result, better prepared to handle the rigors of postsecondary education.
Hoye also explained that a number of local STW partnerships have worked to connect secondary and postsecondary institutions. In some systems, high school students receive college credit for STW participation while in others, two- and four-year college faculty work with secondary school teachers to help ensure that the postsecondary curricula is coordinated with and connected to high school coursework. Other partnerships are experimenting with new standards of college admission, where acceptance decisions are based more on student performance in the classroom and the worksite than on standardized tests.
The difficulty of developing financially self-sustaining partnerships among members of the various sectors involved in STW was another topic of concern. McCullough responded that Ohio has repeatedly communicated the message that federal funding is only to serve as venture capital; it requires local partnerships to match state funds dollar-for-dollar to show that they have the capacity to be self-sustaining.
Participants asked how the partnerships created by STW could work where numerous reforms in the past have been less successful. Hoye, Oliver and McCullough all discussed how STW has attempted to learn the lessons of past reform efforts, and has focused on challenging the traditional concepts of the education system. New methods include placing higher value on work- and community-based learning experiences, fostering direct connections between secondary and postsecondary educational institutions and encouraging the development of an education system that is functional for all people from early childhood through adult life. Oliver and McCullough also stressed how their state initiatives have greatly benefitted from their connection to economic development. Such connections have allowed school-to-work to become one piece in a broader youth, community and economic development strategy, and less an individual program with a narrow goal.