Spotlight on the Clinton Agenda
Preparing American Youth for Success in the Workplace
"There is no curriculum to meet the needs of non-college-bound youth, no real employment service for those who go right to work, few guidance services for them, no certification of their accomplishments and...no rewards in the workplace for hard work at school."
-- Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, America's Choice: high skills or low wages! (1990)
Only about 50 percent -- roughly 1.4 million -- of America's young people enter some form of postsecondary education program the fall after they graduate. Of those, only about half successfully complete a baccalaureate program. The other half -- three out of every four who are on their way to adult careers and responsibility -- find that the path to working adulthood has very few signposts along the way. In his book Putting People First, Bill Clinton pledged to create more and better signposts: "We will bring business, labor, and education leaders together to develop a national apprenticeship-style system that offers non-college-bound students training in valuable skills, with the promise of good jobs when they graduate."
Mapping out an effective transition from school to work is the goal of IMPROVING THE TRANSITION FROM SCHOOL TO WORK IN THE UNITED STATES, just published by the American Youth Policy Forum, the Competitiveness Policy Council and Jobs for the Future. Richard Kazis, Vice President of Jobs for the Future in Cambridge, Massachusetts, writes a detailed, clear analysis of the school-to-work problem in the report's primary essay. Paul Barton, Director of the Policy Information Center at the Educational Testing Service, contributes a helpful "Memorandum on the Youth Transition" to the report.
In his introduction and in the report's first section, Kazis outlines the problems encountered by youth -- particularly the "non-college-bound" -- as they enter the labor market:
"These young Americans are generally ill-prepared while in school for the world of work they are about to enter. They receive little guidance on how to move into a career that can support a family. Their reading, writing, math and communications skills are generally inadequate for the demands of today's quality employers...Once young people enter the job market after dropping out or completing high school, they face an extended period of labor market adjustment, characterized by years of alternating spells of casual work and unemployment. They flounder around, learning little in the way of productive job skills, moving from job to job, dropping in and out of the labor force and connecting intermittently with adults in the workplace."Kazis covers this complex subject with facility. In a clear, readable style, he forces us to look beyond good intentions for "dramatic policy interventions" and ask ourselves these difficult questions: What are the costs of our non-existent, or at least weak, transition system? How significant are those costs -- to individuals and to society? Who bears the costs and how are they distributed? What are the long-term consequences? Does the school-to-work transition pattern in the U.S. create any serious obstacles to U.S. competitiveness and improved living standards?
After describing the school-to-employment problem, Kazis presents strategies for improving career preparation, including a detailed "blueprint for a new school-to-work transition system in the United States." Finally, he offers specific, clear-headed recommendations for federal policy, in areas such as program experimentation, elements of a national skills training system, youth service programs, employer participation and teacher development. The report includes a bibliography for further reading.
Paul Barton's memorandum furthers the emerging national school-to-work debate. Barton illuminates the complexity of that debate and its history: "the education side, the employer side, the union side, the labor market side, and the politics and government side." He looks at the content of worksite-based approaches to learning and career development, emphasizing the importance of collaboration between the schools and employers. Barton also presents tables outlining what he broadly calls "employer-school compacts," such as youth apprenticeship, industry-certified training, informal on-the-job training with school instruction, and career- specific magnet schools. He then fleshes out what he calls the "central proposition" of the youth transition: "School systems and employers (spurred by or joined by government) must jointly design approaches in which they share responsibilities for preparing youth for entry into employment in the primary market, and for facilitating that entry when students are certified to be properly prepared."
IMPROVING THE TRANSITION is an important overview of the problems and challenges we face in preparing our youth for employment and for our nation's economic future.
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