Ready for college and career: no longer a second-class citizen, vocational education contributes deeper learning while raising job prospects.

As high school improvement attracts ever more attention among states and local school districts, it is an opportune time to examine the role of vocational education in school reform.

In a climate dominated by raising academic achievement and increasing the number of students prepared for college, it is easy to lose sight of a second important objective of high school--preparing students for lasting success in the world of work. Well-conceived vocational education--or career and technical education, as it is now usually called--not only can directly improve students' labor market prospects but also may help foster deeper understanding of academics.

Once considered by many to be primarily a program for students not going to college and therefore focused mainly on preparing students for entry-level occupations, vocational education has been undergoing a major transformation over the past decade or so. In many high schools, secretarial and clerical programs have given way to communications and graphic design, computer applications, finance academies and advanced marketing and distribution. Information technology, emphasizing systems design, networking and sophisticated computer modeling, can be found in a growing number of high schools. In some schools, carpentry, electricity and plumbing are now part of broader programs in construction technology that introduce students to entrepreneurship, computer-assisted drafting and design, architecture, environmental regulation and public policy.

In still others, robotics, digital electronics, hydraulics and a host of other technical subjects central to engineering and advanced manufacturing have replaced traditional programs in machining and sheet metal. And in some districts, completely redesigned health programs, once limited to nursing assistance or licensed vocational nursing, are the focus for magnet schools and career academies devoted to biomedical and health sciences.

What are the distinguishing features of these new programs in career and technical education? What are some key considerations high schools need to take into account to implement challenging, comprehensive programs as part of their high school curriculum? And if new programs are adopted, what evidence do we have that they are likely to work?

A Dual Pathway

Located about 50 miles northeast of Los Angeles, Palmdale High School faces all of the challenges of any large urban secondary school. In this Title I school, where 40 percent of the school's 3,500 students are eligible for the free and reduced-price lunch program, more than half the students are Hispanic and about 20 percent are African American. Roughly 13 years ago, two enterprising faculty members, one teaching biology and the other an instructor in a nursing program, launched the Health Careers Academy. It was Palmdale High's first school-within-a-school.

The Health Careers Academy is a comprehensive four-year program that combines core academics with technical courses in medicine, medical laboratory technology, nursing and a variety of clinical subjects. Students participate in a series of increasingly demanding work-based learning experiences, culminating in an intensive clinical internship during the senior year.

The academy is committed to preparing students for post-secondary education, and virtually everyone in last June's graduating class was admitted to a postsecondary institution (including Princeton University, several campuses at the University of California and California State University, community colleges, and proprietary schools specializing in medical technology). Most also graduated with some form of health-related occupational credential that gave them a leg up in the job market. For these students, holding a job while attending college is not an option; it is a necessity.

The Palmdale High Careers Academy has not eliminated occupationally specific preparation for its students. Rather it links this preparation to a broader foundation of academic and technical education that will allow students to pursue post-secondary education and careers in the health sciences as well as in other fields where mastery of advanced biology and chemistry, related mathematics and other subjects will give students an edge.

On the day a group of us visited the school, specific training in the morning at a nearby hospital focused on learning how to perform electrocardiograms. This was followed by a two-hour classroom session that afternoon. The class delved deeply into the human cardiovascular system, helping students understand the basic functioning of the heart, the role of electric impulses in regulating the heartbeat and relationships between different patterns of electro irregularities and various types of heart disease and other malfunctions.

Common Traits

Whether a full-blown career academy like that at Palmdale High or a challenging career major in such fields as pre-engineering, building and environmental design, communications, automotive technology or advanced manufacturing (to name but a few), these new approaches to career and technical education share a number of key characteristics that warrant close attention by educators seeking new strategies for secondary schools.

First, in all aspects of their design, these programs are intended to help prepare students for both college and work, not one or the other. A central feature of these initiatives is combining academics and technical education into coherent programs of comprehensive, demanding preparation for post-secondary education and career. It is no longer desirable, if it ever was, to promote dual high school tracks--one serving students bound for four-year colleges and universities and another intended for those pursuing other options after high school.

But if the objective is both college and work readiness for all students, it does not necessarily follow that there is one and only one curricular and instructional approach that is best for everyone. For some students, the traditional college-preparatory curriculum will continue to be the preferred choice. But for others, including even many students pursuing baccalaureate and graduate degrees, other options may provide more interesting and more challenging pathways to college and career.

A second essential feature of these alternatives, therefore, is that they systematically connect instruction in core academics--English, mathematics, social studies and science--to authentic, often cross-disciplinary, applications in industry, the professions and occupational clusters. They use the world of work to engage and motivate students, to deepen their understanding of academic knowledge and skills and to help students better understand why high schools are expecting them to achieve at higher levels.

Third, while these new initiatives are squarely focused on promoting academic achievement--academics are, of course, essential to success in most careers--the very best of these programs also recognize that academic achievement is not enough. Strong preparation for success in technical and professional fields, as well as in such other areas as the crafts and the performing arts, requires mastering other knowledge and skills that have been largely ignored in the academic classes taught in most high schools.

Increasingly, many students will benefit from a deeper understanding of systems, greater facility with a wide range of communications tools (written, oral and visual), more experience with rich and intricate problem solving that requires applying knowledge from a range of academic disciplines and more exposure to the complex ethical challenges that are ever more present in the workplace. Where now in high school do we ask students to distinguish between personal, professional and organizational ethics and explain (or better yet, demonstrate) how they might use this understanding to address an ethical dilemma? High quality career and technical education ensures that these aspects of preparation for college and work are not neglected.

Collegiate Links

While there are many other distinguishing features of these emerging initiatives, one more deserves explicit mention. These programs provide clear pathways to a full range of post-secondary education options, often giving students the opportunity to earn dual credit while in high school. Additionally, they routinely and regularly involve post-secondary faculty in curriculum and professional development.

One outstanding example of this kind of post-secondary linkage is the evolution of the pre-engineering program developed by Project Lead the Way in its efforts to increase the number of students graduating from high school prepared to pursue post-secondary education in engineering and related fields.

Now active in more than 1,000 high schools nationwide, Project Lead the Way has engaged engineering faculty from some of the leading colleges and universities in the development of challenging high school curriculum and in the training of high school teachers. Post-secondary faculty play a central role in defining both the academic and professional content that are the foundation of such high school courses as Principles of Engineering, Introduction to Engineering Design, Digital Electronics, Civil Engineering and Architecture, Aerospace Engineering and Biomedical Engineering. Additionally, they staff intensive, two-week summer workshops that are required of all high school teachers desiring to teach a Project Lead the Way Course.

In short, in some high schools throughout the country, vocational education has been undergoing a rather remarkable transformation, morphing from narrow programs focused mainly on occupationally specific preparation for jobs requiring less than a baccalaureate degree into comprehensive, challenging, multi-year programs of academic and technical study preparing students for a wide range of post-secondary and career options. These are promising new developments, but before urging wider adoption, there is an important question to consider: Do they work?

Impressive Outcomes

What do we know about the effectiveness of career and technical education, either as more traditionally practiced or in its emerging forms?

First, while program participation is not strictly speaking a measure of student outcomes, it is worth noting that career and technical education appeals to a large and diverse group of high school students. Nearly all high school students (96.6 percent) choose these courses as electives. About one-fourth of all high school seniors are "concentrators" (earning at least three credits in a single vocational program), including fully 15 percent of all high school seniors with a GPA of 3.5 or higher.

Further, the 1990s saw career and technical education concentrators taking more--and more rigorous--academic courses. In 2000, some 50 percent of concentrators completed the New Basics academic core curriculum (the course-taking standard established by the National Goals Panel), up from about 19 percent in 1990, while the number completing a college preparatory curriculum nearly tripled.

The students also improved their academic achievement. On 12th-grade tests for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, concentrators in career and technical education boosted their reading scores by about 8 scale points between 1994 and 1998 and their math scores by about 11 scale points between 1990 and 2000.

With respect to more direct measures of student success, it is clear that participation in such coursework contributes to higher earnings. Findings from the recently completed National Assessment of Vocational Education indicate that seven years after high school graduation, students earned about 2 percent more annually for each vocational course they took, or about $450 per course, based on average annual earnings of $24,000.

Additionally, an ongoing evaluation of career academies, conducted by the Manpower Development Research Corporation, reports that four years after high school, males in career academies were earning an average of $2,554 more annually than a comparable group of young men who did not have the benefit of a career academy experience.

Regarding post-secondary participation and completion, more concentrators enrolled in post-secondary education immediately after high school during the 1990s than in the 1980s (54.7 percent versus 41.5 percent). It turns out that many enroll later, so that by seven years after graduating from high school, nearly three-fourths of concentrators in career and technical education had participated in post-secondary education or training to some extent. Eighteen percent eventually earned a bachelor's degree, and by eight years after high school graduation, 53 percent of concentrators had earned a post-secondary degree or certificate.

Untrue Image

The conventional wisdom has it that career and technical education is for the non-college bound, does not attract high-achieving students, deters students from pursuing rigorous academics and produces only modest, short-term improvements in earnings. The available evidence not only fails to support these widely held presumptions, it stands in stark contrast. Career and technical education is larger, more diverse, more compatible with academics and more conducive to further post-secondary study than most people typically believe.

But does participation in such coursework, in either traditional or emerging forms, contribute directly to academic achievement? From the NAVE report, as well as the work done by MDRC, the fairest assessment of this is that although vocational coursework does not detract from this goal, it does not necessarily aid in its realization.

In terms of academic achievement, at least as measured by standardized tests, concentrators do no better and no worse then their counterparts in the rest of the high school curriculum. With respect to effects on broader conceptions of academic achievement, such as interdisciplinary problem solving, we simply do not yet know.

So is there a continuing role for career and technical education in America's high schools? Can we fashion a high school curriculum that makes it likely that significantly more students will graduate from high school ready for both college and career?

Without a doubt, new models of career and technical education, radically different from the vocational education of the past, are taking root in many high schools. All of the evidence on their effectiveness is not yet in, but the results to date are encouraging. Nurturing this new growth is surely a promising strategy for more effective high school reform.

Gary Hoachlander is the president of MPR Associates, 2150 Shattuck Ave., Suite 800, Berkeley, CA 94704. E-mail: [e-mail]

The Modern Face of Voc-Ed: Career Academies

WILLIAM H. ADAMS

Biological and medical sciences. Engineering and technologies. Communications and information technology. Culinary arts and hospitality.

Do these sound like college majors? In fact, this is the modern face of what we once labeled vocational education. Thousands of students are pursuing highly focused technical studies and are enrolled in career academy programs that often connect seamlessly and simultaneously with university degree programs. These courses of study also meet and often exceed the accountability mandates of No Child Left Behind. Students completing these programs are well-suited for employment in high-wage fields and for higher education.

Career and technical education programs on the K-12 level today represent the best examples of applied learning in American education.

Multiple Options

In southern New Jersey's Salem County, career academies are highly focused on a particular theme or pathway. These programs generally are offered as an innovative curriculum option within a school, as a school unto itself or in partnerships between the county or area career and technical school, local school district, community college and/or employer. Career academies prepare students for careers that generally require further education at the collegiate level.

Career academies typically at-tract motivated students. Some of these programs enable students to earn college credits while fulfilling their high school diploma requirements. At the Salem County Career and Technical High School, some students earn an associate degree through the local community college before their high school commencement.

The benefits are many. New Jersey's county vocational technical school districts draw from a broad student base, sometimes covering as many as 73 local school districts. Their use of regionalized facilities, equipment and supplies promote greater fiscal efficiency. Corporate, business and higher education partnerships provide curricular guidance through advisory committees, mentoring, apprenticeships and work-based learning experiences for students. There's also flexibility to offer college-level classes to high schoolers on their school campuses.

Specialized Focus

Several models exist for delivering career academy programs. In Salem County, six career academies are offered as discrete programs within five of the six county high schools with a seventh academy on the drawing board to address power and energy generation and distribution. Our academies offer studies in fields ranging from communications and information technology, graphic design and engineering to culinary arts and hospitality.

The Academy of Biological and Medical Sciences is typical of our programs in that it educates motivated students in a specialized, student-focused environment, preparing these students for work in the biological and medical sciences and for the higher education to achieve this. The program provides students two distinct pathways--a medical sciences path and a biological sciences path.

The academy offers educational challenges based upon a rigorous core curriculum that combines both high school and collegiate coursework. The program includes opportunities for mentoring and externship experiences at medical and science facilities, including research at Rowan University and field experiences at the Experimental Research Station of Rutgers University.

Academy classrooms are designed with state-of-the-art technology and equipment. An articulation agreement with Rowan University permits students who meet prerequisites to be automatically admitted into the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the College of Engineering. With additional independent coursework, academy students have the opportunity to graduate with an associate degree from Salem Community College and enter a four-year university as a junior. Students may earn up to 34 college credits while in high school.

Recent graduates of this academy have been accepted to Cornell University, Drexel University, Philadelphia College of Arts and Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Air Force Academy, among others.

Revitalized Image

Career academies and career and technical education programs for the 21st century are clearly changing the image and face of what was once known as industrial arts. Students participating in today's career academy and career and technical education programs are afforded the opportunity to obtain the technical and workplace skills required for successful employment and the pursuit of higher education.

The vocational programs that were fine for the industrial age have given way to high-level instructional programs that lead directly to employment in technical career fields and/or to university degrees. Career academies are designed to provide hands-on learning opportunities in which rigorous academic skills are applied across the arts, sciences and technology. Students enrolled in these programs possess the technical and academic skills for acceptance at some of our nation's finest colleges and universities.

William Adams, an AASA Executive Committee member, is superintendent of the Salem County Vocational Technical Schools, Box 350, Woodstown, NJ 08098. E-mail: [e-mail]