\doc\web\98\02\stwtran.txt Date sent: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 17:43:57 -0600 To: arthurhu@halcyon.com From: Jeanne Donovan Subject: Re: International Baccalaureate & Marc Tucker This paper was given to me by a friend, but I suspect it is available from the NCEE upon request. Here's their web site blurb: ======================================================= http://www.ncee.org//OurProducts/monographs.html A School to Work Transition System for the United States Author Marc Tucker argues that an increasingly competitive economy demands a skills development system very different from the ones that have served us through the 20th century. The workplace of the 21st century requires workers with strong academic and technical skills as well as the ability to learn and adapt quickly. This report describes different approaches to designing a new education and training system to help young peoples transition from school to work, and suggests that a consensus on key elements of a new system is emerging. Tucker describes these key elements and how a system of academic and occupational skill standards are a critical part of that design. 1-889630-55-1 $9.95 =========================================================== It's about 20 pages long, and is a condensed version of the paper prepared for the National Governor's Association. Someone else asked about the paper, so I excerpted some text for her. I've included the same below. Try not to get your blood pressure up! Jeanne ============================================================================ Full title: "Workforce Skills Program: A School-to-Work Transition System for the United States" by Marc Tucker, April 1994. SCHOOL-TO-WORK TRANSITION: THE EMERGING CONSENSUS MODEL None of this is news to "a small group of thoughtful analysts" who, on the one hand, have seen the new economy coming and, on the other hand, have witnessed with growing concern the anguish of the "forgotten half"--those students who have been left behind by this economy. "Drawing mainly on the European experience," they have framed models and served as advocates for a new system of school-to-work transition for the majority of our youth, lasting for two to four years, that would begin around age 16 . . . ====================== * job experiences that will enable the student to sample a broad range of careers and occupations and, "under the guidance of a skilled mentor, acquire both the technical skills and the personal values and habits" needed to be successful; ======================= Four years ago, this agenda, taken as a whole, "existed only in the minds of a handful of analysts" and in a few communities with visionary leaders. Two years ago, it had gained enough currency to become a central plank in the platform of the successful candidate for the presidency of the United States. It has now become enshrined in federal legislation. Though it is not without its critics, it has strong support from mainstream educators, the vocational education community, youth advocates, general government and business community. But the broad forumulation of this agenda, which has helped propel it to legislative success, "may prove its undoing when it comes to implementation." This is because the legislation was written to provide great flexibility to the people at the state and local levels who will be responsible for implementing it. The natural tendency in such a situation is toraft the new onto the old, avoiding controversy wherever possible. If that happens, the opportunity to create a new system that truly meets the needs described above will have been lost. The standards for the Certificate of Initial Mastery are the same for all students. "Tracking American-style would be gone" -- a century of practice in which different groups of students have been held to different standards, with much expected of some and very little of others, from the time they first enter school until they leave. STUDENTS WHO DO NOT GET THEIR CERTIFICATE OF INITIAL MASTERY BY AGE 16 For many students, particularly those from impoverished backgrounds, it will be very hard to complete the Certificate of Initial Mastery by age 16. For many of these students, combining the mastery of academic skills with the application of those skills in the workplace may also be the very thing they need to succeed in school. So, if the student has not received the Certificate of Initial Mastery by 16, it should be possible for that student to begin a program of the kind described above anyway, with the proviso that the student not be eligible to receive the skills certificate until the Certificate of Initial Mastery has first been earned. ORGANIZING THE LOCAL SYSTEM Who should be responsible for organizing and delivering all the services required, and what should the rules of the game be that define how funds are allocated, who delivers the services, how they are compensated and who is accountable to whom for what in this system? ===================== Imagine Jamie, a young person who is about to receive her Certificate of Initial Mastery and thinks she might be interested in pursuing a school-to-work transition program. She goes down to the loca shopping mall in which she finds a neighborhood office of the Fairmont County Careers Consortium. It looks a lot like the personnel office of Xerox Corp., where her dad works--neat, clean, new carpets, people who are really friendly and helpful -- a bit of class. She is introduced to Eduardo, a case worker, who explains that this careers center does no education or training itself, but will do "everything necessary to help her figure out which careers might be worth pursuing, how to hook up with a program that will help provide entry and how to find the money she will need to complete the program." "Via his computer terminal," Eduardo has access to a lot of information about current and expected economic trends and forecasts about which careers are likely to flourish and pay well. Jamie is a little confused by all this, and Eduardo offers "to give her a battery of tests that will help her think about what kinds of careers she might like to pursue." When, after thinking about it and consulting with family and friends, Jamie has selected a career line that she would like to pursue, Educardo helps her put together a program to get there. Jamie has decided on precision manufacturing, an area in which most employers will ask for candidates who have a skills certificate endorsed by the National Skills Standards Board. Eduardo discovers that more than 20 institutions in the metro area offer programs leading to that certificate, among them Rivers High, where Jamie is a student. Among these institutions are other high schools, community colleges, proprietary schools and a couple fo firms that orginally developed the programs for their own employees and then decided topen their doors to others. In each case, the programs involve at least some college credit and at least some structured on-the-job training at work sites. Most of these programs are offered by partnerships. Because most of the young pariticpants in the school-to-work transition programs want totay in high school, most of the partnerships consist of a high school, one or more colleges, and one or more firms. It turns out that Eduardo's computer terminal is a big help in sorting through all the possibilities. This because, "under the state's rules, all programs offering school-to-work transition programs are required to compile their performance data in a common format and make it available to the career centers in the state." That means Jamie can compare the programs on the basis of their performance and pick the one that is right for her. In the end, she picks the program in her field that is run by Rivers High, for three reasons: (1) most of the youngsters who enroll in it actually get their skill certificates and get them reasonably quick, (2) the firms that participate in Rivers' program are mostly places where Jamie would like to work after she gets her skills certificate; (3) it is close to her home; and (4) not least important, if she stays at Rivers, she can continue to be in the varsity sports program and be with her friends. ===================== But Jamie might have been a 19-year-old high school dropout looking for a way to get a Certificate of Initial Mastery, or a 24-year-old with limited literacy skills and a history of drug addiction, or a 20-year-old who just got a Certificate of Initial Mastery through an alternative education program in the community and wants to go for a skills certificate. In any of these cases, Eduardo would have carefully interviewed his client, "and then filled in a single computer-data entry form. That form is very like a universal application for all the forms of financial assistance available from the state and federal governments for education, job training and related servides." Eduardo would then press one button and the computer would print out a one-page report showing just how much money is available to meet the needs of that particular young person and whether it is subject to restrictions. With this information in hand, Eduardo would work with the client to craft a progrm that meets her needs; arrange, on the spot, for all services and programs needed; and set up a schedule for the client to come back from time to time to see how she is getting on, and, if necessary, correct course. "(The computer software to perform all these tasks is available now and is being used in a growing number of cities and states.)" ============== For all this to work smoothly, the local career centers will have to be governed by a "powerful board of individuals" very committed to building an effective system for the whole community. It is crucial that the members include the CEOs of some of the most highly regarded employers in the area and that some of these people take leadership positions on the board. But is is also important that organized labor be represented on this board as well as key representatives of the youth advocate community, higher education, the schools and the training community. Without key employers in the lead, it will not work. Unless employers provide the on-the-job training slots and training materials, "help to develop the curriculum," find the job mentors, come up with the wages, "perform their role in examining students against the standards" and organize the job market for young people, the whole idea will fail and become another form of career education without careers. Eduardo and his counterparts will not be in a position to explain to the various providers how the new system works and to persuade the education and training providers to seek new partners and to build new programs for young people. It will take "senior leaders in the community" to organize it for this purpose. It will take "the same group" to monitor the program's progress and to respond to any glaring gaps by, for instance, calling the CEOs of 70 small- and medium-sized firms and urging them, one-on-one, tooget on board. "It will take those same senior leaders to call up the head of the county Department of Social Services or the head of the juvenile justice system and urge them to integrate their data systems with those of the career center and then (and much more importantly) forge the links among the front-line staff members of these agencies that will make it possible for young people on the bottom to escape the cycle of dependency and poverty in which they now are enmeshed." In short, the career centers must be designed to meet the goals of the consensus model school-to-work transition system, but then they must also be designed to meet the needs of dislocated workers, displaced homemakers, those who have never held a steady job, and everyone else in the labor market who needs the kind of help that such a center could provide. The center described herein would have within its scope the trained staff, support services and technologically based information systems to do just that, and do it well. Because such a center would be established to meet everyone's needs, no one would be stigmatized by taking advantage of its services, and everyone would rally around it in times of need. It would be a powerful community institution, not another marginal service for the young or the poor. And that, of course, is the danger. School-to-work transition easly could become another marginal program added to all the others, a vaguely defined collection of activities, each of which serves only a handful of students, mostly perceived as alternative programs for youngsters who do notit in elsewhere. The most potent inoculation against that outcome is the overall structure of state policy build along the lines described earlier and "strong local leadership spearheaded by leading employers," but involving lots of others. One last point about local organization. As mentioned above, one of the most serious problems in getting employers involved is the difficulty that small- and medium-sized firms face in doing th necessary paperwork, planning, supervision, "curriculum development" and training, and in providing the diversity of training experiences that will be required for a sufficiently diverse exposure to a whole industry. The Australians have addressed this problem by offering assistance to local employer groups in the formation of group training corporations. Under this system, the primary relationship between the young person and the firm becomes instead a relationship between the young person and the group training corporation. The corporation becomes responsible for finding the partner to provide the classroom work; for organizing a series of placements among employers that will, taken as a whole, provide the overall exposure to the field that is wanted without requiring any single employers to provide these experiences; for handling all the paperwork involved; for taking out whatever insurance, including worker's compensation, that might be required; for providing the coordination and counseling for the students that is needed; and so on. The whole group of employers at the local level owns the group training corporation, sets its policies and hires its staff. It also pays its expenses, "with significant subsidies from the government." The result in Australia is that many small- and medium-sized employers that could not or woul dnot have participated at all are now enthusiastic participants. From the standpoint of the firms, they have avoided what they see as the heavy hand of government, because all of this is voluntary and they have done it themselves, but government has achieved its aims at a very low management cost, having provided a subsidy without which nothng would have happened. In the system described, the local career centers could be organized as a corporation and play all the functions of an Australian-style group training corporation, or the group training corporations could be formed separately, but in formal alliance with the career centers. In any case, it is very important for the system toohave some feature that serves this purpose.