America is embroiled in a debate over how best to
educate its students. Throughout the past three decades, elementary
and secondary education students have been exposed to a sea of
educational fads, from new math and whole language to outcome-based
education and cooperative learning. Each new theory has been
administered as a healing elixir for the failure of public schools
to help American students rise to the same heights as many foreign
students on international achievement measures. As post-secondary
schools increasingly assume the responsibilities of elementary and
secondary education, and as employers and parents complain about
the failure of schools to teach basic skills, the standards
movement has become the latest attempt to remedy lagging
performance.
Eager to improve the quality of education,
policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels are pressing
for higher standards in education. Major corporations are calling
for higher standards in schools as well and are partnering with
educators to promote their strategies. Governors are
instituting state standards and assessments, and many states are
tying them to grade promotion and graduation. Federal funding of
elementary and secondary education programs through such
legislation as the Improving America's Schools Act (P.L. 103-382)
and Goals 2000 (P.L. 103-227) also imposes state content and
performance standards tied to state assessments as a condition of
funding eligibility. The mantra of the day in education reform is
high academic standards with accountability.
Underlying this effort is the assumption
that linking high-stakes assessments to standards will motivate
educators to higher levels of teaching and students to higher
achievement. The success of both the new standards and the
assessment of students' progress in meeting those standards will
hinge on the content and quality of the standards themselves; so
far, however, policymakers have focused on the process of
implementing standards, paying little attention to their actual
content.
Quite unnoticed, a new definition of
education standards has emerged--one that places greater relevance
on the world of work. All learning is to take place within the
context of a work situation or real-world environment with emphasis
on workplace competencies. It is argued that this will provide
relevance for students that will foster in them a desire to achieve
greater levels of learning. But the result has been a narrower
education that focuses on practical skills to the detriment of a
broader academic education. The danger of the new education
standards is that they may elevate workplace competencies above
essential academic knowledge.
Not
all education is vocational education. Schools should not be
required or encouraged by federal funding to narrow their focus to
emphasize workplace skills. The failure of vocational education in
America to provide a quality education for non-college-bound
students into the world of work is no reason to infuse and impose
workforce education throughout the elementary and secondary
education system. A better solution than transforming all of
education would be to rebuild a vibrant voluntary vocational system
to provide proper transition to work and careers for
non-college-bound youth. Policymakers also should develop education
standards that are academic, rigorous, specific, measurable, and
non-prescriptive of methodology or ideology. Standards should focus
on academic content and be free of workplace skills or
competencies.
FROM SCANS TO SCHOOL-TO-WORK TO NEW
STANDARDS
The
major impetus for transforming academic standards came in the 1990s
when the U.S. Secretary of Labor, Lynn Martin, convened the
Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS). In
1992, the commission published a report entitled Learning a
Living: A Blueprint for High Performance. This report
identified the skills that the commission believed a 21st century
high-performance workplace would require:
-
SCANS Foundational Skills: basic
reading, writing, and math skills; thinking skills and problem
solving; and personal qualities such as individual responsibility,
self-esteem, and integrity.
- SCANS Workplace Competencies:
knowing how to allocate time, money, and materials; interpersonal
skills such as working on teams, teaching others, and negotiating;
using, evaluating, and communicating information; understanding
social, organizational, and technological systems; and effectively
using technology.
The
SCANS report recommended integrating these competencies into core
academic subjects taught in kindergarten through 12th grade and
beyond. Calls to integrate the SCANS skills and competencies into
state standards and assessments of core academic subjects as well
increased nationwide.
In
1994, Congress passed the School-to-Work Opportunities Act (STWOA,
P.L. 103-239) to address the failure of America's primary,
secondary, and vocational education systems to graduate young
adults with marketable knowledge and skills. Embodied in the STWOA
are the central tenets of the school-to-work (STW)
philosophy--workplace relevance, integration of academic and
vocational education, and workplace competencies. STW is not
vocational education, nor does it build upon vocational education.
It also is not a distinct program. Rather, it is an umbrella
philosophy for many activities that are intended to systematically
restructure all education for all students.
Proponents claim that for students to
attain higher levels of academic achievement, education must be
relevant to the real world: that is, to the world of work. They
assert that integrating academic and vocational education in every
subject for all grades will produce this relevancy. Thus, STW is
much more than career awareness and guidance counseling; it is
career integration in every discipline, across all subjects, at all
grade levels, in all schools.
To
varying degrees, STW has been implemented in all 50 states, and its
defining features have been absorbed in the comprehensive education
reform programs currently underway at the state level. Included in
the reform efforts are revisions in state academic standards, Title
I grants to local educational agencies, and Goals 2000 state and
local education systemic improvement grants. All of these encourage
teaching and learning in the context of real-life applications and
careers. Career development is being infused throughout the
curriculum as academic and technical curricula are integrated
across all subject areas and grade levels. These measures also
provide for the sustainability of STW despite the impending
sunsetting of the STWOA in 2001 and the growing sentiment in
Congress to halt the program.
Today, there is evidence across the nation
that STW has integrated workplace competencies, many based on the
SCANS report, in classrooms, in core academic subjects, and in
state standards. State after state is implementing standards
infused with the SCANS foundational skills and workplace
competencies. As stand-alone career or technology standards are
embedded in language arts, history, science, or mathematics, the
focus of workforce development is replacing academic essentials.
For example:
Florida's 1994-95 System of School
Improvement and Accountability, known as Blueprint 2000, states:
"In this information age, the exit-level [high school] standards
required for entry into postsecondary education are the same as the
entry-level standards required for entry into the workforce.... The
skills, knowledge and values comprising these standards are those
identified by the SCANS as applied through Florida's Core of
Essential Concepts."
In Texas, the state's Essential
Knowledge and Skills curriculum includes "the use of knowledge and
skills in everyday life, in work, and, in the future,
real-world-skills in academic subjects (e.g., English Language Arts
and reading, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies will teach
students how to set personal and career goals)."
Michigan's Career and Employability
Skills include Applied Skills that "will be accomplished in the
English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies
benchmarks, and may be accomplished through cross disciplinary
teaching strategies with other subject areas."
New Hampshire's Career Development
Framework states: "It is also understood that knowledge, skills,
and attitudes essential for career development are presented across
a school's entire curriculum, integrating the goals of New
Hampshire's 6 curriculum frameworks. Therefore curriculum planners
should also consult the following: K-12 English Language Arts
Curriculum Framework; K-12 Integrated Arts Curriculum Framework;
K-12 Mathematics Curriculum Framework; K-12 Science Curriculum
Framework; K-12 Social Studies Curriculum Framework."
New Jersey identifies Cross-Content
Workplace Readiness Standards as part of their Core Curriculum
Content Standards that "are not broken down into grade level
clusters because, in addition to crossing all content areas, they
also cross all grade levels. Teachers should integrate these
concepts into all programs in content-specific and
grade-appropriate ways."
Alaska
proudly relates that "Alaska Content Standards directly relate to
the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills
(SCANS).... All Alaska Content Standards help prepare students to
make a successful transition to work." A table available
on the Alaska's Department of Education Web page lists which
content standards most directly align with the SCANS report.
The
integration of academic and vocational education is widespread in
the states and is having a detrimental impact on the basic academic
education of many elementary, middle school, and high school
students. It does not matter what descriptors are attached to
standards--"high," "rigorous," or "academic." What is important is
the objective level each standard sets for measuring academic
quality. In state after state, whether in specific career education
standards or embedded in English language arts standards and
cross-content standards, basic academic knowledge is being
diminished to make room for workplace competencies.
THE PROBLEM WITH SCANS
Serious concerns have been raised over the
adoption of the SCANS recommendations because the generalized
workplace competencies of the SCANS have never been validated. A
National Job Analysis Study begun by ACT, Inc., in 1995 to validate
the SCANS skills was never completed. After the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) refused to continue funding in 1996,
the project died. The preliminary results based on Phase I of the
study were published, but with no definitive conclusions. The study could
not produce sufficient information on which to generalize the SCANS
workplace competencies to high-performance jobs, and further
research was necessary to validate the SCANS recommendations. Nevertheless,
states are implementing their own standards based on the SCANS
competencies, which may have no correlation to job performance.
THE PROBLEM WITH SCHOOL-TO-WORK
According to a 1998 report by the National
Association of Manufacturers, "40 percent of all 17-year-olds do
not have the necessary math skills--and more than 60 percent do not
have the necessary reading skills--to work in a $33,000 per annum
production job at a modern auto plant." More recently, the
American Management Association reported that 38.3 percent of job
applicants tested in 1999 lacked sufficient skills for the
positions they sought.
The
fact that many job applicants lack the literacy and math skills
necessary to perform anything but rudimentary assignments on the
job is not the result of the schools' failure to teach workplace
skills; rather, it is the result of their failure to teach
essential academic knowledge and literacy skills. There is a
widespread assumption that workplace skills and their corresponding
standards are the same as basic academic skills. They are not.
-
Basic academic skills are reading,
writing, and mathematics, and standards for these subjects can be
defined and measured objectively.
- Workplace skills, on the other
hand, range from skills and competencies common to broad
occupational groups to those essential for specific jobs. Some can
be defined and measured objectively, but many are affective in
nature and subjective in evaluation. The skills or competencies
that fall into the affective domain are ethics, interpersonal
skills, integrity, and respect for diversity, among others.
A
number of studies have raised serious questions about the
effectiveness of STW. While some studies have found higher student
motivation and engagement, as well as slightly lower dropout
rates, not one conducted
to date has found that STW or any of its component learning
theories has increased the academic achievement of students as
measured by standardized test scores. Children may be more
motivated to attend school, but this still does not answer the
question, what are they learning and how well?
Much
of the research that claims STW is a success does not consider
academic achievement to be the highest priority. Rather, these
studies consider student satisfaction, enhanced self-esteem, and
other nonacademic outcomes as equal or superior to academic
achievement. If any positive outcome, academic or nonacademic, is
produced, STW is considered successful.
However, Mathematica Policy Research's
National Evaluation of School-to-Work Implementation--the largest
study of STW conducted to date--found that efforts by states to
raise academic standards are occurring independently of STW. According to the
report, "it has been difficult in evaluation site visits to
identify clear plans for promoting [academic] skills in workplace
activities that STW partnerships have arranged."
Moreover, many schools experience a
tension between the priority that states and districts place on
raising academic standards and the interests of STW implementation
leaders. According to Mathematica Policy Research,
In
some cases, [STW] activities can occur only in ways that intrude on
academic class time. Even when they are part of special courses,
they take up time that students could otherwise devote to elective
academic courses. Despite the theory that STW-type activities can
contribute to academic attainment, the absence of rigorous evidence
applicable to their own schools often leaves frontline staff
feeling caught between the pressures of competing priorities.
Moreover, when academic teachers embrace [STW] ideas about making
learning more applied and contextual, their early efforts sometimes
appear to retreat from high standards.
In
addition, STW activities can take time away from academic studies.
The report states that teachers
are
often concerned that incorporating more practical and hands-on
learning will take away from the more traditionally defined
academic skills they consider critical to their students' success
in standardized testing, college admissions, and more advanced
study.
The
Mathematica Policy Research study concludes "that students often
face a trade-off between taking the time to pursue electives with
career content and using their elective options to take more
advanced traditional academic classes."
Other studies support the Mathematica
findings:
-
A study of 100 students participating in
the Cornell Youth Apprenticeship Demonstration Project found that
the youths did gain job-related skills and knowledge, but there
were no effects on academic achievement.
-
A random-assignment study found that
participation in a career academy had no effect, either positive or
negative, on standardized test scores.
- A report produced by the Institute on
Education and the Economy concluded that "research regarding STW
students' achievement on standardized tests is inconclusive. The
few existing studies indicate that there is little, if any, effect
on test scores."
These studies reaffirm the conclusion
reached in a 1996 U.S. Department of Education study that,
while
[m]ost [STW] programs are reported to be
effectively teaching occupational skills at a sufficient
level...less commonly, gains in academic skills are reported.
The
business community and institutions of higher education continually
point to the lack of academic skills in applicants, not to a
deficiency in their workplace skills. "We are not interested in
public schools teaching work-related skills," stated IBM CEO Louis
Gerstner at the 1996 National Education Summit. "We can teach them
what they need to run a machine or develop a marketing plan. What
is killing us is having to teach them to read, compute,
communicate, and to think." As a 1998 Public
Agenda poll of employers and professors conducted for Education
Week revealed, the
greatest dissatisfaction with recent high school graduates' skill
levels lies in basic academic knowledge.
If
businesses and parents are more concerned with literacy skills and
academic achievement, one might ask why there is such a strong
movement to integrate workplace skills into school curricula. The
answer lies in the dominant educational philosophy of STW. As a
utilitarian view of education, STW prematurely places the value of
work above the value of academic knowledge and skills, to the
detriment of both the student and business.
THE PROBLEM WITH CONTEXTUAL LEARNING
The
school-to-work strategy fails to raise academic achievement as
measured by standardized tests because its underlying theories of
learning are flawed. The roots of this strategy lie in
constructivist education theory (the belief that students will
better remember information they create for themselves) and
contextual or applied learning (learning that must take place
within the context of work). These theories imply that education is
not concerned with the acquisition of an accepted body of knowledge
transmitted by a teacher, but rather with the process of helping
students discover and create their own understandings from personal
experience.
The
emphasis on process over content de-emphasizes basic knowledge and
skills acquisition, and limits later conceptual understanding and
academic achievement. STW requires contextual and applied learning
in order to connect the work students do in school to the demands
of the 21st century workplace, and it is having dramatic effects on
classroom practices and state standards because it is taught within
the context of academic subjects.
The
belief that students will learn by scurrying about seeking
information to attain ill-defined goals lies at the heart of
contextual learning and STW. By simply engaging in work-related
processes, students are supposed to develop critical thinking.
However, there is no evidence that complex procedures can be
learned before a student has mastered the simpler components of
those procedures. Dr. Alan Cromer of
Cornell University notes that, "Without knowledgeable guidance from
their teacher, students are truly like mice in a maze. Each will
arrive at his own version of the goal with his own set of errors
and misconceptions."
John
Anderson, Lynn Reder, and Herbert Simon of Carnegie Mellon
University are among the foremost cognitive psychologists in the
United States. They conclude that both constructivist education
theory and contextual learning claims are unproven and, in several
respects, at odds with well-known scientific findings. In fact,
such methods may be detrimental to learning as knowledge becomes
situation-bound and context-specific, leaving the student unable to
generalize and transfer his knowledge to new and different
situations.
Contextual learning is likely to be highly
variable and uncertain. It does not inculcate knowledge and skill
effectively, securely, or universally. What students remember
remains uncontrolled, contingent, and largely irrelevant to
definite and responsible learning goals. Lauren Resnick of
the University of Pittsburgh, a leading theorist on constructivist
and contextual learning, admits that, "Despite broad interest in
contextualized learning programs, there is little systematic
evidence about their effectiveness, especially with respect to
meeting academic standards in math, science, and
English/communications."
Many
parents assume that the education standards currently being adopted
by the states are academic, of high quality, and grounded in core
academic subjects. This is not the case. The curriculum integration
of academic and vocational skills, known as contextual or applied
learning, has become a cornerstone of education reform. As a
result, state education standards increasingly define questionable
workplace competencies, and local school curricula are infused with
workplace skills and assessments to meet those standards.
By
trying to make education more useful to employers, states are
redefining academic standards. All education becomes vocational
education when academic achievement is jettisoned and
neo-vocational education is redefined as education for both
college- and career-bound students.
WORK-BASED COMPETENCIES IN PRACTICE
Across the country, workplace competencies
and real-world situations are found within the core curriculum in
the context of tasks in English, mathematics, and science. Actual
curriculum examples include the following:
-
Chemistry students are asked to determine
the most effective, economical, and environmentally safe grass
fertilizer for a school district. The students were to produce an
analytical report with detailed procedures and conclusions and then
make a recommendation to the school district's grounds and
maintenance department.
-
Middle school math students visit local
car dealerships to determine the average cost of cars with similar
features. Groups of four students then present what they think is
the best car for a given amount of money allowed and justify their
choice to the class.
- Taking time away from academics, high
school seniors are provided the opportunity to experience a
manufacturing work environment while learning the fundamentals of
basketmaking.
States and individual school districts are
also beginning to mandate that students take employability skills
and workplace competency assessments as well. The most notable
assessment test is WorkKeys, produced by ACT, Inc. Based on the
SCANS, it assesses such workplace skills as applied mathematics,
applied technology, listening, locating information, observation,
reading for information, teamwork, and writing. Tasks range from
taking phone messages to computing sale prices, reading
instructions for filling a candy machine, troubleshooting a
hydraulic lift, or repairing a refrigerator.
WorkKeys is one of the fastest growing
workplace skills assessments in use today. For example:
-
It is a graduation requirement for all
high school students in Wichita, Kansas.
-
Beginning with the class of 2002, Topeka,
Kansas, and Jefferson County, Kentucky, will require seniors to
achieve a minimum score on the WorkKeys exam to graduate.
-
Illinois' new Prairie State Achievement
Exam will include WorkKeys exams.
-
In Upstate New York, a Syracuse
University-Community Workforce Development Partnership has inspired
over 30 companies to use WorkKeys with at least seven high schools
in the region.
- In the San Francisco Bay Area, several
large employers adopted WorkKeys to identify anticipated skill
needs for specific jobs, while high schools throughout the region
began testing students in several WorkKeys skill areas. The result:
"a certification system recognized by business and education as a
measure of student preparation for the workplace of the 21st
century," according to Bay Area Industry Education Council vice
president Gerald Bartlett.
Education always has had economic and
work-based implications, but never before have states so tied
economic development and the needs of business so directly to
education standards. To the extent that work-based standards crowd
out rigorous academic standards, business will soon discover that
high school graduates who walk through their doors tomorrow are no
better prepared in reading, writing, and math than they are
today.
They
may also discover that the "trained" graduates arriving on their
industries' doorsteps may require retraining at an even higher
rate. Youth who learn contextually do not perform well when basic
knowledge and theoretical thought are required. The more specific
or situation-bound that knowledge becomes, the less a student is
able to generalize and transfer knowledge to new and different
situations. Those who experience a well-rounded liberal arts
education, by comparison, usually adapt easily to contextual
learning situations.
THE WORKFORCE INVESTMENT ACT AND EDUCATION
STANDARDS
The
primary purpose of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA, P.L. 105-220)
is to reform and restructure 60 federal job training programs into
state block grants and provide a framework for a national workforce
preparation and employment system to meet the needs of business and
workers. The WIA, combined with STW, melds education, job training,
and human resource planning much more closely than ever before. As
STW makes education more utilitarian and workplace-focused, a
mechanism is needed to align job trends with school programs and
curriculum. The WIA serves that function.
Under the WIA, state and local workforce
investment boards--the majority of whose members are businessmen
and women--are required to identify current and projected
employment opportunities and the skills necessary to obtain those
jobs. States are also required to develop a labor market
information system (LMIS) that estimates the industrial
distribution of jobs and skill trends by occupation and industry.
The local workforce investment boards use the LMIS information to
develop programs to provide "tutoring, study skills training, and
instruction, leading to completion of secondary school, including
drop-out prevention strategies." The
vocational-technical competencies necessary for targeted industries
and jobs are then integrated into school curricula through STW
programs.
Although proponents of STW view WIA
employment projections as a positive education reform that will
better prepare students for local job opportunities, this practice
is fraught with danger. The problem is that the LMIS projection
models are based on past trends. Schools, together with business,
are required to predict the future job market and then train
children for those jobs. They may be able to forecast the job
market one year from now, but no one can accurately predict what
jobs will be available five, 10, or 20 years in the future. The
immediate needs of business may be served in such a system, but in
the long run, it is a disservice to students and future employers.
If STW were around in 1900, for example, educators, bureaucrats,
and employers might have trained schoolchildren to be domestic
household help, blacksmiths, barrel-makers, or other high-demand
occupations that became nearly obsolete just 20 years later. This
is hardly wise education policy.
In
addition, business representatives on the boards may be tempted to
manipulate job needs with adverse repercussions on wages in
particular markets, and the future market needs of businesses that
are not represented on a board or that are nonexistent in an area
at that time may be ignored. WIA performance measures may induce
schools to guide students into careers that meet the requirements
of businesses instead of allowing them to choose their own career
path.
Finally, job placement and retention are
used as performance measures for success in this new education
system. If job placement
and retention are the primary measures of success, the pressure to
train students in preferred industries and occupations that are
currently available in the school's proximity becomes enormous.
A BETTER APPROACH TO STANDARDS
In
the guise of consolidating workforce training programs and raising
academic standards, current reform is melding education and
workforce training into a single system. The failure of America's
schools to educate its youth is not, however, a workforce
development problem; it is an elementary and secondary education
problem: the lack of sound, rigorous, academic curricula coupled
with the education establishment's reluctance to demand mastery of
the basic skills.
The
difficulties students have in making the transition from high
school to work or college would disappear if education reforms were
focused on strengthening core curricula, using proven teaching
methods, setting high expectations for students and parents, and
enabling local educators to improve classroom discipline. If
primary and secondary schools concentrated on improving these key
areas instead of on implementing STW strategies, students would
realize greater academic achievement and be better prepared for
work or higher education.
To
strengthen academic achievement, Washington should ensure that
efforts to promote standards focus on academic standards. More
important, state legislators and education officials at the state
and local level should:
-
Eliminate STW programs and
activities from comprehensive elementary and secondary
education;
-
Develop and incorporate education
standards that are academic, rigorous, specific, measurable, and
non-prescriptive of methodology or ideology, and that focus on
academic content rather than workplace skills or competencies;
-
Phase out contextual learning and
replace it with proven teaching methods;
-
Resist the integration of workplace
competencies and academics at all grade levels;
-
Restore academic focus and rigor to
all subjects for all students;
-
Restrict the participation of
students in workforce investment programs;
-
Protect kindergarten through 12th
grade curricula and standards from inordinate business influence;
and
- Rebuild a vibrant and voluntary
vocational system for transition to work and careers for
non-college-bound students.
Research shows that education oriented to
specific workplace skills and job training produces graduates who
are less versatile and unable to change occupations without
substantial retraining. By contrast, graduates of a rigorous
liberal arts education can readily learn new skills and adjust to
new jobs. There is lifelong value in gaining knowledge of history,
literature, science, mathematics, and the arts far beyond the world
of work. The most important purpose of schools is to educate
Americans to be vigilant guardians of their freedom and to be able
independently to take advantage of the social and economic
opportunities that a free society affords.
CONCLUSION
Not
all education is vocational education. America's schools should not
be required by their utilization of government funding to narrow
their focus to emphasize practical skills at the expense of
academic skills. There is more to education than securing gainful
employment. Knowledge of history, science, mathematics, and
literature is valuable regardless of whether it leads directly to a
job.
The
current philosophy of education that permeates primary and
secondary schools is shorn of the disciplined knowledge that is
fundamental for an educated citizenry. The retreat from teaching
proficiency in academic math and science deprives America's youth
of true critical thinking skills. The deconstruction of the
humanities renders youth incapable of reasoned judgment.
For
too long, primary and secondary public education has retreated from
teaching these core academic competencies. The success of the
current effort in Washington to improve the quality of education by
imposing higher standards and assessments will hinge not on the
assessments, but on the content and quality of the standards
themselves. If these standards are academic, rigorous, specific,
measurable, and non-prescriptive of methodology or ideology,
America's schools will graduate adults who are better prepared for
the many opportunities of the 21st century.
Virginia Miller is an
education policy consultant based in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania.