School-to-Work: Making a Difference in Education

Abstract

THE SCHOOL-to-Work Opportunities Act (STWOA) was passed in 1994 after more than a decade of discussion and debate about the country's system for preparing young people for work. This discussion was particularly focused on the role of secondary schools. The STWOA built on a variety of educational strategies that were already being used, but by providing funding through high-profile national legislation, the act accelerated those activities, tried to give them greater unity and coherence, and provided a focal point around which to organize discussion of and experimentation with these educational innovations. However, the authors of the STWOA had not intended to create a permanent separate program. Rather their goal was to generate activities that could then be incorporated into the normal functioning of the education system. As a result, the funding was scheduled to expire in 2001. We have now passed that funding endpoint, and educators and policy makers must look back over the experience of the last several years to decide what lessons have been learned from the social and educational experiment represented by the STWOA. In what ways, if any, can this approach improve schools, educational outcomes, and the country's system for preparing young people for work? Which aspects have been most successful and why? What should educators, policy makers, and organizations such as foundations do now? Our goal is to contribute to the discussion by gathering together and summarizing the research that has been carried out in the last several years to evaluate the effectiveness of the school-to-work educational strategy. Although the federal legislation has expired, the flow of research findings relating to school-to-work is, if anything, accelerating. Educational innovations take some time to organize and implement, so programs started in the mid-1990s may not have reached full operational levels until the late 1990s, and then there is a lag between implementation and the publication of research findings. Moreover, perhaps the most interesting and useful research tracks program participants over time, which creates an even greater lag between implementation and publication. Therefore, the last two years have seen a flourishing of research results, and some important evaluation projects are still ongoing. Our conclusion is that the research so far has found generally positive results: the school-to-work strategy does benefit students, teachers, and employers. Although critics of this educational approach feared that it would weaken academic achievement and divert students to low- skilled jobs, truncating their opportunities for college and further study, the growing body of evaluation work -- even at the most rigorous and definitive levels -- has turned up almost no evidence that such fears were justified. Background In the 1980s, several trends led to an extensive national discussion of education reform and work force development. The 1983 report A Nation At Risk claimed that profound weaknesses in the education system were undermining U.S. productivity and competitiveness. Researchers were documenting and analyzing the changing nature of work and changing skill requirements. Increasingly, young people without some postsecondary education could not expect to earn enough money to support a family. America's Choice: High Skills or Low Wages! pointed out that many young adults were spending their early years in the work force moving from one low-wage, dead-end job to another.1 At the same time, developments in research on and pedagogy emphasized the effectiveness of learning in context. Cognitive psychologists argued that students learn most effectively if they are taught skills in the context in which they will use those skills. Advocates of constructivism argued for a pedagogical approach in which students are more active learners, guided by their teacher in such a way that they construct their own knowledge. …