Areas of Assistance: School-To-Career and High School Reform

The Center for Law and Education can provide technical assistance on a range of school-to-career issues and on their connection to schoolwide high-school change. Five areas of particular emphasis for technical assistance at CLE are noted below.

a. Providing strong experience and understanding in all aspects of an industry.

CLE developed and remains the leading proponent of the "all aspects of the industry" (AAI) approach to vocational and academic integration. In addition to its key role in both the Perkins and School-to-Work Opportunities Acts, AAI is gaining momentum from the growing efforts to build smaller school units (academies, etc.) around a broad industry (health, finance, etc.) -- for the same reasons that CLE embraced it: it provides a broad and exciting platform for exploration and from which to integrate high-level academics; and it is concrete, while not tracking students into narrow occupational programs that have very unequal career status, cut off career and higher educational options, or quickly become obsolete. CLE project sites now include some of the nation's best, and best documented, examples of AAI instruction. CLE can assist with staff development, curriculum development, policy development, and assessment in relation to AAI, including assessment of the full extent of AAI integration into the curriculum of all smaller learning communities within a school and in maximizing the extent to which school-sponsored businesses, service learning programs, and other experiential placements foster AAI experience and understanding.

b. Linking vocational reform with Title I and standards-based academic reform (including Goals 2000 and state reform initiatives) for schoolwide change that integrates academic and vocational learning.

Standards-based reform is now providing much of the fuel for school change, and Title I is the largest single lever and resource helping to structure that change. Linking school-to-career programming with this academic reform is critical to fully implementing the program schoolwide and to ensuring that participating students are enabled to meet the same high academic standards as other students and have a program which qualifies them for admission to four-year college. CLE is heavily engaged in school change efforts beyond school-to-career, and has long been an expert, for example, in Title I policy and implementation, including a key role in the changes called for by the Improving America's Schools Act of 1994. This experience is useful in staff development and program change to overcome the barriers to whole-school change, including detracking and changing low expectations for certain students.

c. Equitably and effectively serving all students.

In particular, CLE brings a long history of work, beyond the VOCED Project, on education of students with disabilities. We can help focus on programmatic and curricular integration, moving beyond physical integration of these students, in order to overcome the barriers which disabilities pose to these students achieving the academic and vocational outcomes expected for all students. This embraces such issues as whether the Individualized Education Plan process focuses on these curricular goals, the relationship between special needs personnel and "regular" teaching staff, ways to ensure that students who are being "mainstreamed" do not end up in low-track regular classes which fail to focus on those goals based on unvalidated assumptions about their limited capacity to learn, and the proper inclusion of these students in assessment programs. Similar issues arise concerning the full programmatic inclusion of students with limited English proficiency.

d. Working with the local community. The assistance that we offer as part of our plan for improvement has two dimensions:

(i) Community involvement and support in developing and improving the program. CLE can help schools involve families, students, and community organizations in ways that are substantial and constructive (including compacts). CLE can also help develop the independent capacity -- in terms of information, training etc. -- of parent and community groups, etc. to understand the reform issues, work with the schools, and hold the schools accountable. CLE's long experience in improving parent and community involvement in education, including the shaping and implementation of participation provisions in Title I, Perkins, and other federal programs, has been augmented by its absorption of the former National Committee on Citizens in Education, with its leading expertise on the research and practice of parent involvement.

(ii) Community development linkages. Engaging students in assessing community needs and in development projects which meet those needs can be an exciting and gratifying way to integrate academic and experiential learning and to understand all aspects of an industry. As the pressure grows to find enough work-based placements in low-income communities to "go to scale" and serve "all students," so does the interest in school-based development enterprises and in working with community development corporations, service organizations, and community groups. CLE can help develop and utilize these options and ensure that they are integrally linked to the curriculum, rather than add-ons with limited academic content. The VOCED Project sites have contained some of the most notable examples of community development and using the community as the locus for student/teacher curricular exploration.

e. Developing policies to help institutionalize and maintain the change process.

This includes help in analyzing, developing, and revising the school-level policies necessary to institutionalize the key elements at a schoolwide level. It also includes developing/revising district policies that better facilitate the schoolwide efforts; helping to deal with state-level policies that help or hinder the effort; and helping the sites understand and make the most advantageous use of changes in federal policy. At all levels, it includes integrating school-to-career policy with policies governing academic reform (including Title I) and special populations. In addition to its substantive background in these policy areas, CLE (many of whose staff have law degrees as well as education credentials) brings a great deal of drafting experience to this work.

Assistance in these five areas (as well as other areas that may arise as critical to school and classroom change) are available through a variety of means, including:

• Training and workshops -- for teachers, administrators, parents, students, community groups and advocates, and others;
• Document and program analysis -- for example, reviewing district- and school-level Title I plans or the IEP process in terms of vocational and academic integration (also see below on collecting descriptive information on school change);
• Development of new policies and plans -- for example, policies and plans to help ensure that small, theme-based learning communities serve all students equitably and are academically equivalent (and drawing together Title I, School-to-Work, special education, standards development, etc.);
• Other ongoing consultation and technical assistance -- to local administrators, teachers, and community organizations, both by phone and in person, which remains the important glue of our support effort.
• Development and dissemination of materials particularly relevant to the site needs -- for example, on how to leverage Title I and standards-based reform for integrated schoolwide change, or materials specifically designed to engage parents in the change process.

CLE also has a relationship with The Big Picture, based in Providence (RI) and Cambridge (MA) that augments our capacity for assistance. First, in conjunction with The Big Picture and the Coalition of Essential Schools, CLE is now implementing the New Urban High School initiative, under a contract with the federal Office of Vocational and Adult Education to identify, assist, and share the work of a limited number of urban high schools that are leaders in linking school-to-work with schoolwide reform. CLE can help other schools tap into this work. Second, CLE in conjunction with The Big Picture operates the Hands and Minds Collaborative, which includes a network of schools and educators focused on academic and vocational integration and incorporating AAI. By drawing on current and former teaching staff from the Rindge School of Technical Arts in Cambridge, the Collaborative can also provide teacher-driven staff development assistance on integrated curriculum (such as the award-winning ninth-grade CityWorks program). The Collaborative also serves as a National-School-to-Work Office-approved provider of Technical Assistance.