This article provides a broad overview of the history of career-focused education in the United States and the reauthorization of the federal Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Improvement Act of 2006. The Perkins act required that the recipients of its funding offer at least one program of study, and this reauthorization included four…

The School-to-Work Opportunities Act (STWOA) of 1994 provides flexible funding and technical assistance to the education reform strategy known as the school-to-work movement, which offers a broad range of students work-based learning opportunities. In 1994, just before passage of the STWOA, the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation…

A statewide effort was conducted in Kentucky to design a longitudinal assessment of tech prep, an educational reform strategy for high schools. Construction of the evaluation design included consideration of quantitative and qualitative data for school programmatic decisions, as well as funding accountability requirements at the district and state…

This report highlights four urban comprehensive secondary schools that are developing, implementing, and evaluating reform initiatives that include vocational and technical education as a key component of these efforts. Efforts of these four high schools are described: Bryan High School, Omaha, Nebraska; Humboldt Secondary Complex, St. Paul,…

This document contains six studies that were commissioned for the National Assessment of Vocational Education. "Introduction" (Ann M. Milne) provides an overview of the reforms of the 1980s. "The Impact of Educational Reform on Vocational Education" (Marion Asche, Donald E. Elson, Ann Echols, Arthur Williams) examines primary…

The 10 chapters in this book provide an overview of 5 years of work by member schools and colleges in the Urban Schools Network, which provides technical assistance to schools in 31 urban areas. "Overview of the Urban Schools Network" (Lola Jackson) is a history, defining purposes, participants, and priorities. "Integrating Academic…

This book provides a rationale, model, and procedures for implementing change in high schools. Focus is on adoption of applied, context-based, community-based education that eliminates competition between academic and vocational education and promotes cooperation in creating career-based education. Chapter 1 provides a review of how this type of…

This concept paper addresses the preparation of vocational education teachers. Several topics are listed with comments, and, in some cases, supporting documentation has been abstracted. These topics correspond to reasons for the lack of national visibility within Florida as indicated by the 2001 rankings in the U.S. News and World Report that…

Section 1 of this publication begins with the 1999 National Center for Research in Vocational Education (NCRVE) agenda, mission statement, and an overview of the 1999 Program of Work. Descriptions of research and development activities within three sets of activities follow. Each description includes project directors and keywords. The first…

Maryland Career Clusters are a resource for high schools as they reorganize into smaller learning communities. Instruction is organized around career themes, providing more students the opportunity to explore career choices while still in high school and enroll in pathway programs that enable them to successfully transition from high school to…

Prompted by requirements of the 1990 Perkins Act and a growing dissatisfaction among employers with college graduates' skill levels, many schools have undertaken curricular reform through tech prep and school-to-work, with most of the efforts working toward the integration of academic content into vocational programs. In general, however, tech…

Tech prep and school-to-work (STW) programs, partly based on the Southern Regional Education Board's High Schools that Work, are being used to restructure secondary education in Kentucky. Tech prep aims for a better understanding and application of technology, career awareness and planning, skills for a highly educated work force, a more focused…

Presenting summarized transcripts of sessions at the Michigan Department of Education's second Curriculum Integration Workshop held in Traverse City, Michigan from July 15-18, 1996, this proceedings describes the state's project to integrate academic curricula into vocational programs at the community college level. Following an overview of the…

In order to obtain firsthand information about different approaches and strategies for curriculum integration, case studies of curriculum integration models were conducted in seven sites across the United States. It was concluded that the presence or lack of certain contextual factors related to structure and operations had implications for the…

This program guide for educators outlines how the tech prep program has evolved in Rhode Island, the type of students most likely to benefit from the program, and how the program works. It begins with tech prep success stories, tech prep associate degree activity timeline, and director of Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI) Tech Prep…