There is widespread agreement that many of California's high schools are doing a poor job of preparing their students for college and careers. The James Irvine Foundation is sponsoring a major initiative to develop "Multiple Pathways"--now called the Linked Learning approach--as a strategy for improving the performance of California high…

In order to assess how completely a Small Learning Community (SLC) and/or Career Academy is implemented in any given site, and to connect the degree of implementation with the amount of improvement in student performance, two kinds of information are needed. The first is information on the quality of implementation, which can be collected by…

Career academies, after more than four decades of development and three decades of evaluation, have been found by a conclusive random assignment study to be effective in improving outcomes for students during and after high school. Career academies have therefore become the most durable and best-tested component of a high school reform strategy to…

Results from an evaluation of 11 academy programs in California high schools designed to reduce dropout rates in the state are reported for 1987-88. Results of the matched comparison study were generally positive, and the estimated net economic benefit from dropout prevention for 327 students was 1 to 1.3 million dollars. (SLD)

The costly supplemental or alternative programs that combat chronic school failure and continued high dropout rates are not always effective for the following reasons: (1) students do not always find out which programs are available, and (2) if no suitable program is available, there is usually no one responsible for trying to create one. People…

The chronic scarcity of career jobs and increased demands for mental ability in the workplace have necessitated school-to-work (STW) transition programs that prepare noncollege-bound youths not only for their first full-time job but also for continued learning and career transitions throughout their working lives. Among the main ideas advanced for…

This report on the high proportion (25 percent) of California high school students who drop out is divided into five major sections. The first discusses the historical shifts in reform efforts to address, alternately, "relevance" and "excellence." It finds that high school students are now more bored and apathetic than…

Work-Based Learning (WBL) has been at the heart of school-to-work initiatives in the 1990s. Local partnerships funded by the 1994 School-to-Work Opportunities Act are placing high priority on developing WBL opportunities for students. However, there is still controversy about whether work really contributes to students' education, and results of…

Eleventh- and twelfth-grade students in California comprehensive high schools and Regional Occupational Centers/Programs spend about one million hours a day on vocational education. California students who took a concentrated sequence of high school vocational subjects during 1981 had a 26 percent unemployment rate in the spring of 1982, compared…

A proposed strategy for the National Assessment of Vocational Education (NAVE) uses school-wide data to identify secondary schools where students' academic achievement has been improving at a relatively fast rate and those where it has not. Schools with the most involvement in vocational education can be selected from the two groups. These two…

After more than three decades of development and two decades of evaluation, career academies have been found to be effective in improving the performance of students in high school, particularly for students at greatest risk. Career academies have become the most durable and best-tested component of a high school reform strategy that includes…

This paper's title summarizes the authors' two main aims. For a number of years, the authors have been helping high schools and districts that are attempting to create or improve career academies. Their assistance includes developing the schools' own capacity to keep track of results for students, relying mainly on information that is ordinarily…

This report, which is directed toward policymakers, educators, employers, researchers, and others interested in the school-to-work (STW) movement, synthesizes literature on the development and effectiveness of STW programs since 1993. Part I provides an overview of the STW movement and examines the effectiveness of STW efforts in terms of…

After their 1969 inception as an electrical academy in a Philadelphia high school, the number of career academies grew steadily for two decades; since 1990, their growth has accelerated. Until the mid-1990s, they existed only as smaller units within high schools, but numerous high schools have since converted themselves entirely into career…

In this paper the authors illustrate the use of a strict standard for evaluating evidence on programs and strategies designed to improve outcomes for high school students. They explain what they mean by solid evidence, and present examples from multi-site evaluations of three programs. After that they examine some of the evidence on high school…