The current demand for educational excellence is an outgrowth of recent national reports criticizing secondary education. This push for academic excellence also affects vocational education outcomes. A growing consensus seems to be emerging that at the secondary level (1) vocational education should be integrated with academic education, (2) technical skills should focus on transferability, (3) employability skills are important, and (4) basic communication, computation, and problem-solving skills need reinforcement in occupational preparation. Principles derived from effective schooling research, successful business practices, and school improvement policy studies can help improve vocational education. Effective schooling studies have identified six critical factors with the greatest potential for application to vocational education settings: time on task, expectations of performance, student motivation, cooperative learning, effective learning climate, and the use of evaluation. The eight successful business practices described by Peters and Waterman in "In Search of Excellence" are also relevant to vocational education: a bias for action, close to the customer, autonomy and entrepreneurship, productivity through people, hands on--value driven, stick to the knitting, simple form--lean staff, and simultaneous loose-tight properties. Finally, school improvement policy studies focusing on the co-management of the school by the school and the district show that district support can be a key factor in improving vocational education. A seven-page bibliography is included. (SK)