The high school is inescapably a vocational institution where most students prepare for jobs, or for higher education that will lead to careers. Curiously, this occupational role is largely ignored. Most secondary courses are “academic,” removed from the real world of employment. Conventional vocational education programs are under siege, and career counseling has all but vanished. In short, secondary schools do remarkably little to help students prepare for eventual employment.
Some emerging practices, however, hold the promise of restoring the high school's occupational relevance—without sacrificing academics. These practices, loosely grouped under the heading of “education through occupations,” use occupations, in all their richness and complexity, to teach both the theory and the applications of conventional subjects (Grubb 1995).
- Career academies usually operate as schools-within-schools. Typically, four teachers—of math, English, science, and an occupational area—collaborate and stay with the same students for two or three years. Because teachers work with one another regularly, they have ample opportunities to coordinate the curriculum. They also get to know students in ways not possible with a conventional schedule. Academies also establish close relationships with businesses, providing students with sources of instruction and motivation (cognitive, behavioral, and financial) beyond those provided by teachers.
- In some high schools, every student elects an occupational major, or cluster, or career pathway, typically at the beginning or end of 10th grade. These clusters help structure the curriculum: sometimes a cluster determines the electives students take, including broadly occupational courses; in other schools, academic courses are also taken within clusters. Like academies, clusters allow teachers greater opportunities to collaborate with one another and to develop closer ties with students. The difference is that students can select among clusters within a school, which provides the added benefit of choice.
- In some cities, entire high schools have adopted an occupational focus. These include some longstanding programs, like Aviation High School in New York City, as well as magnet schools with occupational themes developed for racial integration. Like charter schools, these are potentially excellent examples of focus schools, characterized by distinct missions and social contracts setting forth responsibilities for teachers, students, and parents (Hill et al. 1990).
The movement to integrate academic and vocational education has spawned many experiments. The number of academies and occupationally oriented magnet schools is growing, for example, and networks of high schools integrating instruction have been developed by the National Center for Research in Vocational Education in Berkeley, California, and by the Southern Regional Education Board in Atlanta.
Although these reforms are sometimes seen as in the purview of vocational education, they have much in common with other broad reform movements. Like efforts to professionalize teaching, they demand new roles for teachers, because integrated curriculums must be teacher-developed. Because they emphasize the contextualized, project-oriented approach of the best vocational instruction, they are consistent with constructivist or meaning-centered teaching. The size of academies and cluster schools is consistent with the movement for smaller schools. And where students have the option of choosing among clusters, academies, or magnet schools, the advantages of choice mechanisms exist.
Efforts to integrate academic and occupational education seek to undo century-old divisions in American schools. When reforms designed to better prepare students for eventual employment haven't earned the support of academic educators, they haven't been very successful. Perhaps the greatest promise of “education through occupations,” then, is that it calls for restructuring the high school for all students, eliminating the unproductive division between academic and vocational and investing the “shopping mall high school” with greater focus and purpose.
