School-to-Work Programs

1. What specific experiences do you have with school-to-work programs? How do the three components (school-based learning, work-based learning, and linkages) provide meaning to these programs? If you don't have specific experience with these programs, what reflections or insights can you provide us about school-to-work?

Because law enforcement requires highly specialized training, not only in on-the-job skills but also in performing work in accordance with legally defined protocols, there has been limited exposure of this author to school-to-work programs, except in respect of encounters with juvenile offenders and adults whose lack of academic or vocational training can be linked to their landing in the justice system. Public schools' failure to adequately prepare children to enter the real-world work environment, where children are not the center of everybody's universe but where people must find ways to work together or otherwise cooperate to accomplish specific tasks, is borne out in the inability of some who leave school to adjust to the discipline they need to create constructive lives for themselves. The quality of the transition from the shelter of school life to the unforgiving real world of work has to be managed at some level, and those who have some idea of what they will encounter when they leave school should have a better chance. In that regard, even though Finch and Crunkilton point out problems with implementation, the tech prep approach seems be

Whatever the content of educational theory, its validity can be seen in the effectiveness with which those to whom it is exposed. In the media, much is being made of competency testing all throughout school, especially in academic areas, with the result that many teachers seem to be teaching, not their subjects per se, but rather information that will be included on this or that standardized test. That can limit the scope of actual learning that a student might be exposed to. It also occurs even though, as Finch and Crunkilton state, competency guides and the tests that go with them are not meant to be curriculum guides. It seems impossible to escape the fact that curricula will be easier to design, the more they are keyed to competency measures. The trouble is that the work world does require specific competencies for efficient operation and people management. Thus as flawed as the implementation of competency-based education might be, it seems a necessary evil for achieving vocation-related results. Chapter 12 1. Explain how you would answer one of the following questions about content assessment in your discipline (or school)? b. What student population will the curriculum serve? The two foregoing questions are intertwine

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