Governance of Vocational Education and Training in the United States ...

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Research in Comparative and International Education Volume 5 Number 3 2010 www.wwwords.uk/RCIE

RESEARCH IN

Comparative & International Education

Governance of Vocational Education and Training in the United States JAMES R. STONE III University of Louisville, USA MORGAN V. LEWIS Consultant, Columbus, Ohio, USA

ABSTRACT Local educational agencies (of which there are more than 14,000) have the primary responsibility for governance of public vocational education and training (VET) in the United States. Local agencies operate within a framework of state legislation and regulations that are heavily influenced by federal legislation. The federal government offers funds to the states for the support of VET. To qualify for these funds, states must submit plans to the federal government describing how they will use the funds to achieve the intent of federal law. States, in turn, require local agencies to submit plans for their use of the funds. The diversity of this system is further complicated by the variety of ways that states assign responsibility for the administration of secondary and postsecondary VET. Initiatives to link secondary and postsecondary training include Tech Prep, career pathways, and, in the most recent federal legislation, programs of study. Almost all government-supported skill training outside the education system occurs through the Office of Apprenticeship and the Job Corps, both of which are administered by the federal Department of Labor. The number of trainees in these programs is much lower than that of those receiving skill training from educational institutions. Introduction This article addresses the governance of publicly funded vocational education and training [1] (VET) in the United States. It does not address training by employers, except for Registered Apprentices, or by for-profit providers that do not directly receive public funds. With the exceptions of the Job Corps and Registered Apprenticeships, both of which are administered by the US Department of Labor, the VET discussed in this article operates as part of public education, and the only generalization that can be made with certainty about its governance is that it is diverse. In this article, we attempt to put some parameters on this diversity. The first parameter is the respective roles of the federal, state and local governments in the governance of education. The federal government has no direct governance authority over VET, but exerts a major influence on it by offering funds to the states. To be eligible for these funds, however, the states must agree to use them in ways specified in the federal VET legislation (the most recent reauthorization of which is the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006 (PL 109-270, otherwise known as Perkins IV). The states have the major responsibility for education, but not the primary role in governance at the elementary and secondary levels. In all states but Hawaii, governance of elementary and secondary education rests primarily with local boards that operate within the legislative and administrative structures established for their states.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/rcie.2010.5.3.274

Governance of Vocational Education and Training in the United States The other major parameter we examine is the separation of VET into secondary and postsecondary education. For the first half of the twentieth century, most public VET was offered at the secondary level, with a few evening and weekend courses available to adults. In the years after World War II, postsecondary VET education at the two-year community college level (i.e. VET taught at skill levels higher than those prevailing in high schools) underwent a major expansion. In the last two decades of the century, attempts to align secondary and postsecondary VET took several forms. These attempts were and continue to be complicated by the separate governance systems that exist in most states for these two levels of education. We briefly summarize these past attempts at alignment and how states are currently organized to administer VET. We conclude the article with an overview of the Registered Apprenticeship program and Job Corps, both of which are administered by the US Department of Labor. The Registered Apprenticeship program enrolls a small percentage of the total number of people who receive skill training in the United States. In the 1990s, there was a significant effort to expand apprenticeship as part of public education, but that effort has largely faded. We explore some explanations that have been offered for the limited acceptance of apprenticeships in the United States. The Job Corps serves young people from economically disadvantaged families in residential settings where they receive academic remediation and skill training. Federal, State, and Local Roles The diversity in the governance of VET is the result of the decentralized structure of education in the United States. The federal constitution makes no reference to education, and the 10th and last amendment included in the Bill of Rights reserves all powers not explicitly assigned or denied to the federal and state governments to the states and the people. All state constitutions assign a responsibility for education to the state, and this responsibility is to provide resources and to create a legislative framework to guide how such resources will be used. The language from Article VI of the constitution for Ohio is typical: §2 The General Assembly shall make such provisions, by taxation, or otherwise, as, with the income arising from the school trust fund, will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state. §3 Provision shall be made by law for the organization, administration and control of the public school system of the state supported by public funds provided, that each school district embraced wholly or in part within any city shall have the power by referendum vote to determine for itself the number of members and the organization of the district board of education, and provision shall be made by law for the exercise of this power by such school districts. Paragraph 3 delegates to local boards of education the responsibility for governing schools supported by public funds within a legislative and administrative framework established at the state level. The constitutions of all other states have similar language, except in Hawaii, where there is a single board for the entire state. Local boards are usually elected by citizens of the geographic areas their schools serve. (A small number of boards, usually in large cities, have appointed members.) Service on a board may require a few or many hours a week, and members may or may not receive a salary, but board membership is rarely the main occupation of those who serve. Board members come from many different professions, but are typically wealthier and better educated than the average citizens of the communities they serve (Land, 2002). Most hire administrative and instructional staff to make recommendations regarding appropriate curricula; the boards then have the power to approve those recommended. In most states, local boards have taxing authority independent of other units of government. This decentralization of authority evolved to ensure that education was responsive to local values and priorities and remained somewhat removed from the politics influencing general government. Land (2002) provided a brief history of the factors that affected the evolution of local school boards in the United States. These local units are typically referred to as ‘local educational agencies’

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James R. Stone III & Morgan V. Lewis (LEAs); in 2009, there were more than 14,000 in the United States (Education Commission of the States, 2009). Federal Role As noted, the federal government has no direct governance of state and local education. To influence these levels, the federal government enacts legislation that makes funds available to the states, and through the states, to LEAs, if they agree to carry out the provisions of the legislation. The Smith-Hughes Act, passed in 1917, provided funds for VET and was the first legislation of this type to influence secondary-level education.[2] This act limited the types of occupations for which training could be provided to those in agriculture, trades and industry, and home economics (which evolved into the area now called family and consumer science). Subsequent legislation added additional occupations in distributive education and health; in 1963, the definition was expanded to all occupations requiring specialized training less than that typically acquired in baccalaureate programs. The current legislation, the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Improvement Act of 2006 (Perkins IV), has removed the baccalaureate restriction.[3] This act requires all recipients of its funds to offer a program of study that combines at least two years of secondary education with postsecondary education or training that may extend to the baccalaureate. VET in the United States receives funding from all three levels of government, but the federal share is far less than that contributed at the state and local levels. For the fiscal year ending in the summer of 2006, essentially the 2005-2006 school year, the total revenues received by elementary and secondary school systems was $521.1 billion, of which 47% came from state sources, 44% from local sources, and 9% from the federal government (US Census Bureau, 2008). The source cited does not provide information on funding for VET. However, in the same school year, the federal appropriation for VET basic state grants, which fund both secondary and postsecondary programs, was $1.2 billion. These grants are distributed according to a formula specified in the legislation that is based primarily on a state’s percentage of the total population of all the states. The most recent National Assessment of Vocational Education estimated that approximately 5% of total funding for secondary VTE and 2% of funding for postsecondary VTE comes from the federal government (Silverberg et al, 2004). With the wide disparity between the amount of funding from state and local sources and that from the federal government, one would expect the federal influence on VET to be minor, but that is not the case. The Smith-Hughes Act introduced VET into the public school curriculum, and the priorities set forth in the various subsequent reauthorizations of federal support have had a farreaching impact upon how VET is delivered. The agency responsible for implementation of federal VET legislation is the Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE), a unit of the US Department of Education. The state plan is the primary means of ensuring that federal funds are used at the state and local levels in ways specified in federal legislation. To become eligible to receive federal funds, all states must submit plans to OVAE that describe how they intend to carry out the requirements of the legislation. The states, in turn, require LEAs to submit plans for how they will use the federal funds allotted to the state. In most cases, the plans submitted by the states are accepted as submitted, but occasionally OVAE requires changes to bring plans in closer alignment with the intent of the legislation. After a state plan has been accepted, OVAE requires states to submit both annual reports on how federal funds have been used and evaluation data on the effectiveness of the programs that received these funds. The performance measures by which programs are to be evaluated are specified in the current Perkins IV legislation in Section 113, Accountability. These measures, referred to as ‘core indicators of performance’, are the clearest statement of the federal priorities for VET. The indicators are somewhat different for programs at the secondary and postsecondary levels. A recent study by the US Government Accountability Office (US GAO, 2009a) summarized the indicators for the two levels as shown in Figure 1. Readers outside the United States may be surprised to see that the first indicator for secondary VET involves the learning of academic content. This emphasis on academics began with the 1990 reauthorization of federal legislation, the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology

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Governance of Vocational Education and Training in the United States Education Act (Perkins II), which included academic achievement as one of the indicators by which VET programs were to be evaluated. The 1998 reauthorization strengthened the references to academics, and the present 2006 act aligned academic standards with those in the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, the primary source of federal funding for elementary and secondary education. This emphasis on academics may be traced to the early 1980s, when A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) sounded an alarm that education had deteriorated to the point that it threatened the strength of the American economy. Many have questioned the validity of this claim (e.g. Berliner & Biddle, 1995), but the report nonetheless launched a series of educational reform initiatives that continue to this day.

Figure 1. Perkins IV performance measures at the secondary and postsecondary levels. Source: US GAO (2009a), Analysis of Education Program Guidance and the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006.

The first wave of educational reform led to increases in the number of credits required for high school graduation. (A credit in the United States is awarded for obtaining a passing grade in a course that meets for one period each day for the full school year.) Most states adopted what are referred to as the ‘new basics’: four credits of English or language arts, and three each in mathematics, science, and social studies, as recommended in A Nation at Risk. This reform was so widely adopted that the average high school graduate in 2004 had earned six more academic credits than a graduate in the year 1982 – the equivalent of an additional full year of high school (Schneider, 2007). Simply taking more courses, however, had no impact on scores of high school students in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (Rampey et al, 2009) and did not improve the ranking of American students in international comparisons of test scores in mathematics and science (Provasnik et al, 2009). It was concluded that students needed to take more demanding courses, and a second wave of reform took the form of calls for greater rigor in the courses that students studied. This emphasis on increasing test scores in academics permeates the NCLB Act and, through references to NCLB, is incorporated into the federal VET legislation. VET performance indicators at both the secondary and postsecondary levels stress the completion of programs and the attainment of credentials that indicate the skills and knowledge that have been learned. The one ‘social’ indicator at both levels refers to students studying and completing programs that are not traditional for their gender. This interest in nontraditional program participation reflects the disproportionate number of males and females in highly gendered occupations – such as auto mechanics and construction, which are heavily male, and health and office support, which are heavily female. It also addresses the prevailing differences in wages between traditionally ‘male’ and ‘female’ occupations. Such indicators are an attempt to bring about more equal numbers of males and females in all occupations and thereby decrease wage differences.

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James R. Stone III & Morgan V. Lewis The US Government Accountability Office (US GAO, 2009a) studied the implementation of the performance indicators by surveying the directors of VET in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The survey found that although the states have considerable flexibility in how they measure performance, most still find it difficult to collect data on technical skill attainment and student placement. The GAO report also noted the inherent conflict between state flexibility and uniformity in the data reported. Flexibility allows states to evaluate their programs in ways appropriate for their particular circumstances. Because the states use different methods, however, it is not possible to aggregate the results to obtain a national assessment of the effectiveness of VET programs. Kotamraju (in press) has outlined the complexities of the federal Perkins Performance Accountability Reporting System and the difficulties states face in collecting disaggregated information, particularly for special populations and data on employment placement and student transfer information, for example. State Role The federal VET legislation requires that each state designate an eligible agency responsible for planning and overseeing the use of federal funds. In 35 states, that agency is the board responsible for elementary and secondary education, and in 14 of these 35, that same board is also responsible for higher education. In eight states, the eligible agency is part of the states’ administrative structure for higher education. Some states have a single board for all of higher education; others divide that responsibility. Three states and the District of Columbia have a board or commission that is responsible only for VET. In the remaining four states, the eligible agencies have ‘workforce’ in their titles, although Arkansas recently changed the name of its agency from the Department of Workforce Education to the Department of Career Education.[4] The boards responsible for federal funds roughly parallel the emphasis placed on VET at the secondary and postsecondary levels. Unsurprisingly, in those states in which the boards for secondary education are the eligible agencies, more funds go to the secondary level; in those states in which the boards for higher education are the eligible agencies, more funds go to the postsecondary level. In most states, the eligible agencies delegate responsibility for the administration, operation, and supervision of activities receiving federal funds to units of state government. The state departments of education administer secondary VET in 43 states, and in 15 of these, they also administer postsecondary VET. In 24 states, postsecondary VET is under the administrative structure for higher education. States with separate boards for VET or workforce education sometimes administer programs directly and sometimes delegate responsibility to other state agencies. The individuals in charge of the state units that administer the largest proportion of federal funds are termed the state director of career-technical education. These directors provide leadership for VET in their states, but they are more than just administrators. They also serve as advocates who build statewide constituencies of employers and local directors who attempt to influence state and federal policies affecting VET. At the national level, the state directors are represented by the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc). NASDCTEc supports the states in many ways, including attempting to influence federal legislation and funding decisions. During the administration of George W. Bush, for example, each of the budget proposals that the President sent to Congress recommended that funding for VET be eliminated. At key points, as the appropriations bills for education moved through the US Congress, the NASDCTEc alerted its members to encourage supporters of VET to contact their representatives and senators to urge continued funding; in part because of their advocacy, each year the Congress voted to continue funding. State administrative units vary in the degree to which they attempt to influence local VET policies and practices. All states issue curriculum guidelines, and some require local districts that wish to receive state funding for their VET programs to use the curriculum that they recommend. Some states also require occupations that have national certification bodies (similar to accreditation) to obtain such certification to qualify for state funding. One such certification is awarded by the National Automotive Technicians Educational Foundation (NATEF), the education arm of the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence (ASE). NATEF has developed standards for training programs that teach auto maintenance and repair. Programs that

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Governance of Vocational Education and Training in the United States apply for certification must complete self-evaluation forms and submit them for review. Programs that pass this review are evaluated by visiting teams, and those that pass are recommended for certification. Local Role The actual delivery of publicly funded VET occurs at the secondary level in approximately 17,000 comprehensive high schools, 900 full-time vocational high schools, and 1200 part-time regional high schools (Levesque et al, 2008). All of the high schools, except in Hawaii, operate under the governance of LEAs. About half of the comprehensive high schools provide both academic and VET courses, and about half send students who wish to study certain types of VET to regional high schools on a part-time basis. Regional high schools bring together students from several high schools to offer programs that individual schools cannot offer because they have too few students or too limited resources. Typically, a member of the board governing each LEA that sends students to a regional high school is represented on the governing board of the regional school. Full-time vocational high schools provide both occupational and academic instruction. They are most often found in large cities and in a few states in which the regional high schools require students to attend full time. Most high schools with VET programs also offer training for adults, but because these programs are governed by LEAs, such training is not considered postsecondary. Public postsecondary VET is primarily delivered by community colleges. Levesque et al (2008) reported there were 1121 such colleges in 2005.[5] In some states, local boards govern community colleges; in others, there is a single state board. These boards typically operate within policy and budget frameworks established by state boards that govern all of higher education. Community colleges charge tuition, but this pays only a small portion of the total cost of instruction. During the 2005-2006 academic year, states provided 36% of the total revenue received by community colleges, the federal government 20%, and tuition and fees 17%. Most of the remaining funds came from local sources, including contracted training services to local employers (Snyder et al, 2009). The federal percentage does not include direct loans to students that are used for tuition and fees. The federal government supports students from low-income families with grants to cover some of the costs of tuition and books. Because VET in the United States is largely classroom-based, programs are expected to have advisory committees of employers and union representatives to ensure that instruction is relevant to the needs of the workplace. Federal legislation does not explicitly require advisory committees, but it does include the following language with regard to the plans that must be submitted by LEAs to qualify for federal funds: [The plan must describe how] representatives of business (including small business) and industry, labor organizations, representatives of special populations, and other interested individuals are involved in the development, implementation, and evaluation of career and technical education programs. (P.L. 109-270, Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006?, Sec 134[b][5]) In most states, advisory committees are the means used to satisfy this requirement. Although advisory committees have no governing authority, active committees can have a strong influence on programs. It takes considerable effort, however, to keep advisory committees active, and it is our impression, for which we can find no supporting empirical data, that most advisory committees have only a limited impact. We did a search of the ERIC database with the keywords advisory, committee, career and vocational, that yielded 63 documents dated from 1990 to the present. Those that directly addressed advisory committees mainly encouraged their use and cited the benefits of doing so; a few provided guidelines and standards for their operation. None provided data on how many committees exist or the extent to which their recommendations influenced program design and operation. There were some reports from the state advisory councils that were required by federal legislation during the period 1968 through 1990. When the 1990 amendments were passed, the requirement for these councils was dropped, and within a few years, all had ceased operation. The recommendations of these councils were concerned with VET policy at the state level and did not address the conduct of local programs.

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James R. Stone III & Morgan V. Lewis Aligning Secondary and Postsecondary VET In the last two decades of the twentieth century, the gap between the earnings of workers who obtained no education after high school and those with bachelors’ degrees increased (Day & Newburger, 2002). In 1980, the median annual earnings in inflation-adjusted dollars of full-time workers aged 25 to 34 with a high school diploma were $34,200; for those with a bachelor’s degree, they were $44,000. In 2006, the median for those with high school diplomas was $29,000, and for those with bachelors’ degrees, $45,000 (Planty et al, 2008). The earnings of bachelor’s degree holders had not progressed much, but the real earnings of those with diplomas only had declined, causing the gap between the two groups to increase by almost two-thirds. Among males in this age range, the gap more than doubled. Rapid rates of technological change and the movement towards a global economy have created a need for workers with the higher skill levels that are usually acquired through postsecondary education. Students, and their parents, believe that the surest route to a satisfying and rewarding career is to obtain a bachelor’s degree (Carnevale et al, 2009). Almost all high school students state that they expect to go to college, but less than half of those who enroll in postsecondary education attain a certificate or degree. There are many different estimates of how many students graduate from high school, enroll in postsecondary education, and obtain credentials. In our judgment, the most accurate of these come from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88). This study is based on a nationally representative sample of almost 25,000 students who were selected when they were in the eighth grade in the spring of 1988 and who were followed through the year 2000, eight years after most had graduated from high school. When they were first surveyed in the eighth grade, 93% expected to obtain some postsecondary education and 73% expected to earn a bachelor’s degree (Berkner & Chavez, 1997). At the 1992 survey, conducted shortly before most were scheduled to graduate, 95% expected to attend college. Hudson (2003) reported on the highest education attained by these students by the year 2000. She presented results for those who followed the traditional progression: graduated in 1992, enrolled in postsecondary education within one year of graduation, and obtained a postsecondary credential within the scheduled period for that credential (i.e. two years for an associate degree, four years for a bachelor’s). She also presented the results for attaining these milestones by the year 2000. Table I summarizes her results. Time to milestone

Traditional progression By 2000

Percentage attaining milestone indicated Diploma or (by Postsecondary Postsecondary 2000) GED Enrollment Credential 78 54 15 92 75 33

Table I. Highest educational attainment by students following traditional progression and by the year 2000. Source: Hudson (2003) analysis of NELS:88, 2000 follow-up data.

By eight years after on-time graduation, three-fourths of the NELS:88 participants had enrolled in postsecondary education, but only one-third had obtained a credential. With this wide discrepancy between expectations and reality, enhanced alignment of secondary and postsecondary education is needed if the majority of students are to realize their aspirations. In VET, there have been two major initiatives to assist students in the transition from secondary to postsecondary education: Tech Prep and career pathways. The Neglected Majority (Parnell, 1985) is generally credited with launching Tech Prep. The majority that Parnell discussed was students in the middle two quartiles of academic ability: those who complete high school, but rarely obtain four-year degrees. Tech Prep was endorsed in the 1990 reauthorization of the federal VET legislation (Perkins II), which authorized specific funds for its support. This authorization was continued in Perkins III and IV, but under Perkins IV, states have the option of combining the Tech Prep funds with their basic state grant. The core of Tech Prep is an articulation agreement between a postsecondary institution and one or more high schools. This agreement specifies the instruction in defined occupational areas that will be delivered at the secondary and postsecondary levels, and the criteria that students must meet to receive postsecondary credit for courses studied at the secondary level. The credits earned

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Governance of Vocational Education and Training in the United States in high school are typically ‘escrowed’ and redeemed at the postsecondary level through successful performance in courses in the same occupational areas studied in high school. Some states have developed statewide agreements that allow students from all high schools in the state to receive credit from all postsecondary institutions in the state that sign the agreements. Studies of the implementation of Tech Prep have found that, despite its apparent promise, it is not easing the secondary-to-postsecondary transition for most students. Articulation agreements are difficult to negotiate. Secondary and postsecondary faculty must come to agreement as to the instruction for their occupations that is best taught at the two levels. After an agreement is negotiated and signed, the postsecondary credits earned at the secondary level are rarely redeemed (Hershey et al, 1998; Bragg et al, 2002). The most comprehensive follow-up of Tech Prep participants (Bragg et al, 2002) found that their postsecondary enrollment and completion did not differ significantly from that of matched nonparticipants, and only 10% obtained postsecondary credentials within three or four years of leaving high school. Career pathways, based on career clusters, have emerged as the main method of attempting to align secondary and postsecondary instruction (NASDCTEc, 2007). In the 1990s, it became clear that the traditional way of organizing VET programs (which had been driven by federal legislation) was not adequate for the way the field was changing. Efforts were made to develop alternative ways of grouping occupations and industries into related clusters based on the products and services they produce, such as manufacturing, health services, and architecture and construction. These efforts resulted in a framework consisting of 16 career clusters that was adopted by OVAE for the reporting of activities that received federal funding. Ruffing (2006) wrote a short history of the development of these clusters. Career pathways specify the academic foundation and technical skills that students must acquire at the high school and postsecondary levels to prepare for occupations within each cluster. In 2002, OVAE selected the League for Innovation in the Community College to establish the College Careers Transition Initiative (CCTI) to encourage community colleges to cooperate with high schools to establish career pathways. CCTI collaborated with the National Clearinghouse for Career Pathways at the Center for Occupational Research and Development (CORD) and other interested parties to develop the following definition of a career pathway: A Career Pathway is a coherent, articulated sequence of rigorous academic and career courses, commencing in the ninth grade and leading to an associate degree, and/or an industry-recognized certificate or licensure, and/or a baccalaureate degree and beyond. A Career Pathway is developed, implemented, and maintained in partnership among secondary and postsecondary education, business, and employers. Career Pathways are available to all students, including adult learners, and are designed to lead to rewarding careers.[6] The manner in which CCTI chose to encourage career pathways reflects the decentralized nature of education in the United States. CCTI invited community colleges to submit proposals describing how they would work with high schools and employers to design and implement career pathways. From among the proposals that were submitted, 15 were selected to receive funding to develop career pathways that would serve as models for other institutions. The experiences of these 15 were sufficiently positive that membership in the CCTI network was made available to any community college in the United States and Canada. When the CCTI website was visited on 29 October 2009, it listed 174 institutions as members. CCTI no longer receives federal funding, and in a personal communication dated 29 October 2009, its director, Laurance Warford, described the network as ‘static’ because of a lack of staff to provide services. By 2006, when the federal VET legislation was reauthorized, career pathways had achieved sufficient acceptance that Congress established a requirement that all recipients of federal funds must offer them, but it referred to them as programs of study. To qualify for the funds made available by Perkins IV, LEAs must offer at least one program of study that (1) incorporates secondary and postsecondary content; (2) includes coherent and rigorous content aligned with challenging academic standards and relevant VET content in a coordinated, nonduplicative progression of courses that prepare students to succeed in postsecondary education; (3) may include opportunities for secondary students to acquire postsecondary education credits; and (4) leads to an industry-recognized credential or certificate at the postsecondary level, or an associate

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James R. Stone III & Morgan V. Lewis or baccalaureate degree. These four components for programs of study are taken directly from the legislation (P.L. 109-270, Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006, Sec. 122[c][A]); each state and LEA must describe in its plan for the utilization of Perkins IV funds how these components will be implemented. Programs of study, as defined in Perkins IV, have not been in operation for sufficient time to determine whether they will achieve their objectives, but a review of the literature on similar initiatives was not encouraging. Lewis et al (2008) examined studies of previous initiatives that had most of the same components as programs of study and found that their impact on postsecondary success was minimal. It remains to be seen whether programs of study will achieve better results than these predecessors. Department of Labor Training Programs The US Department of Labor administers the two largest training programs that are not part of the educational system: Registered Apprentices and Job Corps. Registered Apprenticeships are open to any worker 16 years of age or older (18 for hazardous occupations) whose employer has registered its training program with the Office of Apprenticeship. The Job Corps enrolls young people aged 16 to 24 from economically disadvantaged families. During the 2007 federal fiscal year, there were over 468,000 Registered Apprentices (Office of Apprenticeship, 2009). During approximately the same period, the Job Corps 2006 program year, 1 July 2006 to 30 June 2007, the Job Corps enrolled over 60,000 students (US Department of Labor, 2007). To put these numbers in perspective, during the same program year, there were about 15,000,000 students in secondary and postsecondary VET programs operated by US educational agencies (US GAO, 2009a). Registered Apprenticeships

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Similar to the educational system, the registered apprenticeship system in the United States is highly decentralized. The federal government’s role began in 1937 with the passage of the National Apprenticeship Act (usually referred to as the Fitzgerald Act), which authorized the Department of Labor to promote apprenticeship, establish standards, and register training programs and apprentices. This act gave states the option to establish their own agencies to oversee apprenticeship programs, and in the year 2009, 25 states did so. The Office of Apprenticeship operates offices in the 25 states that do not have their own agencies. Employers and groups of employers, sometimes with the cooperation of labor unions, are given considerable latitude in designing their programs as long as they meet the standards established at the federal and state levels. Typically, an employer and an apprentice sign a formal agreement that specifies the skills that the apprentice will learn, the hours of on the job and related instruction the apprentice must complete, and the pay rate the apprentice will receive at identified stages of the apprenticeship. Pay rates are usually stated as percentages of the rate received by journey workers (i.e. those who have completed their apprenticeships). The apprentice accepts a lower wage than fully qualified workers in exchange for the training received. The Office of Apprenticeship encourages employers to offer apprenticeships and has expanded the types of occupations with registered programs beyond traditional construction and manufacturing areas into industries such as automotive service, education, energy, health, hospitality, retail, and transportation. The website of the Office of Apprenticeship (2009) indicates that as of November 2009, there are over 1000 registered occupations. These programs vary from one to six years in length. During each year of the program, the typical apprentice experiences 2000 hours of on-the-job training and a minimum 144 hours of related classroom instruction. Timebased apprenticeships are the most common, but some programs are moving towards a competency-based approach or a hybrid of time and competency requirements. Such hybrid programs specify a minimum and maximum number of hours for the attainment of defined task- or job-requirement skills. Despite federal efforts to encourage its expansion, in the modern, industrialized era, few skilled workers in the United States have obtained their training through apprenticeships. Jacoby (2001) summarized several of the explanations that have been offered for the absence of a strong

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Governance of Vocational Education and Training in the United States apprenticeship tradition in the United States. Explanations have gone as far back as the colonial era, when mercantile policies placed limits on manufacturing; other early historical explanations include the difficulties of enforcing apprenticeship contracts and a persistent rhetoric of independence that challenged relationships based on social status. More recent explanations include the skill leveling that accompanied the rise of mass-production manufacturing and the emergence of classroom-based skill training. Jacoby attributed employers’ support of classroom training to a desire to reduce organized labor’s control over the supply of skilled workers. In 1994, the US Congress passed the School-to-Work Opportunities Act with the explicit goal of easing the transition between education and careers by increasing the involvement of employers in education and training. Many LEAs drew upon funding made available from this act to develop youth apprenticeships for the last two years of secondary education, as had been proposed by Hamilton (1990). The apprenticeships developed during this period were not registered with the Office of Apprenticeship. The intention of their developers was that after their feasibility had been demonstrated, they would seek such registration (Hamilton & Hamilton, 1993), but this did not occur. Very few employers were willing to offer the training envisioned for these programs. Even when such employers were found, schools found it hard to align their schedules and courses with the training provided by employers (Silverberg, Bergerson, Haimson, & Nagatashi, 1996). When the School-to Work Opportunities Act was not reauthorized, most of the programs that had depended upon its funding faded away. The failure of youth apprenticeships to become a significant component of secondary VET was anticipated by Thomas Bailey, the director of the Institute on Education and the Economy at Columbia University. In 1993, as interest in youth apprenticeships was increasing, he and Stephen Hamilton, youth apprenticeship’s most prominent advocate, engaged in an exchange of views in Educational Researcher, the flagship publication of the American Education Research Association. Bailey (1993) doubted whether youth apprenticeships would ever enroll a significant number of young people. The primary reason for his pessimism was the high job mobility of young people, which makes employers reluctant to offer serious training to those in their late adolescence and early twenties. Hamilton (1993) responded that although young people in the United States have high rates of job mobility, the same is not true of their counterparts in countries with extensive apprenticeship systems. In Hamilton’s view, the labor market ‘floundering’ experienced by young people who do not continue their education after high school is the result of the disconnect between education and employment. He attributed frequent job changes to the lack of true career opportunities, not to the inability of young people to make career commitments. Even with broad political support and start-up funding from the School-to-Work Opportunities Act, however, youth apprenticeships did not flourish, and Bailey’s doubts about their widespread adoption proved prescient. Some of the programs begun during the 1990s, including one started by Hamilton himself, continue, but they enroll very few students. Job Corps The most distinctive feature of the Job Corps is that 86% of its participants receive their education and training in residential centers (US GAO, 2009b). The remaining 14% commute to Job Corps centers. The Job Corps was authorized by the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, and it is one of the few federal initiatives from that act that continues today. Its current authorization comes from the Workforce Investment Act of 1998. The rationale for residential centers is to provide young people aged 16 to 24 from low-income families who have experienced significant problems in education and employment with a structured, supportive environment in which they receive both remedial education and occupational training. Because of its intensive nature, Job Corps is an expensive program. For its 2007 program year, Job Corps received approximately $1.6 billion that was used to operate 122 centers located in 48 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The US Department of Labor selects on a competitive basis contractors, corporations and nonprofit organizations to operate 94 of these centers. The remaining 28, called Civilian Conservation Centers, are operated by the US Department of Agriculture and the US Department of the Interior under interagency agreements with the US Department of Labor.

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James R. Stone III & Morgan V. Lewis In its annual performance reports (US Department of Labor, 2007), the Job Corps defines a graduate as an enrollee who was in the program for at least 60 days and completed a VET requirement or earned a high school diploma or its equivalent, a General Educational Development (GED) certificate. A former enrollee is one who completed 60 days but did not attain graduate status. Enrollees who do not complete 60 days or who are dismissed because of violations of a zero-tolerance policy regarding drugs and violence do not qualify for either category. Using these definitions, the Job Corps reported that in program year 2006, the most recent for which data have been reported, the average graduate participated for 11.6 months, and all those separated participated for 7.9 months. Half (51%) of all those separated completed one or more VET requirements, and 18,552 obtained a high school diploma or GED.[8] Among the graduates, 74% entered employment at an average wage of $8.72 per hour, and 9% enrolled in additional education. Recognizing that Job Corps is specifically designed to serve young people deemed at risk of experiencing failure in education and employment, these outcomes must be evaluated by comparing them with measures obtained from other young people with comparable characteristics who did not participate. Fortunately, the US Department of Labor has twice commissioned studies that made such comparisons (Mallar, Kerachsky et al, 1982; Schochet et al, 2001). The first study (Mallar et al, 1982) selected a comparison group with characteristics similar to Job Corps participants, and the second (Schochet et al, 2001) randomly assigned applicants who were eligible for Job Corps either to participate in the program or to a control group. Both studies used interviews to collect baseline data and at intervals during the next four years. Data from these interviews indicated that Job Corps participants received significantly more education and training and had higher rates of employment and higher earnings after they completed the program than comparison/control group members. To check the accuracy of the interview data on earnings, the Schochet et al study also assembled data obtained from the Internal Revenue Service and from state unemployment insurance agencies (Schochet et al, 2003). These administrative records confirmed the earnings advantages reported in the interviews for the period following program completion, but not for subsequent years. The administrative earnings data covered a seven-year period, three more years than the interviews, and in the fifth through the seventh years, the difference between the earnings of Job Corps participants and control group members was not statistically significant. The administrative earnings data indicated that the earnings advantage of older Job Corps participants those who were 20 to 24 when they started the program - persisted during the fifth through the seventh years. These older participants represent only about one-fourth of the enrollees, however, and their advantage was not sufficient to yield a significant difference for the total group. Despite the absence of strong evidence of its effectiveness, Job Corps continues to receive political support. The current session of the US Congress is holding hearings and considering various bills for reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act. One of these bills would authorize the Job Corps to establish centers in territories of the United States. In recent testimony to Congress, Jane Oates (2009), the Assistant Secretary for the Employment and Training Administration, indicated that her branch of the US Department of Labor plans to assume administrative responsibility for the Job Corps. Such examples are indicators that there is little chance that the program will be discontinued. Conclusion Public VET in the United States is as diverse as the entities that govern it. The one constant in all this diversity is the federal VET legislation, which explains why the comparatively small federal financial contribution has such a pervasive influence. Federal VET legislation tends to follow rather than lead the field, however. It provides a national endorsement and a small amount of funding for initiatives that have previously found acceptance. When the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 first provided funds for VET as part of public education, manual training had previously been found to be a promising innovation (Woodward, 1974/1883). Lazerson & Grubb (1974) gathered many of the papers published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by groups such as the National Education Association, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the American

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Governance of Vocational Education and Training in the United States Federation of Labor that laid the groundwork for the passage of Smith-Hughes. In a similar manner, the endorsement of programs of study linking secondary and postsecondary education in Perkins IV reflects changes in how VET is delivered that have evolved over the past quarter of a century. The structure and governance of VET in the United States will never be cited as a model of rationality or efficiency. Its decentralized nature, however, provides a fertile climate for innovation. Initiatives that appear effective have many venues in which to prove their value. The redundancy of offerings and absence of strong linkages in the VET system also provides opportunities for second and even third chances. Students who did not apply themselves at the secondary level can try again at the postsecondary level, if they can succeed in the remedial academic courses that stand between them and occupational training. The Job Corps provides an option for those unable to benefit from mainstream institutions. Efforts to enhance articulation, coordination and cooperation will continue, but fundamental change in the decentralized governance of VET in the United States is unlikely to occur. Notes [1] In 1999, the members of the American Vocational Association voted to change the name of their organization to the Association for Career and Technical Education. This action was based on a widely held opinion that the term vocational education had acquired a negative connotation as a second-class education most appropriate for those students who could not succeed in a college preparatory curriculum. Since that time, the term career and technical education (CTE) has been adopted by all levels of government, except at the federal level, where the office that administers federal CTE legislation remains the Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE). Because this article appears in an international journal, we shall use the term vocational education and training (VET). [2] In 1862, the Morrill Act offered public lands to the states to create endowments for institutions of higher education that would offer instruction in agriculture and the mechanical arts. All states accepted these lands, and the institutions initiated from these funds are among the major public universities often referred to as the land-grant universities. [3] The current legislation is the fourth reauthorization (‘Perkins IV’) of federal VET legislation to carry the name of Carl D. Perkins. Carl Perkins was a member of Congress for 36 years. He died while in office at the time the 1984 reauthorization was ready for final passage. His name was added to the title of the bill to honor his years of support for VET. [4] This information was summarized from state profiles developed by the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc) that can be accessed at http://www.careertech.org/state_profile/ [5] Levesque et al (2008) defined postsecondary VET to include all types of occupational preparation, including that at the baccalaureate level. We use the older definition of less than baccalaureate preparation. [6] This definition was retrieved from http://www.league.org/league/projects/ccti/cp/characteristics.html It was also published in Hull (2004, p. 6). [7] All of the discussion in this section concerns registered apprentices. There are unknown numbers, probably in the millions, of informal, nonregistered apprenticeships, but the authors were unable to find any source that attempted to document the numbers receiving such training. [8] The performance report for 2006 does not indicate what percentage of enrollees the 18,552 represents because some enrollees already had high school diplomas or GEDs when they entered the program. Assuming a relatively small number had such certificates and that an average of 40,000 are separated each year, the 18,552 earning a credential would be about half those leaving the program.

References Bailey, T. (1993) Can Youth Apprenticeship Thrive in the United States? Educational Researcher, 22(3), 4-10.

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James R. Stone III & Morgan V. Lewis Berkner, L. & Chavez, L. (1997) Access to Postsecondary Education for the 1992 High School Graduates (NCES 98-105). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, US Department of Education. http://nces.ed.gov/pubs98/98105.pdf Berliner, D.C. & Biddle, B.J. (1995) The Manufactured Crisis: myths, fraud, and the attack on America’s public schools. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Bragg, D.D., Loeb, J.W., Gong, Y., Deng, C.-P., Yoo, J. & Hill, J.L. (2002) Transition from High School to College and Work for Tech Prep Participants in Eight Selected Consortia. St. Paul, MN: National Research Center for Career and Technical Education, University of Minnesota. http://136.165.122.102/UserFiles/File/pubs/Transition-Bragg%20ALL.pdf Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006, Pub. L. No. 109-270. Congress of the United States. (2006). Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Education Act of 1990, Pub. L. No. 105-332. Congress of the United States. (1990). Carnevale, A.P., Strohl, J. & Smith, N. (2009) Help Wanted: postsecondary education and training required, New Directions for Community Colleges, 146, 21-31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cc.363 Day, J.C. & Newburger, E.C. (2002) The Big Payoff: educational attainment and synthetic estimates of worklife earnings. Current Population Reports. Washington, DC: US Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/p2s3-210.pdf Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, Pub. L. No. 88-452, 78 Stat. 508, 42 USC § 2701. Congress of the United States. (1964). Education Commission of the States (2009) School Boards. Denver, CO: Education Commission of the States. http://www.ecs.org/ecsmain.asp?page=/html/IssueCollapse.asp Hamilton, S.F. (1990) Apprenticeship for Adulthood: preparing youth for the future. New York: Free Press. Hamilton, S.F. (1993) Prospects for an American-Style Youth Apprenticeship System, Educational Researcher, 22(3), 11-16. Hamilton, M.A. & Hamilton, S.F. (1993) Toward a Youth Apprenticeship System: a progress report from the Youth Apprenticeship Demonstration project in Broome County New York. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Youth and Work Program, Cornell University. http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/14/76/d6.pdf

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JAMES R. STONE III is a Distinguished University Scholar at the University of Louisville, and, since 2002, Director, National Research Center for Career & Technical Education, University of Louisville. Dr Stone’s research interests include school-to-work transitions for youth and adults and school reform based on VET (CTE). Correspondence: James R. Stone III, 350 Education Building, Louisville, KY 20292, USA ([email protected]). MORGAN V. LEWIS has served as a consultant to the National Research Center for Career and Technical Education since retiring from Ohio States University. His research interests include evaluation and policy in education and training. Correspondence: Dr Morgan V. Lewis, 2240 McCoy Road, Columbus, OH 43220, USA ([email protected]).

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