As the evidence comes in, it may be building a strong case for tech prep.
By Susan Reese, Techniques Contributing Editor
Since 1985, when Dale Parnell, ?the father of tech prep,? wrote The Neglected Majority, tech prep has become another important element in career and technical education?s mission to prepare a skilled workforce for America. Parnell?s concept included applied learning programs, blended secondary and postsecondary programs of study, and emphasized math, science, communications and technology.
Career and technical education has diverse educational pathways for students to follow, and programs such as tech prep and career academies have helped to define those pathways while also helping to raise the academic achievement of career tech students.
But perhaps the most important result of the establishment of tech prep consortia is the marked increase in the number of articulation agreements between secondary and postsecondary institutions.
The 1994 School-to-Work Opportunities Act reinforced the tech prep model, and the 1998 Perkins reauthorization provided further support for articulation of tech prep programs with postsecondary education.
Now we are in an age of even greater accountability, when documented results are in continual demand. So, exactly what can an exemplary tech prep program accomplish? Is it possible to provide students with both a strong academic background and highly desirable technical skills? Can it encourage students to not only stay in school and complete their secondary education, but go on to postsecondary training as well? Could tech prep even help raise scores on standardized tests? Although considerable amounts of data are not easily found, some has been produced that helps make the case for tech prep and its role in education reform.
Kathy Jo Elliott, 2002-2003 ACTE president, is tech prep director with the Georgia Department of Education. She notes that CORD?which founded and operates the National Tech Prep Network?has done some work in this area, but she acknowledges that more educators and institutions involved in tech prep should probably be working to build more definitive data and statistics.
Dan Hull, president and CEO of CORD, reports that his organization has recently been contracted by the U.S. Department of Education?s Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE) to search out exemplary practices and showcase them. They have developed criteria for a Technical Programs of Study Clearinghouse.
According to National Tech Prep Network (NTPN) Executive Director David Bond, ?The criteria we will be using are similar to tech prep.? This includes transition from secondary to postsecondary, partnerships with businesses, and Technical Programs of Study, which Bond says is the new term being used by OVAE to designate a career path such as information technology or health sciences.
Bond points out that, ?NTPN is not a government agency so no one is required to send data; they do so voluntarily.?
He comments that sometimes it?s important to show what a successful tech prep program is and does. ?It?s not always successful, because it?s not always done right. If you?re not doing the proper research, finding career paths or teaching contextually, then it?s not going to be successful.? He adds that, ?You can put a label on something, but it doesn?t necessarily make it true?or successful.?
Bond agrees with Elliott that documentation is important in making the case for tech prep. ?It?s not just about success; it?s about how you document success,? he says. ?And now, with the No Child Left Behind legislation, if you don?t have data, you might end up not having funding for your program.?
Hull points out that many of the elements of tech prep were incorporated into the last reauthorization of Perkins, and that one thing tech prep was licensed to do was to promote more enrollments in community and technical colleges.
That seems to have happened in Georgia. ?Our enrollment numbers in the technical colleges in Georgia have dramatically increased,? notes Elliott. ?I think tech prep has done that. Tech prep was meant to raise career and technical education to the next level, and I think it has also done that.?
?Tech prep has really served as a change agent for CTE,? says Hull. ?Tech prep is not a big piece of the Perkins legislation, and Congress set it up to measure progress like it?s a second track. But if you look anywhere in the country and see courses set up as tech prep, they will have all kinds of students in them.?
It?s often difficult to even determine the actual number of students enrolled in tech prep (See ?Counting Tech Prep Students? by Elisabeth Barnett in the January 2002 issue of Techniques), and Elliott says, ?There?s not been a true, solid definition of tech prep and tech prep students.?
She points out that tech prep and the principles behind it fit in with some of the data from the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) on High Schools That Work. ?Some key practices in High Schools That Work hold true to tech prep,? says Elliott. ?Tech prep also establishes high expectations, and because of increased opportunities, students gain the confidence to go on to postsecondary education.?
With the articulation between secondary and postsecondary institutions that is inherent in tech prep, students find that they can not only enroll in college-level courses, but they can succeed in them.
When Elliott attended a meeting of the tech prep coordinators for the 37 tech prep consortia in Georgia, one topic of discussion was the role of the tech prep coordinator. ?They felt they were the liaison between secondary and postsecondary institutions and in bringing the community together,? says Elliott. She thinks that is perhaps the best thing about tech prep. ?It establishes partnerships and collaboration between institutions?high schools, technical colleges, universities?and with business and industry as well as with the community.?
Bond recently spoke about tech prep to a group of educators and businesspeople at a meeting in Washington State and relates this story.
?Somebody there said to me, ?It?s all about higher test scores, so what do you have to prove that?? I told him that when students get turned on to education because they?re interested in a particular field?like automotive technology or computer technology?then they?re more motivated to come to school. Then I asked, ?Do you think the student who comes to school will have higher test scores than the one who drops out???
Bond also sees teachers who are more excited about teaching since they became involved in tech prep. ?If teachers are more turned on to teaching, and students are more turned on to learning, something good has to come out of it.?
He admits that much of the evidence is anecdotal, but adds that, ?Most people in tech prep can tell you a story about a teacher or student whose life has been turned around.?
The Miami Valley Tech Prep Consortium (MVTPC) in Ohio works with 58 area high schools covering a seven-county area. The programs emphasize mathematics, science, communication and technology, as well as hands-on learning, workplace experience, critical thinking, problem solving and teamwork. It is described by its director, Ron Kindell, as ?a fairly large consortium, both geographically and numerically, with close to 3,000 students.?
At MVTPC, they have done some studies that indicate this is a program with positive results. ?Performance of Tech Prep and Non-Tech Prep Students in Select Courses, 2001? is from the Office of Institutional Planning & Research at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio. The study examined whether tech prep students perform differently than non-tech prep students in select courses at Sinclair Community College. The analysis showed that tech prep students did perform better than their classmates in some areas. The studies included general population students, so these results can be seen as positive for the field of career and technical education.
Among the findings: Business and engineering tech prep students received higher grades in English composition and elementary algebra and had higher overall cumulative GPAs than their non-tech prep classmates. Allied health tech prep students earned ?significantly better? grades in allied health mathematics and human biology than the non-tech prep students in those classes. It also noted that, with the exception of one course, the withdrawal rates were ?considerably lower? for tech prep students compared to non-tech prep students.
Also from the Office of Institutional Planning & Research at Sinclair Community College is ?Tech Prep: Pathways to Success? The Performance of Tech Prep and Non-Tech Prep Students at a Midwestern Community College? by Donna J. Krile and Penelope Parmer. This study found that, ?When compared to classmates who did not participate in a Tech Prep program prior to enrolling at Sinclair, Tech Prep students had higher entry assessment scores, were less likely to need remedial mathematics, were more likely to receive a passing grade in their first college-level math courses, and were more likely to be retained one year after their initial term of entry.?
While both of these studies are encouraging and offer positive indications for tech prep, both acknowledge that further research needs to be done.
In Ohio, tech prep is jointly managed by the Ohio Department of Education and the Ohio Board of Regents, and Kindell says, ?We are really quite fortunate with the resources we have been given.?
But he also points out that tech prep can differ widely from state to state. As he puts it, ?We have 50 different flavors of tech prep in this country.?
That adds another degree of difficulty in tracking and documenting the benefits of tech prep. But Kindell believes tech prep has done much to boost career and technical education in Ohio. ?In this state,? he says, ?tech prep has been of tremendous value to the career tech system because it is attracting an additional demographic to career and technical education.?
Sinclair Community College now offers a tech prep scholarship, which is a $3,000 merit-based award that goes to a student who completes the high school program, transitions into Sinclair and remains in the career path he or she started in high school.
Kindell sees this as another positive result of a good high school and college partnership. ?The college is committed to it,? says Kindell, ?because tech prep at Miami Valley is producing a perfect demographic for the college. It?s a demographic with a higher level of motivation, preparation and retention.?
Another study that produced positive results for tech prep students came out of Texas. ?A Comparison of Selected Outcomes of Secondary Tech Prep Participants and Non-Participants in Texas? is a five-year analysis that compared 10th through 12th grade students participating in tech prep, not just with other career tech students, but also with general population students. The tech prep students had slightly higher annual attendance rates, and lower dropout rates, and in their senior year, the tech prep students had slightly higher graduation rates. According to Carrie Brown, the director of the Texas State Leadership Consortium for P-16 Partnership, more recent statistics show that the percentage of tech prep students completing college preparatory plans has increased significantly.
Brown says that the biggest issue in producing documentation has been the identification of tech prep students at the postsecondary level. The technical colleges in Texas operate independently and the intake process varies widely from school to school; however, articulation agreements have flourished in Texas, and Brown notes that there were so many that they have transitioned into statewide articulation.
Like most tech prep professionals, she believes in the postsecondary component, but also believes that does not mean every student should be in a college prep program that eliminates career and technical education courses and leads straight to a four-year university. The fact that a number of the students in Texas community colleges already have baccalaureate degrees offers evidence that courses teaching technical skills are an important part of education that should not be eliminated in a push to send every student down the same purely academic path.
If tech prep can improve postsecondary preparation in Ohio and increase retention rates in Texas, then it probably can?and does?achieve similar results in other states. Hopefully, the body of evidence will be further documented and presented, thus making an effective case for tech prep. It will also offer further proof that career and technical education can play a role in leaving no child behind; therefore career and technical education should not be left behind when it comes to school reform and school funding.
The following are resources and studies for further exploration.
