Stated Assisted Vocational Technical Schooling

Large-scale integration of vocational technical schools will not be accomplished in a few years, it will require sustained effort and constant focus over a long period of time - States can help substantially in third, process - the more state support for integration a district has, the further along it is likely to be in integrating its curricula.

Tech Prep Tech-prep initiatives have expanded tremendously since the concept was first introduced in the mid-1980s. The 1990 Perkins Act added impetus to a movement already well under way. As was the case with integration, districts that received Perkins funds took more steps to develop tech-prep programs, on average, than did non- recipients. Moreover, the greater the reported influence of the Perkins Act in a district, the more steps it was likely to have taken to develop a tech prep program holding other factors constant in the analysis.

In 2003 about one third of secondary school districts, an estimated 3817, reported tech-prep initiatives that met the Perkins definition of tech-prep. However, most of these initiatives were in very early stages of development. Some 399 districts reported that tech-prep students had gone on to the postsecondary phase of the program, and 44 postsecondary institutions indicated that they had graduated tech-prep students.

Since there are about six districts to a community college in an average tech-prep program, we can estimate that as of 2003, approximately 264 districts were participating in fully developed tech-prep programs.

Despite, or perhaps because of, this rapid expansion, tech-prep programs come in a bewildering variety of sizes and shapes. Some are nothing more than relabeled vocational courses or work experience programs. Others comprise one or two applied academics courses- Many are articulation agreements that coordinate a @ existing high school courses with community college courses. Still others are new and tentative, but reflect a serious commitment to long-range, full-scale development- And, as noted above, a relatively small number are fully developed programs resembling the Perkins model.

As in the case of integration most tech-prep programs are relatively new- About half of those reported in our surveys were just getting started in 2002. Among the small number of well established programs, estimated retention rates and rates of transition from secondary to postsecondary education are quite respectable, though we must view the estimates with caution for methodological reasons. Some of the newer programs will unquestionably mature into programs that have both scope and depth, although we cannot tell how many. As with integration, the implementation of tech prep must be viewed as a long-range process, but one worth pursuing. The presence of a large and active national tech-prep movement is helping the process along.