Archived Information

**Beyond Empty Promises: Policies to Improve**

**Transitions into College and Jobs**

James E. Rosenbaum

Northwestern University

April 2002

This paper was prepared for the Office of Vocational and Adult
Education, U.S. Department of Education pursuant to contract no.
ED-99-CO-0160. The findings and opinions expressed in this paper do not
necessarily reflect the position or policies of the U.S. Department of
Education.

.

Beyond Empty Promises: Policies to Improve

###### Transitions into College and Jobs

James E. Rosenbaum

***Introduction***

Innovation occurs in the U.S. at an amazing speed, but people and
institutions often have difficulty keeping up. In the past two decades,
jobs and colleges have dramatically changed their requirements, but
these changes are often poorly understood, and the resulting
misconceptions have led to misguided educational practices. Reviewing
research evidence, we conclude that well- intentioned educators have
encouraged misguided \"college for all\" policies which prevent students
from 1)getting crucial information about how they are doing, 2)seeing
the full range of their desirable options, 3)assessing the
appropriateness of these options and their likely outcomes, and 4)seeing
what actions they can take to improve their career outcomes.

\"College for all\" policies create serious information failures. This
paper recommends policies to give students and educators better
information and to help students make more effective career plans. These
new policy actions provide three components.

1\) [Provide guidelines]{.underline} \-- information about college and
the labor market which tells students about desirable career options and
steps they can take to get them.

2\) [Provide useful evaluations]{.underline}\-- tests and ratings that
provide usable information to students, employers, and colleges about
students\' strengths on diverse valued dimensions.

3\) [Provide trusted communication channels]{.underline}\-- channels
that provide authoritative information about students' positive
qualities to employers and colleges, and provide authoritative
information about college and labor market demands to students.

High schools have a broader mission than college preparation, or even
academic preparation. As the last societal institution attended by all
youths, high schools must prepare all young people for productive
careers. If they fail, youths will have difficulty becoming
self-sufficient adults, and in fact, many youths spend 2-10 years
floundering among many dead-end high turnover jobs, with many
unemployment spells and strong enticements for criminal activity.
Students must begin to assess what

they\'ve accomplished and their likely career options, while they are
still in high school where they can take steps to prepare for realistic
options. Instead, high schools encourage nearly all students to have
college plans, even when such plans are unrealistic. Although less than
42% of high school graduates get college degrees and many drop out of
college with no credits, high schools encourage all students to expect
college degrees, even students with poor grades, of whom only 14 percent
will get any degree. Such advice often encourages complacency, lack of
effort, and misdirected efforts. We propose policies to encourage high
schools to provide information, useful student evaluations, and help in
attaining multiple options. These policies include college plans, but
they also include other desirable options that make it less likely that
students will face dead-end jobs or unemployment.

After identifying 12 misconceptions that arise because of poor
information, this paper describes some specific procedures for providing
needed information, usable evaluations, and more trusted communication
channels. These policies require new information and new models for
interaction among high schools, employers and colleges. The federal
government can provide new information and models to help schools,
employers, and colleges understand and respond to the new rules of
college and the labor market.

Three Revolutionary Changes: The New Rules of College and the Labor
Market.

Youths have always had difficulty entering adult society, but the
process has become more difficult in recent decades. Over the last 40
years, three revolutionary changes have dramatically changed the way
students become adults. First, the labor market has dramatically
increased its skill demands and the earnings advantages for college
graduates, while reducing the real earnings for those with less
education.

Second, college became much more available, and community colleges (a
minor factor in the prior generation) radically increased in enrollment.
Over the past 40 years, while enrollment at four-year colleges doubled,
enrollment at community colleges increased 5-fold (Digest of Educational
Statistics, 1999).

The third revolution was perhaps the most remarkable. Community colleges
undertook a revolutionary policy of open admissions. Unlike most
four-year colleges, community colleges opened their doors to admit all
interested students regardless of their prior academic achievement. Any
high school graduate could attend, even with barely passing grades.
Sometimes students do not even have to be high school graduates or have
GEDs.

These three revolutions radically changed the rules of college and the
labor market. They give students dramatically new opportunities.
However, as with all revolutions, such dramatic changes are difficult to
understand, and they have lead to misconceptions and unintended
consequences.

The College-For-All Policy: Misconceptions About the New Rules of
College and the Labor Market.

Dramatic changes are hard to understand, and educators have formed
mistaken beliefs and pursued misguided practices. Without any public
decision, American high schools have quietly adopted a new informal
policy, what I\'ve called the \"college-for-all\" policy (Rosenbaum,
2001). This new policy is based on misconceptions about the new reality
of college and the labor market. Before proposing solutions, we must
consider the misconceptions that have led to the current college-for-all
policy. The following sections present 12 misconceptions and research
evidence about these misconceptions. This paper then recommends policy
actions to improve the ways high schools interact and communicate with
students, colleges and employers in ways that help all parties.

#### *Misconceptions About the Desirability of College for Everyone*

The first six misconceptions are about the desirability of college for
everyone, and the remaining six are about the undesirability of jobs for
high school graduates.

[MISCONCEPTION 1: Counselors should advise all students to attend
college.]{.underline} Guidance counselors have traditionally been the
school staff responsible for advising students' educational plans.
Counselors used to be gatekeepers; if students were unprepared for
college, counselors advised them to plan other careers (Cicourel and
Kitsuse, 1963; Rosenbaum, 1976). The increased skill demands of the
labor market, the vast expansion of higher education, and new open
admissions policies have given the impression that all students should
attend college

Recent studies indicate that guidance counselors' practices have
changed. Counselors rarely discourage college plans or suggest
alternatives. A recent study in eight diverse urban and suburban high
schools found that guidance counselors do not discourage students from
attending college, even if students have poor achievement, and they do
not warn students if they have poor chances of success in college (Krei
& Rosenbaum, 2001; Rosenbaum, Miller, & Krei, 1997). Although some
counselors express misgivings about their college-for-all advice and
believe that some of these students have little likelihood of lasting in
college more than a few months, they believe that open admissions means
that they no longer have to restrict college access, and they are happy
to be free of that unpleasant task. Such attitudes were rarely evident
in the studies of counselors prior to 1980.

National data suggest that these practices are widespread. While only 32
percent of a national survey of seniors in 1982 said that their
counselors urged them to go to college, ten years later, twice as many
seniors (66 percent) made the same statement (comparing HSB with NELS
respondents). Indeed, 57 percent of seniors in

the bottom half of the academic rankings reported that counselors urged
them to attend college (Gray, 1996; Boesel, 2001).

Despite popular concerns about counselors being too restrictive, the
opposite may be happening now. Counselors who wish to warn students that
they are unprepared for college feel that they lack authority to do so
(Rosenbaum, Miller, & Krei, 1997). They report that when they warn
students that they are unprepared for college, parents complain, and
principals support the parents. Many counselors believe that they do not
have authority to give such advice. In the words of one counselor, \"Who
am I to burst their bubble?\"

Of course, if counselors lack authority to warn students, no one else in
high school is likely to do it. Despite their doubts about encouraging
unprepared students to attend college, counselors lack any information
or guidelines that would authorize them to warn students, and they face
strong pressures to encourage all students to have college expectations.
Counselors also lack information about desirable career alternatives to
college.

MISCONCEPTION 2: [All students should plan to get college
degrees]{.underline}. The \"college-for-all\" policy has had an impact
across the nation. The 1992 National Education Longitudinal Survey
(NELS: 92) found that 84% of high-school seniors planned to get a two-
or four-year college degree. Even many students with bad grades,
low-test scores, and poor high-school attendance planned to complete a
college degree.

However, many of these students will be disappointed. Although 84% of
high-school seniors expect a degree, only 41.3% of high-school graduates
age 30--34 actually have college degrees (Digest of Educational
Statistics, 1999). Similarly, a national study, the High School and
Beyond (HSB) survey, followed high-school seniors 10 years after
graduation. It found that of seniors who planned to get a college
degree, only 37.7% actually completed a degree in the ten years
following graduation. For seniors with poor high-school grades who
planned college degrees, less than 14% completed a degree (Rosenbaum,
1998, 2001). For this 14%, open admissions provided an extremely helpful
second chance.

However, for the other 86% of students, their second chance was only
another failure experience. It is hard to argue that these students
should count on getting a college degree. Students who graduate from
high school with low achievement can have college plans, but, at a
minimum, they need to be informed of the high risk of college dropout,
informed of how hard they must work to overcome these odds, and informed
of other desirable options. If they were so informed, they might revise
their plans, or they might increase their efforts while still in high
school.

MISCONCEPTION 3: [Students with college plans do not need to prepare for
work]{.underline}. To avoid discouraging students, educators have
removed alternatives. Since 95% of students plan to attend college, and
84% expect degrees, educators now feel that it is unnecessary to prepare
young people for work. Since about 1990, the past two superintendents of
the Chicago public schools declared a commitment to getting all
graduates into college, and they systematically reduced vocational
programs. Similar reductions were seen in high schools in six different
suburbs (Rosenbaum, 2001). There are reports of similar policies across
the U.S. Vocational enrollments in the U.S. have declined substantially
over the past two decades (NCES, 2000,p.7), but it is hard to know how
much of the decline in student preferences has been affected by schools'
college-for-all advising and declines in vocational offerings.

In fact, many "college-bound students" are really work-bound. As noted,
many students who plan college degrees are almost certain to drop out of
college. Although they have college plans, such students are
[really]{.underline} work-bound. They will enter the labor market with a
high-school diploma as their highest degree, although they have not
planned or prepared for this. Indeed, about 31.1% of college entrants
get no college credits, and 52.4% of students with poor high-school
grades (Cs or lower) get zero credits (Rosenbaum, 2001, p. 77). Students
who have zero credits surely get no benefit from the college-for-all
approach, and they would have had better outcomes from obtaining other
plans and preparation (see below).

MISCONCEPTION 4: [Open admissions allow all students to enter college
classes]{.underline}. Open admissions allow all students to enter
college, but that does not mean that they can take college classes. Many
\"college students\" are not really in college. Community colleges admit
all interested students, but many students are not prepared for college
courses, and they are placed in remedial courses---high-school level
courses that confer no college credits (Deil-Amen & Rosenbaum, 2002b).

Many high school graduates lack basic ninth grade academic skills
(Murnane and Levy, 1996, p. 34), and many students with low achievement
are planning to get college degrees (Rosenbaum, 1998; Boesel and
Fredland, 1999). Community college administrators report that many of
their students must take basic reading and arithmetic courses at an
8^th^ grade level (Deil-Amen and Rosenbaum, 2002). These "college
students" are taking 8^th^ grade courses, and they may have to cover
several years of high school curricula for which they will not receive
college credits.

The best national estimate of the extent of remedial education comes
from a careful analysis of college transcripts of a national survey of
students from the class of 1982. It finds that when they enter college,
about 46% of students are in remedial courses, and among those entering
community colleges, 64% are in remedial courses (Adelman, 1985). Similar
percentages are evident in the prior decade, for the class of 1972.
Another national survey finds that many students take three or more
remedial courses, which doubles the chances of dropping out (Deil-Amen &
Rosenbaum, 2002b). Moreover, in an effort to reduce students\' feelings
of inferiority, college advisers often downplay that courses are
remedial and give no college credit. Even after entering college, many
students are unclear about requirements and do not realize they are in
remedial courses (Deil-Amen & Rosenbaum, 2002b). This has two
implications. First, students\' reports of the incidence of remedial
course taking in national surveys are likely to be underestimates.
Second, many students do not realize that they are not earning college
credits for remedial courses, and their plans for two-year or four-year
degrees cannot be achieved in the time they have scheduled, particularly
if they are taking several remedial courses.

MISCONCEPTION 5: [College plans lead to increased school
effort.]{.underline} It is often assumed that college plans make
students more motivated, giving students a reason to work in high
school. Unfortunately, that does not happen for many students. For many
decades, work-bound students have believed that high school achievement
will not influence their future careers (Stinchcombe, 1965), but now
many college-bound students also hold this belief. In a survey of over
2000 seniors in 12 urban and suburban high schools, we found that almost
40% of college-bound students believe that school effort has little
relevance for their future careers (Rosenbaum, 1998, cf. also Steinberg,
1996). Since anyone can enter college no matter how badly they do in
high school (because of open admissions), they believe they can wait
until college to exert effort.

Not surprisingly, students who hold this belief exert much less effort
in high school, even after controlling for student attributes and other
student beliefs (Rosenbaum, 2001, p. 63). Students seem remarkably
complacent that they have the ability to be successful whenever they
decide to get serious about school, a confidence which is at odds with
the actual degree completion rates of similar students in national
samples. Unfortunately, college plans do not lead to increased school
effort. Many students who plan to get college degrees exert very little
effort in high school.

MISCONCEPTION 6: [High schools should focus on academic preparation,
instead of warning students about their college prospects or providing
other career options]{.underline}. Since students\' college plans are
often inconsistent with their preparation, either their plans must be
reduced or their preparation increased. The usual response is to urge
schools to redouble their efforts to improve students\' achievement.
This seems to be a noble and uncontroversial goal.

However, by high school, higher achievement has been schools\' goal for
ten years, yet many students are 2, 3, or more years below grade level
in achievement (NAEP, 1999; Murnane and Levy, 1996, p. 34). Educators
should not give up on academics, but they cannot count on large numbers
of students who have fallen several years below grade level after ten
years of school to close that gap in the last two years of high school,
even if schools make large new efforts. Indeed, improved academic
instruction would probably be better directed at the early years of
elementary schools since the gap tends to grow over the school career,
and early prevention is probably easier than fixing the problem after it
has become severe (Farkas, 1996).

Our failure to warn students has had an unintended consequence. Although
many high school students are several grade levels behind in academic
skills, they still believe they can get college degrees without
increasing their efforts. Many low-achieving seniors have college plans,
but are doing little or no homework; they are not taking efforts to
improve their future prospects (Rosenbaum, 2001). Teachers are urged to
push students harder, but many teachers believe that students will not
do the assignments (Sedlak, et al, 1986), because students have
after-school jobs (Steinberg, 1996), and because parents complain about
homework (Bishop 1996).

While high schools should continue trying to improve students\' academic
achievement, that is not an excuse for withholding information about
students\' likely college prospects. The college-for-all policy gives
students the mistaken impression that low high school achievement is not
an obstacle to their plans. That is exactly the wrong message if we want
to raise students\' achievement.

Misconceptions About the Undesirability of Jobs After High School.

As the last institution that nearly all members of society attend, high
schools have the obligation to prepare young people to become
productive, self-sufficient members of society. Open admissions
community colleges already guarantee that the college option will remain
open, but that doesn\'t mean that college is necessarily one\'s best
choice. High schools must provide students with multiple options, in
case college doesn\'t work out.

Unfortunately, misconceptions have arisen about how to do this. Changes
in the labor market have lead to six misconceptions about the jobs
students can get after high school and whether high school can help
students get good jobs.

MISCONCEPTION 7: [All good jobs require a college degree]{.underline}.
Although the labor market requires higher skills than formerly, many
good jobs do not require college skills. There has been a large increase
in the need for strong *high-school* level skills: math, reading, and
writing skills at a 9th grade level. Examining good jobs at several
kinds of employers, Murnane and Levy (1996, p.33) found that many good
jobs require the ability to do math at a 9th grade level, the \"ability
to manipulate fractions and decimals and to interpret line graphs and
bar graphs\.... \[Reading skills to\] find, understand, summarize, and
explain relatively complicated information.\" The problem is that even
in 12^th^ grade, over 40% of high-school students lack these ninth-grade
academic skills in math and 60% lack these skills in reading (*Ibid*.,
p.34). We need to improve youths\' skills, but the skills that are
needed can be provided in high school. Students do not need to learn
these skills in college.

When asked what jobs they recommend to students who seek jobs after high
school, counselors report that they either give no advice about jobs, or
they advise students to take jobs in fast food or small retail shops,
jobs which have no career advancement opportunity (Rosenbaum, 2001).
Counselors believe that young people cannot get good jobs without
college degrees. However, when asked the same question, vocational
teachers report that many good jobs are available to high school
graduates (Krei and Rosenbaum, 2002). Jobs that lead to well-paid
careers exist in a wide variety of fields, including construction,
trades, clerical and administrative support, technical specialties,
printing, graphics, financial services, and social services.
Unfortunately, few guidance counselors know about such jobs and their
requirements, counselors are too busy with other duties to give job
advice, and high schools do not assign career advising to any staff
(Rosenbaum, 2001).

MISCONCEPTION 8: [High school achievement is irrelevant to job
outcomes.]{.underline} Many high school teachers believe that academic
achievement is not important for students' employment or earnings
(Useem, 1986). As noted, counselors advise students to take jobs in fast
food or small retail shops, but, since many high school students already
have such jobs, they might rightly infer that the diploma is irrelevant
to job outcomes. The doubts about high school relevance to job outcomes
are reflected in four related beliefs --

a\. High school achievement is irrelevant to jobs,

b\. Noncognitive behaviors in school are irrelevant to jobs,

c\. Vocational programs are irrelevant to jobs, and

d.  High school teachers cannot help students get better jobs.

All four are common beliefs, and all four are wrong. We shall address
each.

The first belief, that high school achievement is irrelevant to job
outcomes, is correct in the short term, but not in the long-term. In a
large national survey, employers report that grades are important for
hiring college graduates, but not for hiring high school graduates
(Crain, 1984). Another study found that most employers do not even
request high school transcripts, and even when employers consider school
experience, they do not necessarily focus on academics (Bills, 1988). In
the 1997 National Employer Survey, employers asked to rank the relative
importance of various potential criteria in the hiring process on a five
point scale (from \"essential\" to \"not at all important\") put \"tests
and academic performance\" near the bottom of all criteria (2.3 and
2.5), just above \"teacher recommendations\" (2.0), and far below
\"applicants\' attitude\" and \"employer references\" (4.6 and 3.9,
respectively, Shapiro and Iannozzi, 1999, table 2). In a careful study
of employers, John Bishop (1993, 343) notes that employers rarely make
efforts to obtain valid information from schools. A study of hiring
practices into entry-level, career-ladder jobs in diverse industries
found that employers placed most emphasis on applicants\'
self-presentation in a brief interview, and little emphasis on grades,
test scores, or teacher recommendations (unless they knew the teacher;
Miller and Rosenbaum, 1997).

If we assess employers' needs by the wages paid for employee
qualifications, employers do not seem to need any academic achievement
from recent high school graduates. They neither offer higher pay nor
have a greater propensity to hire based on academic achievement \-- that
is, grades, test scores, or teacher evaluations. Indeed, many studies
indicate that high school grades and test scores do not predict a
student\'s unemployment, occupational status, or earnings right after
high school. (Bishop, 1993; Gamoran, 1994; Griffin, Kalleberg, and
Alexander, 1981; Jencks et al., 1979; Stern, Finkelstein, Stone,
Latting, & Dornsife, 1995). No wonder high school staff believes that
academic achievement is not important for students' employment or
earnings.

However, those studies only consider short-term outcomes, and high
school achievement has strong effects on long-term outcomes. Although
high-school grades and test scores have little relationship to
short-term outcomes (college admissions or earnings right after high
school), they strongly predict important long-term outcomes (Altonji and
Pierret, 1995; Murnane, Willette, and Levy, 1995; Miller, 1998;
Rosenbaum, DeLuca, Miller, & Roy, 1999). High-school grades predict
students\' ultimate educational attainment, and these relationships
remain significant after many controls (Miller, 1998; Rosenbaum, 2001).
In addition, high-school grades also strongly predict long-term earnings
(even after we controlled for educational attainment). A rise of one
letter grade (from C to B) was associated with a 12.8% earnings gain at
age 28 for youths who get no college degrees (Rosenbaum, 2001, p. 182).
Unfortunately, it is very difficult, if not impossible, for high school
teachers or counselors to see what happens to most of their graduates
nine years after high school, so they do not realize the long-term
importance of high school achievement.

MISCONCEPTION 9: [Noncognitive behaviors in high school are irrelevant
to job outcomes]{.underline}. It is often assumed that the increased
skill demands of the labor market mean that employers primarily need
academic skills. However, while employers say they value academic
skills, employers say their greatest needs are soft skills, e.g., work
habits and social skills, which they consider far more important than
academic skills (Shapiro and Iannozzi, 1999). In interviews we\'ve
conducted with 51 employers in a wide variety of fields, employers
stress attendance, dependability, perseverance, attention to quality,
and ability to work with others (Rosenbaum, 2001, chap. 6).

Moreover, soft skills are sometimes the best predictors of job
performance. In an assessment of Diamond-Star Corporation's selection
process, an outside personnel firm examined the correlation between
employees' ratings during the hiring process and their later job
performance as rated by supervisors. The study found that applicants had
to have test scores over a fixed threshold, but the level of scores over
that threshold had almost no relationship to job performance. By
contrast, applicants' soft-skills ratings were better predictors of job
performance (Murnane and Levy, 1996, p. 36, cf. also Houghton and
Proscio, 2002).

In addition, analyses of the national HSB data indicate that students'
earnings 9 years after graduating from high school are significantly
affected by their noncognitive behaviors in high school \-- their
sociability, discipline, leadership, and attendance, even

after controlling for background characteristics and academic
achievement (Rosenbaum, 2001, ch. 8).

Moreover, youth must learn these behaviors before entering the labor
market. While some employers provide training in academic or technical
skills, they do not provide training in soft skills or work habits. If
workers lack soft skills, if they are undependable, unmotivated, or get
into conflicts, employers don\'t train them, they fire them. Employers
report that they do not know how to train soft skills (Miller and
Rosenbaum, 1997). Similarly, most job training programs focus on
academic or job skills, and the few programs which try to teach
motivation, find that it is difficult, expensive, and very time
consuming (Herr, Wagner, and Halpern, 1996). If students don\'t learn
soft skills before entering the labor market, they probably won\'t be
given a chance to learn them later.

High school is the last institution all students attend, so it is the
logical place for students to learn work habits, if they haven\'t done
so already. Yet, as noted, many students believe that there is no reason
to exert effort in high school. In the NELS survey, 31% of high school
sophomores do one hour of homework a [week]{.underline} or less (DeLuca
and Rosenbaum, 2001).

Many employers report that some new workers are absent or late to work
several days in their first week at the job, they do poor quality work,
and they talk back to supervisors (Rosenbaum, 2001). Youths have learned
that these behaviors are accepted in high school. Employers report that
workers who were absent three days in the first week expected that their
excuses would be accepted, so they are surprised when employers fire
them. Employers report that many young people go to considerable effort
to travel to job interviews, but then they dress or act inappropriately.
Young people arrive at a job interview bringing a crying baby or a
girlfriend to read the job application, or they wear headphones, short
skirts, torn jeans, or T-shirts with inappropriate slogans ("Fuck you,"
"Megadeth", Rosenbaum, 2001). These young people wanted the job, but
they didn\'t know what employers expect. High schools are failing to
develop soft skills, which employers value much more than academics, and
which must be learned before entering the labor market.

MISCONCEPTION 10: [Vocational education is irrelevant to job
outcomes.]{.underline} Many studies find substantial employment benefits
from vocational courses immediately after high school. For example,
Campbell et al. (1986) found that vocational graduates in the 1983
national longitudinal survey were 8.2% more likely to be in the labor
force than graduates of academic programs, and their pay was 5.6%
higher, after controlling for test scores and enrollment in higher
education. Another study found that male vocational graduates get 8%
higher wages, work 10% more, and earned over 20% more in 1981, their
first year after graduation than graduates of academic programs. The
benefits were even greater for female vocational graduates (Kang and
Bishop, 1986), not only for earnings but also for desirable occupations
four years after high school (Arum and Shavit, 1995).

A comprehensive review of research on vocational education concludes
\"the strongest, most consistent finding throughout the literature \[on
vocational education\] is that improved earnings do accrue in situations
where vocational training is directly related to job tasks\.... Students
who concentrate in a single area of coursework have better economic
outcomes than those who take courses in a variety of subjects\...\[but\]
only if work is in a related field" (Boesel, et al. 1994, vol. II, pp.
137-139). This means that vocational programs must offer skills in areas
that are in demand in the labor market, and it may also mean that
programs need to assist students in finding appropriate jobs, as noted
later.

Just as cognitive psychology suggests that learning is more effective
and more motivating if done in appropriate contexts (Berryman, 1992),
some studies have found that some vocational courses contribute to
academic achievement in mathematics (Wirt et al. 1989), and they may
reduce dropout rates from high school (Boesel, et al. 1994, vol II, p.
121). Moreover, a recent study of a national survey (NLSY) found that
females in vocational tracks have lower teen pregnancy rates than
students in general or college tracks (Beattie, 2001). If, as theorists
suggest, teen pregnancy results from poor future prospects (Wilson,
1996), one possible interpretation is that vocational programs give
these young women hope for better future employment prospects. This
interpretation is consistent with survey results that indicate that
students who believe that their teachers can help them get jobs see
their classes as more relevant to their future lives than other students
(Rosenbaum, 2001, p. 63).

In the era of \"college for all\" policy, vocational education has been
criticized as preventing college attendance (Oakes, 1985). This belief
is mistaken. Although students in vocational programs are less likely to
attend college than other students, many students choose vocational
programs because they do not wish to attend college. However, vocational
programs do not preclude college enrollment. In 1980, 12.6 percent of
vocational education graduates obtained a 1 or 2 year degree in the six
years following graduation (Digest of Educational Statistics, 1991,
table 289) and over 20% of vocational education graduates from business
and health programs obtained college degrees. Indeed, 18 percent of
students in distributive education programs and 15 percent in health
programs attend four-year colleges. More recently, vocational student
enrollment in college has increased: vocational students from the class
of 1992 were much more likely to enroll in college after graduation than
1982 graduates were (NCES, 2000, p. x). Students in vocational and
general tracks, who tend to be similar in academic and social
background, differ very little in postsecondary outcomes, even though
students choose general tracks (and sacrifice vocational preparation)
because general tracks promise greater college preparation (Boesel, et
al. 1994, vol. II, p. 125).

Vocational education has increasingly emphasized academics, and
vocational students' academic preparation increased greatly between 1982
and 1994 (NCES, 2002, p. vii). An academic emphasis was an explicit goal
of the federal School to Work Opportunities Act (STWOA) of 1994. An
analysis of programs related to this act indicates that students in
school-to-work programs are more likely to complete their high school
diploma, to improve their attendance and grades, and to report having
increased access to caring adults, enhanced motivation, better planning
for the future, and broader career plans (including both college and
work, Hughes, Bailey, and Mechur, 2001,p. 6). An assessment of long-term
goals, including education and employment require longitudinal research
that has not yet been done.

MISCONCEPTION 11: [High school teachers cannot help students get better
jobs]{.underline}. Unlike secondary schools in Germany and Japan,
American high schools have no responsibilities for helping students get
jobs after graduation. However, recent research has discovered that
American high schools do help some students get jobs. Over eight percent
of work-bound high-school graduates obtain their jobs after high school
primarily through help by their schools (Rosenbaum, 2001, p. 200). High
schools do not merely help students who are already favored in the labor
market: females and minorities are significantly more likely to get
school help than white males, and low-SES students are equally helped
(after controlling for achievement). In addition, students who got jobs
through school help had better career trajectories. Nine years after
graduating, they had 17% higher earnings than students who got jobs
through direct applications (Rosenbaum, 2001, p. 208). This compares
favorably with students who got jobs through relatives, who only had 8.6
percent higher earnings.

In addition, interviews with 110 high school vocational teachers find
that many vocational teachers have developed strong contacts with
employers and they use these contacts to help students to get jobs, as
described below. Although these teachers\' job placement efforts are not
formal job duties and are not widely known, they provide important
career benefits to some students.

MISCONCEPTION 12: [Society can wait to address students' employability
until after high school]{.underline}. The United States prides itself on
offering second chances, and the open admissions policies at community
colleges are a prime example. Community colleges open their doors to
nearly all applicants.

However, some doors have already begun to close after students leave
high school, and high school is the last time that many students have to
fix problems before they are shut out of opportunities. As noted,
community colleges give low-achieving students second chances to get a
degree, but only a small proportion of students succeed in doing so. In
addition, if students do not learn soft skills before entering the labor
market, they probably won\'t be given a chance to learn them later.
Employers are unwilling to teach soft skills (Rosenbaum, 2001, ch. 6),
and many community colleges do not teach them (Deil-Amen and Rosenbaum,
2002a).

New welfare reform regulations also partially close another door. TANF
recipients may only enroll full-time in postsecondary education for 12
months, after which they must engage in work activity. They may continue
to participate part-time in postsecondary education, however. While 22
states have adopted policies that enable recipients to participate
full-time in postsecondary education for longer than 12 months, two-year
associates degrees are very difficult in the majority of states.

Moreover, poor preparation in high school can lead to a bad start, which
can be harmful to later careers. If students get their start in dead-end
jobs, if they have many periods of job turnover and unemployment, or if
they wander into crime or drugs, these records may stigmatize their
future employment prospects.

Even society's efforts to help youths may backfire. In a random
assignment experiment, a job-training program that offered good training
led to significantly [lower]{.underline} earnings than a control group,
presumably because it stigmatized participants as having poor employment
histories (Bloom et al. 1992; Cave and Doolittle, 1991). The control
group had the same employment problems, but they did not get the
stigmatizing label.

Some doors begin closing after students leave high school, and students
need to be warned and prepared with multiple options while they are
still in high school. Waiting to provide the training after high school
may be ineffective, or even harmful.

Although youths' problems in high school are easily dismissed as minor
youth indiscretions, American society is not so unforgiving of problems
that arise after high school, even in the next few years. Teen
pregnancy, crime, unemployment, job turnover, and job training programs
leave stigmas, which may have a lasting effect.

High school is the last time that many students have to fix problems
before they confer a durable stigma. Warning students while they are in
high school allows them to get preparation and help while it is still
available and non-stigmatizing. Currently our policies wait to repair
youths' employment prospects only after they start having problems in
the labor market, by which time, the problems are often compounded by a
poor employment record and stigma. Rather than waiting until youths have
serious employment problems, policy would be more effective by
preventing these problems in the first place. If they weren't caught up
in college-for-all delusions, high schools could prevent such problems
with job preparation and job placement assistance.

##### *The New Rules for College and The Labor Market*

These 12 conceptions are mistaken. There are rules that students and
educators should know, but they probably don't. The new rules of college
and the labor market can be summarized succinctly:

1)  All students can attend college, but low-achieving students should
    be warned about remedial courses and their own likely prospects.

2)  All students can plan to get a college degree, but, if they are
    unprepared, they must be willing to repeat high school courses in
    college, taking the extra time and effort in non-credit remedial
    courses, with higher risks of failure.

3)  Even if students have college plans, they must [still]{.underline}
    prepare for work. All career plans should include multiple options,
    particularly for students who have poor likelihood of completing
    college.

4)  Open admissions allows all students to enter college, but not
    necessarily college credit classes.

5)  College plans [require]{.underline} increased school effort. If
    students delay their effort until they get to college, the delay
    will make degree completion take longer and be less likely.

6)  Policies to improve college preparation do not remove the need to
    provide information about students' college prospects or to provide
    multiple options

7\) Many good jobs do not require a college degree, and high school
graduates actually get such jobs.

Students can improve their chances of getting good jobs by 8)having
better academic achievement, 9) having better noncognitive behaviors,
10) taking vocational courses, and 11) getting job placement help from
teachers. 12) Students' employment prospects can best be improved before
they leave high school.

##### *New Policy Proposals*

This review indicates an urgent need for policy action. As long as
policymakers, practitioners, parents and students hold these
misconceptions, they will make decisions that poorly meet their own
needs, the needs of each other, and societal needs. The following
sections advance proposals that would help students take actions that
would make high schools more effective in helping students.

Effective policy proposals should provide three components.

A)  [Provide guidelines]{.underline} \-- information about college and
    the labor market, which tells students about desirable options and
    steps, they can take to get them.

B)  [Provide useful evaluations]{.underline}\-- tests and ratings that
    provide usable information to students, employers, and colleges
    about students\' strengths on diverse valued dimensions.

C)  [Provide trusted communication channels]{.underline}\-- channels
    that provide authoritative information about students' positive
    qualities to employers and colleges, and provide authoritative
    information about college and labor market demands to students.

While it cannot impose these policies, the federal government is the
best source for devising and recommending models. Although local actors
have a vital role in assessing local labor market requirements and
responding quickly to change, they have great difficulties in perceiving
systemic properties and in discerning long-term consequences. As a
result, local policymakers, practitioners, and individuals have serious
misconceptions, they view problems too narrowly, and they cannot see
long-term outcomes of career choices. Local actors often get caught up
in a blame game: employers and colleges blame high schools, and vice
versa. Yet failures often result from defects in the way these
institutions interact and communicate, not from defects inside the
institutions themselves. For instance, if employers and colleges do not
effectively communicate their skill needs, students will not see
incentives for high school effort, and they may be unresponsive to
instruction, regardless of what teachers do.

The following policy proposals can improve communication of information
about incentives and improve the transition. Local practitioners do not
have time, resources, or expertise for doing the required multivariate
longitudinal research on these questions. The U.S. Department of
Education is in a good position to conduct such research and recommend
models that will help local actors to formulate appropriate policies,
programs, and practices.

######## 

######## Provide Guidelines 

Guidelines can provide information about the new rules for gaining
access to jobs and college. Instead of imposing proscriptive rules,
guidelines inform students about their options and assist them in making
choices among those options and in seeing steps they can take to improve
their career outcomes. They can provide four kinds of information:
desirable options, actual requirements, procedures for increasing
access, and likely outcomes.

1.  Inform students what [options]{.underline} exist, including options
    that are not generally realized. This includes the many types of
    available jobs and colleges that are often overlooked, perhaps
    because their benefits appear in later years, not right after high
    school.

2.  Inform students about the [requirements]{.underline} for various
    options. This includes not only college entrance requirements, but
    also the requirements to succeed in various college programs. What
    types of effort, what levels of grades, and what other ratings are
    good signals of preparation for students\' goals?

3.  Inform students about [procedures]{.underline} for increasing access
    to these options. What kinds of practical steps can students take in
    high school to improve their access to desirable careers. Some types
    of curriculum programs and some types of teacher help can assist
    students in obtaining a good job or in getting access to appropriate
    college programs.

4.  Inform students about [probable outcomes]{.underline} for various
    career options, given their personal achievements, both their
    strengths and weaknesses. If this information is provided early, it
    can stimulate students to make greater efforts. Later, it can guide
    students to select several desirable career options, at least some
    of which they have a high probability of attaining.

Guidelines include information about desirable options (desirable jobs,
colleges, college programs) and information about their benefits,
requirements, procedures for increasing access, and likely outcomes.

Information On Each Option---Benefits; Requirements; Procedures;
Outcomes

##### Options---

**a. Jobs**

**b. Colleges**

c.  **College programs**

College is Not the Only Option and Not the Best Option for Everyone.

Everyone can attend college, but it is not students' only option, and it
may not be the best option for every student. If students face the
prospect of an 86 percent failure rate, guidelines should warn and
advise them to have several alternative plans, in case their college
plans do not work out.

Although college-for-all advice occurs for the best of intentions, it is
sometimes a cruel deception. It fails to warn students about their
likelihood of dropping out of college, and it prevents students from
considering other options and getting suitable preparation and job
placement assistance while they are in high school. By the time students
realize that college is not a viable option, they are out of high
school, and they have nowhere to turn for help.

Guidelines stipulate information students should know when they make
their plans. Although anyone can attend college, students should know
that 1) good job options are available without a college degree, 2) some
colleges with low entrance requirements have higher requirements for
college credit, 3) different job seeking procedures and different
college programs offer the same student different probabilities of
success, 4) although they can enter college, low-achieving students have
low probability of getting a degree, and it takes some students several
terms of college to discover their poor chances. This information would
help high school students prepare for colleges\' real demands and make
appropriate choices and multiple plans, but students and educators
currently have misconceptions about these issues.

a.  [Job requirements, procedures, and outcomes]{.underline}. Although
    good jobs require increased skills, they do not necessarily require
    \"college skills\" (Murnane and Levy, 1996), and many desirable jobs
    are available to high school graduates (Rosenbaum, 2001). Research
    indicates that students with better grades, attendance, discipline,
    sociability, and leadership in high school get significantly higher
    earnings nine years after graduating from high school. There are
    also procedures for getting these jobs: vocational programs and
    school job placement can lead to better earnings trajectories. These
    requirements and procedures are not stated, and students (and many
    counselors) do not realize this information.

> Guidelines can provide information about these job options and
> procedures. They can encourage high schools to offer ratings of
> students' social skills and work habits, and tell students about the
> incentives for getting higher ratings. Guidelines can recommend that
> high schools provide time and incentives for vocational teachers to
> assist students with job placement, instead of only a few teachers
> doing this activity on their own time, as is now the practice.
> Although these options now exist, they are not widely recognized.
> Merely providing information and guidelines can help schools and
> students consider additional options.

b.  [College requirements, procedures, outcomes]{.underline}. Guidelines
    can provide information about the actual requirements for college
    credit courses, and can inform students about their realistic
    chances of getting some benefit from college. Such information will
    help students and schools consider additional options. In addition,
    guidelines can provide college applicants with details about
    procedures---how to prepare for college-level courses, how to know
    if a course offers college credits, how to assess how long will it
    take to complete a degree (given their remedial needs), how to
    assess what is the likely job outcome from a program and whether the
    college provides job placement assistance (Deil-Amen and Rosenbaum,
    2001).

c\. [Types of colleges and college programs]{.underline}: [requirements,
procedures, and outcomes]{.underline}. Although high-achieving students
have many college options, which are well described by counselors and
college guidebooks, low-achieving students' options are poorly
understood. Low-achieving students have many college options: they can
attend public or private two-year colleges, and also some public or
private four-year colleges. Within the same college, different programs
are offered, and these programs often have very different properties:
different requirements, completion rates, and outcomes. Since these
colleges only serve local areas, no directories compare these various
options, and some guidance counselors do not understand the differences
among them. Despite the increased emphasis on college for all students,
high schools have been remarkably silent about the variety of colleges
and college programs that exist for low achieving students, the various
requirements for entry and for completion, their degree completion
rates, and their occupational outcomes

The differences are not trivial. For instance, community colleges offer
several kinds of associate degrees. Students majoring in business or
some technical fields could obtain an associates of science (AS),
associate of arts (AA), or applied associates of science (AAS) degree,
which have different levels of difficulty and prerequisites. At some
community colleges, the AAS requires an easier math course than the AA
degree, which requires an easier one than the AS. Students who performed
poorly on the math remedial test (i.e., at the 10^th^ grade level) must
take three noncredit math courses before they can take the required math
credit course for the AA or AS degree. If the same students seek an AAS
degree, they'd need two fewer remedial math courses (only one noncredit
math) before taking the required math credit course. Community colleges
encourage the AA or AS because they are the customary degrees for
transfer, however the AAS does not preclude transfer. More importantly,
at community colleges where 75 percent of students drop out with no
degree and 90 percent fail to transfer, employment is the more frequent
outcome, and employers rarely detect distinctions among those degrees.

Math or English prerequisites are important obstacles for students
(Deil-Amen and Rosenbaum, 2002b). While AA students taking several
remedial courses face a high risk of dropping out, the same students
seeking the AAS degree have fewer noncredit requirements, so they have a
better chance of completing a degree, doing so in the two years which
most students expect, and getting significant earnings benefits.

Health and technical programs in community colleges sometimes offer job
placement assistance in fields that have strong demand and provide
strong earnings. Graduates of these occupational programs often have
higher earnings than liberal arts graduates with associates of arts
degrees (Grubb, 1996). Some health and technical programs have specific
math or science requirements that liberal arts programs do not require,
but these programs do not necessarily require higher-level courses than
liberal arts Associates (AA, not the easier AAS) programs.

Similar issues arise in four-year colleges. Among students planning to
get BA degrees, students who enter four-year colleges have a greater
chance of obtaining a four-year degree than students who enter two-year
colleges (Dougherty, 1994). However, for students who do not complete
the BA degree, research raises doubts about the economic value of
four-year colleges. \"Students who take vocational courses in these
institutions seem to do reasonably well, but others might be better off
choosing a two-year institution\" (Boesel and Fredland, 1999, p. 18).
This conclusion is based on evidence about employment outcomes, but the
argument is even stronger when costs are considered. Students who attend
four-year colleges are more likely to leave with significant debts, and
their debts are much larger, regardless of whether they completed the
degree (Ibid., p. 19).

Guidelines can provide information about the various colleges and
program options and their requirements, completion rates, and job
outcomes. Many options now exist, but they are not widely understood.
Indeed, in our current research, it took a Ph.D. graduate student
several months of reading catalogs and interviewing administrators to
figure out the above procedures about the different Associates degrees
at a few community colleges. No wonder high school students do not
understand what will be expected, and community college students, who
have little time to devote to college, frequently make choices that
waste their scarce time and money, and then give up in frustration
(Deil-Amen and Rosenbaum, 2002b). Merely providing information can help
students consider all their options and make productive efforts.

##### *Guidelines Induce Change*

If used appropriately, guidelines will not constrain students, they will
inform students about their full range of options\--broadening the
options they consider, informing them of requirements and likely
payoffs, and directing their efforts to effective activities. In the
process, guidelines can change program enrollments, as students enter
colleges offering good chances of degree completion and employment.

Guidelines can also change students' behavior \-- showing them
incentives for improving their achievement. By failing to give students
information, counselors think they are protecting students' self-esteem,
but in fact they are withholding information about incentives that would
induce them to exert effort in high school, instead of missing that
opportunity. Of course, students will learn that they need academic and
soft skills after entering college or jobs, but by then, acquiring those
skills will be difficult or costly.

Guidelines can also give guidance counselors information. Guidance
counselors may not know what skills students need to get college credit
courses or good jobs, so they would have the ability to warn students
about remedial placements or delayed completion and inform students
about promising job opportunities. Counselors not only need to possess
this information, they also need the authority to give advice about
alternative options. Counselors are not always sure which options are
acceptable, and they worry that if they warn students about college
difficulties, they will be criticized for having \"low expectations\"
(Rosenbaum, 2001). In contrast, no one complains when guidance
counselors now send large numbers of graduates to some community
colleges, which have 80-90% dropout rates. In many schools, counseling
which encourages high expectations is less criticized than offering
realistic options, yet students will ultimately suffer the consequences.
Guidelines can authorize counselors to warn about illusory options,
about students\' misconceptions about the relevance of high school
achievement, about alternative desirable job options.

Guidelines can also give counselors information about what college
programs have higher chances of completion and what desirable jobs are
possible after high school that offer career advancement and tuition
benefits. Guidelines can tell counselors under what circumstances they
can advise a student to enter a job or a college occupational program.
Guidelines can also indicate the requirements for these college programs
and jobs, and procedures for obtaining them. Guidelines would improve
counselors\' practices and would give them authority to provide
realistic advice.

Of course, college and work are not exclusive options. Instead of the
usual practice of college students taking dead-end jobs solely to earn
money, low-achieving students might be encouraged to take career-ladder
jobs suggested by teachers while also trying out a few college courses.
These students would get benefits from both their college courses and
their job experiences.

In addition, both college and good jobs require similar criteria, so
students do not have to choose between different kinds of achievement.
Efforts to improve high school grades, test scores, attendance, and
teachers' ratings of industry and discipline will be valuable in
predicting success at college [and]{.underline} at jobs.

The federal government can vastly improve the decisions of policymakers,
practitioners, parents and students by compiling information about the
new rules of college and the labor market. The extensive misconceptions
noted above indicate the great need for information.

Provide useful evaluations aligned with college and work requirements

For high-achieving students, the U.S. has a clear procedure for making
the transition into highly selective colleges, a procedure that provides
student evaluations (either the SAT or ACT) and trustworthy
communications channels linking high schools and colleges (high school
visits by college recruiters and even some personal contacts). However,
for students entering work or entering less selective colleges, the U.S.
has not developed an explicit system, and the result is poor alignment
of requirements.

Poor alignment is sometimes blatant. Although many states require new
"high-stakes tests" to assess students\' progress, the tests are often
poorly aligned with college and work requirements. Students pass their
state exam for \"high school competency\" and then fail the community
college exam for \"high school competency\" and are placed in remedial
classes that give no college credit (Rosenbaum, 2001). Students get a
score on a high school test, which says pass or fail, but does not tell
them what competencies they have, or what kinds of jobs they can get.
This score is not information that students can use to make career
decisions. A score that says that students have solid ninth grade
competency in mathematics (that they know fractions, decimals, or
logarithms) would be valued by employers and would give students
information about their qualifications about appropriate jobs.

The high school diploma is a certificate that implies preparation for
society. However, after students graduate from high school, employers
are surprised to discover that they lack basic literacy and social
skills. "High-stakes tests" are sometimes effective in frightening some
students into studying harder (especially if they are near the cut-off
point), but they don\'t give students useful information.

In addition, society and the labor market have other important needs
besides academic skills. As the last educational institution that nearly
all young people attend, high schools must take on the task of
developing students\' other capabilities and providing evaluations of
them. U.S. schools need to provide useful student evaluations\-- tests
and ratings that inform employers, colleges, and students about
students\' strengths and weaknesses on many dimensions.

[Tests of competency]{.underline}. Employers' needs for academic
achievement are often misstated. Employers need higher skills than many
high school graduates possess, but they do not necessarily need college
level skills, or even 12th grade skills. Many employers have good jobs
that require basic 9th grade skills (Murnane and Levy, 1996). While few
jobs require calculus, many jobs require a basic knowledge of fractions,
decimals, and simple algebra (Rosenbaum and Binder, 1997). Students need
ways to know that they\'ve achieved mastery for job requirements.

Similarly, college-bound students need to know if they qualify for
college-credit courses. Community colleges assess this with tests, but
students do not get these tests until they get to college. If students
took such tests in high school, they could assess their preparation for
college and they could focus on improving their achievement to qualify
for college-credit courses, rather than focusing on getting into college
(which has few requirements).

[The right kind of tests]{.underline}. Students take many tests that are
used for a wide variety of purposes. Many tests are used to assess
schools and teachers. Teachers get upset when they see students sleeping
or daydreaming during these tests, which students have no reason to care
about. Even high school exit exams affect only a portion of students.
These exams assess \"minimum competencies,\" since it is not politically
feasible to set the level so high that many students fail. As a result,
the many students safely above the pass mark are rarely affected. The
skill levels demanded by various state exams vary considerably. While
some demand very low skill attainment, others require somewhat higher
levels of skill attainment.

Norm referenced tests, which say that a student is at the 40th
percentile; convey no meaningful information about whether a student has
satisfied the requirements of employers or colleges. In contrast, tests
which certify that high school seniors have satisfied 9^th^, 10^th^,
11^th^ or 12^th^ grade competencies in math and reading convey
meaningful information. They tell employers if students meet their
academic skill demands, and tell students what level of jobs or college
courses they are qualified to take. Moreover, these tests would pose
achievable standards for students to strive to attain. High school
seniors would be motivated to attain those standards if they saw clear
payoff.

[Authoritative tests to assist career choices]{.underline}. While
policymakers have focused on the test difficulty, and the ranking of
schools and states, the more important point is being ignored \-- what
information do tests convey to students about their qualifications for
jobs or college? Very few tests give useful information to young people.
Students do not learn anything about their career possibilities, and
they do not get any benefits from a good score.

While students have no reason to care about most test scores (except
exit exams where the score isn't meaningful, but the punishment is),
students actually need a test that provides authoritative information
about realistic career options. For instance, high school seniors need
to know whether they are prepared to take college credit courses, or
whether college will consign them to remedial courses that give no
college credit\-- that question determines how long it will take to get
a college degree and their likelihood of succeeding. Yet currently there
is virtually no way for students to get this information before they
enter college. Students need tests that can help them formulate their
career plans and assess their career possibilities. We shall propose a
way of creating such tests later in this paper.

[New ratings]{.underline}. Besides academic skills, employers also need
other qualities, which they have difficulty assessing. Employers usually
rely on interviews to assess job applicants' work habits and social
skills, but interviews are often poor predictors of how applicants will
work or get along on a day-to-day basis (Miller and Rosenbaum, 1998). In
contrast, research finds that students\' behaviors in high school, their
attendance, discipline, sociability, and leadership, predict their later
earnings (Rosenbaum, 2001, chapter 8). Unfortunately, employers do not
realize that high schools could provide information that predicts later
job performance, so they do not solicit such information (Miller and
Rosenbaum, 1998). As a result, students see no reason to improve their
behavior on these soft skills.

In addition to providing grades that signal these soft skills, high
schools can provide new evaluations of soft skills (like attendance,
discipline, motivation, sociability, and leadership), which predict
students\' later earnings. Just as some teachers already informally
evaluate soft skills for employers who call them, schools could devise
new evaluations so that all students could systematically get valuable
signals of their soft skills. Such evaluations would tell employers how
students perform, give students incentives to develop these behaviors,
and provide low-achieving students with alternative ways to show their
capabilities and improve their career outcomes.

After I proposed such ratings in an article, a teacher called me to say
that he initiated new employability ratings in his high school. He
reported that students who formerly had not exerted effort in high
school suddenly saw an incentive to do so, and their behavior improved.
These ratings improved student motivation so much that teachers voted to
increase their usage of these ratings, despite the extra work required.
Employers also found the ratings useful. A few employers initially
signed on to using these employability ratings, and increased numbers
did so later.

Employability ratings provide new attainable goals, even for students
who have great difficulties with academic achievement. These goals do
not substitute for academic achievement, but they do provide additional
dimensions on which a student can show competency and can qualify for
good jobs. For students who have difficulty with academic achievement,
employability ratings provide new ways to show qualities that are valued
in the labor market.

These ratings may be especially helpful to disadvantaged students. Many
disadvantaged students live in areas of concentrated poverty where
neighbors don't work or attend college, so it is hard to learn about the
demands of colleges and jobs (Wilson, 1996). Ratings can inform students
of the kinds of behavior that are expected and give immediate feedback
on how they are doing and what they need to do to improve their
qualifications. Such ratings may be useful in helping students know what
is expected to improve their performance. With such ratings, high
schools can provide highly specific information to students about what
actions they can take to improve their employability. Of course, these
work habits and social skills are also required in college.

Grades. High school grades are a strong predictor of a student's
employment success, particularly many years after students enter the
labor market (Miller, 1998; Rosenbaum, 2001). Employers do not realize
this, so they tend to ignore high school grades when hiring high school
graduates. The correlation between high school grades and earnings for
noncollege students at age 18 is small, but the correlation is large at
age 28. This implies that employers eventually raise their wages as they
see that these students are superior employees, but they never think to
look back at these employees\' high school grades, so they don't use
grades in hiring or early job assignments.

Guidelines would encourage employers to make that connection, to examine
for themselves how well high school grades predict their own employees\'
career advancements. Many employers will discover this relationship for
themselves (if their own practices match national patterns), and they
will change their hiring practices. Moreover, such guidelines will
inform work-bound students about the incentives to improve their grades,
and this will lead to better-prepared students. Finally, as students
discover the value of grades, teachers will acquire increased authority.

Ironically, while employers often complain about teachers\' lack of
authority, employers\' own hiring practices undermine teachers'
authority. If employers change their practices, students will see
incentives to get better grades, and teachers will have more authority.

The same is true for college-bound students. Although students who
aspire to selective colleges already realize the importance of grades,
those who aspire to open admissions colleges often do not. Guidelines
will help students to discover the importance of high school effort for
achieving their goals.

Reformers have proposed all kinds of innovative curricula for improving
the quality of instruction. However, school reforms are useless if
students are inattentive or asleep, as is so frequently true today.
Reforms will not be effective unless students are motivated, and
motivation requires that students see some incentive to pay attention
and exert effort. The above reforms can help to accomplish that.

####### Provide Trusted Communication Channels

Channels that authoritatively inform employers and colleges about
students' positive qualities, and authoritatively inform students about
college and labor market demands.

It would be nice if all work-bound students had job contacts. Informal
personal contacts have always been an effective way to get good jobs.
Young people get better jobs by relying on family members who have
informal relationships with an employer. While this procedure is unfair
because it is not available to everyone, it has a compelling logic.
Employers are willing to trust the recommendation of a friend because
they trust that the friend would not jeopardize their relationship by
recommending an applicant who they knew to be a bad risk. By relying on
personal contacts, employers obtain trusted information that they cannot
get in other ways, and they are willing to trust young people in good
jobs. If high schools had trusted relationships with employers, they
could help their students get good jobs.

Some high schools have trusted relationships with colleges. Contrary to
the common preconception that elite preparatory schools help their
students merely by giving them status advantages, research discovers
that they convince selective colleges to admit their students by
providing dependable evaluations of students\' positive qualities
(Persell and Cookson, 1986). These schools encourage college counselors
to form dependable contacts with colleges. These contacts are especially
useful to lower achieving students and students from lower social class
backgrounds \-- students who look less good on paper or in brief
interviews. School contacts can show college admissions officers other
desirable attributes of students that are not easily apparent (Persell
and Cookson, 1986). Since work-bound students tend to have poor academic
records, linkages would seem to be especially helpful in getting them
jobs.

Since employers have a great need for social skills and work habits,
which require evaluations of hard-to-measure qualities that require
subjective judgment, trusted linkages can be of enormous value in
assuring that these evaluations are trustworthy. These linkages can be
especially useful for providing opportunities to disadvantaged students
whose strengths are often not reflected on standardized tests and
measures, and who do not present themselves well in job interviews. Such
student evaluations are more likely to be used if they are conveyed in a
trusted relationship.

Teacher job contacts can help work-bound students who don't have
personal contacts. Research indicates that trusted school--employer
relationships already exist, they are especially used to help
disadvantaged students, and they can help put students into jobs with
better career trajectories. A study of 110 vocational teachers found
that some teachers report that they have trusted relationships with
employers, that they take actions to create and maintain these
relationships, and that these relationships allow them to place students
into good jobs, jobs that offer training and career advancements. Most
remarkably, teachers report that these relationships allow them to place
disadvantaged students, students with poor academic achievement, limited
English proficiency, learning disabilities, or other problems (Rosenbaum
& Jones, 1995, 2000). Teachers inform employers about students\'
limitations, but they also inform employers about students\'
strengths\-- work habits or social skills that might not be apparent in
a job application or job interview. For instance, students with learning
disabilities who have good attendance, persistence at difficult tasks,
attention to quality, and ability to get along with co-workers and
supervisors are highly desirable workers, yet none of these qualities
are easy to detect in a job interview.

Many vocational teachers enter teaching after having experience in
industry. These teachers know employers\' needs, and they have
friendships with employers, so they can keep informed about employers\'
needs. Their daily interaction in the classroom gives them a good
knowledge of students\' strengths and needs. Teachers who have
friendships with employers, who seek to preserve those relationships and
to recommend students for jobs in future years will not jeopardize their
relationship by giving misleading evaluations of their students.
Employers recognize that teachers\' desire to maintain trusted
relationships into the future gives these teachers a continuing
credibility.

A study of 51 employers found that some employers report that their
relationships with teachers help them make better hiring decisions and
provide dependable information and good workers (Rosenbaum & Binder,
1997). These linkages are rare: Nationally about 9% of seniors get jobs
through school help (Rosenbaum et al., 1999) and 5% of employers hire
from schools (Holzer, 1995). However, high-school job assistance is
important, because it provides information that employers cannot get
otherwise, and it serves students who have difficulties in the labor
market. The task for school reform is to find ways to encourage these
relationships and make them more generally available across many
teachers in a school.

Of course, by limiting the number of applicants, linkages reduce the
number of good applicants. However, larger applicant pools do not
improve hiring outcomes if employers cannot assess applicants\' quality.
Our employers report that advertising generates many applicants, but
employers have difficulty selecting among them, and poor decisions often
result. In contrast, while linkages generate fewer applicants, they
provide more trusted information and better selections. To exaggerate
the contrast, if employers end up hiring [random]{.underline} students
from unlinked schools and the [best]{.underline} students from linked
schools, they get better quality through linkages. Good information is
sometimes more valuable than a large number of applicants.

Additional support might come from chambers of commerce, which can
provide valuable information about employers\' needs, changes in the mix
of industries, job demands and skill demands in local labor markets.
However, chambers of commerce have difficulty providing stable
institutional support over many years, so they cannot maintain these
channels themselves.

Career coordinators can provide further support for such responsiveness.
In a study of 12 high schools, two schools had career coordinators. In
one school, the career coordinators were active in reaching out to
employers and employer groups to identify unmet demands where the high
school might provide assistance. Coordinators brought back information
to vocational programs, and considered whether the high school could be
of service and how to prepare their students. The coordinators\'
outreach efforts built upon and extended vocational teachers\'
pre-existing contacts. The vocational teachers were still the main
source of contacts, but in new occupational areas, coordinators
sometimes became the primary contact. In the other school, the career
coordinators played a more passive role, and they became the source of
job counseling help for the weakest students (who vocational teachers
felt were unprepared) and the worst jobs (jobs in the fast food industry
and small retail shops).

Applications to Three Reforms: Tech-Prep, Coop & Reinvigorated
Vocational Education

Our policy framework can suggest ways for improving various reforms.
Tech-prep, co-op, and "College and Career" programs are three of the
most promising reforms. The above policy framework can be applied to
improving all three.

####### 

####### 

####### 

####### Policy Actions for Improving Tech-prep Programs

Tech-prep programs create contacts between high schools and
community-college programs in specific occupational fields, such as
health care and technology. Tech-prep is a promising approach. It is
consistent with economic theory, and even critics of other approaches
are impressed with the tech-prep idea (Donahoe & Tienda, 2000). By 1990,
there were over 120 tech-prep programs in 33 states, and the Carl
Perkins Act included funds to encourage further implementation of this
model (Bailey & Merritt, 1993). These programs organize the high-school
curriculum in junior and senior years so that it directly meets the
prerequisites for certain occupational programs in community colleges
and may even provide college credits. Ideally, tech-prep makes a
seamless transition between high school and the first course in
community college: high-school graduates in these programs are fully
prepared to take college courses.

The ideal tech-prep program should reduce some of our concerns about the
college-for-all approach of sending unprepared students to college. In
tech-prep, mastery of high-school courses should meet the prerequisites
for college courses. If students do poorly in a high-school course, they
will get clear information about a problem that they must repair before
they get to college. Tech-prep programs that synchronize high school and
college in very strong linkages will address many of the problems that
usually arise with a college-for-all approach.

Unfortunately, many tech-prep programs suffer from the same problems as
ordinary high schools. Despite their intentions to make a seamless
transition, this doesn\'t happen. In many tech-prep programs, students
enter college unprepared for college-credit courses, high schools do not
provide students with clear signals of what colleges demand or how well
individuals meet college requirements, and colleges give their own tests
because they do not trust high-school evaluations (Orfield and Paul,
1994). These problems indicate how difficult it is to make a seamless
transition.

Poor coordination also encourages some students to shop for lax
standards. Students can shop for the college that offers the easiest
test.

[Improving Tech-Prep]{.underline}. Tech-prep provides a good example of
the big benefits that can come from our relatively inexpensive reforms.
Tech-prep programs can develop tests that convey signals of students\'
readiness for college courses. Colleges already give tests to determine
whether students will take remedial courses, but various colleges use
different tests, and tests are not available to high schools. All
community colleges should adopt the same test and make the test
available to high schools, so this test would inform high-school
students of whether they are prepared for college courses. This
improvement is being implemented already. New Jersey community colleges
have recently begun to use the same college placement test to determine
remedial placements over all community colleges in the state. In
addition, some New Jersey high schools are considering using this test
to assess students\' readiness for college-level courses. Students will
take such tests of academic proficiency in any case, after they arrive
at college. Taking the tests in high school gives them signals of what
actions they should be taking while they are still in high school

Pretests of college readiness would give students incentives for
appropriate achievement, and inform them if they are prepared for
college-level courses, so they will not be disappointed when they arrive
at college. Pretests will help students assess whether college is
realistic for them and what they must do to prepare for college courses.
Some students will discover achievement deficiencies that they must
repair. Unlike the students in our study who had unrealistic plans, New
Jersey students who take this test will know in high school whether they
will be in college-credit or remedial courses when they get to college.
Some students will choose to increase their efforts to make themselves
better prepared for college. Other students may realize the uncertainty
of their success in higher education; while preparing for college, they
will also make multiple plans and get job preparation. Still other
students will decide that jobs are better options for them, especially
if high school can help them get jobs that lead to career advancement.

Since high school exit exams usually have lower requirements than
college remedial exams, many students pass the state test of "high
school competency\" and fail the community college test of "high school
competency.\" While the two standards won't be identical, the same test
could pose two different standards to tell high school students whether
they meet [each]{.underline} standard. Indeed, subscales in math and
reading could give specific useful information. Adapting college
remedial tests to include a lower standard for the high school diploma,
as well as the standard for college credit, and administering it in high
school can go a long way to making the college entrance process more
rational, effective, and comprehensible.

##### *Policy Actions for Improving Co-op Programs*

Youth apprenticeship and co-op programs create contacts between high
schools and employers. They attempt to coordinate learning at school and
at jobs. Both programs try to help students learn academic skills, job
skills, and soft skills.

Youth apprenticeships are more structured and usually include close
supervision and coursework synchronized with the job experience. Some
small-scale experiments are being done in the U.S. (Hamilton and
Hurrelmann, 1994; Hamilton and Hamilton, 1999). However, while
apprenticeships are extensively used in Germany, they are very
expensive, and so few American employers are willing to pay for them.
Only a few thousand young people are in youth apprenticeships in the
entire U.S. (Lerman and Pouncy, 1990).

Co-op is sometimes viewed as an inexpensive youth apprenticeship. It is
widely practiced across most American high schools, with about 8% of
American high-school juniors and seniors in co-op programs (General
Accounting Office, 1991). Co-op usually consists of releasing students
from some classes so they can get experience at jobs, which are supposed
to provide more training than average jobs.

In practice, co-op programs have shown two kinds of problems. First, if
the jobs are not carefully screened, they may be ordinary jobs in the
youth labor market that provide little or no learning (e.g., fast food
or small retail).

Second, co-op leads to earnings benefits for students, but only if
students take jobs in the same company where they did the co-op program.
Research has found that students get no earnings benefit if they take a
job in another company (Stern & Stevens, 1992). While students who
complete German apprenticeships get a generalized signal of value
trusted by all employers (Hamilton, 1990), students who complete a co-op
experience do not get such a signal. Co-op programs have problems in
providing relevant, trusted signals that are valued by other employers.

Improving Co-op. Just as student evaluations and trusted communication
channels could improve other programs, they could also make the co-op
experience more effective. If co-op programs provided a widely
recognized rating scale to evaluate students\' job skills, work habits
and social skills, students would get portable credentials to present to
other employers.

Informal teacher-employer relationships are probably the most promising
way to provide trusted communication channels. As noted, many vocational
teachers already have industry experience, have friendships with
employers, and they know employers' needs. They also know students\'
strengths and needs. Employers trust these teachers not to jeopardize
their relationship by giving misleading recommendations, so these
teachers provide trusted communication channels.

Our proposals can address the two main limitations in co-op programs. If
vocational teachers have trusted relationships with employers, they can
detect co-op placements that offer only menial tasks, and they can
eliminate them or only use them for their least qualified students. The
problem of communicating students\' performance from a co-op employer to
a hiring employer could be remedied by trusted communication channels
between a vocational teacher and the two sets of employers. While the
employers might not have contacts with each other, if they both have
trusted contacts with the same vocational teacher, that teacher can
receive and send trusted information about the students\' performance.

## *Policy Actions for "College and Career" Programs*

The world has changed, and students need to acquire greater academic
skills in order to get wages that will support families. College will be
an option, but less than 42% of high school graduates will attain
college degrees, and that proportion is growing very slowly.
Fortunately, good jobs are available that do not require college
degrees, but they do require solid high school skills.

Over the past decade, reformers have proposed "college and career"
programs that provide academic instruction related to occupational
themes, and also provide instruction in 21st century occupational areas.
Career academies are innovative reforms that try to provide such
programs, and many career academies have been set up across the country
(Stern, et al., 1992; Kemple, 2001). These programs offer better
academics than vocational programs, and they offer more than academics.

These programs also offer social skills and work habits. Although these
programs have modified vocational education to provide academic skills
and new job skills, one aspect can be preserved. Vocational classes
provide opportunities to teach work habits and social skills, which
students cannot get in other ways. While employers believe they cannot
teach work habits and social skills and academic teachers rarely try,
vocational teachers can and do teach them. Expensive equipment is not
required. Vocational classrooms can simulate workplaces where students
learn to persist at tasks, to solve problems, to work with others, to
maintain tools, to resolve conflicts, etc (Rosenbaum and Jones, 2000).
Teachers pose exercises that require teamwork, communication skills,
writing brief reports, reading technical manuals, and various other
skills that employers need. Vocational teachers who have contacts with
employers hear employers complain about current workers\' persistence,
social skills, or problem solving, and they respond by devising tasks to
simulate these problems. Many vocational teachers design their
classrooms as a form of "quasi-apprenticeship."

Career-related and vocational classes may be especially good places for
developing, evaluating, and communicating these student qualities. They
involve applied tasks, tasks cumulate toward a finished product, the
classroom simulates real work settings, and students can see that their
teachers can evaluate their work readiness, and make recommendations to
employers. Even low achieving students who have difficulty in academic
classes can discover their capabilities in this setting. Even when
academic classes assign applied tasks illustrating a lesson, they pose
these as isolated tasks removed from a context where they are essential
for some larger goal. "Story problems" are common in mathematics
classes, but they do not cumulate into a project or product that has any
purpose.

Career-related classes may be especially motivating to low-achieving
students who have difficulty in academic classes where they perform
poorly. In our interviews, many low-achieving students report that they
are unsuccessful, bored, withdrawn and rebellious in nearly all their
classes, with only one exception \-- their vocational classes
(Rosenbaum, 2001). These classes allow students to show other skills
than those demanded in academic classes. They also give students a
compelling reason to learn and to do high-quality work. When students
ask, "Do I have to do that?," one teacher responds, \"don\'t do it for
me. But the employers I know who offer good jobs in this field require
these skills, and I can\'t recommend you to those employers if you
don\'t master those skills\" Another teacher asks, \"Do you\... want me
to do a recommendation for you based on what you do in this class?\" '
Students then understand the importance of class and they respond with
greater effort (Rosenbaum, 2001, p. 227).

Unfortunately, policy is now moving in the wrong direction. Schools are
reducing vocational education and retiring vocational teachers who have
employer contacts. That is a terrible loss. Cutbacks in vocational
teachers deprive the entire school of employer contacts, which are
especially helpful to students who are unlikely to benefit from college.
While school systems are dismantling vocational programs and bragging
that they are sending large numbers of students to college, they are not
noticing that large numbers of students are taking remedial courses and
are dropping out with no college credits and with no preparation for the
labor market. On the other hand, one suburban school in our sample ended
vocational classes and got rid of all its equipment, and then discovered
that students' engagement plummeted. They were sorry to have dismantled
these programs, but, by then, the decision could not be reversed.

Vocational programs are already widespread. Policy actions should be
taken to reinvigorate vocational programs\-- to improve them and to help
them better teach social skills and work habits required in the
contemporary labor market. These programs should integrate academic
skills required by the work world, and they should be made more
effective in helping students prepare for and obtain jobs that have
career advancement opportunities. Vocational teachers can provide
evaluations of social skills and work habits on job-relevant tasks that
will motivate low-achieving students. They can also provide trusted
communication channels to employers. We already have a substantial
infrastructure in place, and we should not let \"college for all\"
misconceptions prevent us from realizing the value of vocational
programs and making them more effective.

### ***Conclusion***

As the last societal institution attended by all youths, high schools
must prepare all young people for adulthood. If they fail, youths will
have difficulty becoming self-sufficient adults. The labor market is
often a cruel teacher, and, if youths have bad job experiences,
government help comes in the form of job training programs that may
stigmatize and hurt their careers worse than if they got no training.
While college-educated reformers think that college is necessary to get
good jobs, and they often urge that all high school seniors should have
the chance to become doctors and lawyers, these are not realistic
options for all seniors, and they are not the only good jobs in society.

The real goal should not be the unrealistic vision of everyone being a
doctor, but the goal of eliminating the all-too-common outcome of youths
facing fast-food jobs and unemployment as their only options. Many other
good jobs are available. We interviewed students who reported that
vocational education raised their sights to better jobs than they could
get on their own, so they could get responsible clerical, technical, or
crafts jobs rather than the fast-food jobs most youths get.

While educators worry that career-related education shuts off college
options, research indicates that many vocational education students get
college degrees, and "college and career" programs may prepare students
to do even better. While educators worry about premature career
decisions, high school is not too early for students to begin assessing
what they\'ve accomplished and their likely career options. For students
several years behind grade level, discussing noncollege options does not
limit their careers, it helps them become aware of realities and
options, so they make informed decisions. Self-assessment may encourage
students to improve their efforts and to plan multiple options. After
ten years of schooling, low-achieving students who are not exerting any
effort in school will not be helped by high schools' encouraging college
delusions, which often lead to complacency, lack of effort, and
misdirected plans. We propose policies to encourage high schools to
provide information, useful student evaluations, and help in attaining
multiple options. These policies include college plans, but they also
provide a safety net that makes it less likely that students will face
dead-end jobs or unemployment.

In stressing these reforms, we do not deny the need for other kinds of
reforms. New instructional materials, tutors, and new curriculum
standards could better prepare students for their goals.

However, while our proposals may not be sufficient, they are probably
necessary prerequisites to effective change. Before any instructional
improvement can be taken, the proposed policies can identify
discrepancies between students\' achievements and plans, alert students
and teachers of the need for action, areas of deficiencies, and needed
areas of improvement. Most important, they can give students compelling
reasons to exert greater efforts, and, later on, they can inform
students of their progress, whether their plans are becoming more
likely, or whether they should consider other options.

Reform efforts require a prior realization that additional efforts are
needed and a willingness to exert such efforts. The college-for-all
approach is a form of denial---it creates a complacency that makes
additional efforts seem an unnecessary to faculty and students. The
first step is to provide information that provides compelling reasons
for additional efforts and provides some guidance about what skills are
necessary. That is the goal of these proposals.

**References**

Adelman, Clifford 1985. [The New College Course Map and Transcript
Files]{.underline}. Washington, DC.: US Dept of Education.

Altonji, Joseph G. and Charles Pierret. 1995. \"Employer learning and
statistical discrimination.\" Working Paper, Institute for Policy
Research, Northwestern University.

Arum, Richard and Yossi Shavit. 1995. \"Secondary vocational education
and the transition from school to work.\" [Sociology of
Education]{.underline}, 68, 187-204.

Bailey, Thomas and Donna Merritt. 1993. \"The school-to-work transition
project\" New York: MDRC.

Beattie, Irenee. 2001. "Learning 'self-sufficiency': How high school
experiences help women avoid welfare." American Sociological Assn.
Annual Meetings. Anaheim, CA (August).

Berryman, Susan E. 1992. \"Apprenticeship as a paradigm for learning.\"
In James E. Rosenbaum (Ed.), [Youth Apprenticeship in America:
Guidelines for Building an Effective System,]{.underline} pp. 25-39.
Washington, DC: William T. Grant Foundation Commission on Work, Family,
and Citizenship.

Bills, David. 1988. \"Educational credentials and hiring decisions: What
employers look for in entry-level employees.\" [Research in Social
Stratification and Mobility,]{.underline} 7:71-97.

Bishop, John. 1993. \"Improving job matches in the U.S. labor market.\"
[Brookings Papers in Economnic Activity: Microeconomics]{.underline},
ed. by Martin N. Bailey. Washington D C: The Brookings Institution:
335-400.

Bishop, John. 1996 "Signaling the competencies of high school students
to employers" in [Linking School and Work]{.underline} ed. Lauren B.
Resnick and John G. Wirt, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp. 79-124.

Bloom, Howard S., Larry Laurence Orr, George Cave, Sam H. Bell, and Fred
Doolittle. 1992. [The National JTPA Study: Title II-A Impacts on
Earnings and Employment at 18 Months]{.underline}. Bethesda, MD: Abt
Associates.

Boesel, David, Lisa Hudson, Sharon Deich, and Charles Masten. 1994.
[Participation in and Quality of Vocational Education]{.underline},
National Assessment of Vocational Education, Vol. II, U.S. Dept. of
Education.

Boesel, David and Eric Fredland. 1999. [College for all? : is there too
much emphasis on getting a 4-year college degree?]{.underline}
Washington, D.C.: National Library of Education, Office of Educational
Research and Improvement, U.S. Dept. of Education.

Boesel, David. 2001. "The College Movement And Its Critics". [Phi Delta
Kappan]{.underline}, 82(7): 537-42.

Cave, George and Fred Doolittle. 1991. [Assessing Jobstart: Interim
Impacts of a Program for School Dropouts]{.underline}. New York, NY:
Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation.

Cicourel, Aaron V. and John I. Kitsuse. 1963. [The Educational
Decision-Makers]{.underline}. Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill.

Crain, Robert. 1984. \"The quality of American high school graduates:
What personnel officers say and do.\" Center for the Study of Schools,
Johns Hopkins University.

Deil-Amen, Regina and James E. Rosenbaum. 2001. \"How can low-status
colleges help young adults gain access to better jobs? Practitioners\'
applications of human capital vs. sociological models.\" Presented to
the American Sociological Assn. Los Angeles, August.

\_\_\_ 2002a. "Community Colleges and Social Reproduction: Social Skills
as Cultural Capital." Session on The Sociology of Community Colleges.
Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, August.

\_\_\_. 2002b. \"The unintended consequences of stigma-free
remediation.\" [Sociology of Education.]{.underline} October.

DeLuca, Stefanie Ann and James E. Rosenbaum. 2001. "Individual agency
and the life course: do low-SES students get less long-term payoff for
their school efforts?" [Sociological Focus]{.underline}.

Digest of Educational Statistics. 1991. Washington, D.C.: Gvt. Printing
Office.

Digest of Educational Statistics. 1999. Washington, D.C.: Gvt. Printing
Office.

Donahoe, Debra and Marta Tienda 2000. \"The transition from school to
work: Is there a crisis? What can be done?\" in Securing the Future,
editors Sheldon Danziger and Jane Waldfogel. pp. 231 \-- 263. New York:
Russell Sage Foundation

­­­Dougherty, Kevin J. 1994. [The Contradictory College.]{.underline}
Albany NY: SUNY Press.

Farkas, George. 1996. [Human Capital or Cultural Capital?]{.underline}
New York: Aldine.

Gamoran, Adam. 1994. The impact of academic course work on labor market
outcomes for youth who do not attend college: A research review.
Washington, D.C.: National Assessment of Vocational Education.

General Accounting Office. 1991. [Transition from School to
Work]{.underline}. Washington, DC: Author.

Gray, Kenneth 1996 "The baccalaureate game: Is it right for all teens?"
Phi Delta Kappan, April, pp. 528-34.

Griffin, Larry J., Arne L. Kalleberg, Karl L. Alexander. 1981.
\"Determinants of early labor market entry and attainment: A study of
labor market segmentation.\" [Sociology of Education]{.underline}. 54:
206-21.

Grubb, W. Norton. 1996. [Working in the Middle.]{.underline} San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Hamilton, Stephen F. 1990. [Apprenticeship for Adulthood: Preparing
Youth for the Future]{.underline}. New York, NY: Free Press.

Hamilton, Stephen F. and Klaus Hurrelmann. 1994. \"The school-to-career
transition in Germany and the United States.\" [Teachers College
Record]{.underline}, 96(2)Winter: 329-344.

Hamilton, Stephen F and Mary Agnes Hamilton 1999. [Building strong
school to work systems]{.underline}. Ithica, New York: Cornell
University youth and work program.

Herr, Toby, Suzanne Wagner, and Robert Halpern. 1996. \"Making the shoe
fit.\" [Project Match]{.underline}, Erikson Institue, Chicago.
Unpublished paper.

Holzer, Harry. 1995. [What Employers Want: Job Prospects for
Less-Educated Workers]{.underline}. New York, NY: Russell Sage.

Houghton, Ted and Tony Proscio 2002. [Hard work on soft
skills]{.underline}. Philadelphia: Public/Private Ventures.

Hughes, Catherine, Thomas Bailey, and Melinda Mechur, 2001, School to
Work: Making a difference in education. New York: Institute on education
and the economy, teachers college, Columbia University.

Jencks, Christopher, Mary Corcoran, Susan Barltett, James Crouse, David
Eaglesfield, Kent McClelland, Peter Mueser, Michael Olneck, Joseph
Schwartz, Sherry Ward and Jill Williams. 1979. [Who Gets
Ahead?]{.underline} New York: Basic Books.

Kang, Suk and John Bishop. 1986. \"The effect of curriculum on labor
market success.\" [Journal of Industrial Teacher Education]{.underline},
Spring, 133-48.

Kemple, James J. 2001. [Career academies: Impacts on students' initial
transitions to postsecondary education and employment]{.underline} New
York, New York: MDRC.

Krei, Melinda Scott and James E. Rosenbaum. 2001. "Career and College
Advice to the Forgotten Half: What Do Counselors and Vocational Teachers
Advise?" [Teachers College Record]{.underline}, 103(5), 823-43.

Lerman, Robert and Hillard Pouncy. 1990. \"The compelling case for youth
apprenticeships.\" [Public Interest]{.underline}. 101, 62-77.

Miller, Shazia R. 1998. \"Shortcut: High school grades as a signal of
human capital.\" [Educational Evaluation and Policy
Analysis]{.underline}, 20(4): 299-311.

Miller, Shazia and James E. Rosenbaum. 1997. \"Hiring in a Hobbesian
World: Social infrastructure and employers\' use of information.\" [Work
and Occupations]{.underline}, Vol. 24, N.4 November, 498-523.

\_\_\_\_\_. 1998. \"What do grades mean?\" (Unpublished paper, Institute
for Policy Research, Northwestern University, Evanston IL.).

Moss, Philip and Chris Tilly. 2000. [Stories Employers Tell: Race, Skill
and Hiring in America]{.underline}. Russell Sage Foundation Press.

Murnane, Richard J. and Levy, Frank. 1996. [Teaching the New Basic
Skills: Principles for Educating Children to Thrive in a Changing
Economy]{.underline}. New York: The Free Press.

Murnane, Richard J., John B. Willett, and Frank Levy. 1995. \"The
growing importance of cognitive skills in wage determination.\" [Review
of Economics and Statistics]{.underline}, Vol.77, N. 2 (May): 251-266.

NCES, 1999. [NAEP 1998: Reading Report Card for the Nation and the
States]{.underline}. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for
Educational Statistics. Washington DC.

NCES, 2000[. Vocational education in the United States for the year
2000]{.underline}. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for
Educational Statistics. Washington DC.

Oakes, Jeannie. 1985. [Keeping Track]{.underline}. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.

Orfield, Gary and Faith G. Paul. 1994. [High Hopes, Long Odds: A Major
Report on Hoosier Teens and the American Dream]{.underline}.
Indianapolis: The Indiana Youth Institute.

Osterman, Paul. 1980. [Getting Started: The Youth Labor
Market]{.underline}. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Persell, Caroline and Peter Cookson. 1986. [Preparing for
Power]{.underline}. New York: Basic Books

Rosenbaum, James E. 1976. [Making Inequality: The Hidden Curriculum of
High School Tracking]{.underline}. New York, NY: Wiley.

\_\_\_\_ 1998. \"College-for-all: Do students understand what college
demands?\" [Social Psychology of Education]{.underline}, 2(1): 55-80.

\_\_\_\_ 2001. [Beyond College for All.]{.underline} New York: Russell
Sage Foundation.

Rosenbaum, J.E., and Amy Binder. 1997. \"Do employers really need more
educated youth?\" [Sociology of Education]{.underline}, 70, 68-85.

Rosenbaum, James E., Stefanie DeLuca, Shazia Miller, and Kevin Roy.
1999. "Pathways into work: short and long-term effects of personal and
institutional ties." [Sociology of Education]{.underline}, 72(3):
179-96.

Rosenbaum, James E. and Stephanie Jones. 1995. \"Creating linkages in
the high school-to-work transition: Vocational teachers\' networks.\" in
[Restructuring Schools: Promises, Practices, and Policies,]{.underline}
ed. Maureen Hallinan. New York: Plenum, 235-58.

Rosenbaum, James E., and Stephanie A. Jones. 2000. \"Interactions
between high schools and labor markets.\" [Handbook of Sociology of
Education]{.underline}, editor: Maureen Hallinan. New York: Plenum.

Rosenbaum, James E., Shazia Miller, and Melinda Krei. 1997. \"What role
should counselors have?\" in [Advances in Educational
Policy]{.underline} (ed. Kenneth K. Wong), Vol 3, Greenwood, Ct. JAI
Press, 79-92.

Sedlak, Michael W., Christopher W. Wheeler, Diane C. Pullin, and Phillip
A. Cusick. 1986. [Selling Students Short]{.underline}. New York:
Teachers College Press.

Shapiro, Daniel and Maria Iannozzi. 1999. \"The benefits to bridging
work and school: Results of the 1997 National Employer Survey.\"
National Center for Postsecondary Eduation, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, Pa.

Steinberg, Lawrence. 1996. [Beyond the Classroom]{.underline}. NYC:Simon
and Shuster

Stern, David, Neal Finkelstein, James Stone, John Latting, and Carolyn
Dornsife. 1995. [School to Work: Research on Programs in the United
States]{.underline} Washington and London: Falmer Press.

Stern, David, Marylyn Raby and Charles Dayton. 1992. [Career Academies:
Partnerships for Reconstructing American High Schools]{.underline}. San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Stern, David and David Stevens. 1992. \"Analysis of unemployment
insurance data on the relationship between high school cooperative
education and subsequent employment.\" Paper prepared for the National
Assessment of Vocational Education, Berkeley: University of California:
School of Education.

Stinchcombe, Arthur L. 1965. [Rebellion in a High School]{.underline}.
Chicago: Quadrangle.

Useem, Elizabeth. 1986. [Low-Tech Education in a High-Tech World:
Corporations and Classrooms in the New Information Society]{.underline}.
New York, NY: Free Press.

Wilson, William Julius. 1996. [When Work Disappears]{.underline}. New
York: Vintage.

Wirt, John G, Lana D. Muraskin, David A. Goodwin, and Robert H. Meyer.
1989. [National Assessment of Vocational Education]{.underline}.
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education.