Effective strategic planning has clearly become a skill that is essential to the survival of managers in public and private sector agencies alike. While sometimes thought of as being an overly quantitative and excessively time-consuming activity, strategic planning does not need to be characterized in these terms. In its simplest and most…

This handbook, one of five local handbooks developed to support specialized implementation of the National Career Development Guidelines, presents guidelines for developing comprehensive programs for students who are served at the post-secondary school level. Part I describes the need for guidelines and standards in career development, defines…

The National Association of County Training and Employment Professionals represents the service delivery areas (SDAs) that operate and administer programs funded by the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA). With renewal and overhaul of the JTPA on the legislative horizon, the association made the following recommendations: (1) eligibility should…

This document analyzes the inspection reports of the five further education (FE) colleges in Britain that have achieved a grade of 1 for quality assurance (QA), identifies key lessons for the improvement of programs in other FE colleges, and refers to helpful FE publications. The five colleges consisted of two general FE colleges, one sixth-form…

This handbook is intended to assist correctional educators in improving postsecondary vocational programs for incarcerated persons. The guide is based on a study of exemplary characteristics and practices of postsecondary vocational programs in minimum-, medium-, and maximum-security correctional institutions. The introductory section includes…

Four kinds of measures of excellence are currently used in evaluating vocational education: components and process, occupational impact, equity, and individual student development. None of them displays the kind of precision that characterizes measures in the physical sciences. Furthermore, the nature of the enterprise to which these measures must…

Program providers who do not give refunds should reconsider their policies. Training providers should give all attendees the opportunity to express dissatisfaction, follow up on all complaints immediately and personally, and allow dissatisfied attendees to receive full or partial refunds or attend another session or program without additional…

This booklet contains standards developed with input from correctional educators and field tested in correctional education programs. The standards cover four major areas: (1) administration (philosophy and goals, written policy and procedure, organizational chart, budget, accreditation, annual meeting, student records, and program evaluation);…

This guide was developed to help career guidance counselors and administrators improve their programs by adapting the best practices from exemplars and other models and by using standards suggested by national groups. The guide includes the guidance and counseling framework that the National Center for Research in Vocational Education uses for…

This guide provides an outline of the components necessary in a written evaluation plan for vocational education programs. The four components that a plan for evaluation should include are described. The first component, the specific goals of the evaluation process, is divided into these two sections determined by the type of evaluation conducted:…

This annotated resource list consists of print materials, educational information centers/services, and organizations providing practitioners with information on Tech Prep resources for program improvement. Each listing includes some or all of the following: title, author(s), publisher, address/contact, description, pages, and cost. Ten…

Accreditation receives much emphasis in our educational systems and it forms a significant element in both institutional and programmatic accountability and credibility. Numerous agencies and associations in addition to national institutional accrediting agencies are recognized as accrediting bodies. The accrediting bodies establish accreditation…

A multiuse Comprehensive Occupational Data Analysis Program (CODAP) job analysis is being used to develop training requirements and selection criteria for three interrelated Army civilian logistics career fields. Individual job task lists for the 20 job series within the three career programs were developed. The lists were based on a review of…

This paper offers a conceptual model or theory that synthesizes previous research, personal experience, and years of dialogue with instructors of wilderness programs, and other wilderness users. The goals of this model are to create a useful tool to help practitioners improve their programs and train instructors, focus additional research, help…

The Wilderness Vision Quest is an outdoor retreat which helps participants touch, explore, and develop important latent human resources such as imagination, intuition, creativity, inspiration, and insight. Through the careful and focused use of techniques such as deep relaxation, reflective writing, visualization, guided imagery, symbolic drawing,…