Representative community councils are needed to serve a coordinating function as independent institutions between schools and the workplace. Council membership should include schools, employers, unions, parents, representatives from major service organizations, other effective community citizens, and youth representatives. (Author/JDS)

Proposes federal vocational education policies, emphasizing: (1) public education, business and labor cooperation; (2) educational needs of students; (3) joint school-employer instruction; (4) better local-level market information; (5) facilitation of youth school-work transition; (6) aid in occupational adjustment and aid for upgrading employer's…

This paper describes specific programs created through partnerships between employers and educators. It looks at how employers view schools, explores what schools do that affects the workplace, addresses the effect of early work experiences on young people, and attempts to view the future of such partnerships. (MT)

The time has come to start to improve students' job experiences and to improve the relationship between the work and school experiences. In rural and agricultural economies, student work was so important to the family that the school year was fashioned to accommodate it. As the nation became more urban, student employment for pay and student…

This paper provides examples of intermediary organizations that assist school systems to integrate computer technology into their programs through the provision of financial and/or technical assistance. The organizations are classified into five major categories: (1) free-standing organizations; (2) the collaborative council (representing…

The problems inherent in the relationships between education and work present difficulties and opportunities for education. Increasing segmentation has come to characterize modern life and the role of education in it. The period of youth is mostly filled with education, the middle years are usually devoted to work, and old age has come to be…

This paper provides an overview of partnerships between corporations and schools in the United States. It discusses nine different types of partnerships, their purposes, their leadership, and what each of the parties gets from them. The nine types discussed are the following: (1) employers extending a helping hand in the form of the adopt-a-school…

Although student enrollments in cooperative education constitute only about 8 percent of all high school students, about half of all high schools provide such opportunities. In practically all co-op programs, the employer ensures supervision, on-the-job learning, and evaluations that will influence students' grades; coordinators have released time…

A compilation of three papers commissioned by the National Institute of Education, this study discusses the use of community education and work councils (CEWCs) as ways to improve school-to-work and work-to-school transitions for youth and adults. The first paper (1) elaborates the idea of councils comprised of business, industry, education, labor…

Employers have played an important role in the education reform movements of the 1980s and 1990s; they have been vocal about the education deficiencies of the people they interview. They have focused on what the schools can do to improve education, but there are things that employers can do. The first thing is to make achievement matter by taking…

The vocational education system was started in the United States by a collaborative effort of employers, educators, and unions. If vocational education is to meet the critical skill needs of industry, Federal policies providing for broader governance and an incremental approach to the planning and delivery of vocational education programs are…