The productivity of the U.S. work force is a primary determinant of the standard of living of the U.S. population. Worker productivity is affected by many factors, including the education and skills of the work force. This handbook highlights several measures of productivity and education, and addresses the link between these two sets of measures.…

Industrial maintenance in Northeast Georgia is facing an acute crisis. Contributing factors are economic development that is depleting the work force, aging of the population, downsizing of the military, and lack of technical school graduates. Solutions to the crisis fall into three categories: short-term, mid-term, and long-term. For short-term…

Signed into law in May 1994, the School-to-Work Opportunities (STWO) Act provides states and communities with funds to develop systems that connect academic knowledge with technical skills and workplace competencies. The Act links the Goals 2000: Educate America Act with workforce and economic development and is designed to help the nation prepare…

A 1996 study of employers across the United States confirmed the valuable role that community colleges play in providing workforce training. To continue performing that role, community colleges must take into account emerging factors that will change the role of instruction. These factors include the characteristics of the continuum of learners…

To gather information on the workforce training and retraining needs of American businesses and how community colleges can best meet those needs, a study was conducted of recipients of workforce education and training nationwide. One-hundred and four community colleges in 27 states participated in the study, sending questionnaires to 4,703…

Vocational-technical teacher education has followed a different preparation path since the Smith-Hughes Act established a separate system for vocational training. This path has been increasingly challenged by end-of-the-century changes in the workplace and new knowledge about teaching and learning. This paper reviews reform initiatives in teacher…

This document, which is intended for work force and workplace development providers, examines ways of reducing the costs of developing and delivering training to small and midsized companies. Listed first are the following strategies for cutting service costs: split the provider's development costs by delivering the same services to a number of…

This bulletin focuses on the connection between student performance and standards that has led to reform efforts designed to set high standards and develop new ways to measure student performance. It provides an overview of national, state, and local efforts to develop standards. The bulletin then discusses these practitioner-identified approaches…

Increased global competition and rapidly changing labor markets are providing a new imperative for relevance and quality assurance in education. This imperative is driving a consensus around the need for standards that link the content of education and training to the demands of the workplace. The national framework for improving relevance and…

This bulletin focuses on the integration of school-to-work systems into a comprehensive set of economic development services that can help address a critical need articulated by businesses, spur economic growth, and equip young people with the skills necessary for further learning and work. It first describes these strategies to integrate…

There is increasing evidence that American schools are doing a poor job of preparing students for the work force. Several studies have concluded that North Carolina has the worst school-to-work educational training system in the industrialized world. America's educators still have not learned how to deal with the problems that poverty creates for…

Focusing on legislation expected to be addressed by the 105th Congress, this booklet sets forth an agenda for the nation's community colleges, developed by the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) and the Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT). An introductory section provides background on community colleges, indicating…

Ohio's state-operated/state-supported job training and work force development programs were reviewed in response to a legislative mandate calling for development of a plan for administrative consolidation of those programs under the control of a single state agency. The review included examination of the following: history of federal and Ohio job…

Designed to help California community colleges develop plans and applications for Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Education Act (VATEA) funds, this handbook reviews the purposes and mandates of the VATEA and provides instructions for plan development. The first section presents an overview of the Act, indicating that it…

According to the Advisory Board of the National Center on the Educational Quality of the Workforce (EQW), young people in the United States are losing out in the job market, too often having to settle for intermittent, part-time jobs, routinized work, low wages, and few if any benefits. This circumstance has been the result of a net loss of 1.65…