Community College and Secondary School Collaboration on Workforce Development and Education Reform

Catalyst, The, Spring 2004 by Orr, Margaret Terry

The most frequent, but least intense, forms of collaboration were the information-sharing strategies from community colleges to secondary schools, particularly to encourage students to pursue technical careers and a community college education. The next most frequent and somewhat more intensive, were the professional and curriculum strategies facilitated by community colleges for secondary school teachers to improve their teaching and student learning.

The third most frequent type of collaboration was structural bridging between community colleges and secondary schools through articulation agreements designed around common course areas and programs of study. Although none of the three most common forms of collaboration did much to alter the community college or secondary school programs, they facilitated student access to the community college and improved secondary school preparation for postsecondary education and employment.

These forms of collaboration between the community colleges and public schools, and their relative intensity, are primarily what Haycock (1998) termed as unidirectional (from community colleges to secondary schools). They are primarily administrative and transition-focused (as Stewart & Johanek, 1998, had asserted) and marginal to the overall mission and purpose of the colleges. Even the comprehensive programs focused mainly on workforce preparation, changing the design and delivery of secondary school components, and making the K-14 educational continuum more efficient. These findings are consistent with the national Tech Prep evaluation research (Silverberg et al., 1998), which found comprehensive Tech Prep programs to be rare and those that included community college improvements even rarer. The existence of efforts to forge broadly available comprehensive 2 2 articulated programs through two of the community colleges is, therefore, unique.

Role of federal funding. Much of the workforce preparation-related collaboration between secondary schools and community colleges was stimulated by Tech Prep and STWOA. Tech Prep, which preceded the other federal initiatives, had the strongest influence because it most clearly spelled out a major role for community colleges. Both Tech Prep and STWOA drew the four colleges into regional educational planning with their local school districts - all four were members of a regional school-to-work partnership.

STWOA funding extended the planning begun under Tech Prep. The combined focus of Tech Prep and STWOA led the local school districts to reorganize their high school programs according to the locally selected career-cluster areas. Finally, the STWOA partnership requirements helped to formalize the planning among the school districts, community college, and business and industry. The four colleges were least involved in Goals 2000 planning. Only one formally participated in Goals 2000 planning with two small local school districts on student transition preparation.

In sum, the three federal policy initiatives, to varying degrees, were instrumental in establishing an agenda for workforce preparation reform and collaboration between secondary schools and community colleges. Other factors contributed, however, to differences in the K-14 collaborations and seemed to influence whether these federal policy initiatives were either catalytic or ineffectual. These were: a limited number of partner school districts; supportive state policy interpretation and direction; strong visionary college leadership; and multiple opportunities for collaborative planning.