School-to-Work for the College-Bound.

The case can be made that school-to-work programs can be a college preparatory strategy because they can teach academic skills as well as and possibly even better than more traditional approaches. The skepticism about its potential as a means of preparing students for college is based on misconceptions about its characteristics. Its three basic elements--authentic teaching and learning, out-of-class experience, and career and interest exploration--support all types of learning. Authentic teaching and learning requires students to develop in-depth understanding and apply academic learning to important, realistic problems. Experiences outside the classroom strengthen and increase the amount of knowledge learned, understood, and retained. Systematic exploration of student interests and career goals can stimulate interest in academic learning. Some of the most highly regarded school-to-work programs are explicitly designed for college-bound students. Empirical evidence shows many school-to-work programs have high college attendance rates and the use of authentic pedagogy leads to gains in both traditional test scores and in measures of authentic learning. Reformers have taken three broad approaches to reduce the conflict between participation in school-to-work activities and admission to selective colleges: accommodation of the school-to-work program within the existing college admission system, communication between individual schools and colleges, and reform of assessment and college admissions procedures. (Contains 10 references.) (YLB)