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	Fostering a More Supportive Society

In this section... FOSTERING A MORE SUPPORTIVE SOCIETY Strengthening Families and Neighborhoods How Do We Change Smaller Cities? Building Communities with Help from the Press Using Data to Strengthen Communities and Improve Services Forging the Essential Connections Between Schools and Work School-to-Work Update Young Men as Fathers Drug Prevention Education Conference TABLE OF CONTENTS

Forging the Essential Connections Between Schools and Work

In Common Purpose, Lisbeth Schorr recalls former Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall's remark, "America has the worst school-to-work transition process of any industrialized nation," and comments as follows:

"Young people not headed for college are on a path to nowhere. Educator Lauren Resnick observes that `while college graduates are eased gently into economic and civic adulthood by our established institutions, public and private, the other three-quarters are left to fend for themselves in an increasingly unfriendly and undependable world.' Clearly, if only half of high school graduates even enter college, and only half of that group graduates, the vast majority never even have a shot at a career in the growing information economy. It is true that virtually all of the jobs of the future will require high skills. But they wouldn't all require a college education if the high schools taught what they are supposed to teach, and if there were better connections between high schools and the world of work.

"William Julius Wilson [the sociologist] notes that school counselors rarely know of present and future labor market requirements. They have little time and less training to help high school students in danger of not finding a decent job to prepare for non-college careers and to connect them with job opportunities. Since youngsters from impoverished backgrounds often know little about the world beyond their own neighborhoods, they assume that low-wage service jobs at familiar gas stations and fast food restaurants are all they can aspire to. Many young people drift from one short-term, minimum-wage job to another, with frequent periods of unemployment in between. As Resnick points out, they get the message that `society doesn't need or want them as responsible adults. For many young people, drifting and lack of commitment become a way of life.'

"This is a big problem for all American youths, and especially minority youngsters. . . . Most thoughtful observers believe that this ... situation will not change until there is an entirely new system for making the school-to-work transition, with diverse pathways from one to the other. A workable system would include many elements already operating separately somewhere:

"Efforts along these lines are now being energized and supported by the federal School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994. The act is still limited to supporting demonstrations, and is not yet funded on a scale that would give it national impact on the school-to-work problem. But it does specify an unusual federal role. Unlike much past legislation, the act asks states to develop their own programs, to build on existing institutions and to weave the various elements together into a coherent system. The act also encourages wide variability to reflect the diversity of community needs and people involved.... It uses performance standards to monitor the system without prescribing cumbersome rules and procedures.

"The school-to-work legislation also enables communities to act on research showing the importance of a young person's close attachment to a caring and successful adult. That adult—a mentor, role model and coach—supplements what teachers, neighbors and family members provide, particularly when traditional community supports are lacking.

"The new school-to-work strategies recognize that most students learn best in context—when they see how knowledge is actually used outside the school, especially in a work setting. The workplace becomes a learning laboratory where young people can experience the relevance of school knowledge in the `real world.' This perspective dovetails neatly with the new theoretical findings from cognitive research. Both the theory and the practice place a premium on dissolving the barrier between abstract and hands-on learning.

"Today's big challenge in the school-to-work domain is, of course, the same as the challenge in every other arena with promising models. How do we go from a few precious examples to a system that will enable millions of students to move smoothly from school to work?

"The challenge is not only to expand the number of individual interventions but to create a coherent system. `Most places are doing one aspect,' Hilary Pennington of Jobs for the Future says. `They're working on changing the schools, or the workplace or the post-secondary connection. The key implementation challenge is to help places move toward doing all three things well.'"

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