The top businesses are discovering that, to get high organizational performance, they must assign frontline workers duties and responsibilities that typically have been given only to management and senior professional personnel. To help schools catch up with a changing world economy, students should achieve a certain mastery level by age 16…

Most young people in Europe and Asia move directly into primary labor market by age 21. The do-it-yourself system confronting most U.S. non-college-bound youth has resulted in high youth unemployment, shortages of adequately prepared youth entering the job market, and increasingly uncompetitive economy drifting to low-skill, low-wage jobs.…

For a year, the U.S. Department of Labor's Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) commissioners and research team talked with employers, managers, and frontline business workers about skills needed on the job. Certificates reflecting mastery of SCAN competencies, if valued by employers, will change students' perceptions of…

During 1990-91, Michigan schools piloted an innovative portfolio approach enabling students to discover, document, and develop employability skills in academics, personal management, and teamwork. Not an improved sorting system, the project encourages students to recognize successes, seek opportunities to improve skills, and gain confidence in…

High school is an inescapably vocational institution whose occupational focus is largely hidden. Integration of vocational and academic education through academies, occupationally focused schools, and occupational clusters may eliminate "shopping mall" course selections, improve teaching of all subjects, enhance student engagement with learning,…

Recently, the Dayton-Montgomery (Ohio) Public Education Fund Mathematics Collaborative sponsored 18 educators in a summer industry internship program. Many teachers gained invaluable insights on learning to work with people and applying knowledge to work situations. Participants learned the value of incorporating teamwork, technology, problem…

The rift between academic and vocational education has been magnified by the physical isolation of vocational facilities. Vocational educators must abandon their apologetic soapboxes to help parents and students realize the vocational nature of almost all education. Dialogue is essential. Teachers must assume responsibility for educating all…

U.S. observers of German apprenticeships are impressed with the quality of vocational training provided, the sense of purpose given to (part-time) academic schooling, and the smooth transition apprentices make from adolescence to adulthood. In Broome County, New York, Cornell University has initiated a Youth Apprenticeship Demonstration Project to…

To help students with exceptional math and science skills debate career options, the Indianapolis (Indiana) Public Schools have established a mentoring program linking such students with exemplary adult scientists and mathematicians. The program allows students to apply their skills and use specialized instruments in industrial settings. Sample…

Although well intentioned, Oregon's Certificate of Initial Mastery Plan offers no apprenticeship programs for non-college-bound students. In contrast, Japan's Oita Media Technology High School and Hita Rinko High School of Forestry exemplify the nation's longstanding focus on technical education and industry-specific trade schools. The new…

Staff at a Baton Rouge (Louisiana) elementary school devised an innovative program to introduce disadvantaged children to opportunities outside their ghetto neighborhood. The Discovery Expeditions plan attempted to address dropout prevention by increasing student awareness of resources and vocational opportunities in Baton Rouge and other areas,…

Survey showed that U.S. students in international schools for children of expatriates received more failing grades than European or Asian students. U.S. students also spent less time on homework and less time with their families than did European or Asian students. Non-U.S. students are generally more at ease around adults, whereas American…

Deming's quality-focused principles contradict Taylor's top-down, authoritarian industrial model. Deming advises educators to fix the system instead of blaming individual teachers for student apathy and low achievement. In the new paradigm, education will be a process that encourages continual progress through improving one's abilities, expanding…

The formula for improving U.S. schools can be found in the philosophy that helped transform Japanese industry and in Deming's 14 principles, emulated by many corporations. Deming's arguments against appraising individual performance through quotas or numerical goals call into question schools' current grading and merit pay practices. (12…

Total Quality Management is a value-based, information-driven management process through which the minds and talents of people at all levels are applied fully and creatively to the organization's continuous improvement. The total quality view allows educators to see with a student's eye, to understand what the school and the world look like to…