Every high school student should not only be provided with appropriate academic instruction but with supervised work experience as well. For the past 70 years, the number of students in cooperative education programs has grown steadily. Despite these steady gains, the best estimates place no more than 10 percent of all vocational education students in cooperative education programs today. It is true that traditional vocational/technical classrooms and shops can provide an introduction to a job or career path; however, they cannot instill good work habits or provide the reality and immediacy of an actual job placement. Cooperative education programs need guidance counselors and cooperative education coordinators who can broker job placements, match students with appropriate jobs, and hold seminars or workshops emphasizing good work habits. In cooperative programs, work supervisors become part of the "faculty" in the sense that they guide, grade, counsel, and teach students. Vocational teachers must in turn adjust course offerings and the curriculum to integrate course work not only with students' job demands but with their full academic schedules as well. In other words, employers and school officials must work hand in hand to ensure that basic work and career lessons are learned. The goal of cooperative education should be to replace the floundering between school and career with connectors, ties, links, and bonds. (This paper includes commentaries by Roy L. Wooldridge, David H. Lynn and Dennis Gray, and Morgan V. Lewis.) (MN)