Occupational Standards and Credentials

Education

May 2002

Occupational Standards and Credentials

Occupational Standards are based on a strong academic foundation (reading, numeric, and communication skills) supplemented by general workplace readiness skills and broad skills needed for specific industries (e.g., manufacturing). Occupational standards incorporate a range of proficiency and skill levels for broad and narrow industries.

The most widely used benchmark for workplace readiness skills are the five "SCANS" competencies. (SCANS stands for the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills.) They are the hallmarks of today's skilled worker and lie behind the quality of every product and service offered on today's market. They include five competencies of effective workers plus two foundation skills.

Productive use of resources
Interpersonal skills (necessary for effective teamwork and interaction with clients)
Information management (organizing information for informed decision-making)
Systems skills (understanding systems to improve their design for improved performance)
Technology skills (selecting technology and applying it)
Basic skills (reading, writing, arithmetic and mathematics, speaking and listening)
Thinking skills (thinking creatively, making decisions, solving problems, seeing things in the mind's eye, knowing how to learn and reasoning) (SCANS, June 1991).

A number of states have begun to integrate cross-disciplinary skills, such as SCANS, into the K-12 academic core curriculum to foster the integration of academic and occupational curricula, to encourage critical thinking and reasoning skills and to make standards-based reform efforts more coherent by linking the different disciplines. Still, the available occupational standards needed to build bridges between secondary and postsecondary institutions and in designing coherent programs of study do not yet cover a large number of career clusters. These standards form a communication link between the requirements of the workplace and providers of education and training, and give context for developing and assessing the value of work-based learning experiences for students.

How are schools making it work?

Below are statistics that summarize how extensive occupational standards and credentials are in America's high schools.

Data from MPR Associates' School-to-Work in the 1990s A Look at Programs and Practice in America's High Schools, show:

20 percent of high schools offer skill certificates in at least one subject area.

28 percent use skill standards in their curriculum.

Nearly half of all schools report that they attempt to integrate academic and vocational curriculum.

As many as 20 percent of schools offer career majors.

According to a recent publication of the National Center for Education Statistics,

overall a majority of all public secondary schools offered at least one of the listed occupational programs;

35 percent of the schools offered 1 to 5 programs;

18 percent offered 6 to 10 programs; and

another 13 percent offered more than 10 programs.

Educators responsible for occupationally specific courses were asked how they involve industry to ensure that the course content prepares students for the occupations. Public secondary schools were asked about five possibilities --industry advisory committees, surveys of employers' skill needs, follow-up surveys of graduates, student work experience (e.g., internships), and faculty externships (work experience for the teachers in the career field they teach). Except for faculty externships, each of these procedures was used by at least two-thirds of all public secondary schools that offered at least one of the listed occupational programs. About half of these schools used faculty externships to ensure that courses teach appropriate job skills.

Occupational programs are sometimes linked to a credentialing process. Students are awarded official documentation that they have completed a program and/or passed a skills test. At the secondary level, potential credentials (other than the high school diploma) are state or industry regulatory exams (resulting in registrations, licenses, or certifications) and occupational skill certificates.

Seven percent of public secondary schools with listed occupational programs prepared students in all of their programs for a state or industry regulatory exam (leading to registration, licensing, or certification), while 41 percent prepared students in at least one of their programs to do so. Thirty-one percent of public secondary schools with listed occupational programs prepared students in all of their programs to earn an occupational skill certificate, whereas 55 percent prepared students in at least one of their programs to do so. (National Center for Education Statistics, Statistical Analysis Report June 2001 Features of Occupational Programs at the Secondary and Postsecondary Education Levels)

Key Components

Career clusters. The School-to-Work Opportunities Act (STWOA) proposed organizing career clusters (or pathways) to make the many industries and occupations usable and understandable to students and educators. Career clusters aim to provide an integrated learning experience for students around broadly conceived career majors by organizing class work into sequences of academic and occupational study. As more attention was focused on career pathways as a tool for career decision making and workplace preparation (Jansen and Lewis 1996; NSWLIC 1997), more states took action to consider, recommend, develop, or adopt a set of career pathways (Finch et al. 1997; Wills 1997). Louisiana passed their Career Options law in 1997 hoping that making academic and technical learning relevant within career clusters would keep students engaged in what they were learning. An article from State Legislatures Magazine, Should I Stay or Should I go?, tells the story of Louisiana's decision to pass this legislation as well as West Virginia's efforts to improve their school system through linking learning to career options.

Issues involved in career pathways have also surfaced, including inconsistency in the clustering of occupations, both in career pathways and in occupational information systems resistance to career pathways (Vo 1996), and implementation problems and pitfalls (Hoachlander 1999; Paris and Huske 1998). On the other hand, success stories focused on overcoming barriers and concerns (Linn 1998; Lozada 1997; U.S. Department of Education 1998).

The potential effectiveness of career pathways has recently been enhanced by the U.S. Department of Labor's new public, online, skills-driven occupational information system O*NET, which replaces the task-driven Dictionary of Occupational Titles (Mariani 1999). O*NET joins state online career information systems (CareerZone 2000; CIS for Windows 2000) as perhaps the cutting edge of systems to organize and provide information about work, workers, and the workplace based on the skills shared by occupations rather than on industry sectors.

The U.S. Department of Education has supported the development of 16 broad career clusters that include pathways for a range of occupations from entry-level to professional within that career area. The clusters provide a framework for academic and technical knowledge needed to continue in a postsecondary setting or in the workforce. Career clusters can be tools for students, parents and teachers to relate high school education to future career goals, providing relevance to what students learn. The U.S. Department of Education's website offers more information about these 16 career areas.

Nationally recognized standards. At the same time that the STWOA was being considered, Congress also passed the National Skill Standards Act. The legislation created the National Skill Standards Board (NSSB) representing business, labor, employee, education, and community and civil rights organizations. The NSSB is charged with building a voluntary national system of skill standards, assessment and certification systems in each of the 15 industry sectors identified by the Board. Industry partnerships are developing the skill standards, assessment, and certification for their respective sector. So far, manufacturing and sales and service industry sectors have skill standards in place. Skill standards development is underway in the education and training and hospitality and tourism industry sectors. Coalition-building efforts continue in other sectors.

Assessments in Career and Technical Education

"Promoting New Seals of Endorsements in Career Technical Education" is the National Association of the State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium's (NASDCTEC) exploration of new ways to ensure that high-quality career technical education is available and recognized as an essential component of the total educational system. This paper specifically explores the benefits of taking the curriculum development and end-of-course assessment process from the International Baccalaureate (IB) program and Advanced Placement (AP) courses and applying it to career technical education.

The paper reviews the research and practice in career technical education as well as the IB and AP approaches and suggests strategies for "building a new infrastructure" for exit exams for career programs. The new credentials that could emerge from this process could inform high schools, postsecondary institutions, and industry-led certification programs. This paper provides a possible roadmap for developing educational materials for use in career technical education programs based upon a rigorous quality-based continuous improvement process.

Integration of Academic and Vocational Standards

The use of academic and occupational standards can come together in an integrated curriculum - one that draws on work experience, as well as academic and occupational study. There are variety of approaches and models, ranging from the relatively simple to the more complex. Coordinated curriculum realigns course work so that instructors in different disciplines teach related topics concurrently, using occupational themes as the organizing principle for integrating academic lessons, occupational study, and workplace experience.

Promising Practices

Building Linkages. The most advanced examples, though still incomplete, can be found in multi-state consortia projects, such as Building Linkages, that integrates academic and industry-recognized skill standards in the fields of health care, manufacturing and business management. Products to be developed include: common health science technology goals and standards, a best practices document with suggested strategies and activities to meet the needs of all learners, nationwide implementation of a "train the trainers" program, and certificates of competencies that are portable among different education levels and states and between school and the health care industry.

High Schools That Work (HSTW) is the nation's first large-scale effort to engage state, district and school leaders and teachers in partnerships with students, parents and the community to improve the way all high school students are prepared for work and further education. HSTW provides a framework of goals, key practices, and key conditions for accelerating learning and setting higher standards. It recommends actions that provide direction to schools as they work to improve academic and vocational-technical instruction at school and the work site. The HSTW website has a page summarizing some of the legislative and policy initiatives that have occurred in relation to HSTW.

HSTW began with 28 sites in 13 states when it was started in 1987 by the Southern Regional Education Board-State Vocational Education Consortium. Since then it has grown to more than 970 sites in 22 states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.

LEED-Sacramento (Linking Education and Economic Development) is a coalition of leaders from business, education, labor, government, and the community. It focuses on providing all students with education and career possibilities; businesses with workforce development opportunities; and the community with economic advantages by creating an educated, skilled workforce. LEED provides oversight for the Sacramento Regional School-to-Career Alliance. It also organizes and manages regional industry consortia, including: the Sacramento Regional High-Tech Consortium, the Sacramento Regional Banking & Financial Services Consortium and the Sacramento Health Employers & Educators Consortium. LEED has recruited over 135 employers to participate on industry consortia related to industry skill standards. For students in the career academies and career pathways, over 500 employers provide work-based learning opportunities that are tied directly to skills standards. LEED has trained over 60 worksite supervisors to manage and expand these work-based learning opportunities and placed over 6,000 learners in learning opportunities, significantly increasing their number each year. LEED has also involved employers in working with educators on integrating school curricula and courses with skill standards. All high schools in partner districts use skill standards for academies and pathways and to guide curriculum development.

LEED with CASAS (Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System) in conjunction with Strumpf Associates' Center for Strategic Change has developed the Workforce Skills Certification System for the purpose of assessing the readiness of potential employees to enter the workforce. These assessments are aimed at the group of industries that provided the impetus for the project: banking, health, high-tech and telecommunications and are designed to be used by schools, adult education programs, job training classes, and other workforce preparation programs. Companies with workplace education programs may also use them to assess workers' skills. They do not require knowledge or experience in particular industries but rather focus on reading, math, critical thinking, problem solving, and applied performance. Certified assessors, available through CASAS, administer and score the assessment battery. When prospective employees apply for entry-level jobs, this certificate means that they have achieved the skills necessary for success and a certified, objective CASAS assessor has scored the results.

Georgia's Department of Technical and Adult Education (DTAE) in partnership with the National Skill Standards Board (NSSB) are developing a process to implement nationally recognized skill standards, assessments, and certification. Implementation will begin with the manufacturing skill standards that have been identified by the Manufacturing Skill Standards Council (MSSC - www.msscusa.org), and Quick Start's Certified Manufacturing Specialist (CMS) program. The NSSB pledges to recognize DTAE certifications that meet its requirements and thereby position Georgia as a model state for implementing the national skill standards system into public workforce education.

Alaska submitted to the federal government as part of its five-year Workforce Investment state plan a goal of building a statewide system of voluntary skills for education and training in alignment with the voluntary national system of skill standards being developed by the National Skill Standards Board.

Issues of sustainability

Experts in the career and technical education field point to actions that may expand the use of occupational standards and credentials.

Promote and link ongoing efforts to develop state academic standards to occupational skill standards. A start may be to share the NSSB-developed standards and the accompanying assessments and certification among educators to create a dialogue on applying them in academic settings.
Develop and promote transferability of standards between and among states if it is your state's intention to endow students with a credential that will be an accepted mark of quality education nationwide. Some states adopt their own standards while others adapt standards from the NSSB or other states. As long as they are slightly different, transferability of skills and certifications will be more difficult.
Document, disseminate, and continue efforts to develop curricula and coherent sequences of courses aligned with academic and occupational standards that bridge secondary and postsecondary learning. This may save the trouble of duplicative efforts at the local district level. Consortia like Building Linkages can jointly develop curricula that can be shared among states.
Provide extensive professional development in instructional strategies to support the curricula and career pathways aligned with academic and occupational standards.

Links and supporting information

Publications

Making Skill Standards Work: Highlights from the Field, Judith Leff, Joyce Malyn Smith, Elisabeth Hiles, 1999, Education Development Center, Inc.

"This is a practical manual, filled with information and over 100 real examples and case studies from around the country, of how to use industry skill standards to improve education. The case studies and examples, demonstrate how educators, employers, government and other community members are creating and operating successful systems and programs, using skill standards to prepare people to enter the work force or continue to higher education. They provide creative methods for dealing with common stumbling blocks that such endeavors face." - taken from EDC website.

Statistical Analysis Report June 2001 Features of Occupational Programs at the Secondary and Postsecondary Education Levels, National Center for Education Statistics.

Grubb, W. N., ed. Education Through Occupations. Volume 1. Approaches to Integrating Academic and Vocational Education. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1995. (ED 392 921) Chapter 4, "A Continuum of Approaches to Curriculum Integration,"

Websites

National Skill Standards Board

National Dissemination Center for Career and Technical Education NCCTE Standards Repository provides a searchable database of academic, skill, and employability standards, organized by job cluster and origin (national or state).

This issue summary was a collaborative effort between NCSL's Learn, Work and Earn Project and the Institute for Educational Leadership's Center for Workforce Development. It was made possible by a grant from the U.S. Departments of Education and Labor.