The Next 25 Years and the National Policy on Vocational Education: Looking Back to the Future |
C. William Garner |
Abstract As we enter the 21st century, we need to continue our efforts to improve vocational education. One approach to accomplishing this is to examine past policies that created and directed vocational education at the national level over the past century. In conducting these examinations, researchers must consider the means of policy making and maintenance. Further, reviewers must utilize a methodology suited to seeking out the truths of the past and present embedded within a mosaic of circumstances and events along with the reality of the predictions for the future. Hopefully inquiries that look back will permit us to make the best decisions for the future of vocational education. |
Introduction As our 25th anniversary offers us a time to reflect, it also presents
us with the opportunity to discuss the use of our reflections. One important
factor to consider on our anniversary is the unusual genesis and evolution
of vocational education as we know it today. An examination of our creation
and development through the use of honest and truthful analyses should
permit us to assess where we are today, why we are what we are and then
where we need to go. Of course, the efforts to conduct such research and
generate proposals require complex and multi-faceted projects that will
take time. |
Policy Making and the National Policy for Vocational Education The most direct approach to making policy is through the making of law. A policy may come from a legislative body, case or common law, or administrative directive. Not only is this form of policy making the most direct, but it is the highest form of policy making. A new legal policy or a change in policy may add to or shift a government’s mission. In turn, a new policy or a change in policy will likely cause a government to redirect resources that will impact either positively or negatively on the quantity or quality of other programs and services. When a policy is implemented, its impact may be diminished by the rules and regulations that follow. As a consequence, the name of the game for many individuals and interest groups is to influence policy making officials. If this is not successful, the next step is to influence those who make up the rules in the implementation of the policy. In other words, the players in policy making go beyond the government officials who make up the law. The reason for policies, according to Guthrie, Garms and Pierce (1988), is to guide the actions of a government body. Caldwell and Spinks (1988) regard policy as a statement of purpose that includes guidelines to describe how it is to be achieved. At the same time, Gallagher, Bagin and Kindred (1997) see policies as a guide for decision making, however, they believe the purpose of the policy is the critical element. When studies of the passing of the 1917 and 1963 Acts plus all of their related amendments and modifications are conducted, the above definitions and descriptions of policy must be applied in the analyses. More specifically, the 1917 Act was a policy passed by the federal legislature that ended up guiding the future actions of the federal government, state governments and local school boards. Further, the Act provided a purpose for the policy and defined the programs that would be included in vocational education (agriculture education, trade and industrial education, and home economics). It also determined that teacher education should be supported in order for states to receive government money and the policy limited the program grants to public school districts. The Act did not order any school districts to offer the vocational education programs but rather gave them money in exchange for adding the programs to their curriculum. An important element in the development of the 1917 federal policy was the contention and passionate discourse brought to the policy maker’s table by a number of interest groups. In an analysis of the making of the policy, investigators need to study the discourse among the players in reference to the tremendous changes taking place in society, government, businesses, and technology at that time. Who were the different interest groups and what did they propose to be the purpose of the 1917 policy? What were the objections to the national policy? Did the interest groups effect the proposed contents of the 1917 Act? For example, an interesting account is provided by historians for the reason home economics was added to the list of programs to be offered. Should we expect similar efforts or arguments from interest groups as new policies are drafted to direct vocational education over the next 25 years? One argument made in an attempt to prevent the passage of the Act was that any federal influence on public education was improper because the U.S. Constitution did not provide for a national educational system (Thompson, 1973). In the study of this shallow argument, vocational educators must first examine why education was not included in the Constitution. Was it a philosophical difference of opinion or the inability of the framers of the constitution to come to an agreement? Was the 1917 argument regarding the intent of the constitution a sincere, but uninformed belief, or an effort to defeat the 1917 policy for other reasons? Do these same arguments exist today? In answering these questions, researchers must realize the 1917 Act was the first time the federal government got directly involved in the business of public schools and, indeed, did bring about a redistribution of resources. Further, as some feared, the 1917 Act set a precedent that the federal government has used since to influence local educational efforts, meaning the offering of money to change public education. Other questions to be examined revolve around the effectiveness of the policies. Would state governments and local school districts have offered vocational education without the federal money? Meyer (1967, p. 410) suggested that vocational education would not have been nearly as successful had it not been for “the magic lamp of Federal aid.” He further proposed that because of the future acts (1929 George-Reed Act, 1934 George-Ellzey Act, 1936 George-Deen Act, and the 1946 George-Barden Act), the amount of the federal aid and, therefore, the programs and services offered were increased. Was Meyer correct? If so, the policy was effective. Is this true for the future of vocational education? Can vocational education survive without a federal policy? At the same time, effectiveness reviews might consider the alternatives if the 1917 had not been passed. If vocational education was not available, what might have been the effect on the industrial development in the United State in the first part of the 20th century and the effect on the country’s performance in two world wars? For example, Rippa (1980) pointed out that in 1900 there were 8,000 vehicles in the U.S. and in 1929 there were 20 million. Obviously someone had to be taught how to fix cars! What about the future? Can we expect the GDP to continue to grow without a properly prepared workforce? As international trade continues to expand, can our country maintain its superior position without strong, public vocational programs? A number of scholars, such as Reich (1992) and Thurow (1996) are quite concerned about the viability of our economy in view of the declining state of public vocational education and the training/re-training of adult workers. When examining the 1963 Vocational Education Act and the following amendments, a review must again seriously regard the resistance to the federal policy offered by many interest groups, including other educators. A major feature to be recognized is the 1963 policy directed that large sums of money be used to expand vocational education at the public secondary level, at post secondary schools, and at colleges and universities. The testimony provided to the Senate Republican Policy Committee plus at the hearings before the legislative committees and subcommittees provide an array of interesting opinions (Barlow, 1967). What were the objections to the 1963 Act? Did they influence the contents of the national policy? Do those objections still exist today? If so, do they influence federal, state and local policy on vocational education? As in the beginning of the century, were there any effects from the expansion of vocational education on employment opportunities, especially on the baby boomers? Was there any hope that the vocational education policies would help to curb the youthful civil disobedience in the cities in the 70’s? Finally, have the 1917 and 1963 policies succeeded, failed, or fell short of their potential (not their stated intentions)? |
Policy Making Tactics Policy making tactics are designed to influence the purposes of a policy. When investigating the above questions, plus many others, researchers must collect information with an eye on the tactics that influenced or attempted to influence the final version of the policies. One of these tactics, and likely the senior, is the group theory (Dye, 1987; Truman, 1951). In this approach people get together and make up formal and informal advocacy pressure groups or alliances to influence policy makers. Basically, as these groups interact with each other to their mutual benefit, they impact upon the action of the policy makers. As the desire to influence a policy shifts, the groups and their interactions change. The elite theory on policy making (Dye & Zeigler, 1981) is another way that people may effect public policy. In this tactic individuals interested in having an impact on the content or success of a policy appeal to those typically not interested in current events; such as the majority of voters. By influencing the majority and gaining their support, the views of the elite group have a greater chance of success. Another approach (Swanson & King, 1991) is the rational approach. In this case, individuals strive to insure that a policy results in maximum social gain based on economic, not political, principles through a mathematical model. This is an idealistic approach that reviewers would hope to uncover but likely will not find in a majority of cases. Researchers must also recognize the real focus of many tacticians. Specifically, Swanson and King (1991) explained that the tactic of policy making is on the means and not the ends (objectives). In other words to alter the ends, the objective is to change the means to the ends. This may actually be an easier and more effective approach since policy makers and partisan groups are more likely to find agreement on the means while a pact on the ends would be impossible. When advocacy groups are formed and their mutual efforts are advanced incrementally, although the end result may take longer, their work will typically have a greater impact. Further, when policy means are incrementally revised to redefine the ends, the means actually have intended purposes of their own. In some cases the original objective of a policy may become watered down to the point where it is not relevant or sidetracked completely. Researchers will find that the advocacy process was used both pro and con in the preparation of the 1917 and 1963 Acts and was effective in defeating several acts proposed prior to 1917. Further, the suspicion is that the more recent decline of vocational education in many states, and possibly at the national level, has been due to incremental changes in the means to the ends. Therefore, the ultimate point to be recognized in regard to the effects of policy making tactics is the potential danger noted by Etzioni (1964). He explained that goals can be influenced by the power plays of groups through policy making in reference to their own interests. As a conse quence, the idealistic ends of a policy may be subverted for personal gains. The allocation or reallocation of resources will follow accordingly. Without question, the 1917 and 1963 Acts were passed with a fury of tactical maneuvers. Vocational educators must study the tactics and determine how they influenced the means and the ends. Were compromises made on the means that hindered the effectiveness of vocational education? To gain greater in-depth understandings of the policies and their impact, the next step is to collect data on the rules and regulations as well as the maintenance of the policies. |
Policy Rules, Regulations and Maintenance To look beyond the policy making process, investigators must examine the implementation and maintenance of the policy. Policy makers usually rely on administrators and managers to make up the rules and related procedures to implement a policy. Rule making authority is especially important with respect to national policies. More specifically, the federal government must respect the constitutional rights of the states to govern themselves and this includes their authority to make up their own rules and regulations (of course within the guidelines of the policy). Likewise, in some states, the state must respect the rights to “home rule” in which the local political leaders have the authority to make up rules and regulations. The source of the authority to make up the rules and to maintain them is very critical since they set forth “who does what, when and where” (Rebore, 1998, p. 7). Problems for a policy occur when the intended ends of a policy are subverted by the rules and the allocation of resources. Unfortunately, discrepancies in policy rules may not be revealed when an evaluation is conducted. This failure is simply because a review is often limited to the effectiveness of a program in relation to the rules of the governing body, not the purpose of the policy. With respect to the allocation of money, financial discrepancies are easily found in an audit made when the books are kept in accordance to the new government accounting procedures. Unfortunately, not all state and local governments, including school districts, have implemented the new accounting standards (although all states have passed laws to use the standards) and are still using the old single entry, check book method of accounting. Under the single entry method, expenditures are difficult, and sometimes impossible, to track (Garner, 1991). For vocational education, this has presented problems in many states! A serious problem for policy maintenance occurs when a policy degenerates. Some examples of degeneration are when there has been a declining commitment to the original purpose of a policy, when a policy has been maintained in spite of its inefficacy, when there has been a high social cost, when the undesirable effects of eliminating a policy have outweighed desirable ones, when there is no connection between the purposes for which the policy was established and the actions of the unit, when a policy has becomes irrational or unduly complex, and when the purpose of the policy has been altered (Haller & Strike, 1979). Of course, a policy can be ineffective if it no longer supports the mission of the institution or when it has not kept up with the changes in society, government, business and technology. The list of reasons for the degeneration of a policy are troubling and offer suggestions for researchers to consider when examining cases where vocational education has declined. Finally, open systems theory offers policy making yet another variable to be considered in reference to policy maintenance; namely, the importance of feedback. This theory, which is quite popular and central to some management theories, proposes that successful organizations interact with their environment. Therefore, they are able to shift their focus from structure to process; both in terms of the internal operations and as an entity. The idea is that for an organization to survive, it must adapt. In order to accomplish this, it must be open to its environment. As adaptation and change come from feedback, an organization may redefine itself and survive (Hage & Aiken, 1967, Katz & Kahn, 1966; Klees, 1986; Morgan, 1986; Scott, 1981). Has there been adequate and accurate feedback on the policies on vocational education to the policy makers at the federal, state and local levels? Have there been efforts to incrementally influence the means on the feedback process required for the annual allocation of state resources as well as the passage of the national policy amendments? Have the modifications to the policies, rules and regulations been based on feedback? |
Methodology One reason why policy research has received so much attention in recent years is due to the advances in research methodologies. These new methods have produced insights that have benefited policy makers, rule makers and managers. As a result, the research of a policy must be conducted through the use of an appropriate framework to insure that the proper data is collected and analyzed in order to arrive at valid conclusions. When conducting policy research, the distinction between quantitative and qualitative methods must be clear. Quantitative researchers, known as positivists, see social and physical realities measured by collecting quantitative data from a sample of a population in order to predict future behavior. The samples, therefore, have to represent reality and the conclusions, if unbiased, gained from the analysis are considered to be objective realities. The objective conclusions of the researcher will be the same over time, assuming that the conditions are the same or similar. The weakness, of course, is that the environment is constantly changing. If the sample measures are taken without including a study of the environmental conditions, the conclusions may not be able to be compared to another time (Gall, Borg & Gall, 1996). Qualitative researchers, or post-positivists, take the view that when people measure physical and social reality, their observations and conclusions must recognize two weaknesses. First, the observations may be influenced by the assumptions of the researcher and, therefore, the interpretations and conclusions may be biased. Second, social reality changes because the environment is subject to pressures from a variety of sources that are constantly shifting. Consequently the intensive study of cases must reference the environment of the time. Conclusions gained from inductive reasoning based on the data collected should be triangulated, meaning the same information should be gained from several sources or at least verified by other sources. If the data is corroborated in some manner, the findings and conclusions can be considered to be valid (Gall, Borg & Gall, 1996). In any research project Gall, Borg and Gall (1996) warned that social reality is often constructed by the participants. In other words, the corroboration of reported events is needed to insure that facts, not biased opinions, are collected for analysis. An example of an in-depth review and analysis is the description of the approach to a review of educational research methodologies by Popkewitz (1997). He described his work as “traveling through different sets of ideas” that he saw as a “scaffolding” or “overlay of historically formed ideas whose pattern gives intelligibility to today’s debates” (p.18). When researchers do not “travel through different sets of ideas” or view the events within the context of the environmental forces impacting on a policy, the product cannot help to be anything other than a linear report. For example, a number of historians describe the origin of vocational education in terms of the needs of the industrial revolution. They were not incorrect in their reports of the problems associated with the prepara tion of skilled workers via the apprenticeship method of training. The training of these workers was too slow to produce the necessary large numbers of skilled workers demanded by the factories of mass production. Usually additions to these observations about the shortage of workers were reports of the influence from the 1876 centennial of the United States in Philadelphia. On this occasion a Russian exhibit presented the shop instruction approach taken by Victor Della-Vos. This method of instruction was picked up by John Runkle, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where his version of the Russian method was implemented. The use of the laboratory to mass produce skilled workers was initiated and eventually became popular throughout the country (Barlow, 1967; Brubaker & Rudy, 1958; Meyer, 1967; Roberts, 1971; Thompson, 1973). While the above description provides an accurate view, it is one dimensional. It does not offer the insights needed to analyze why and how the national policy on vocational education came about in 1917 and then, how this differs in relation to today’s environment. For instance, Toffler and Toffler (1995) described the experiences of the human race taking place in three waves. Their position was that the first was the agricultural revolution and the second was the industrial revolution. They considered the second wave to a brute force economy that was in its prime at the turn of the century. In his review of this period of time, Reich (1992) discussed the economic, industrial and labor conditions. He noted, for example, the two dramatic economic depressions of the latter half of the 1900’s. Likely the brute force economy and the depressions had an impact on the public attitudes about the preparation of young people for jobs. What was the age of the young people to be prepared for work? Do we hold to the same ideas for that age group today? In addition, researchers must consider the setting in which vocational education was being placed. For instance, in his reviews of schools in the early part of the century, Cubberly described them as “factories in which the raw materials are shaped and fashioned into products to meet various demands of life” (cited in Owens, 1987, p. 9). Obviously, the public had different ideas about public education than are held at this time. The same insights must be sought for a review of the 1963 Act. For example, Reich (1992) proposed that in the mid-1900’s our educational system “fit nicely into the prevailing structure of high-volume production within which its young products were to be employed” (p. 226). With respect to the years after the 1963 Act was passed, like the Tofflers (1995), Reich reported the tremendous changes that took place and described them as a move to high value enterprises with specially tailored products and services that required specialized knowledge. Reich’s concern, however, was that “schools had not changed for worse, they simply had not changed for better” (p.226). He also noted that the reaction in more recent years to the need for change in education has been to retreat to “back to the basics” accompanied by decline of more than 50% in public funding for training and retraining workers. At the same time, the Tofflers proposed that while some developing countries are still in the second wave, the United States has moved to a third wave that requires us to “rethink the role of knowledge” (p.57). In addition, Thurow (1996) warned of the current capitalistic and economic effects from a population that is growing older. He explained that “capitalism is not a doctrine that promises maximum growth. It promises only to cater to individual preferences” (p. 297). If the observations of these scholars are accurate, vocational educators must respond. Because the ultimate purpose of a review of the national policies for vocational education is to develop a strategy to move vocational education into the 21st century, researchers must address the environmental conditions of two periods. The first is the environmental forces that existed at the time the policy was developed and implemented. The second is the future environment proposed by scholars and futurists such as Reich, the Tofflers, Thurow and others. |
Conclusion The above task assigned to policy researchers is difficult and significant to the future of vocational education and the future of the people who need the services offered by vocational educators. Decision makers are learning to work from a policy base and are recognizing that their attention must be focused on the policies and not the rules and regulations. At the same time, they are becoming aware of the need to insure that the rules and regulations must support their policies. As a result, with valid research findings accompanied with rational proposals, policy makers need to be informed in a manner that will allow them to prepare appropriate policies to direct vocational education into the next century. While the last 25 years have been exciting and fruitful, the next 25 years must be filled with promise! |
References Barlow, M. L. (1967). History of industrial education in the United States.
Peoria, IL: Charles A. Bennett Co. |
C. William Garner is an Associate Professor of Educational Administration at Rutgers University. |