It has been eight months since the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Improvement Act of 2006 was enacted into U.S. law. States are scrambling to translate the federal law’s requirements into manageable policies, while local administrators and instructors anticipate a need to reform old practices. When anyone—from the U.S. Secretary of Education to the local auto tech instructor—talks about the new law, one word enters every conversation about Perkins IV: “Accountability.” At issue is a concern for the impact of our practice on student academic and technical achievement, as well as our effectiveness at preparing our students for work in the 21st century. Clearly, Perkins IV indicates that the need for discussion and research on the student impact of CTE activities is greater now than ever.

The research and concept articles in this issue add to the discussion about accountability. The authors of two articles looked at two very popular school reform movements: Work based learning during the School-to-Work era, and career academies during the era of small learning communities. Policy makers, administrators, and practitioners have invested a great deal of time, energy and finances in school to work and academies as mechanisms believed to improve preparation of young people for life after high school. Have these Do curriculum approaches made a difference for students? Ahn & Walter and Folan & Trexler report their studies of this topic.

Logically, the call for increased accountability will create a need for good strategies of collecting valid and reliable data. An often-used approach to examine impact of programs on students is comparison of scores from pre-tests and post-tests administered before and after a treatment. Nimon and Allen offer retrospective pretests as an alternative approach to determining the effects of a program.

The accountability issue also implies stewardship of the taxpayers’ money. In his “In My View” article, Frank Elliott advocates use of free and effective software to get our work done.

On a management level, the WEF Editorial Board and Trustees are taking a new step to be accountable. In an effort to ensure the highest level of academic integrity, the Editor will use plagiarism detection software to scan all manuscripts submitted to the WEF. Papers with proper citations will be published. If a scan results indicate plagiarism, improper paraphrasing, or absence of citations, the manuscript will be returned to the author with the analysis. All authors are encouraged to examine their papers for proper paraphrasing and references according to the ethics of scientific research outlined in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) (5th ed.), pages 348-355.

The WEF welcomes your thoughts about accountability and other topics relevant to practitioners of career and technical education as well as workplace performance and learning. Guidelines for authors are on pages 66-67 of this issue.