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Relations with the Federal-State Employment Services

The 1963 Act required that each state, in its plans and projected activities filed as a prerequisite to receiving the federal matching funds, include provisions for cooperative arrangements with state employment service offices for occupational and labor market information, vocational guidance and placement services. Little progress was made during the first two years. Educators accused the employment services of failing to provide the required labor market information; the latter countered that the educators had yet to define their needs. The employment services also complained that they could not supply additional services within the constraints of their existing budgets; yet there was no provision for transferring vocational education funds.

Progress was even slower in vocational guidance and placement services. Employment service personnel had for a number of years visited one-half of the high schools in the country, now representing more than three-fifths of total enrollments, to test and counsel members of senior classes not planning to enter college. Beyond this continuing program, no significant efforts were made to establish a special relationship with vocational education. Vocational instructors customarily place their better students through informal industry contacts. The remainder seek their own jobs by a variety of methods, including registration at the public employment service. The employment services occasionally "outstation" personnel in junior and community colleges to provide placement services but rarely do so in high schools and vocational schools. Thus, no special guidance and placement assistance as contemplated by the Act were provided to vocational education students or graduates.

Excellent relations exist between local employment service personnel and local vocational educators in some areas, but relationships are nonexistent in others. The Act appears to have had little if any effect. This is in contrast to the notable impact of the Manpower Development and Training Act on this relationship. The essential difference is that, while the VEA '63 directive was a pious hope with no built-in leverage, MDT institutional funds could flow only following joint employment service-vocational education action.

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Despite the slowness of improvement in local relationships, significant developments are currently underway at the federal level. In 1966, the Department of Labor took the initiative by funding a study which assessed the status of existing relationships, identified the services needed from the Employment Service and made recommendations to meet the needs. The report identified many sound local relationships, but also found that some state vocational agencies had already begun to set up manpower survey units duplicating those of the Employment Service. Much of the needed information was already available from the Employment Service but was unknown because of the absence of communication.

The report led to the establishment, for the first time, of formal Vocational Education/Employment Service relations at the federal level. A U.S. Employment Service-U.S. Office of Education Liaison Committee is working toward a joint occupational taxonomy, exchange of information on occupational requirements, and administrative procedures for transfer of data. Study is underway to ascertain the need to broaden the Employment Service cooperative school program to cover vocational and technical schools. Employment Service representation on state vocational education advisory councils and vocational research coordinating units is being considered.

Supporting Services

The Vocational Education Act of 1963 required that at least three percent of each state's allotment be used for ancillary services to assure quality in all vocational education programs. Ancillary services were defined in a very broad sense and six specific examples were listed: teacher training and supervision, program evaluation, special demonstration and experimental programs, development of instructional materials, state administration and leadership, and "periodic evaluation of state and local vocational education programs

5H. Ellsworth Steele, Cooperation Between the Employment Service and Educators in Providing Realistic Vocational Education, U.S. Department of Labor, Manpower Administration, September 1966 (mimeographed).

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and services in light of information regarding current and projected manpower needs and job opportunities." Actually, the states spent almost ten percent rather than three percent in 1966 for those purposes-a total including federal, state and local funds of nearly $50 million.

The number of vocational teachers (full-time and parttime) increased from 109,000 in 1965 to 124,000 in 1966, a gain of 13.8 percent. In the latter year, 77,000 teachers were enrolled in teacher educational programs in vocational and technical education, half in pre-service and half in in-service courses. Although the growth is promising, a continued effort will be required, for it is estimated that a 150 percent increase will be needed during the next decade to meet projected enrollments.

Little progress has been made since the enactment of the 1963 Act toward offering vocational students the same counseling and guidance services that are provided-at least in some states-to college-bound students. While only one out of ten academic high schools has no counselor, only half of the vocational schools furnish guidance and counseling services with, in most cases, only one person to a school. Practically no guidance and counseling services are provided to out-ofschool youths and adults and very little to youths with special needs. Only one-half of the states have guidance personnel at the staff level, again usually one person to each state. The guidance and counseling functions of the U.S. Office of Education are also greatly understaffed. No data are available to evaluate the impact of the 1963 Act on other supporting services.

The Impact in Summary

The changes wrought by the 1963 Act are a separate issue from the following assessment of the status of vocational education. The changes can only be concluded to be minor.

The Vocational Education Act of 1963 advocated two basic changes: First, vocational education was to serve the occupational needs of all people in the community through unified programs rather than to train them in separate programs for selected occupational categories. Second, a new group was to be served-the persons who could not succeed in regular

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vocational education programs because of educational, socioeconomic and other obstacles. Neither change has occurred to a substantial degree.

Expenditures have increased, but the expansion has been largely in the old occupational categories except for the addition of a new category of office occupations. Vocational education is not yet adequately responsive to the needs of the labor market, little recognition has been given to new occupations, few innovative programs are underway, and there is little coordination between general and vocational education. It is not even certain that enrollments have increased significantly more than they would have in the absence of the Act.

Progress has not been totally lacking. Construction has been accelerated, though not necessarily in the most innovative ways. Area schools have been established rapidly; home economics and agriculture show somewhat greater concern with gainful employment; research in vocational education has begun; a start has been made on establishing effective relationships with the Employment Service; work-study programs have been successful. A Federal Advisory Committee on Vocational Education has been established, though its effectiveness is yet to be demonstrated. There are now more vocational teachers, and vocational guidance has probably improved to some extent in quantity and quality.

Two or three years is a short time in a system as old as vocational education, and change may accelerate with time. Yet it is possible to identify two major reasons for the limited impact of the 1963 Act to date. The first is the permissiveness of the legislation. New objectives were prescribed and added resources were provided, but the Act made no necessary connection between the two. The new funds could be used to pursue old objectives as well as new ones. Congressional ambivalence was evident in the failure to replace existing vocational education acts by merely adding another with inconsistent objectives.

The second obstacle, allowed but not created by the permissiveness of the Act, was the lack of national leadership from the Office of Education. The agency has a long history of providing matching funds without prescribing objectives, establishing substantial guidelines or evaluating state and

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local accomplishment. Its leadership is also more comfortable with higher and general education than with vocational education.

In the absence of federal leadership, resistance to change is considerable, particularly at the state level. Local vocational educators, in direct daily contact with students and aware of the needs of local employers, are more responsive to changing social and economic conditions. When VEA '63 directed changing emphasis from occupational categories to groups of people, the federal vocational education agency was restructured accordingly. However, most states continued organization around the traditional categories. Local educators complain that innovative programs are often rejected at the state level because they do not fit administratively within existing categories. For instance, proposed special needs courses were rejected in one state because there was no such division in the state office.

Administrative structure is not the only source of resistance to change. Another state arbitrarily reported ten percent of its secondary students as being in the special needs category without creating any special courses. A technical school in another state reacted that it had spent years building an image with employers and was not going to risk that image by enrolling less than the best. In another case, the State Director of Vocational Education arbitrarily announced that he would allocate no funds to post-secondary training.

The Office of Education is not without leverage to bring about change. Since the Commissioner of Education has the authority to approve the state plans and projected activities which are prerequisite to receiving federal funds, he also has the authority, by implication, to disapprove them. The state plan is a misnomer. It is, in actuality, merely a legal agreement by the states to comply with federal laws in the use of the federal funds. The projected activities, however, are, or could be required to be, detailed declarations of state intent.

No state plan with its accompanying projected activities has been disapproved, and there is little evidence that they are seriously studied by the Office of Education. Staff limitations may have something to do with the absence of monitoring and evaluation. Lack of federal interest in exerting aggressive leadership is more important. State and local educators