Learning a Living

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LEARNINGA LIVING:

A BLUEPRINT FORHIGH PERFORMANCE

A SCANS REPORT FOR

AMERICA 2000

THE SECRETARY’S COMMISSION ON ACHIEVING NECESSARY SKILLSU.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

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LEARNING A LIVING HTML FORMAT http://www.ttrc.doleta.gov/SCANS/lal/LAL.HTM

APRIL 1992

CONTENTS

LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL......................................................................................v

PREFACE.....................................................................................................................ix

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY...........................................................................................xi

PART I: LEARNING A LIVING

Chapter 1: Time to Decide.........................................................................3

Chapter 2: Solving the Skills Problem.....................................................11

Chapter 3: Toward a High-Performance Future.....................................17

PART II: A BLUEPRINT FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE

Introduction.....................................................................................................29

Chapter 4: Schools That Work: Organizing Education for High Performance .................................................................33

Chapter 5: Work-Based Learning and High-PerformanceIndustries.................................................................................47

Chapter 6: Standards, Assessments, and Certification.........................59

Conclusion: A Learning-a-Living System.....................................................71

APPENDIXES

A. Acknowledgements......................................................................................77

B. Definitions of SCANS Know-how...............................................................81

C. Other SCANS Materials...............................................................................85

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EXHIBITS

Exhibit A: Workplace Know-How................................................................................... 6

Exhibit B: The Proportion of Male High School Graduates Unable to Support a Family................. 7

Exhibit C: High-Wage Jobs Require Higher Levels of the SCANS Know How........................... 10

Exhibit D: Deming’s 14 Points toward Quality.......................................... 18

Exhibit E: Sites of SCANS Activity................... 30

Exhibit F: Assignments That Integrate the SCANS Competencies into the Core Curriculum Areas.......................................... 35

Exhibit G: The Conventional Classroom Compared with the SCANS Classroom............................. 42

Exhibit H: Writing: The SCANS Perspective............................... 43

Exhibit I: Chances of Receiving Formal Company-Based Training Increases with Education............................ 50

Exhibit J: International Comparison of Worker Training............................................... 51

Exhibit K: Hypothetical R’esum’e...................................................... 65

Exhibit L: Tasks from Diverse Occupations Representative of Level of Performancein SCANS Know-How Required for Entry into Jobs with Career Ladder............ 69

Exhibit M: Participants in the "Learning-a-Living’’ System............................................. 72

Exhibit N: Information Flow in the "Learning-a-Living" System.................................... 73

Exhibit O: Recommendations for the "Learning-a-Living" System.................................... 76

SIDEBARS

Sidebar A:Integrating SCANS Know-How into Arts and Vocational-TechnicalEducation...........................

37

Sidebar B: IndianaPLUS: Model "School to Work" Project.................................................... 39

Sidebar C: From Small Manufacturers to Electronic Giants................................................ 52

Sidebar D: NAM and the SCANS Skills................................................................................ 55

Sidebar E: Hospitality Industry........ 57

Sidebar F: Pieces of the Standards and Assessment Puzzle........ 61

Sidebar G: Teaching and Assessing Persons with Limited English Proficiency........ 63

U.S. Department of LaborSecretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills

SCANSWashington, D.C. 20210

April 1992

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The Honorable Lynn MartinSecretary of LaborWashington, D.C.

Dear Madam Secretary:

On behalf of my colleagues on the Secretary of Labor’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills(SCANS), I am pleased to transmit our final report, Learning a Living: A Blueprint for High Performance.

In June 1991 this Commission produced What Work Requires of Schools, a document defining theworkplace competencies and foundation skills required for effective job performance today and tomorrow.Events since then have confirmed our conviction that this know-how is essential for all Americans.

The national self-examination about education and training has continued. The National Education GoalsPanel issued its first report card on the goals agreed to by President Bush and the nation’s governors in1989. The President announced Job Training 2000, a new effort to improve the job training system. TheNew American Schools Development Corporation (NASDC) moved forward with its plans to create "breakthe mold" schools. And the National Council on Education Standards and Testing endorsed the workplacecompetencies defined by SCANS, suggesting that they be integrated into national standards andassessments of core academic subjects.

The SCANS message, in short, was not delivered in a vacuum but in the midst of an intense national debateabout education and training, their purposes, and the progress to date. Each of these efforts has a differentfocus, and all of them recognize that schools do more than prepare young people for work. But these effortsare all of a piece‹elements in a broad nationwide effort to link education to the real world. All seek aparticular kind of learner, one who can put knowledge and skills into practice as a productive worker, aresponsible citizen, and a more complete human being.

This document completes SCANS' contribution to the conversation. It is in two parts. Part I, Learning aLiving, describes the economic choices facing the United States, defines the workforce issue as weunderstand it, and makes several recommendations to set the nation on the path to a high-performancefuture. Part I outlines the SCANS vision, describes how schools and the private sector can cooperate tocreate a high-performance economy capable of maintaining the nation's standard of living, and offerssuggestions on how to proceed. In particular, it recommends that, as Secretary of Labor, you take steps toassure support for the continued development of the SCANS agenda.

But visions and recommendations, for all their value, must take root and flower in real schools andworkplaces. Part II, A Blueprint for High Performance, provides a more detailed roadmap for those chargedwith the responsibility for the Commission's major concerns: educators, employers, and the designers of ourcertification and assessment systems.

This, the SCANS final report, thus hopes to contribute to improving the nation's productivity and thewell-being of its citizens in the next century. It moves beyond our previous description of what must bedone to build high-performance workplaces and schools to a description of how we can prepare our youngpeople, as well as those workers already on the job, for productive work in the 21st century.

I know that I speak for all of my Commission colleagues in expressing my admiration for your outstanding

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support of this effort and for your leadership of the Department responsible for the health, safety, andwell-being of the working men and women of America.

Respectfully,

William E. BrockChairman

Edward AguirreAguirre International

J. Veronica BigginsNationsBank

James P. BlackBoard of Education Lauderdale County, Alabama

Charles E. BradfordInternational Association ofMachinists & Aerospace Workers

Patricia L. BrockettOffice of the Governor, Iowa

Walton E. BurdickInternational Business Machines

Badi G. FosterAEtna Life and Casualty

William H. GregoryGregory Forest Products

Yvette HerreraCommunications Workers of America

Madelyn P. JenningsGannett Company, Inc.

Steffen E. PalkoCross Timbers Oil Company

Dale ParnellOregon Department of Education

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James D. BurgeMotorola, Inc.

Bruce CarswellGTE Corporation

Thomas W. ChapmanGreater Southeast Healthcare System

Paul F. ColeNew York State AFL/CIO

Gloria J. ConnWayne County Regional Educational ServiceAgency

Gabriel CortinaLos Angeles Unified School District

Frank P. DoyleGeneral Electric Company

Jay H. ForemanUnited Food and Commercial Workers

Joan PattersonUAW/Chrysler National Training Center

Lauren B. ResnickUniversity of Pittsburgh

Richard E. RiveraTGI Friday’s, Inc.

Roger D. SemeradRJR Nabisco Foundation

Thomas G. StichtApplied Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, Inc.

Maria TukevaBell Multicultural High School

Gary D. WattsNational Education Association

Sharyn Marr WetjenHigh School Redirection

Gerald WhitburnWisconsin Department of Health and Social Services

John H. ZimmermanMCI Communications

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PREFACE

The Secretary’s Commission on AchievingNecessary Skills (SCANS) was asked to define theknow-how needed in the workplace and to considerhow this know-how is best assessed. TheCommission was also asked to look to ways todisseminate its findings. The latter mission wasexpressed best by Secretary Martin in stating thatthe result of our efforts should not be a report thatended up gathering dust on already overladenshelves but should be, rather, an action plan forschools and workplaces.

The Commission issued its first report in July 1991.That report defined the five competencies andthree-part foundation that constitute workplaceknow-how. That report, What Work Requires ofSchools, also invited the public to join in theconversation with the Commission.

Since then the SCANS office has received over20,000 phone calls or letters asking for and givinginformation. Some 100,000 reports, 200,000Executive Summaries, and 200,000 Letters toParents, Employers, and Educators have beendistributed. The public has overwhelminglysupported the know-how definition, but the publicalso asked questions that have to be answered:

Why should we change the schools?Wouldn’t it be better to reestablish thestandards of 30 or 40 years ago?

Where will the jobs that need these skills befound? Doesn’t the workplace have to changefirst?Will the proposed changes be fair tominorities, who are a growing proportion ofthe U.S. population?What steps have to be taken in the educationsystem?What has to change in the world of work?What must the Federal Government do?How do the SCANS proposals fit with thenation’s other education reform efforts andwith the economic changes that aretransforming the job market?

This, our final report, informed by field research thatconfirmed the findings of What Work Requires ofSchools, is our answer to these questions. Part Icontains three chapters: Chapter 1 is directed to thequestion, Why change? The answer, in a nutshell, isbecause economic change has made the high schooldiploma and what it represents less of a guarantee ofa decent wage. The SCANS know-how, however, iscorrelated with high wages. Chapter 2 identifies thethree parts of the learning and earning system thatmust change: the schools, the workplace, and theassessment system. Chapter 3 contains the principlesand recommendations that should guide this change.

Part II, which also contains three chapters, is directedto people responsible for implementing change.Chapter 4 is directed to educators who want to createhigh-performance schools. Chapter 5 is directed toemployers, especially to those who are responsiblefor human resources. And Chapter 6 is directed topersons who are developing a national system ofassessment. Part II is not a detailed roadmap or arigid prescription. Instead, it contains suggestionsbased on the experience of those who have taken thefirst steps toward the high-performance future.

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LEARNING A LIVING:A BLUEPRINT FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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PRINCIPLES AND RECOMMENDATIONS

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The Secretary’s Commission on AchievingNecessary Skills (SCANS) was appointed by theSecretary of Labor to determine the skills that ouryoung people need to succeed in the world ofwork. The Commission’s fundamental purpose is toencourage a high-performance economycharacterized by high-skill, high-wageemployment.

Our primary message to schools is this: Lookbeyond the schoolhouse to the roles students willplay when they leave to become workers, parents,and citizens.

Our message to teachers is this: Look beyond yourdiscipline and your classroom to the other coursesyour students take, to your community, and to thelives of your students outside school. Help yourstudents connect what they learn in class to theworld outside.

Our message to employers is this: Look outsideyour company and change your view of yourresponsibilities for human resource development.Your old responsibilities were to select the bestavailable applicants and to retain those you hired.Your new responsibilities must be to improve theway you organize work and to develop the humanresources in your community, your firm, and yournation.

We want to state at the outset that the well-being ofthe nation---and its citizens---is not synonymouswith economic status. There is much more to lifethan earning a living, and we

want more from schools than productive workers.We want citizens who can discharge theresponsibilities that go with living in a democraticsociety and with being parents. As we said in ourfirst report: "A solid education is its own reward andhas value beyond specific skills." We are not talkingabout turning our high schools into trade schools.Nor do we suggest that schools ignore the beauty ofliterature and scientific theories or the lessons ofhistory and geography.

SCANS focused on one important aspect ofschooling: what we call the "learning a living"system. In 1991 SCANS issued its initial report,What Work Requires of Schools. As outlined in thatreport, a high performance workplace requiresworkers who have a solid foundation in the basicliteracy and computational skills, in the thinkingskills necessary to put knowledge to work, and inthe personal qualities that make workers dedicatedand trustworthy.

But a solid foundation is not enough.High-performance workplaces also requirecompetencies: the ability to manage resources, towork amicably and productively with others, toacquire and use information, to master complexsystems, and to work with a variety of technologies.This combination of foundation skills andworkplace competencies---"workplace know-how"(see Exhibit 1)---is not taught in many schools orrequired for most diplomas.

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EXHIBIT 1

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WORKPLACE KNOW-HOW

The know-how identified by SCANS is made up of five competencies and a three-part foundation ofskills and personal qualities that are needed for solid job performance. These are:

WORKPLACE COMPETENCIES: --- Effective workers can productively use:

Resources --- They know how to allocate time, money, materials, space, and staff.

Interpersonal skills --- They can work on teams, teach others, serve customers, lead, negotiate,and work well with people from culturally diverse backgrounds.

Information --- They can acquire and evaluate data, organize and maintain files, interpret andcommunicate, and use computers to process information.

Systems --- They understand social, organizational, and technological systems; they can monitorand correct performance; and they can design or improve systems.

Technology --- They can select equipment and tools, apply technology to specific tasks, andmaintain and troubleshoot equipment.

FOUNDATION SKILLS: --- Competent workers in the high-performance workplace need:

Basic Skills --- reading, writing, arithmetic and mathematics, speaking, and listening.

Thinking Skills --- the ability to learn, to reason, to think creatively, to make decisions, and tosolve problems.

Personal Qualities --- individual responsibility, self-esteem and self-management, sociability, andintegrity.

The time when a high school diploma was a sureticket to a job is within the memory of workers whohave not yet retired; yet in many places today a highschool diploma is little more than a certificate ofattendance. As a result, employers discount thevalue of all diplomas,

and many students do not work hard in high school.

In fact, the market value of a high school diplomahas fallen. The proportion of men between the agesof 25 and 54 with high

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school diplomas who earn less than enough tosupport a family of four above the poverty line isgrowing alarmingly. Among African-Americanmen with 12 years of schooling, the proportionwith low earnings rose from 20 percent in 1969 to42.7 percent in 1989; among Hispanic men, from16.4 to 35.9 percent; and among white men, from8.3 percent to 22.6 percent. In other words, in1989 more than two in five African-Americanmen, one in three Hispanic men, and one in fivewhite men, all with high school diplomas, did notearn enough to lift a family of four above poverty.Unless there is a second earner, their families willnot have what most would call a decent living.

The workplace know-how that this Commissionhas defined is related both to competentperformance and to higher earnings for the peoplewho possess it. When the Commission comparedthe know-how required in 23 high-wage jobs withthe requirements of 23 low-wage jobs, theconclusion was inescapable: workers with moreknow-how command a higher wage---on average,58 percent, or $11,200 a year, higher.

Everyone must have the opportunity to reach thehigher levels of skills and competencies theCommission found to be associated with highwage jobs. To that end, we have recast the broadprinciples set forth in What Work Requires ofSchools as the context for our recommendations:

The qualities of high performance thattoday characterize our most competitivecompanies must become the standard forthe vast majority of our employers, publicand private, large and small, local andglobal.

The nation’s schools must be transformedinto high-performance organizations.

All Americans should be entitled tomultiple opportunities to learn theSCANS know-how well enough to earn adecent living.

To make those principles a reality we recommend:

1. The nation’s school systems should makethe SCANS foundation skills andworkplace competencies explicit objectivesof instruction at all levels.

2. Assessment systems should providestudents and workers with a r’esum’edocumenting attainment of the SCANSknow-how.

3. All employers, public and private, shouldincorporate the SCANS know-how into alltheir human resource development efforts.

4. The Federal Government should continueto bridge the gap between school and thehigh-performance workplace, byadvancing the SCANS agenda.

5. Every employer in America should createits own strategic vision around theprinciples of the high-performanceworkplace.

IMPLEMENTATION

The Commission recognizes that nationwidepolicies are of little value until they are carried outby people on the front line. Cities such as FortWorth, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Tampa,

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and Louisville and states such as Florida, Indiana,New York, and Oregon have taken steps to put thebroad SCANS principles in place in their schoolsystems at the local and state levels. In thecorporate sector, TGI Friday’s, MCI, Gannett,Motorola, NationsBank, and AT&T (and its majorunions) are taking action. A number of tradeorganizations in the hospitality field have joinedtogether to introduce the SCANS language intotheir industry. The U.S. Department of Labor ismoving to build SCANS into various aspects ofJob Training Partnership Act programs. TheFederal Government’s Office of PersonnelManagement (OPM) is seeking ways to applySCANS findings in skills centers for Federalemployees.

These leaders and those who follow them canbegin the systemic change to a high-performancefuture. In the process they will have to reinventeducation, reorganize work and work-basedlearning, and restructure educational assessment.

REINVENTING K-12 EDUCATION

During the 1980s the United States, seeking toimprove public schools, tried to get more resultsthrough tighter curricula, higher certificationstandards for teachers, and more testing ofeveryone. Despite the effort, students wereperforming essentially no better at the end of thedecade than they were at the beginning. More ofthe same was not a successful strategy.

As this Commission argued in What WorkRequires of Schools, American society todayrequires that elementary and secondary

schools meet drastically different goals. The jobnow is to bring all students to a level that, in thepast, only a small minority reached. Expertsuniversally agree that this job requires reinventingelementary and secondary education.

President Bush and the nation’s governors haveagreed on a set of six goals for education. Thesegoals have been generally agreed to by stategovernments, education leaders, and businessgroups such as the Business Roundtable. TheCommission supports all six goals; itsrecommendations are particularly pertinent to thetwo goals that refer to preparing youth and adultsfor productive employment in our competitiveeconomy.

The experience of schools, districts, and states thatare advancing toward high-performance schoolingprovides important lessons for educators wishing toteach the SCANS know-how:

Teaching should be offered "in context,"that is, students should learn contentwhile solving realistic problems."Learning in order to know" should notbe separated from "learning in order todo."

Improving the match between what workrequires and what students are taughtrequires changing how instruction isdelivered and how students learn.

High performance requires a new systemof school administrators and assessment.

The entire community must be involved.

The experience of Fort Worth, Texas, withrestructuring its instructional program has

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shown how the SCANS classroom can differ fromthe traditional classroom. In Fort Worth, theconventions of today’s classroom (teacheromniscience, student passivity and isolation, rigiddisciplinary borders, and "abstracted" knowledgeand facts) are being replaced with sophisticated andmore realistic concepts of instruction and learning(the teacher may not know all the answers, studentsoften learn best in groups, and knowledge is relatedto real problems).

Resources

Of all the resources required for reinventingschools around the SCANS ends, none are moreimportant than those devoted to teacher trainingand staff development. Providing trainingopportunities for instructional staff will be costly,especially if teachers and administrators are to begiven the time they need during the school day andsummers for training. But teachers,noninstructional staff, and building andschool-district administrators need time if they areto:

Develop new pedagogical skills required toteach in context and to develop active,collaborative learning environments;

Learn new instructional management skillsand use new instructional technologies todevelop new ways of interacting withstudents; and

Gain experience with the principles of highperformance as applied in restructuredworkplaces.

Emerging instructional technologies promise torevolutionize teaching and learning

by enabling teachers and students to change theirtraditional roles. When technology dispensesinformation, teachers are free to coach and facilitatestudent learning. With technology monitoringlearning, students can become active learners,working to acquire new skills.

The SCANS competencies cannot be widely taughtunless teachers have instructional materials:textbooks and other print materials, andcomputer-based and multimedia materials. Videoand multimedia materials are essential to creatingthe realistic contexts in which the competencies areused.

Equity and Diversity

The changes advocated by the Commission promisegreat benefits to minority and low-incomeAmericans. One-third of new entrants into theAmerican labor force are members of minoritygroups; they are entitled to an education that willlet them learn and will equip them to find and holda decent job. Because children vary, not only asindividuals but also as members of differentcultural, racial, and ethnic groups, education musttake into account three basic elements thatcontribute to this diversity:

1. Differences in family income,

2. Limited English-speaking proficiency (LEP),and

3. Differences in learning styles.

Variation and diversity are not the enemies ofhigh-quality education. The enemy is rigidinsistence on a factory model of schooling, aprescription for failure that refuses to accommodate

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diversity or to allow those students with specialstrengths to function productively.

REORGANIZING FOR HIGH-PERFORMANCE WORK AND WORK-BASED LEARNING

Both high-performance workplaces and highlytrained workers are needed if we are to build ahigh-skilled, high-wage economy. Reinventing K-12education is necessary but not sufficient becauseabout 80 percent of the workers on whom Americanemployers will depend as we enter the 21st centuryare already on the job. To create high-performanceworkplaces, employers must actively work todevelop the skills and competence of these workers.Only in this way can they constantly improve thequality of the goods and services they provide andsatisfy their customers’ needs.

Every American employer, public or private, largeor small, local or global, must consider the humanresources needed for high performance and highquality. Yet, today, American companies do muchless training than some of our internationalcompetitors; in fact, fewer than 10 percent offront-line American workers now receive training ofany kind.

The Commission believes that employer-sponsoredtraining, both public and private, must be upgradedand organized around the SCANS know-how. As auseful first step, coalitions of trade associations,business organizations, labor unions, and industryspecific groups could develop training strategies and

materials around the SCANS know-how for useby all businesses, particularly small firms.

Many young people between the ages of 16 to 25today are frustrated because their high schoolstalked of English and geometry, but theirworkplace speaks a different language. In asystem that serves people beyond high school,employers would describe job requirements interms of the SCANS workplace competenciesand use these for recruitment and employeedevelopment. Human resource and trainingmanagers would reorient their education andtraining offerings to include not only job specificskills but also the SCANS workplacecompetencies and foundation skills.

Providers of education---vocational schools,proprietary schools, community colleges, adulteducation, and work-based programs---wouldoffer instruction and certification in SCANSworkplace competencies. Referral agencies---jobcounselors in high schools, in employmentagencies and the Employment Service, or in theskill centers newly recommended by theAdministration---would assess their clients’SCANS workplace competencies, understand joband educational requirements and opportunitiesin the same terms, and refer clients tocareer-enhancing work and education.

RESTRUCTURING EDUCATIONALASSESSMENT

A system for assessing and certifying the SCANSworkplace know how is essential. If employersand colleges pay attention to the SCANSfoundation skills and workplace

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competencies, students will work to acquire them.If teachers have to certify that the know-how isacquired, they will make the effort to teach it. Ifparents and community groups understand thestandards that graduates are expected to attain,they will demand that their children reach theselevels.

The Commission supports the emerging nationalconsensus calling for a new, nationwide, voluntaryassessment system. The Commission believes thesystem should incorporate new techniques ofjudging performance---not "tests" as traditionallyunderstood, but assessment tied to learning goals.The National Council on Education Standards andTesting has endorsed the inclusion of the SCANSworkplace competencies in the system itrecommended, stating that the SCANScompetencies "can and should be integrated intothe national standards and assessments."1 TheCommission hopes that the curriculumdevelopment work of several groups---theNational Council of Teachers of Mathematics, theNational Council of Teachers of English, theNational Science Teachers Association, andothers---will follow this advice.

The Commission believes that a national system,as recommended by the National Council onEducation Standards and Testing, should integrateassessment of proficiency in SCANS know-howwith other equally important outcomes ofschooling. Such a system is needed to:

Communicate world-class standards ofcurriculum content and student performance,and

Certify individual performance and therebymotivate students and their teachers to meetthese standards.

The challenge is to design a system that clearlyestablishes that all young people in our nation havethe right to an education up to a recognizedperformance standard‹without putting the burdenof failure on students' backs.

The Commission suggests establishing for allstudents, beginning in middle school, a cumulativer'esum'e. The r'esum'e would contain informationabout courses taken, projects completed, andproficiency levels attained in each competency. Astudent who accomplishes enough to meet anoverall standard would be awarded a certificate ofinitial mastery (CIM), a universally recognizedstatement of experience and accomplishment. Theinformation would mean the same thing toeverybody: this person has the SCANS workplaceknow-how noted here.

Students would be free to use their résumés inseeking employment or further education at anytime. Employers could be expected to demandfrom students the highest level of certification thatthe job demands (i.e., high-performanceworkplaces can demand high skills including, butnot limited to, those required for the CIM). Itwould be up to the consumers of thisinformation---employers,

_________________________

1 Raising Standards on American Education (Washington, D.C.: National Council on Education Standards and Testing, January1992).

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colleges, the military, or others---to decide whatweight to give each element in the r’esum’e, usingtheir own needs and criteria as guides.

In addition to the education-based assessment, a wayto assess and certify persons who are already in theworkforce (an experience-based assessment) isneeded. The Federal Government, some privatefirms, and a coalition of trade associations in thehospitality industry have begun the hard work thatwill lead to the needed assessment tools.

IMPROVING THE "LEARNING A LIVING"SYSTEM

The Commission understands that preparation forwork is only part of the mission of schools, and thatschool is only part of the learning process. PresidentBush has spoken of the need for America to be anation of learners and for the "education revolution"to extend beyond the schools into the community.This report is concerned with those parts ofeducation and work that form the "learning a living"system.

In the learning-a-living system all students, at leastthrough the second year of high school, learn theSCANS know-how in English, math, science,history, and geography, in other classes (e.g., art),and in extracurricular activities. That is, all studentsfollow a common academic program, a single track,until they are about 16. After age 16, some studentsare more likely to be learning the SCANSknow-how in the context of work, perhaps byspecializing in the application

of the competencies to a particular industry, suchas manufacturing or hospitality.

Some of these students will go on to communitycolleges in a 2+2 tech-prep program, a programthat begins with the last two years of high schooland leads to an associate degree after two years ofcollege. Other students will continue to learn theSCANS know-how in academic courses as theymove toward a four-year college program. Otherswill, after graduating, go directly to work andwork-based learning.

In addition toformal schooling, learning takesplace through employers and work-basededucation. This learning should continue for alife-time, supported by the human resourcefunctions of recruiting, developing, and retainingemployees. Workplace education producesportable certificates that are valued in manyworkplaces.

Information should flow from employers toeducators through recruiting and employeedevelopment activities, including the ways inwhich employees progress up career ladders.Educators, in turn, should inform employers ofthe workplace competencies that students haveattained. Today, neither employers nor educatorsreceive or deliver information effectively. TheSCANS aim is to improve the information flow(and the learning and earning) so that theeconomy will deliver the high productivity andwage increases that characterized the UnitedStates in the years from 1937 to 1973.

Exhibit 2 outlines the actions that are needed toreach the SCANS goals. Unless the

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nation takes forceful action on this agenda, thenation’s schools, employers, students, and workerswill not fare well in the next century.

This, the SCANS final report, provides a blueprintfor groups at the national, state, and local levels.Each community must decide what

EXHIBIT 2

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RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE "LEARNING A LIVING" SYSTEM

THE COMMISSION RECOMMENDS FULL IMPLEMENTATIONOF THE FOLLOWING ACTIONS BY THE YEAR 2000:

Reinventing Schools

Workplace know-how (the SCANS foundation and workplace competencies) should be taughtalong the entire continuum of education, from kindergarten through college.

Every student should complete middle school (about age 14) with an introduction to workplaceknow-how.

Every student by about age 16 should attain initial mastery of the SCANS know-how.

Every student should complete high school sufficiently proficient in the SCANS know-how to earna decent living.

All federally funded programs for youth and adults, including vocational education programs,should teach the SCANS know-how.

Fostering Work-Based Learning

Federal, state, and local agencies should incorporate SCANS workplace competencies into theirown employee programs.

Private-sector work-based training programs should incorporate training in the SCANS workplacecompetencies.

Coalitions of businesses, associations, government employers, and labor organizations should teachthe SCANS competencies to the current workforce, including employees of small businesses.

Reorganizing the Workplace

The vast majority of employers should adopt the standards of quality and high performance thatnow characterize our most competitive companies.

Firms should develop internal training programs to bring employees to the proficiency in theSCANS competencies needed for high-performance work organizations.

Restructuring Assessment

A national education-based assessment system should be implemented that will permit educationalinstitutions to certify the levels of the SCANS competencies that their students have achieved.

Public and private employers should define requirements for higher-level competencies.

Employment-based assessments should permit diagnoses of individual learning needs.

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resources will be allocated to create a system thatwill meet its specific goals. But first, each mustbecome involved in a conversation about it placein a fast-changing world as we approach the year2000. Our nation’s ability to lead in a globaleconomy will depend on the out-

come of those conversations. This Commission isconfident that once they are informed,communities will commit themselves tomaintaining the American dream for themselvesand their children.

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PART I

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LEARNINGA LIVING

1

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2

Chapter 1TIME TO DECIDE

About 150 years ago a French visitor named Alexisde Tocqueville described the United States as a"land of wonders" in which "what is not yet done isonly what [they have] not yet attempted to do."Through the generations the people of the UnitedStates have proudly lived up to that description.American ingenuity and creativity expanded thefrontiers of technology. Our science and engineeringtook men and women into space. And Americanknow-how gave the United States pride of place inthe world’s economy.

Ingenuity, creativity, hard work, and know-howmade the American dream come true for millions ofour citizens. Much of the rest of the world is nowtrying to live it. The dream is that the standard ofliving of each new generation will exceed that oftheir parents. Holding fast to that dream in theUnited States is what this document is all about,because today this "land of wonders" is being testedanew.

For most of this century, America took its goods tothe world without worrying about competition fromabroad. The quality of our goods and services wassecond to none. American production techniquesand know-how were the envy of the world.American markets, isolated by two great oceans,belonged to American producers. Those days arebehind us.

Today, telecommunications and modern airtransportation have created a truly global vil-

lage. More than 70 percent of Americanmanufactured products are subject to competitionfrom abroad. The globalization of finance,capital, technology, and labor means that aproduct can be designed in one country,engineered in another, produced in yet a third,and distributed around the world. If the nextgeneration of Americans is to enjoy theincreasing economic prosperity that blessed thepost-World War II generation, the United Statesmust be prepared to respond to these challenges.

Internationally, competitive pressure on theAmerican economy can only increase. As a newcentury approaches, Europe will be economicallyunited for the first time in history. Its hugemarket will stretch from the North Sea to theMediterranean, from Ireland to what used to becalled the Iron Curtain. The countries of EasternEurope and the new members of theCommonwealth of Independent States willstruggle in fits and starts to develop market-basedeconomies. Japan and other newly industrializedAsian nations will continue to succeed.

If we are to respond effectively, trade agreementsmust give all parties a fair chance to compete.Barriers to American products overseas must bediminished. The private sector must invest morein our country’s plants, equipment, andtechnology. Yet none of these will be sufficientwithout urgent and effective action to improvethe productivity and skills of

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our workforce-the central concern of SCANS. Weare concerned both with preparing young peoplestill in school and with upgrading the skills ofpeople already in the workforce.

However, this concern must not be misinterpreted.We want to state at the outset that the well-beingof the nation-and of its citizens-is not synonymouswith economic status. There is much more to lifethan earning a living, and we want more fromeducation than productive workers. We wantcitizens who can discharge the responsibilities thatgo with living in a democratic society and withbecoming parents. As we said in our first report:"A solid education is its own reward and has valuebeyond specific skills." We are not talking abouttransforming high schools into trade schools thatignore the beauty of literature, the elegance ofscientific theories, or the lessons of history andgeography. To quote a comment made after thefirst SCANS report:

SCANS calls for a revival of the ancient andhonorable idea of a liberal education, theeducation that makes lives of ordered libertypossible. Writing more than 150 years agoin The Uses of University, John HenryNewman captured the essence of theSCANS report when he said that the onlytruly vocational education is a liberaleducation.1

Workplace productivity, however, is the key tonational wealth and earning a decent living isimportant to most of us. America is the world’swealthiest nation because its workers

are the world’s most productive. But America nolonger leads the world in productivity increases,that is, in the extra amount produced per workereach year. In the last generation, Americanproductivity has grown at a snail’s pace, droppingfrom an average growth rate of 3 percent a yearbetween 1937 and 1973 to less than 1 percent since1973. Over the past 20 years, wealth for bothfamilies and the nation was increased by puttingmore people, particularly more women, to work,but we can no longer sustain that strategy.

Clearly, all of us-as individuals, communities,employers, and a nation-have reached a point ofdecision. We can choose between raisingproductivity through a conscious effort to build anequitable, high-skill, high-wage future, or we canignore the productivity side of the economicequation by settling for a low-skill, low-wageeconomy and its inevitable accompaniment,declining standards of living for most.2 We darenot choose badly.

A HIGH-PERFORMANCE ECONOMY

To choose well is to go on the offensive. TheSCANS goal is a high-performance economy-onecharacterized by high skills, high wages, and fullemployment-in which every human being’sresources are put to their best use. Thehigh-performance workplace is one that empowersworkers to participate and utilize fully their skillsand knowledge. The future we

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1Denis P. Doyle, "Focusing on Education," Atlantic Monthly (October 1991).

2America’s Choice: High Skills or Low Wages! (Rochester, N.Y.: National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), (June1990).

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want for our country and our children leads usinevitably in this direction.

A blue-ribbon Commission on IndustrialProductivity noted in 1989:

In the course of its work the Commissiondiscovered many American firms that arethriving in the new economic climate andindeed are leading the way in internationalcompetition. The success of those firmssuggests a vision of a new industrial America,a nation equipped to exploit the best ideas andinnovations from abroad as well as its owninherent strengths.3

The characteristics of these high-performanceworkplaces are easy enough to spot, though difficultto achieve:

Flexible and decentralized productiontechniques;

Employee empowerment, by givingemployees decision-making responsibility,career paths, and wage progression tied toskills;

A strong emphasis on "excellence," oncontinuously improving work performance,and on the kind of management for qualitythat reduces error and rework, increasescustomer satisfaction, and cuts costs;

Continual training to upgrade skills andemployees’ ability to function effectively in aproblem-oriented environment; and

Increasing integration of tasks through workteams and the identification of workers withtheir products and services.

What Work Requires of Schools was the firstSCANS contribution to the high-performancediscussion. It created a common vocabulary tohelp the worlds of work and school tocommunicate. Despite the widespread agreementamong employers and educators that too manyyoung people complete school unequipped for theworkplace, there has been no clearcommunication about what the schools shoulddo. We described educators and business leadersas "ships passing in the night" on this issue.

That report also acknowledged that "schools domore than prepare people to make a living . . .They prepare people to live full lives-toparticipate in their communities, to raise families,and to enjoy the leisure that is the fruit of theirlabor." Nevertheless, we must emphasize thatschools have an important role to play in movingour nation to a high- performance future.

WORKPLACE KNOW-HOW

This Commission began its task by definingcompetency in the high-performance workplace.Defining competency led to a majordata-gathering effort, in which we talked tohundreds of employers, supervisors, andespecially employees across the entire spectrumof the American economy. The SCANSinvestigation found a clear pattern ofrequirements. A high-performance workplacedemands workers who have a solid foundation inthe traditional basic academic skills, in thethinking skills necessary

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3Michael L. Dertouzos, Richard K. Lester, and Robert M. Solow, Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge (Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press, 1989).

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to put knowledge to work, and in the personalcharacteristics that make a worker confident,trustworthy, and responsible. We called this the"foundation" of workplace know-how. But a solidfoundation is not enough. High-performanceworkplaces also require the ability to manageresources, to work amicably and productively withothers, to acquire and use information, to understandand master complex systems, and to workcomfortably with a variety of technologies. Wecalled these the "competencies."

Workplace know-how is a combination of thefoundation skills and the workplace competencies(see Exhibit A). The competencies cannot beachieved without the foundation; but the twocan-and should-be learned simultaneously. Theknow-how is not taught in most high schools orrequired for most diplomas.

The day when a high school diploma was a surejob ticket is within the memory of workers whohave not yet retired. In many places today,however, a high school diploma is

EXHIBIT A

WORKPLACE KNOW-HOW

The know-how identified by SCANS is made up of five competencies and a three-part foundation ofskills and personal qualities that are needed for solid job performance. These are:

WORKPLACE COMPETENCIES:---Effective workers can productively use:

Resources---They know how to allocate time, money, materials, space, and staff.

Interpersonal skills---They can work on teams, teach others, serve customers, lead,negotiate, and work well with people from culturally diverse backgrounds.

Information---They can acquire and evaluate data, organize and maintain files, interpret andcommunicate, and use computers to process information.

Systems---They understand social, organizational, and technological systems; they canmonitor and correct performance; and they can design or improve systems.

Technology---They can select equipment and tools, apply technology to specific tasks, andmaintain and troubleshoot equipment.

FOUNDATION SKILLS:---Competent workers in the high-performance workplace need:

Basic Skills---reading, writing, arithmetic and mathematics, speaking, and listening.

Thinking Skills---the ability to learn, to reason, to think creatively, to make decisions, and tosolve problems.

Personal Qualities--individual responsibility, self-esteem and self-management, sociability,and integrity.

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EXHIBIT B

THE PROPORTION OF MALE HIGH SCHOOLGRADUATES UNABLE TO SUPPORT A FAMILY*

Percent

*Males, ages 25-54, with 12 years of education whose own earnings are less than poverty levelfor a family of four. Family income may be higher.

Source: Sheldon Danziger, "The Poor," in David Hornbeck and Lester Salamon, Human Capitaland America’s Future (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1991), p. 148, and unpublished data for1989.

little more than a certificate of attendance. As aresult, employers discount the value of alldiplomas, and students do not work hard in school.

As Exhibit B shows, the market value of a highschool diploma is falling. The proportion of menbetween the ages of 25 and 54 with high schooldiplomas who earn less than enough to

support a family of four above the poverty line isgrowing alarmingly.4 Among African-Americanmen with 12 years of schooling, the proportionwith low earnings rose from 20 percent in 1969 to42.7 percent in 1989; among Hispanic men, from16.4 to 35.9 percent; and among white men from8.3 percent to 22.6 per-

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4Data on women in the workforce, relating their educational levels to earnings, are not reliable over the same time period becausethe participation of women in the world of work changed so dramatically.

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cent. Unless there is a second earner, their familieswill not have what most would call a decent living.What these figures mean is that the Americandream has turned into a hollow promise for manypeople, especially those who do not go to college.For some, their high school diploma has become aticket to underemployment or unemployment. In thewords of What Work Requires of Schools, "Theyface bleak prospects-dead-end work, interruptedonly by periods of unemployment, with little chanceto climb a career ladder."

CHICKEN OR EGG?

Many people have asked, Is there really a skillsshortage? Is the high-performance workplace areality? More to the point from the SCANSperspective, Is the know-how we have definedreally related to job performance and to rewards forcompetent performance? These are thoughtful,legitimate questions. What is the evidence?

The growing wage premium between workers withcollege degrees and those with only a high schooldiploma is a powerful sign that more knowledgeand skills are in relatively high demand. Too often,however, employers are turning to collegegraduates to obtain skills that, in other nations, arefound in high school graduates.

What previously has been only anecdotal evidenceregarding a skills shortage is now

being confirmed by surveys. In a recent survey bythe National Association of Manufacturers, forexample, employers reported that they had tointerview six applicants to find one qualifiedemployee. One-quarter of the companies said theycould not improve product quality becauseemployees were not capable of learningappropriate skills. About 30 percent complainedof being unable to install modern work systemsbecause employees could not learn new jobs.5

Nevertheless, commentators on the previousSCANS report thought we had overstated our casewhen we reported that "more than half our youngpeople leave school without the knowledge orfoundation required to find and hold a good job."America’s economy, they argued, is not nearly sofar along in developing high-performanceworkplaces that there is a skill shortage; indeed,there is more likely to be a shortage of good jobs.Other commentators asked, Which comes first: dohighly skilled workers enable their employers todevelop a high-performance workplace, or doemployers first create such workplaces and thenlook for the right kind of worker?

This is a classic chicken-and-egg argument. It canbe resolved only by recognizing that bothhigh-performance workplaces and highly trainedworkers are needed.6 Whatever their order, eachreinforces the other, and the absence of either canretard the other’s development, ultimatelyweakening the nation and slow-

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5William Kolberg and Foster Smith, "Our Unsung Olympic Hero," Washington Post (February 23, 1991).

6Arnold Packer and John Wirt, "Restructuring Work and Learning," in George Peterson and Wayne Vroman, Urban LaborMarkets and Job Opportunities (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute, in press).

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ly lowering Americans’ standard of living. Whatremains true is that firms cannot organize for atruly competitive and productive future aroundskills they cannot find. Conversely, studentscontemplating work will not be motivated todevelop new skills unless employers value thoseskills.

Is the SCANS know-how related to higher wages?In addition to defining the skills needed foremployment, the Commission collected taskdescriptions from workers and supervisorsinterviewed during the SCANS research.7 We laterrated examples of specific job tasks associatedwith each of the SCANS skills on a scale ofdifficulty from 1 (low) to 5 (high). Exhibit Ccompares the know-how required in 23 high-wagejobs with the know-how requirements of 23low-wage jobs. The conclusion is inescapable: Onaverage, workers with high levels of know-how, asmeasured on the 1-to-5 scale, command a weeklywage 58 percent higher than people with lowerlevels of the skills. Workers in the high-wage jobsreceived an average weekly wage of $513; those inthe low-wage jobs, $298.8

On an annual basis, the average difference isimpressive. It amounts to about $11,200, enoughfor a down payment on a new house, a year of achild’s college education, or a moderately pricednew car. SCANS know-how pays off, forindividuals, for families, and for the largereconomy.

Bringing the SCANS know-how to everyone willnecessarily involve all of American education,K-12 and beyond, including colleges, trade andvocational schools, businesses, and tradeassociations. Whether they proceed directly towork, apprenticeship, the armed services, orfurther education, all young Americans shouldcomplete high school with the know-how theyneed to make their way in the world. Withincurrent efforts to restructure education, theCommission wants to identify what has to be doneto teach the SCANS know-how. There are noproven blueprints because no nation has everbefore attempted such an effort. Yet, in the wordsof Tocqueville, what Americans have not yet doneis only what they have not yet attempted to do. Thetask we outline will not be accomplished easily orsoon. But it must be done-and done well.

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7The Commission interviewed about 200 people. The sample was not a scientifically valid cross section of the Americanworkforce.

8The SCANS research involved 50 jobs. For this particular analysis they were divided into 25 high-wage and 25 low-wage jobs.Four jobs did not fit the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) classification scheme and were deleted, leaving two job groups with 23jobs apiece. High-wage jobs (e.g., programming technicians) paid between $374 and $654 a week; low-wage jobs (e.g.,child-care aide) paid between $203 and $373 a week. Data on which Exhibit C is based can be found in Skills and Tasks for Jobs:A SCANS Report for America 2000 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, 1992). See Appendix C.

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EXHIBIT C

HIGH-WAGE JOBS REQUIRE HIGHERLEVELS OF THE SCANS HOW-HOW

Source: See footnote 8.

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Chapter 2SOLVING THE SKILLS PROBLEM

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The ability of a workforce to make the best of new technologies may be a country’sbest competitive advantage. . . To change it, governments need to start at the schoolgates.

---The Economist9

A world-class economy requires a world-classworkforce. We cannot have the former without thelatter. The economic evidence is clear: a significantproportion of productivity growth in the UnitedStates earlier this century depended on the growingskills of the workforce.10 The Commissionconcludes that in recent years the United States’ability to grow has been hampered because itshuman resource base is badly in need of upgrading.

REORGANIZING THE WORKPLACE

In a world where routine production and servicesare up for grabs globally and hundreds of millionsof workers overseas are happy to work for less thanAmerican workers, our main hope for competitiveadvantage lies in the value our workforce can addin terms of quality, flexibility, and customization.The game has changed. American workers andmanagers cannot win playing by the old rules. Ruleone was that the boss was always right. Rule twowas

that employees did what they were told. And rulethree was that companies should standardizeproduction because profitability depended onproducing more and selling it more cheaply, whatexperts call "economies of scale." There wereplenty of other rules---each a variation of thesethree---all designed to support standardizedproduction in enormous volume, a factory modelof work based on the research of FrederickTaylor.11

The old workplace could not use, and in fact didnot want, too much creativity or ingenuity amongthe workforce. A small number of people acted asdecision makers---gathering and siftinginformation, setting up systems, organizingworkflow and office arrangements, manipulatingdata to solve problems, and, above all, handing outorders to govern the minute-to-minute actions ofemployees. For this old workplace, the publicschools were ideal. The schools did a magnificentjob of turning out just the kind of productrequired. Workers needed

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9"Innovation," The Economist (January 11, 1992), p. 19.

10Edward F. Denison, Trends in American Economic Growth, 1929-1982 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1985). Hisanalysis indicates that education was directly responsible for about 27 percent of all growth in output per worker between theDepression years and the 1980s. Another 44 percent of productivity growth was attributed to new knowledge, that is, thecombination of education, research, development, and new inventions and technologies.

11Frederick W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York: W.W. Norton, 1967).

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enough education to read, write, and comprehendinstructions. Above all they needed to followinstructions faithfully and show up for workreliably.

But in the emerging high-performance workplacevirtually everyone acts as a decision maker,gathers and sifts information, sets up andtroubleshoots systems, organizes workflow andteam arrangements, manipulates data to solveproblems, and, on occasion, provides directions tocolleagues. Modern work is just too complex for asmall cadre of managers to possess all theanswers. Consider automobile repair as anexample: It has been estimated that in 1965 amechanic who understood about 500 pages ofvarious repair manuals could fix just about any caron the road. Today the same mechanic would neednearly 500,000 pages of manuals, the equivalent ofabout 50 New York City telephone books.

REINVENTING EDUCATION

The SCANS thesis is that schools must alsobecome high-performance workplaces. That iswhere SCANS’ workplace know-how comes in.The schools must teach it, and, furthermore, mustensure that all graduates possess it. Despite thewidespread public outcry about deficiencies inschool preparation, this Commission was able tofind only limited evidence that educationalinstitutions are taking this new high-performancepath.

The educational reforms of the 1980sdemonstrated that it is futile to try to wring highperformance from schools by doing more of thesame_more tests, more classes, and more

time, thus playing the old school game with moreof the old rules. The new game requires new rules.A process of educational invention is required torestructure schools around teaching the SCANSfoundation skills and competencies so that"learning to do" is integrated with "learning toknow." The experience of schools, districts, andstates that are breaking new ground in advancinghigh-performance schooling is described more fullyin Chapter 4. These pioneers provide importantlessons:

Teaching should be offered in context."Learning in order to know" should notbe separated from "learning in order todo."

Improving the match between what workrequires and what students are taughtrequires changing how instruction isdelivered and how students learn

High-performance requires a new systemof school administration and assessment.

The entire community must be involved.

SCANS believes that applying these lessons willfree up the schools to teach new skills in new ways.It insists that students need not first learn in theabstract what they will later be expected to apply. Itconsiders students as workers in the learningenterprise, not as buck-

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ets waiting to be filled. It liberates teachers todevelop new pedagogical and instructional skills.

Equity and Diversity

The changes advocated by this Commissionpromise great benefits to minority and low-incomeAmericans. The increasing number of high schoolgraduates with lower earnings, as was shown byExhibit B, demonstrates that many are poorlyserved today. But in a high-performance economynobody can be left out. In the "production model"organization of schooling, many minority andlow-income youngsters are passed through thesystem, rarely challenged, only to discover too latethat lack of genuine achievement bars furtherprogress. The reinvented schools advocated bySCANS promise to change that situation byestablishing clear standards for what all studentsneed to know and be able to do, and thenorganizing education and work to entitle studentsto the services they need to meet the standards. Forthe first time, parents will be armed with theknowledge of what students have to do in order tosucceed. They will know how well theiryoungsters are doing as they move through school.

This agenda is all the more critical as the UnitedStates approaches a new century. Alreadyone-third of new entrants into the American laborforce are members of minority groups; they areentitled to an education that will provide the skillsneeded to find and hold a

decent job. That objective cannot be accomplishedby providing the same educational experience forall. Children vary, not only as individuals but alsoas members of different cultural, racial, and ethnicgroups. Education and training efforts mustrespond to three basic elements that contribute tothis diversity:

1. Differences in family income. Children ofpoverty are an increasing proportion of theschool population; and family andcommunity problems place a growing burdenon the schools that serve them.12

2. Limited English-speaking proficiency (LEP).The 1990 census reports a 53 percent growthin Hispanic populations and a 108 percentgrowth among Asian-minority people inAmerica. Job success requires the SCANSknow-how in English. Schools must developthese skills in a linguistically and culturallysensitive manner. Teachers must useapproaches that respect personal interactionsacross cultures and cultural patterns ofdealing with authority and responding tofamily obligations.

3. Differences in learning styles. Recentcognitive research points to the diversity ofstyles by which people learn. Education inthe SCANS skills must begin with therealization that there are many paths to thesame goal; that assessments should play tostudents’ strengths, not their weaknesses; andthat tests should not needlessly penalizestudents who need more time, areunconventional thinkers, or are bored bymultiple-choice tests.13 Schools should keepin mind the many famous people such asThomas Edison,

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12The work of James Comer at Yale and the activities of organizations such as Cities in the Schools are examples of productiverelations between schools and low-income communities that work to sustain learning.

13Howard Gardner, The Unschooled Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1991), and Frames of Mind (New York: Basic Books,1987).

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Gustave Flaubert, Woodrow Wilson, andNelson Rockefeller, who were initiallyclassified as poor students and went on togreat success.14

Variation and diversity are not the enemies ofhigh-quality education. The enemy is rigidinsistence on a factory model of schooling, aprescription for failure that refuses toaccommodate diversity or allow those studentswith special strengths to function productively.

REDESIGNING WORK-BASED LEARNING

If high-performance workplaces are to become thenorm in the United States, the SCANS know-howmust also form the foundation of adult educationand training programs. More than 80 percent of thepeople who will be working as the new centurydawns are already on the job.

By international standards, most American workersreceive very little training. Where Americancompanies concentrate training on their collegegraduates_and most small firms provide notraining at all_major foreign competitorsconcentrate on developing workplace skills at alllevels of the company. About two-thirds of theemployed workers in West Germany havecompleted an apprenticeship program, while theJapanese integrate on-the-job training withday-to-day operations. French,

Korean, Singaporean, and Swedish workers benefitfrom programs unavailable here.15

In the United States the transition from school towork is hit-or-miss, and most work-based trainingis provided to managers and executives. Less than10 percent of front-line workers now receivetraining of any kind. According to a survey byTowers/Perrin for the National Association ofManufacturers (NAM),

Respondents recognized the need for moretraining, but were not yet making the neededeconomic investment.

Companies were reluctant to evaluate theextent of the skills mismatch in theirworkforce.

The level of involvement with remedialtraining programs and local schools wascomparatively low.

Companies of all sizes were reluctant to dealwith skill deficiencies among their workers,although they admitted that thesedeficiencies cause serious businessproblems.16

This Commission believes thatemployer-sponsored training, both public andprivate, must be upgraded and integrated aroundthe SCANS know-how. Moreover, apprenticeshiptraining, and second-chance efforts for theunemployed and marginally employed, should bereoriented to integrate the SCANS skills into theirbasic education and job-specific training.

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14Sally Smith, Succeeding Against the Odds/I> (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991).

15Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), U.S. Congress, Worker Training: Competing in the New International Economy(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, September 1990), pp. 21 and 94.

16Today’s Dilemma, Tomorrow’s Competitive Edge (Washington, D.C.: Towers/Perrin Co., November 1991).

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RESTRUCTURING ASSESSMENT OFKNOW-HOW

"Will this be on the final?" is a familiar question inAmerican schools. In the absence of a system forassessing and certifying the SCANS know-how, itwill not be learned. If employers and colleges payattention to the SCANS foundation skills andworkplace competencies, students will work toacquire them. If teachers have to certify that theworkplace competencies are acquired, they willmake the effort to teach them. If parents andcommunity groups understand the standards thatgraduates are expected to attain, they will demandthat their children reach these levels.

This Commission supports the emerging nationalconsensus calling for a new, nationwide, voluntaryassessment system.17 The Commission believes thatthe system should (1)apply both to students andadults, to the classroom and the workplace; (2)incorporate new techniques of judgingperformance--not "tests" as traditionally understood,but assessment tied to learning goals; and (3)include locally developed assessment tasks.

An education-based system should assess masteryof the SCANS know-how as well as mastery ofthe traditional academic subjects. The assessmentsystem should:

Establish clear, high standards of studentperformance;

Encourage students to meet the standardsby creating a cumulative record of coursestaken, projects completed, and assessmentsof student mastery of both academicsubjects and SCANS competencies; and

Provide a basis for holding the educationsystem and body politic accountable tomeet the equity goal of providing allstudents with sufficient skills to earn adecent living.

In addition to assessing and certifying theprogress of students (education-basedassessment), there must be a way to assess andcertify those who are already in the workforce(experience-based assessment). Thus jobs must bedescribed, workers’ capabilities assessed, andtraining opportunities provided, all in the sameterms. The terms are the workplace know-howthat was shown in Exhibit A.

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17Raising Standards for American Education (Washington, D.C.: National Council for Education Standards and Testing, January1992).

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16

Chapter 3TOWARD A HIGH-PERFORMANCE FUTURE

The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that resultsexist only on the outside. The result of a business is a satisfied customer . . . . Theresult of a school is a student who has learned something and put it to work ten yearslater. --Peter Drucker18

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The insight of business expert Peter Drucker is keyto the concept of high performance. Highperformance requires looking beyond one’s school,company, or organization. This Commission existsbecause the Secretary of Labor looked beyond theworld of Labor Department programs to the worldof schools and workplaces.

Our primary message to schools is this: Lookbeyond the schoolhouse to the roles students willplay when they leave to become workers, parents,and citizens.

To teachers we say this: Look beyond yourdiscipline and your classroom to the other coursesyour students take, to your community, and to thelives of your students outside school. Help yourstudents connect what they learn in class to theworld outside.

To administrators we say this: Try to apply the 14points shown in Exhibit D. These points weredeveloped by W. Edwards Deming, the man whoseideas produced the Japanese economic miracle andthe redirection of

American businesses toward quality as thetouchstone for productivity growth.19

To employers we say: Look outside your companyand its costs, to your customers and suppliers, andencourage your employees to look beyond theirdepartments. Most emphatically we say this:Change your view of your responsibilities forhuman resource development. It is no accident thatmore than half of Deming’s widely admiredprinciples deal directly with human resources, andone speaks directly to the company’s trainingprograms. As an employer, your oldresponsibilities were to select the best availableapplicants and retain those you hired. Your newresponsibilities must include developing thehuman resources in your community, your firm,and your nation.

For your company’s sake, be concerned about thecommunity’s schools. The public (or private)school that is not "good enough" for your childrenwill be the source of your employees, yourcustomers, and the employees of your suppliers.For your company’s sake, think of the schools ascritical to your success. In Deming’s

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18The New Realities (New York: Harper and Row, 1989).

19W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982).

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EXHIBIT D

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DEMING’S 14 POINTS TOWARD QUALITY

1. Create constancy of purpose for improvement of product and service.

2. Management must be responsible for change.

3. Do not depend on mass inspection; build quality into the product.

4. Do not award contracts on the basis of price alone.

5. Improve constantly, and thus constantly decrease costs.

6. Institute training on the job.

7. Supervisors should aim to help people and gadgets do a better job.

8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively.

9. Break down barriers between departments to make teams.

10. Eliminate slogans and targets for the workforce.

11. Eliminate numerical quotas for the workforce (and management).

12. Remove barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship.

13. Encourage education and self-improvement for everyone.

14. Take action to accomplish the transformation.

terms, you must work with those on whom youdepend, cultivating a long-term relationship withthem, in order to improve the quality of yourgoods and services and maintain your position inthe market. The quality of today’s students willdetermine the future of your enterprise. Help theschools meet the SCANS requirements, andincrease the training and education of personsalready in the workforce.

DEFINING HIGH PERFORMANCE

For many people, the 14 points proposed byDeming define high performance. The

two key lessons this Commission takes fromDeming are these:

1. The more quality--including human resourcequality--you build into anything, the less, inthe long run, it costs.

2. Leadership in any organization---be itschool, company, or governmentagency---lies primarily in developingconstancy of purpose throughout.

By applying these two lessons, Deming helped turnthe phrase "Made in Japan" from a mark ofderision to a hallmark of quality. Thehigh-performance workplace in America will bedeveloped the same way.

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Because of Deming and other experts on quality,the United States is slowly leaving the work worlddesigned by Frederick Taylor early in this century.That world rested on hierarchical organizations inwhich powerful managers told tightly controlledworkers how to do their jobs, broken down intosmall bits, and how to do them faster and faster.The new vision promises a high-performanceeconomy and greater opportunity andresponsibility for managers and workers if theyhave the skills.

Acceptance of Deming’s principles has alreadycreated some American miracles.Telecommunications, electronics, and automobilefirms have won Baldrige awards for quality.20Motorola, for example, has reduced its "defectsrate" per million manufactured electroniccomponents from 6,000 to 40, with a target of 3.4in 1992. One result has been savings inmanufacturing costs over five years of $700million, about 6.4 percent of the company’srevenues in 1990. According to recent publicaccounts, Motorola’s operating principles arestraightforward: 21

1. Recognize that quality is in the eye of thecustomer.

2. Reduce the "learning cycle" for developingnew products and getting them "right" thefirst time.

Build redundancy into products to keep qualityhigh.

Push responsibility down the ranks of theorganization.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Creating high-performance workplaces is notsimple, but it must be done. We must give allAmericans multiple opportunities to becomecompetent enough to earn their way out of poverty.To these ends, we have recast the broad principlesset forth in What Work Requires of Schools as thecontext for our recommendations.

The qualities of high performance thattoday characterize our most competitivecompanies must become the standard forthe vast majority of our employers, publicand private, large and small, local andglobal.

The nation’s schools must also betransformed into high-performanceorganizations.

All Americans should be entitled tomultiple opportunities to learn theSCANS know-how well enough to earn adecent living.

To make those principles a reality we recommendthe following:

_______________________

20The purpose of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, signed into Federal law in 1987, is to promote qualityawareness, recognize high-quality achievement of U.S. companies, and publicize successful quality strategies. The Secretary ofCommerce and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) administer the award with cooperation and financialhelp from the private sector. Since its inception, the Baldrige Award has been given to 12 companies, including Motorola andZytec Corporation for manufacturing, Federal Express for service, and Marlow Industries for small business. The applicationprocess for the Baldrige Award is rigorous, and heavy emphasis is placed on high-quality achievement and quality improvementas demonstrated through quantitative data furnished by applicants.

21"Future Perfect,"The Economist (January 4, 1992).

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1. The nation’s school systems should makethe SCANS foundation skills andworkplace competencies explicitobjectives of instruction at all levels.

Research on effective learning validates whatevery classroom teacher knows from personalexperience: the more closely learning is tied to"real world" contexts and consequences, the moreprofound and durable it becomes. We believe such"learning in context" is essential to acquiring theSCANS know-how. Learning and doing mustbecome a single activity throughout education,from kindergarten through high school andbeyond.

This Commission believes that a massivereexamination of teacher training and in-serviceeducation is required. We call on allteacher-training institutions, professionalassociations, curriculum developers, andpublishers to begin addressing the changes thatteaching the SCANS know-how will require. Webelieve that this task will eventually involveredefining state curriculum frameworks andcertification requirements for teachers and makingsweeping overhauls in the texts and othermaterials---including multimedia andcomputer-based materials that support learning. Itis not too soon to begin.

We urge state and local educators (includingadministrators, teachers, principals, and schoolboard members) to work with local advisorygroups (including management, labor, andcommunity groups) to review pedagogy,curriculum, and the administration of schools foropportunities to advance the SCANS know-how.This review might include the following issues:

How can the SCANS foundation skills andworkplace competencies be taughtthroughout K-12 education?

What resources in the form of teachertraining, technology, new instructionalmaterials, and school and districtreorganization are needed to teach theSCANS know-how?

How can this school and school systembecome a high-performance organization?

2. Assessment systems should providestudents with a r’esum’e documentingattainment of the SCANS know-how.

The current national discussion about standardsand assessment is long overdue, but it will be oflittle use if the skills and competencies required forhigh-performance work are ignored. It is asimportant that today’s students know how toimprove the performance of systems continuously(indeed, to understand what a "system" is) as it isthat they know how to think mathematically, writea term paper, or complete an experiment. Newnationwide standards and assessments that ignorethe SCANS know-how will keep our schools andyoung people from realizing their full potential.

The Commission is pleased to note that theNational Council on Education Standards andTesting has endorsed the inclusion of the SCANScompetencies in the system it recommended,stating that they "can and should be integrated intothe national standards and assessments."22 Othershave proposed a certifi-

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cate of initial mastery (CIM) as the linchpin for anassessment of both academic subjects and theSCANS competencies.23 The Commissionbelieves that such a certificate should be based onstudent r‚sum‚s. Beginning in the middle school, acumulative r‚sum‚ containing information aboutcourses taken, projects completed, and assessmentresults should be established for each student. Asstudents meet the standards set for specific skills,that mastery would be noted on the r'esum'e.

In addition, when students have met world-classstandards across courses and the SCANScompetencies, the r'esum'e should show that theyhave been awarded the CIM.

As discussed more fully in Chapter 6, thisCommission's members believe that assessmentgrounded in world-class standards can succeed inthe United States only if the burden of failure isnot borne solely by students. The r‚sum‚ shouldcertify student mastery of subject matter and theSCANS know-how at world-class levels. Studentsshould be entitled to educationalservices---publicly supported in schools,community service or community-based youthorganizations, or privately supported in school oron the job---until they can demonstrate thatmastery.

This Commission believes that employers whohire youngsters who do not have the CIM have aspecial responsibility toward these young men andwomen. Employers should see

to it that such employees are enrolled insecond-chance programs or, if appropriateprograms are unavailable, should provide theneeded work-based training opportunitiesthemselves.

3. All employers, public and private, shouldincorporate the SCANS know-how into alltheir human resource development efforts.

Much formal education and training occur in theprivate sector---perhaps $50 billion annually. Theprivate sector should take an active hand indeveloping the skills and competence of theworkers on whom it depends. Specifically, wesuggest the following:

Employers, as well as educators, should usethe SCANS language.

All companies should consider the SCANSknow-how in their recruitment andemployee-development activities and in theirdevelopment of position descriptions andcompensation plans.

Human resource and training managersshould reorient their education and trainingofferings to include not only job-specificskills for employees but also the SCANSworkplace competencies and foundationskills.

Coalitions of trade associations, businessorganizations, labor unions, andindustry-specific groups should developtraining materials around the SCANSknow-how for use with all businesses,particularly small firms.

_______________________

22See NCEST, Raising Standards for American Education .

23See NCEE, America’s Choice.

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Every American employer or, business, largeand small, local or global, should assess itselfagainst the principles of high performance andhigh quality outlined in this document_andthe human resource implication of theseprinciples.

On the theory that "physicians should first healthemselves," one of the first places to beginimplementing the SCANS agenda is through thein-house education and training efforts conducted byFederal departments and agencies for theiremployees. The Office of Personnel Management(OPM), the human resource organization that servesFederal Government agencies, has already taken thefirst steps. Such foundation skills as listening,speaking, solving problems, and thinking creativelyare already a part of much Federal training andcould be readily adapted to reflect the SCANSknow-how. Many other OPM courses address thefive workplace competencies. Job descriptions andemployee evaluations and the skill centers that OPMis encouraging will have to follow suit.

SCANS know-how should also be taught infederally funded training programs fordisadvantaged youth and adults, including displacedworkers, under the Job Training Partnership Act(JTPA) of the Department of Labor, and publicassistance training under the JOBS program of theDepartment of Health and Human Services.

4. The Federal Government should continueto bridge the gap between school and thehigh-performance workplace, byadvancing the SCANS agenda.

In a future high-performance economy virtuallyall students completing school should findhigh-wage, high-skill jobs with advancementprospects. Children of the poor and immigrants,and women, would be full participants. In thateconomy, high school certification, based in parton SCANS know-how, would provide an easyand natural link between school and workplace.This economy would diminish the barriers thatface those who begin life with few financialresources.

But that world and that economy do not existtoday. Today only a fraction of jobs are inhigh-performance workplaces, and few of theseare open to young people with only high schoolcredentials. Many young people see no chance ofgood jobs, even if they work hard in school.Realizing the SCANS vision of linking schooldirectly to workplace success, of usingcertification as a motivator for school effort,requires surmounting many obstacles.

If the bridge between school and workplace is tobe constructed, the Federal Government mustcontinue the leadership it displayed in thecreation of this Commission and the relatedefforts of the Secretary of Labor. An example isthe Commission on Work-Based Learning, whosepartnership with the private sector and state andlocal leaders will advance standard setting andcertification of employment skills. Thatcommission currently is working to developvoluntary skill standards around core SCANSproficiencies for a number of major U.S.industries.

As the SCANS work draws to a close, thegrowing nationwide conversation about

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standard setting and assessment is impressive. Inthe public sector that conversation involvesFederal panels, commissions, and agencies, alongwith state and local initiatives. In the privatesector, it draws on business organizations,associations of similar firms (e.g., smallmanufacturers), and industry-specific groups (e.g.,the hospitality industry). In the nonprofit world itbenefits from the perspective of foundations,universities, think tanks, testing organizations,community-based organizations, representatives ofminority populations, and academic associationsconcerned with specific disciplines. Labororganizations, which represent workers who feelthe direct effects of standards testing andassessment activities, are actively participating.Parents also are increasingly involved. All havesomething to contribute; each group brings aunique piece of the puzzle to the table. Thisconversation is, in fact, what the United States isall about---public discussion of great public issues.

An urgent need exists for Federal leadership tobring these many efforts together. Despite thedifferent emphases, the efforts are directed towardthe same goal: establishing an equitable,nationwide system of human resourcedevelopment, assessment, and certification.Whatever strengthens one, strengthens all.Working together, they can make more substantialprogress toward the common end.

A partnership built around employmentskills---one that includes the U.S. Departments ofLabor and Education, the business community,trade unions, education, business schools,job-training and literacy providers, the military,

and community-based organizations---couldaccomplish a great deal. It could draw on andsupport the work of existing groups. It couldcontinue the task of mapping the elements of theSCANS know-how and advance the tasks ofstandard setting and assessment outlined in thisdocument. It can pursue the form that new studentr’esum’es should take, and it can encourageemployers throughout the country to begin tointeract with schools around these r‚sum‚s, and torely on them as a resource for creating thehigh-performance workplace.

A national partnership could encourage a dialoguebetween two major groups, one based largely in theworld of work, the other consisting mostly ofeducators. On the one hand, we have an effort tosupport the development of portable certificates forspecific industries by the Department of Labor'sCommission on Work-Based Learning. On theother, we have the remarkable array of assessmentand certification activities in the educationalcommunity: efforts to develop a nationalassessment system around core academic subjects,the New Standards Project (described in Chapter6), and activities by diverse educationorganizations (e.g., the College Board, theEducational Testing Service, and the AmericanCollege Testing program) to developperformance-based assessments of substantialportions of the SCANS know-how.

The emerging partnership can help these groupsformulate their agendas and can draw on theirstrengths in an effort to bridge the gap betweenschool and work. This opportunity should beseized, not squandered.

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5. Every employer in America should createits own strategic vision around theprinciples of the high-performanceworkplace.

All the American high-performance success storiespoint in the same direction: Americanemployers---public and private, global and local,manufacturers and innkeepers, health care providersand service organizations, whether large orsmall---must jettison the perspective exemplified bymottos such as, "Tell me what to do but keep itsimple," and, "How long will it take, but keep itshort." In the interests of long-term profitability, theCommission believes managers must restructure theworkplace around the principles of highperformance, continuously improving the quality oftheir goods and services.

The obligation for taking the first step rests withmanagement. Experts agree that the transformationto high performance does not begin in the secretarialpool or on the plant floor. It happens because thosein the executive suite and the boardroom committhemselves to achieving high quality. It is theresponsibility of employers to assess their ownoperations against the ideal of high performance andhigh quality---and to follow through on the humanresource implications of those principles. Thus theywill take the first steps in the long journey towardthe ideal that will empower workers and make themsecure in their jobs.

It is simplistic to think that one formula will workfor all. Each organization will have to answer thefollowing questions for itself: What

external forces and conditions are acting uponus? What do we have to do to become ahigh-performance organization? What does"customer satisfaction" or "total quality" meaninside this operation? What do we have to do toempower our employees so that they can help usmake the transformation we need to make? Theimportant thing is to get started, whether theeffort is guided by the ideas of Edwards Deming,the MIT Commission on Industrial Productivity,the Commission on the Skills of the AmericanWorkforce, Peter Drucker, or other experts onorganizational improvement.

Because of international competition, Americanmanufacturing firms are furthest along in thetransformation to high performance. But even inthe manufacturing sector the high-performanceworkplace is more the exception than the rule.Further progress can be made as more large firmsadopt the perspective of total qualitymanagement, and as more of them begin to insistthat their vendors become high-performanceorganizations in their own right. Large firmscannot improve their own product quality if thevendors on which they rely for parts andcomponents are not also dedicated to total qualityand consumer satisfaction.

This Commission believes that dedication toquality and customer satisfaction is equallycritical to market success in the service side ofthe economy. The nation cannot afford health andsocial services that leave patients or clientsunhappy; restaurants, hotels, or clothing storesthat permit customers to stand around ignored;transportation services characterized by delay orunreliability; or financial institutions

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that mishandle depositors’ funds. Although theapplication of high-performance principles may bemore difficult in the service sector than inmanufacturing---and perhaps less amenable tostatistical controls---the principles can be applied.24

A FINAL WORD

These recommendations define a comprehensivenationwide agenda. We propose it not lightly butknowing that major portions of it are already beingdeveloped, implemented, tested, and refined inhundreds of schools and businesses around thecountry. This document is an effort to pull theexperience and wisdom of these efforts together sothat local leaders can, community by community,school by school, and---if need be---classroom byclassroom, begin to create their ownhigh-performance programs.

When all is said and done, the high-performancefuture requires a radically different organization ofwork and a radically differ-

ent kind of workforce. The ability of managersand workers to get the best out of newtechnologies, new processes, and new marketsremains our best competitive advantage.Technology itself is not the answer; anyone canbuy it. Wealth itself is of little help; capital isportable. More and more, success is the productof the knowledge, skills, and judgment of avalued workforce. Only that intangible quality oftrained intelligence and skills actively engaged inmeeting consumers’ needs is nontransferable.Developing that quality will call for the best in usall.

The tasks just outlined will not be accomplishedtomorrow. This Commission does notunderestimate the difficulties; neither can itignore the fact that delay will only compoundthem. If the nation’s educators and employersmove forward immediately, the agenda set forthhere can be well in place by the year 2000. Withit in place, the United States will have taken amajor step forward toward a high-performancefuture and a high-wage, full-employmenteconomy.

_______________________

24Federal Express, for example, won the Baldridge Award in 1990.

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26

PART II

A BLUEPRINT FORHIGH PERFORMANCE

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28

PART IIINTRODUCTION

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The SCANS effort takes place against thebackdrop of an intense, nationwideself-examination about education and training,workplace needs, and the imperative forreorganizing work. Among the prominent featuresof this discussion are the following:

The publication in 1987 of Workforce 2000,sponsored by the Department of Labor,which joined the issues of education and oureconomic prosperity in the year 2000;

President Bush’s education summit with thenation’s governors in 1989 and theirsubsequent adoption in 1990 of six nationaleducation goals;

The September 1991 "report card" onAmerican education issued by the NationalEducation Goals Panel;

New education and job-training efforts fromthe Bush Administration, America 2000 andJob Training 2000, calling for restructuringschools and improving service delivery inadult training;

Growing consensus among manyblue-ribbon groups, such as the Commissionon the Skills of the American Workforceand the MIT Commission on IndustrialProductivity, that the American workplaceneeds to be reformed around principles ofhigh performance.

Bush Administration and congressionalefforts to encourage school improvement;

The call of the National Council onEducation Standards and Testing for a newnationwide assessment system;

The work of the Labor Department’sCommission on Work-Based Learning todevelop portable certificates of employeecompetency industry by industry; and

The serious debate in many states and localcommunities_from Rhode Island toOregon_about how to respond to theseissues.

The SCANS contribution to this nationaldiscussion includes attention to the way broadprinciples are to be put in place at the local level.We recognize that nationwide policies are of littlevalue until they are advanced by men and womenon the front line.

This Commission’s initial publication, What WorkRequires of School, has already begun to have aneffect beyond Washington. Individual schooldistricts in Fort Worth, Tampa, Louisville, andelsewhere are using that report in their planningprocesses.25 Youngsters in Indiana, through aproject called IndianaPLUS, have gone out todiscover for themselves whether SCANSknow-how applies in that state. And there areproposals to replicate that project in other statesand cities. The Los Angeles Unified SchoolDistrict has announced that all its graduates,beginning in

_________________________

25SCANS will publish the set of resource materials listed in Appendix C. The volume that will describe these efforts will becalled Teaching the SCANS Competencies .

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EXHIBIT E

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SITES OF SCANS ACTIVITY

1994, will be warranted to have the SCANSknow-how. A newly formed Human DevelopmentCorporation in the Pittsburgh area is developing aregionwide mathematics and science curriculumincorporating the SCANS workplacecompetencies. Florida is the first state to make theSCANS know-how an official part of its statewideeducational reform program by incorporating theSCANS competencies into its student performancestandards.26 Oregon’s school reform effort willinclude new standards based on the SCANSknow-how. New

York and Rhode Island are considering ways toincorporate the SCANS recommendations into newinitiatives. A number of groups seeking to design"break the mold" schools are integrating SCANSknow-how into their concepts. Exhibit E locatesthe sites of activities related to the SCANSmessage as of the date of this report.

In the corporate sector, TGI Friday’s and Motorolaare investigating ways of integrating SCANS skillsinto their human resource planning. In April 1992,MCI and the Gannett Corporation began toexamine together the use-

_________________________26Memorandum, Florida Department of Education, March 19, 1992.

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fulness of SCANS findings for the structure of jobdescriptions; their goal is to build the results intotheir educational and training activities. TheAlliance for Employee Growth and Development,the training organization formed by AT&T and itsmajor unions, has asked its vendors to determinewhether they can teach the SCANS know-how.The associations that represent the hospitality andmanufacturing industries are identifying howSCANS ideas can be used by their members.NationsBank, concerned about the economicwell-being of the smaller communities that itserves, has begun a dialogue about teachingSCANS competencies with the CrossroadsConsortium in southwestern Virginia.

The Department of Labor is moving to buildSCANS workplace competency training intovarious aspects of its JTPA programs. The

Office of Personnel Management (with theDepartment of Labor) is reviewing the applicationof SCANS ideas in skills centers for Federalemployees. The Department of Defense isreviewing possible roles for SCANS training in themilitary and in the schools it operates overseas formilitary dependents.

The recommendations contained in Chapter 3cannot be met unless these efforts are repeatedthroughout the worlds of education, business, andgovernment. This second part of the SCANS finalreport is an effort to provide suggestions andguidance to educators, trainers, and employersabout how the broad SCANS agenda can be put inplace in local communties. It is organized aroundthree major issues: reinventing education,encouraging work-based learning andhigh-performance industries, and restructuringassessment.

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Chapter 4SCHOOLS THAT WORK:

ORGANIZING EDUCATION FORHIGH PERFORMANCE

When the President of the United States announcedthe America 2000 strategy in 1991, he called on allAmericans to become revolutionaries in the cause ofeducation. America 2000 is an effort to reach sixnational education goals from four differentdirections: (1) reinvented schools for tomorrow’sstudents; (2) better, more accountable schools fortoday’s students; (3) lifelong learning for yesterday’sstudents; and (4) supportive communities wherelearning for all can take place.27 This chaptersuggests how the SCANS know-how can be taughtin reinvented schools where that know-how isintegrated into the curriculum, teaching is done incontext, and new resources provide teachers withthe tools they need. The reinvention begins with awillingness to change.

COMMIT TO TRANSFORMATION

The American public school system was designed toserve the nation’s economic and social needs of theturn of the century. At that time, the thinking for theworkplace was done by a small portion of thepopulation, certainly no more than a quarter of allworkers. School systems, in keeping with theindustrial model of

the day, were highly centralized. Decisionsflowed down from the top and the basic teachingmethod was "teacher talk"-the teacher dispensedinformation from the front of the classroom,while the students sat passively like bucketswaiting to be filled.

During the 1980s the United States, seeking toimprove public schools, tried to get more resultsout of that system-through tighter curricula,higher certification standards for teachers, andmore testing of everyone.28 Despite the effort,students were performing essentially no better atthe end of the decade than they were at thebeginning. The strategy of getting more out of theold system was doomed from the outset.

As this Commission argued in What WorkRequires of Schools, American society todayrequires that elementary and secondary schoolsmeet drastically different goals. The job now is tobring all students to a level that, in the past, onlya small minority reached. Experts universallyagree that this job requires reinventingelementary and secondary education.

_________________________

27 The six national education goals for the year 2000 adopted by the President and the nation’s governors in 1990 are (1)improving readiness for school, (2) increasing high school graduation rates, (3) improving student achievement, (4) raisingscience and mathematics achievement, (5) improving adult literacy and skills, and (6) ridding schools of drugs and violence.

28 Much of this discussion about education reform reflects a briefing provided to the Commission by Edward (Ted) Fiske, formereducation editor for the New York Times and author of Smart Schools, Smart Kids (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991).

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We recommend that SCANS know-how be taughtfrom kindergarten through grade 12 and beyond.Even in the early grades, the foundation skills andthe workplace competencies can be taught,oriented around school- and home-based tasks. Aswe noted in What Work Requires of Schools, it isnot true that everything one needs to know in lifeis learned in kindergarten, but it is certainly truethat one can begin to learn everything one needs toknow that early. The five workplace competenciescan be integrated with the three-part foundation asa part of every child’s education from kindergartenthrough grade 12.

The SCANS competencies must be integrated intocore academic subjects such as English andmathematics (see Exhibit F). But these skills applyacross the board-to health and physical education,to music and the other arts, and to studentactivities normally thought to be extracurricular,such as drama and student publications. It is alsoimportant that the SCANS competencies beintegrated into vocational offerings (see SidebarA).

The process of reinvention needed to integrateSCANS know-how into the curriculum is underway across the nation. As already indicated,several local communities and organizations havestarted redesigning their educational offeringsaround the SCANS agenda. Their experienceindicates that working on a SCANS-like approachonly begins with curriculum and instructionalreform. It often also involves redesigning theentire delivery system---intro-

ducing school-based management, shared decisionmaking, and new means of assessment.29

When a school system and its surroundingcommunity take up the SCANS agenda, what arethey taking on? How difficult is the task? Who hasto be involved? And what are the results likely tobe? No single answer to any of these questionsexists. The Commission can offer the educationalcommunity no single template for reinvention. Thepractical difficulties of reshaping the educationalenterprise, root and branch, should not beunderestimated. Nevertheless, certain conditionsneed to be present if the schools are to respondeffectively to the SCANS message. Theseconditions include the following:

Schools and communities must develop acommitment to change and a willingness totake action.

The entire community must participate in theeffort-schools, large and small businesses,community and civic leaders, labororganizations, community-basedorganizations, parents, the media, and stateagencies (Sidebar B shows the participationthroughout Indiana).

Schools must act on the belief thatimproving the match between what workrequires and what students are taughtrequires improving how students are taught.

Learning must be allowed to take place inreal-world contexts.

Communities must understand thatredesigning schools around skills is notsimply a marginal change involvingcurriculum, but a basic reform strategy

_________________________

29 See Teaching the SCANS Competencies (forthcoming).

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EXHIBIT F

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ASSIGNMENTS THAT INTEGRATE THE SCANS COMPETENCIESINTO THE CORE CURRICULUM AREAS

Competency English/Writing Mathematics Science SocialStudies/Geography History

Resources Write a proposalfor anafter-schoolcareer lectureseries thatschedulesspeakers,coordinatesaudio-visual aids,and estimatescosts.

Develop amonthly familybudget, takinginto accountfamily expensesand revenues andusinginformation fromthe budget plan.Schedule avacation trip thatstays within theresourcesavailable.

Plan the materialand timerequirements for achemistryexperiment, to beperformed over atwo-day period,that demonstratesa natural growthprocess in termsof resource needs.

Design a chart ofresource needs fora community ofAfrican Zulus.Analyze thereasons why threemajor cities grewto their currentsize.

Study theVietnam War,researching andorallypresentingfindings on thetiming andlogistics oftransportingmaterials andtroops toVietnam and onthe impact ofthe war on theFederal budget.

Interpersonal Discuss the prosand cons of theargument thatShakespeare’sMerchant ofVenice is a"racist" play andshould be bannedfrom the schoolcurriculum.

Present theresults of asurvey to theclass, and justifythe use ofspecific statisticsto analyze andrepresent thedata.

Work in a groupto design anexperiment toanalyze the leadcontent in theschool’s water.Teach the resultsto an elementaryschool class.

Debate the issueof withdrawingU.S. militarysupport fromJapan in front of apeer panel.Engage in a mockurban planningexercise for Paris.

Study theAmericanConstitutionand role-playthe negotiationof the wordingof the freestates/slavestates clause bydifferentsigners.

Information Identify andabstract passagesfrom a novel tosupport anassertion aboutthe values of akey character.

Design and carryout a survey andanalyze the datain a spreadsheetprogram usingalgebraicformulas.Develop a tableand a graphicdisplay tocommunicate theresults.

In anentrepreneurshipproject, presentstatistical datapertaining to ahigh-techcompany’sproduction andsales. Use acomputer todevelop thestatistical charts.

Using numericaldata and charts,develop andpresentconclusions aboutthe effects ofeconomicconditions on thequality of life inseveral countries.

Research andpresent paperson the effect ofthe IndustrialRevolution onthe classstructure inBritain, citingdata sourcesused to arrive atconclusions.

(Continued)

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EXHIBIT F(Continued)

ASSIGNMENTS THAT INTEGRATE THE SCANS COMPETENCIESINTO THE CORE CURRICULUM AREAS

Competency English/Writing Mathematics Science SocialStudies/Geography History

Systems Develop acomputer modelthat analyzes themotivation ofShakespeare’sHamlet. Plot theevents thatincrease ordecrease Hamlet’smotivation toavenge the deathof his father.

Develop a systemto monitor andcorrect theheating/coolingprocess in acomputerlaboratory, usingprinciples ofstatistical processcontrol.

Build a model ofhumanpopulationgrowth thatincludes theimpact of theamount of foodavailable, onbirth and deathrates, etc. Do thesame for agrowth modelfor insects.

Analyze theaccumulation ofcapital inindustrializednations in systemsterms (as areinforcingprocess withstocks and flows).

Develop a modelof the socialforces that led tothe AmericanRevolution. Thenexplore the fitbetween thatmodel and otherrevolutions.

Technology Write an articleshowing therelationshipbetweentechnology andthe environment.Use wordprocessing towrite and editpapers afterreceiving teacherfeedback.

Read manuals forseveraldata-processingprograms andwrite a memorecommending thebest programs tohandle a series ofmathematicalsituations.

Calibrate a scaleto weighaccurate portionsof chemicals foran experiment.Trace thedevelopment ofthis technologyfrom earliestuses to today.

Research andreport on thedevelopment andfunctions of theseismograph andits role inearthquakeprediction anddetection.

Analyze theeffects of wars ontechnologicaldevelopment.Use computergraphics to plotthe relationshipof the country’seconomic growthto periods ofpeace and war.

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SIDEBAR A

INTEGRATING SCANS KNOW-HOW INTO ARTS ANDVOCATIONAL-TECHNICAL EDUCATION

The Arts and High Performance

SCANS know-how can be learned in the context of the arts. At a pragmatic level, high school studentslearning to make charts could benefit from knowing more about the visual arts. The advent of desktoppublishing means that millions of workers will be publishing documents, deciding how to make thamvisually appealing, and, in general, calling on talents that only yesterday were primarily the concern ofgraphic artists.

The theater arts are often thought of as developing speaking, reading, and listening skills. But theaterpeople also know about another domain of the SCANS know-how, managing the resouces of budgets,space layout, staffing, and the interpersonal skills, such as teaching others and working as a team.Technology use is another of the SCANS competencies. Musical instruments are becoming increasinglyhigh-tech. Some synthesized sounds come directly from sophisticated mathematical functions fed into amusical instrument digital interface. Systems, the fifth SCANS competency, can be taught in the contextof orchestral composition.

Arts education naturally embraces methods that are characteristic of high-performance schools. Artdepartments often accept and evaluated students on the basis of portfolios and auditioned performances.Coaching and assessing progress are done continuously in the midst of practice, performance, orcritiques. The arts are an especially good vehicle for teaching about improving quality. Who, more thanthe artist, is unwilling to be satisfied with yesterday’s performance?

Vocational-Technical Eduation and Workplace Know-How

Few educators are more aware of the importance of teaching workplace know-how than those invocational-technical education. Vocational education can shape itself into high-performance centers fortraining by incorporating the SCANS foundation skills into its curriculum. Reading, writing, math, andscience are currently being woven into vocational studies to enhance the ability of students to achieve theSCANS workplace competencies.

Recognizing the need to teach basic academic, thinking, and interpersonal skills, vocational education isalso progressively becoming a team-teaching effort. Academic and vocational teachers work side by sideto reinforce the relevance of academics by demonstrating how they apply to the high-performanceworkplace.

This restructuring empowers students to use the information they are given to evaluate and organize dataand apply it to solve problems. When students understand the job that needs to be done, allocatingresources of time, money, materials, personnel, and information is learned in the context of application.Vocational-technical education answers the question often asked by students ("Why should I learn this?")by demonstrating how the productive use of resources, interpersonal skills, information, systems, andtechnology is necessary to achieve excellence in business and industry. Because the link between schooland work becomes clear, school takes on new relevance.

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37

affecting management, instruction, and assessment.

Educators must rethink assessment so that it iscompatible with the instructional strategies chosento deliver the SCANS know-how, and reinforces,guides, and motivates instruction and learning.

In this regard, the Commission supports the ninepoints of the education-reform program developedby the Business Roundtable, an association of thechief executive officers of many of our nation’slargest employers.30

The Fort Worth Experience31

The reinvention experience in Fort Worth, Texas,provides a case study of the degree of changerequired. The Fort Worth Independent SchoolDistrict is in the front ranks of the effort torestructure American public education in tworespects: Fort Worth business, civic, andeducational leaders have a vision of where they aregoing, and they understand that the time fortinkering with the existing system is over. They alsounderstand that genuine improvement can becreated only if everyone with a stake in theoutcome-parents, students, administrators, teachers,and business leaders-is involved.

The Fort Worth Metropolitan Area, with apopulation exceeding 1.3 million, is home toseveral major corporate headquarters, manymanufacturing and distribution facilities, andsome 700 high-technology companies. Thedistrict enrolls an ethnically and culturally diversestudent population of about 68,000 (35 percentAfrican American, 26 percent Hispanic), housedin 110 schools and taught by 3,500 teachers.

The idea of getting business and civic groupsinvolved with the schools was discussed with theBoard of Education and then taken to the FortWorth Chamber of Commerce. The result wasProject C3-Community, Corporations,Classrooms-an effort to create an educationalsystem that motivates and prepares students forsuccess in school, in the workplace, as citizens,and in their personal lives.

The first step in Fort Worth was similar to thefirst step in the work of this Commission: find outwhat skills and competencies the workplacedemands. Fort Worth’s leaders decided that thelogical place to start was by asking people in thelocal workplace themselves-the employers (nearly300) and employees (nearly 3,000). The FortWorth investigation confirmed

_________________________

30Essential Components of a Successful Education System , (New York.: Business Roundtable, n.d.). The nine points are these:(1)The new system is committed to four operating assumptions: (a)All students can learn at significantly higher levels. (b)Weknow how to teach all students successfully. (c)Curriculum content must reflect high expectations for all students, butinstructional time and strategies may vary to assure success. (d)Every child must have an advocate. (2)The new system is basedon performance or outcomes. (3)Assessment strategies must be as strong and rich as the outcomes. (4)Schools should receiverewards for success and assistance to improve. (5)School-based staff have a major role in making instructional decisions.(6)Major emphasis is placed on staff development. (7)A high-quality prekindergarten program is established, at least for alldisadvantaged students. (8)Health and other social services are sufficient to reduce significant barriers to learning. (9)Technologyis used to raise student and teacher productivity and to expand access to learning.

31This section and the next one draw extensively from a review of the Fort Worth, Texas, experience with restructuring schoolingas reported in Michael Kane et al., Developing Schools That Work (Fort Worth: Fort Worth Public Schools, 1992).

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the importance of reading, mathematics, writing,speaking and listening, computer literacy, reasoningand problem solving, and originality and creativity.

The second step Fort Worth took was to developeducational programming that is responsive toworkplace needs. To date, the school district hasseveral efforts under way:

Applied Learning relates learning moredirectly to the needs of the workplace. Theproject involves 38 teachers in some 24schools who have created instructionalmodels to develop the skills identified in theC3 project and by SCANS.

Vital Link bridges the gap between school andbusiness. Sponsored nationally by the AmericanBusiness Conference, this initiative is beingcarried out by the Fort Worth Chamber ofCommerce which has 3,800 members. It lets bothstudents and teachers experience what workrequires through teacher and student internships.

Equity 2000, sponsored by The College Board,upgrades mathematics instruction-and henceskills in reasoning and thinking-by dropping lessrigorous mathematics offerings and requiring allstudents to progress through a demandingsequence including algebra and geometry. Theinitial results are impressive: among Hispanics,75 per-

SIDEBAR B

IndianaPLUS: MODEL "SCHOOL TO WORK PROJECT"

Based on the SCANS findings and methods and the initiative of the American Broadcasting Company(ABC), teams of high school seniors in five Indiana cities systematically explored the world of workduring the first semester of the 1991-92 school year. This pilot project, known as "IndianaPLUS," isdescribed in "Teaching the SCANS Competencies (see Appendix C). Efforts are under way to help otherstates and communities that wish to mount similar projects.

Each team of 20 to 25 students worked under the supervision of a social studies teacher at high schools inEvansville, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, South Bend, and Terre Haute. Aided by local Junior Achievementoffices, ABC-affiliated television stations, and business leaders, the students interviewed a range ofjob-holders to pinpoint the skills required in the local economy. Each student interviewed three to fiveworkers, using a modified version of the SCANS interview method.

Based on the interviews and other research, each team produced videotapes and handbooks to helpcommunicate to middle-school students what the team had learned about workforce needs. The localtelevision stations spread the message to the general public. (ABC affiliates were involved as part of thenetwork’s Project Literacy United States--Plus.)

The culmination of the project came with the televising of a special hour-long program on the skills gapin Indiana and on the work of the "IndianaPLUS" teams. Aired in prime time simulateously by all fivetelevision affiliates, the statewide special was hosted by Peter Jennings of ABC News and by local newsanchors in the five cities. It presented the issues of global competition, technological change, and theskills gap, and then focused on the local findings of the IndianaPLUS students and teachers.

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cent more males and 43 percent more femalesenrolled in algebra in the 1991-92 school year;among African-American students, 33 percentmore males and 41 percent more females enrolled.

Vocational education has been substantiallymodified, with the help of school-based advisorycommittees, to gear the curriculum more closely tolocal work requirements. One result has been thedistrictwide adoption of a new Principles ofTechnology course that embeds advancedmathematical and scientific principles in the studyof electronics, hydraulics, and mechanics.

High-Performance Schools, a joint venturebetween district and business leaders, brings theprinciples of site-based management and decisionmaking to Fort Worth schools. This projectincludes districtwide training for principals,administrators, and school teams and a schoolincentive grant program.

Student Assessment is in the process of beingtransformed on the theory that multiple-choice,paper-and-pencil tests cannot evaluate students’ability to apply knowledge to real-world problems.The Portfolio Project is developing portfolios ofstudent competencies that include a personalr sum , evidence of competence in specific areasof study, work history, extracurricular experience,and record of community services. This effort isconnected to the New Standards Project, discussedin Chapter 6.

Despite all these initiatives, Fort Worth recognizesit has just begun the process of fully restructuringits schools. The city's education and businessleaders, represented by the local Chamber ofCommerce, are moving to transform the system inaccordance with the lessons these initiativesprovide.

THE INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGY: TEACH IN CONTEXT

In its 1991 report, this Commission argued thatlearning in order "to know" should not be separatedfrom learning in order "to do." We concluded thatthe two could be combined by teaching "incontext," that is, learning content while solvingrealistic problems. Teaching in context implies thatstudents and teachers will learn and applyknowledge in real-life situations, for example, byparticipating in work-based projects, internships,and mentor programs and by "shadowing" workerson the job. IndianaPLUS is a work-based project,and the Fort Worth experiment offers students andteachers all these activities.

Another of the promising "applied academics"developments being implemented in Fort Worthand by high schools and community colleges acrossthe nation is the 2+2 tech-prep/associate degreeprogram, which could easily incorporate theSCANS know- how. In one community thisprogram, now funded with Federal funds throughthe Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education andApplied Technology Act, "had the greatest impacton secondary education since high schoolconsolidation in 1971. Since beginning thetech-prep program, average SAT scores haveincreased 46 points, the drop-out rate has declinedsignificantly, and the percentage of graduateschoosing to attend a community college rose from24 to 46 percent!"32

Teaching in context is different from making upartificial word problems (e.g., the classic algebraproblem that requires students

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to determine when two trains leaving differentstations at the same time will meet). For example,chemistry students in Fort Worth learned howchemistry applies to the problem of growing grasson the grounds at 104 Fort Worth schools. Theythen presented the results of their work to theschool board for policy action.

Teaching in context requires more complexintegration with real-world experience. It alsooften requires cooperative learning opportunities(e.g., peer teaching and group problem solving). Italways demands that students be activelearners-that is, workers- who are promoting thegrowth of their own knowledge as they undertakerealistic tasks. And it requires that the curriculumbe integrated across subject areas in activities thatrequire students to read, write, compute, applyscientific or statistical principles, integrate, andreason about specific problems.

Exhibit G, drawn from experience in Fort Worth,outlines how the conventional classroom differsfrom the SCANS classroom. The conventions oftoday’s classroom (teacher omniscience, studentpassivity and isolation, rigid disciplinary borders,and "abstracted" knowledge and facts) are replacedwith sophisticated and more realistic concepts ofinstruction and learning (the teacher may not knowbest, students often learn best in groups, andknowledge should be related to real problems).

Wishful thinking will not create such classrooms.Fort Worth found that these class-

rooms require community support, parentalleadership, business support, and site-basedmanagement that allows individual schools to getout from under the dead hand of regulation. Theschool system is making a searching examinationof instructional strategies to make sure that "incontext" learning is encouraged around the SCANSworkplace competencies. Systemic change willrequire appropriate instructional materials andtechnology for delivering the SCANS know-howand the resources, including training and time, thatteachers and administrators need to do the jobright.

What does it mean to organize instructionalstrategies around in-context learning? How didFort Worth change its instructional strategy?

One of the district’s first projects was to examinethe way writing is taught. Good writing could betaught in virtually every subject: English, socialstudies, foreign languages, vocational programs,and even mathematics and the sciences. In English,where literature and poetry are discussed, writingand reading are related to aesthetic experience andthe role of education is self-realization. Writing inhistory is often related to the educational goal ofenhancing citizenship.

In mathematics and the physical or social sciences,however, writing may be ignored or treated in thesame way as writing for an aesthetic experience. Asa result, graduates often cannot write a memo. Howshould the

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32School Superintendent Douglas James of Richmond County, North Carolina. The 2+2 tech-prep/associate degree program wasfirst advocated by SCANS Commissioner Dale Parnell in his book The Neglected Majority, published by the AmericanAssociation of Community and Junior Colleges in 1985.< /FONT>

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EXHIBIT G

THE CONVENTIONAL CLASSROOM COMPARED WITH THE SCANS CLASSROOM

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FROM THE CONVENTIONAL CLASSROOM TO THE SCANS CLASSROOM

Teacher knows answer. More than one solution may be viable and teachermay not have it in advance.

Students routinely work alone. Students routinely work with teachers, peers, andcommunity members.

Teacher plans all activities. Students and teachers plan and negotiate activities.

Teacher makes all assessments.Information is organized, evaluated, interpreted andcommunicated to students by teacher.

Students routinely assess themselves.Information is acquired, evaluated, organized,intepreted, and communicated by students toappropriate audiences.

Organizing system of the classroom is simple: oneteacher teaches 30 students.

Organizing systems are complex: teacher andstudents both reach out beyond school foradditional information.

Reading, writing, and math are treated as separatedisciplines; listening and speaking are often missingfrom curriculum.

Disciplines needed for problem solving areintegrated; listening and speaking are fundamentalparts of learning.

Thinking is usually theoretical and "academic." Thinking involves problem solving, reasoning, anddecision making.

Students are expected to conform to teacher’sbehavioral expectations; integrity and honesty aremonitored by teacher; students’ self-esteem is oftenpoor.

Source: Fort Worth Public Schools.

Students are expected to be responsible, socialble,self-managing, and resourceful; integrity andhonesty are monitored within the social context ofthe classroom; students’ self-esteem is highbecause they are in charge of their own learning.

teaching of writing be refocused? Some writingassignments should be reoriented from theacademic focus preferred in today’s school to thekinds of writing demands found in the real worldof work. Most decent jobs today require somelevel of writing ability. For some professionals,writing is the only thing they do. For others, at alllevels in the organization, writing is anintermittent obligation to develop letters,memoranda, reports, or presentations that rangefrom relatively easy and rewarding to relativelydifficult and unpleasant.

Exhibit H compares the writing that today’s schoolsteach and what the workplace requires. Thecontrast is dramatic. The school sees writing as anacademic exercise--- essays, book reports, researchpapers---designed to demonstrate mastery ofacademic knowledge, skills, content, and format.The audience is limited to one person (the teacher),and the novice writer is obliged to tell everythinghe or she has discovered. The logic is conceptualand theoretical, but at the same time neatness,punctuation, and grammar may be the main basisfor evaluation.

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EXHIBIT H

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WRITING: THE SCANS PERSPECTIVEWhat Today’s Schools Teach What the Workplace Requires

Purposes for WritingCentral purpose is to display masteryof knowledge, skills, and format.

Range of purposes (instrumental): toinform, persuade, clarify (or obscure),soften the blow, explain how to dosomething, tell others to dosomething, make a recommendation,sell.

Types of Writing Routinely GeneratedEssays, book reports, poetry, stories,research papers, letters.

Reports, brochures, letters, memos,proposals, surveys, ad copy,instructions, planning documents,messages, specifications,recommendations, logs, legaldocuments/contracts, news releases,minutes, personnel evaluations.

AudienceSingle audience: the teacher. A range of audiences, including

people differing in needs, motivations,uses for the information, andknowledge of the topic, e.g.supervisors, clients, co-workers,subordinates, the general public.

Work ConditionsDeadlines and distractions controlledby the teacher.

Deadlines and distractions oftenunavoidable.

ContentTeacher assigns topics.Text reveals everything discovered.

Ill-defined problems are workedthrough.Text tells what the reader needs toknow.

LogicTheoretical; "academic." Problem-solving, pragmatic,

goal-oriented.

CorrectnessUsage, handwriting, spelling, andpunctuation are a focus for evaluation,accounting for 50 to 100 percent ofthe document’s value.

Same factors are a given, not a focusfor evaluation.

Source: Fort Worth Public Schools.

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In contrast, workplace writing is always developedfor a purpose-often to explain or to persuade agroup to act on a recommendation. The documentsusually have a variety of audiences, and thewriter’s obligation is to tell the readers somethingthey do not know but need to know. Far fromworking on well-defined topics selected by theteacher, the working writer has to cope with poorlydefined problems amid the distractions of otherdemands and tight deadlines. Both kinds ofwriting require neatness and good grammar, but inthe workplace these factors are just the beginning,not the goal.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Education will have to invest in change. Byinvestment we mean expenditures whose effectwill be felt for years to come. Among the mostimportant investments are staff development,technology, and instructional materials. All shouldincrease the quality produced by the workers in thesystem: the teachers and their students.

Training and Time

Of all the resources required for reinventingschools around the SCANS ends, none is moreimportant than those devoted to staff

development and teacher training. Teachers,noninstructional staff, and building andschool-district administrators will need extensiveassistance in developing the following:

New pedagogical skills required to teach incontext and to develop active, collaborative,learning environments;

New instructional management skills neededto use the instructional technologies to findnew ways of interacting with students; and

Knowledge and understanding of theprinciples of high performance as they areapplied in restructured workplaces.

Providing training opportunities for instructionalstaff in these areas will be costly. Perhaps themajor expense will involve giving teachers andadministrators the time they need during the schoolday and summers to work on these activities.33

Technology

A 1990 study from the Congressional Office ofTechnology Assessment34 pointed out that, in itsoperations and purposes, education is very muchlike the information industry in the private sector.But unlike other information industries (banking,finance, and insurance, for example) which havebeen remade by technolo-

_________________________

33If a school devotes $300 per student for teacher training and development activities in its annual budget (about 5 percent of thecurrent cost per student), and the student-teacher ratio is 25:1, each teacher would have $7,500 to use for training. This moneycould be used in a number of ways, such as:

Paying for 250 hours of training at $30 per hour (perhaps in a business environment) during the summer; or

Enabling a group of teachers to pool their training resources so that the school could hire an additional staff member. Thenew staff member would substitute for each member of the group one day a month while group members participate intraining.

34Office of Technology Assessment, Power On! New Tools for Teaching and Learning (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government

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Printing Office, September 1988).

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gy and its applications, the information-technologyrevolution of the last generation has had little effectin education. The basic technology available to mostteachers throughout the United States in 1992 is tooclose to the technology of 1892: textbooks,blackboards, and chalk.

Yet technologies offering the promise ofrevolutionizing teaching and learning are readilyavailable. CD/ROM (compact disk/read onlymemory) players, personal computers, andintegrated learning systems are currently being usedeffectively in a number of schools across thecountry. The new CD-I (compact disk interactive)technology and broadcast-based interactive videowill be on the consumer market this year. Thesetechnologies are capable of providing multiplelearning contexts and resources for students incost-effective ways: delivering self-pacedinstruction, monitoring and continuously assessinglearning, and placing students in real-life andreal-work simulations with multimediapresentations.

Even more promising are instructional tools thatallow students to use the same technology thatadults use at work. For example, word processingmakes it easier for students to submit multiple draftsof a paper. In short, technology offers theopportunity to change the roles that teachers andstudents have traditionally played. With technologydispensing infor-

mation, teachers are free to coach and facilitatestudent learning. With technology monitoringlearning, students can become active learners,working to effectively acquire new skills as theysolve problems. If the goal of creating high-performance learning organizations is to berealized, the reinvention of American educationhas to incorporate these new tools.35

Instructional Materials

The SCANS workplace competencies will not bewidely taught unless teachers have access toinstructional materials that put them in context.These materials include textbooks,computer-based materials, and multimediamaterials that employ the technology noted in theprevious section. Video and multimedia materialsare essential to creating the realistic contexts inwhich the competencies are used.

Materials are needed for the teachers ofmathematics, science, English, history, andgeography who will teach the SCANScompetencies as part of their regular courses. Asimilar need exists for teachers of art, foreignlanguage, English as a Second Language (ESL),and vocational courses. Finally, "second chance,"proprietary schools, and community collegesneed instructional materials for their curricula.

High-quality materials are expensive to develop.The investment---whether made by the

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public or private sector---can be justified only ifmany students use the materials over a period ofyears. If SCANS is widely adopted---and millionsof students learn these skills---that condition ofwidespread use will be met.

Private-sector publishers will need some assurancethat a market exists before making that investment.This assurance can come from a variety of sources:large-scale purchases of materials for federallyfinanced programs, inclusion of the SCANS know-how in state curriculum frameworks, ordevelopment of joint ventures between one or morestates and publish-

ers (for example, Florida is developing amultimedia ESL program and anotheryouth-at-risk program in partnership with twodifferent publishers).

Instructional materials is one of the "chicken andegg" problems that will have to be solved if theSCANS agenda is to be realized. If publishersrefrain from investing in materials developmentuntil curriculum frameworks are changed, andstates refrain from changing their frameworksuntil instructional materials are available, noprogress will be made.

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Chapter 5WORK-BASED LEARNING AND

HIGH-PERFORMANCE INDUSTRIES

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This Commission has said to employers, "Changeyour view of your human resource responsibilities.. . . Your new responsibilities must includedeveloping the human resources in yourcommunity, your firm, and your nation." Wedefined a generic set of workplace competencies.If the SCANS goals are to be met, employers willhave to use the language built around the SCANSknow-how in all their human resource activities.They will have to teach the SCANS competenciesin expanded internal training programs. TheSCANS language will also have to be adopted asthe definition of workplace literacy andemployment preparation in second-chanceprograms. Finally, and most important, industrywill have to build high-performance workplaceswhere the competencies are used and rewarded.

A COMMON LANGUAGE

Employers must become an active force incommunicating what is required for success on thejob. In What Work Requires of Schools, we createda new vocabulary for communicating thefundamental skills and competencies required bywork. This vocabulary must take hold throughoutthe workplace. As pointed out earlier, about 80percent of the workers on whom the Americaneconomy will depend as it enters the 21st centuryare already on the job. Some of these people areyoungsters and young

adults from age 16 to 25, who today are lost in thetransition between school and work. Their highschools talked of English and geometry, but theiremployers speak a different language. Theirfrustration could be lessened by an adequatereferral system that mediates between the twoworlds. A system like this requires that schools andemployers learn and use a common language, suchas one built around the SCANS know-how.

In a workable referral system:

Employers would describe job requirementsin terms of the SCANS competencies.

Education providers---vocational schools,proprietary schools,---in communitycolleges, adult education, and work-basedprograms---would offer instruction andcertification in SCANS know-how.

Referral agencies---job counselors in highschools, in employment agencies, and theEmployment Service, or in the skill centersnewly recommended by the BushAdministration---would assess their clients’SCANS know-how, understand job andeducational requirements and opportunitiesin the same terms, and refer clients to career-enhancing work and education.

If high-performance workplaces are tobecome the norm rather than the exception inthe American economy, promoting theSCANS know-how in the existing workforcemust be

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widely adopted. Programs must be designed to serveadult learners, who differ from those in high schoolin several important ways:

Experience: Adults know more and havemore opinions than young people.

Motivation: Adults often are not required toattend school, as are most young people.

Other Demands on Time: The greatdemands on adults’ time, the difficulties theyface in traveling to "school" and adhering to aschool schedule, and the objectives they bringto their learning are likely to presentchallenges. Most important, they need to earna living and often cannot afford to be full-timestudents.

Financing: Workers’ education may be paidfor by their companies on a voluntary basis(e.g., tuition-reimbursement schemes) or as aresult of union-based negotiations (e.g., thearrangements negotiated by the United AutoWorkers with the "Big Three" automobilecompanies). Continuing education may alsobe self-financed.

Providers: However financed, the educationmay be provided by company trainingprograms, joint union-management programs,vocational-technical schools, communitycolleges or four-year institutions,community-based organizations,correspondence courses, and, as technologyprogresses, distance-learning methods.

Adult learners, unlike younger students, are morelikely to want to learn their SCANS know-how inthe course of industry-specific

training, rather than in traditional academiccourses. Moreover, these students may be aimingfor a specific profile of skills fitted to a certainjob possibility or career.

In addition to their joblessness, unemployedadults experience all of the difficulties thatemployed adults experience. But the unemployedmay be particularly eager to acquire the skillsneeded to find a job. Moreover, unemployedworkers may be able to finance their educationthrough publicly supported adult job-trainingefforts, although these workers face uncertainpost training job prospects.

WORK-BASED LEARNING

For most employees, employer-sponsorededucation and training programs need to becreated. Although the private sector spends $50billion on education and training, precious littleformal training is now being provided tofront-line workers as opposed to managers.According to the Commission on the Skills of theAmerican Workforce (CSAW), for example, only8 percent of today’s front-line employees receiveany formal training on the job,36 and this trainingis largely limited to orientation for newemployees or short courses in such areas as safetyand environmental regulation.

The CSAW findings confirm an earlier RandCorporation study, thought to be the mostcomprehensive analysis of private-sectortraining.37 According to the Rand analysis, about

_________________________

36See NCEE, America’s Choice. Front-line workers are those who work at the point of production or the point of sale.

37Lee A. Lillard and Hong W. Tan, Private Sector Training in the United States: Who Gets It and What Are Its Effects? (SantaMonica, Calif.: Rand Corporation, 1986).

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7 percent of men receive company training in theirfirst year of employment and 10 percent in thesecond year. Among women, the figures are 3.6 and3.2 percent. Although the likelihood of receivingtraining increases the longer the worker remainswith the same firm, training is disproportionatelyprovided to those who need it least, that is, collegegraduates and those with a year or more in college.High school graduates and dropouts are at the end ofthe training line.

What these findings mean is displayed graphicallyin Exhibit I. The 25 percent of high schoolgraduates who receive baccalaureate degrees---forexample, technical professionals---are two to threetimes as likely to receive formal company-basedtraining as are laborers; machine operators; andtransportation, service, and clerical workers.

Measured against international standards, mostAmerican front-line workers have few trainingopportunities.38 Exhibit J compares these efforts inthe United States with those of three majoreconomic competitors in terms of school-to-worktransition and availability and quality of vocationaleducation, and employer-sponsored training. Theresults are troubling: in the United States, thetransition from school to work is left mostly tochance; vocational education is uneven; andworkplace training is largely limited to managers,executives, and those already technically trained.

Islands of Excellence

There are islands of excellence in a number ofcorporations across the industrial spectrum (seeSidebar C). Despite the fact that many companieshave recently announced major job reductions,almost all of them have in place, and plan to keepin place, companywide efforts to upgrade theskills of their workforce.

Some corporate training programs are the resultof a realization by union leaders and executivesof the need to make workers part of ahigh-performance industry. Ford and its branch ofthe United Auto Workers (UAW) pioneered theconcept in the auto industry, and the UAW madetraining of front-line workers part of industrywidebargaining. Initially, five cents was contributed toa training fund for each hour worked by a UAWmember (the so-called nickel fund). In recentyears the contribution has risen to 10 cents perhour, or more in some circumstances.

The Communications Workers of America(CWA) brought the concept to thecommunications industry. When AT&T lost itsregulated monopoly position, its workers also lostjob security. The 1986 collective bargainingagreement between AT&T, CWA, and theInternational Brotherhood of Electrical Workers(IBEW) established the Alliance for EmployeeGrowth and Development as a separateorganization, with a board of directors chosenfrom

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38OTA, Worker Training.

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both the company and its unions. Each month,AT&T contributes to the Alliance about $13 perworker. The contribution supports the activities of300 local union-management committees. Since itsinception, more than 65,000 unionized

employees have enrolled in 145,000 trainingactivities, ranging from basic skills to advancedtechnology. The Alliance, working with AT&T’sBusiness Units as they develop strategic plans,qualifies workers for the new jobs created by

EXHIBIT I

CHANCES OF RECEIVING FORMAL COMPANY-BASEDTRAINING INCREASES WITH EDUCATION

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EXHIBIT J

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United States Germany Japan Korea

School-to-WorkTransition

Left mostly tochance; someemployers haveties to localschools

Apprenticeshipsavailable for mostnon-college-boundyouth

Personalrelationshipscultivatedbetweenemployers andlocal schools

Employers recruitfrom vocationaland academic highschools

VocationalEducation:

Extent

Available inmost areas

Universally availableLimited; mostlyassumed byemployers

Universallyavailable

QualityWide range:poor toexcellent

Uniformly good Fair to goodVocational highschools uniformlygood

Employer-ProvidedTraining:

Extent

Available inmost areas

Universally availableLimited; mostlyassumed byemployers

Universallyavailable

Quality

Wide range;some programsare excellent,but more areweak orunstructured

Very good Very good Generally poor

PublicPolicies

Source: OTA, Worker Training

Federal role isvery limited;state aid toemployers isgrowing

Governmentapprenticeshipsencourage continuingtraining

Subsidiesencouragetraining bysmall firms

Directive--someemployers resistpolicies

changing technologies and markets. Vendors thatsell training materials and services to the Alliancehave been asked to describe how they could helpteach the SCANS know-how.

A dramatic example of the fruits of jointunion-management efforts to integrate work aroundquality and high performance is found in NewUnited Motor Manufacturing, Inc.

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SIDEBAR C

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FROM SMALL MANUFACTURERS TO ELECTRONIC GIANTS

Across the industrial spectrum, from manufacturing to high technology, many Americancorporations have responded to the imperative their workers. Will-Burt, Inc., and Motorola areexamples.

Will-Burt, Inc. Harry Featherstone is the president and CEO of Will-Burt, Inc., a small ($20million in sales) manufacturer located in Orrville, Ohio. Pressed by the threat of bankruptcy, a 35percent product-rejection rat, 2,000 hours of rework per month, and a largely uneducated workforce,Featherstone has become a firm believer in and practitioner of the Deming principles. When hestarted, he "couldn’t get 10 people to volunteer to take courses in basic blueprint reading" oncompany time. Now, 25 percent of the factory workers take classes on everything from accountingto inventory control, and on their own time. At the same time, product rejections fell to 8 persentand rework to 400 hours. Quality improved to the extent that Will-Burt became the first Americanmanufacturer of gears for Honda’s Gold-Wing motorcycle factory in Marysville, Ohio.

Featherstone is also a champion of the proposed Associate Degree in Manufacturing. At present heis working on the idea with the University of Akron. The degree will be (1) obtained throughinstruction provided by community colleges and employers, (2) based on the SCANS competenciesas they apply to manufacturing, and (3) honored throughout the manufacturing industry because itwill be backed by an industrywide organization.

Motorola Corporation, as mentioned earlier, has set itself the objective of reducing its defects to3.4 per million components in 1992. The company has established the following education andtraining objectives:

By the end of 1992, all employees worldwide will receive five days of job-relevant trainingand education per year.

By the end of 1994, all employees will have mastered and applied the job skills required bybusiness plans.

By the end of 1995, all employees will be competent in the language, reading, andmathematics skills needed for their jobs and for higher-level training.

By the end of 1994, all components of the program will meet criteria for highperformance---best-in-class training and customer satisfaction.

By 2000, exit-level proficiencies of the graduates of targeted institutions will be equal to orhigher than entry-level skill requirements of Motorola.

(NUMMI), a joint General Motors-Toyota venturelocated at a former General Motors (GM)manufacturing facility in Fremont, California. Unionand management committed themselves to newlabor-management relationships: to

resolve problems through consensus; to seekconstant improvement in quality, productivity,and cost; and to resolve any worker’s failure tomeet work rates. The workers’ right to stop theproduction line when quality is at risk, without

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fear of being disciplined, was made explicit. Finally,management agreed to reduce its own salaries and tobring work that had been contracted out back to theplant before resorting to layoffs.

NUMMI’s success since opening in 1984 isimpressive, particularly against the backdrop ofprior experience at the same facility. An entirelynew approach to management---replacing"Taylorism" with total quality management---wasessential.

Other employers have similar stories to tell.Working with its union, the Xerox Corporation alsoannually spends millions of dollars training itsemployees.39 Xerox’s International Center forTraining and Management Development in Virginiaoffers programs in sales training, service andtechnical courses, and management development.All told, Xerox trains 110,000 employees annually.Arthur Andersen & Company employs about 200trainers at its Worldwide Center for ProfessionalEducation in Illinois, which last year providedtraining to 58,000 of the firm’s employees.

Unfortunately, there is a general lack of coherenceand coordination among programs offered bydifferent employers---be they private companies orvarious governments. There are few portablecertificates’outside the general equivalency diploma(GED) or college degrees---that many workersbelieve are worthwhile. Few firms recognizecertificates granted

by other companies’ internal training programs.As a result, tuition-referral programs are under-subscribed. Employers and workers wouldbenefit if job descriptions, career ladders,recruiting, training, and portable certificates weretied to a common language such as SCANS. Theenhanced benefit would encourage employers toinvest their money, and employees to invest theirtime in education and training.

SECOND-CHANCE PROGRAMS

Providing everyone with a "second chance" is adeeply held value in the United States. Peoplewho drop out of high school are encouraged toreturn or are offered the opportunity to obtain theGED. Community, technical, and junior collegesacross the nation are now providing millions ofadults with second-chance opportunities. Manylearn skills missed in formal schooling in theirmilitary service. Unemployed people and thoseon public assistance can take advantage ofemployment-training opportunities supported byFederal and state agencies.

Since the early 1980s the principal vehicle forFederal involvement in employment and traininghas been the Job Training Partnership Act(JTPA). JTPA gives states and their local agents,usually private industry councils (PICs),considerable discretion in designing programs tomeet local needs. Most of the services areprovided not directly by the PICs themselves, butunder contract with local education agencies,community colleges, proprietary schools,

_________________________

39Carol Kleiman, "Recession or Not, Training Remains an Essential Expense,"Washington Post, (January 19, 1992).

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and community-based organizations. Title II of thelegislation offers employment and trainingservices to disadvantaged persons. Title III of thelegislation provides education and trainingservices to workers dislocated by economic ortechnological change. Unlike the other JTPAprograms, eligibility for Title III is based not onincome, but the loss (or prospect of the loss) of ajob.

Several other programs provide other significantFederal support for upgrading employment skills.The Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education andApplied Technology Act helps schools,community colleges, and vocational and technicalinstitutes provide students with marketable jobskills. States match $1.1 billion of Federal funds invocational education by a factor of 10 for everyFederal dollar. The Adult Education Act isoriented largely to improving functional literacy.Appropriations for Adult Education, which servesabout 3.6 million adults each year, approach $300million annually. The Job Opportunities and BasicSkills (JOBS) Training Program authorized by theFamily Support Act of 1988 helps eligible welfarerecipients become self-sufficient by providingeducation and training and other related support.Significant Federal matching funds are availablefor the JOBS program on an entitlement basis.

"Second chance" programs can readily be adaptedto the SCANS know-how. Embedding thesecompetencies and the foundation skills in JTPA,JOBS, vocational education, and adult edu-

cation programs will make them more useful toparticipants and increase the return on the public’sinvestment.

APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAMS

Apprenticeship is an age-old system of providinglearning in context. Apprentices are employed invirtually every sector of the American economy,from agriculture to government. The 819occupations recognized for apprenticeship trainingrange, alphabetically, from accordion maker tox-ray equipment tester. The overwhelming majorityof apprentices, however, are in the constructionindustry; 10 occupations (e.g., electrician,carpenter, plumber, machinist, tool-and-die maker)account for more than 132,000 apprentices---about50 percent of the total.

From the SCANS perspective, the attractiveness ofapprenticelike training lies in the structure ofapprenticeship itself. Apprentices have to meetoccupational and industry standards. They earn aliving while they are learning. They receivestructured, on-the-job training and relatedtheoretical instruction. The apprentice understandshow long the training will last-as little as one yearto as long as five, depending on the occupation. Awage-progression schedule is normally associatedwith apprenticeship, and apprentices are aware ofthe financial benefits of completing training and ofreceiving their journeyman’s certificate. In short,the apprenticeship model incorporates many of theelements required to teach the SCANS know-how.

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TRAINING AND THE HIGH-PERFORMANCE INDUSTRY

There is a growing consensus that the productivity,stability, and competitiveness of today’s firm ismore and more directly tied to the quality of itsworkforce. Deming’s emphasis on training hasalready been mentioned, and training is one of thesix points identified as essential to manufacturingcompetitiveness by the MIT Commission onIndustrial Productivity in 1989. Another point madeboth by Deming and MIT is each firm’s dependenceon receiving high-quality input from its suppliers.Thus, firms such as Motorola, Boeing, and Xeroxrequire that their suppliers train to becomehigh-performance firms.

In short, high-performance, competitive firmscannot be created or thrive if their suppliers lack thekinds of competencies and skills

defined by the Commission. This is as true forservice and public-sector organizations as it is formanufacturing enterprises. Good training paysoff. It pays off for the individual worker, for thecompany, and for the industry as a whole. Theother side of the training coin is downtime on thejob, defective products and services, wastedmaterials, late deliveries, and dissatisfiedcustomers.

Workplace know-how---the competencies and thefoundation skills---offer employers a better wayout. In fact, some industry organizations, such asthe National Association of Manufacturers(NAM), are already beginning to focus on theSCANS message as a foundation for rethinkingtraining needs (see Sidebar D). The competenciesSCANS has defined can be taught aroundspecific workplace tasks of interest to thesponsoring employer. Employees will

SIDEBAR D

NAM AND THE SCANS SKILLS

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) believes that remaining competitive in globalmarkets will depend increasingly on the skills of the nation’s workforce and the way in whichhuman resources are used. As a result, NAM, in partnership with the Department of Labor, hascreated a project in workforce readiness to design innovative training models for small,medium-size, and large companies. In Phase I, focus-group research will be conducted, and in PhaseII, a series of workshops will be sponsored. The purpose of the focus groups is to explore attitudesand concerns about worker readiness and current worker education and training programs amongemployers and employees across the country. The themes identified in the focus groups will be usedin developing the workshops, which will offer hands-on examples of work-based learning as aneffective method of skill acquisition. The goal is to provide a forum where local businesses canshare strategies and create a network for continuing consultations.

SCANS know-how will more likely be taught in local schools if manufacturers understand theimportance of these skills and competencies and then communicate that understanding to a widerange of educational institutions. Through its Association Council, which includes over 180 verticaltrade associations, NAM will be a powerful vehicle for disseminating the findings about theSCANS know-how.

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possess a broader set of workplace competenciesand will be able to perform, in their current jobs ina superior manner.

Association-wide activities can be found in othereconomic sectors. The American Institute ofBanking, for example, offers "Strategic SkillBuilders for Banking," a package of flexiblemodules easily adaptable to any bank’s trainingprogram. It tests participants’ language andmathematics skills and offers instruction insubjects from reading to balancing cash drawersand building communications skills. The NationalAssociation of Printers and Lithographers,representing 400,000 employees, also offersextensive training. Its workplace program offers askills inventory, manager’s sourcebook, andcourses in on- the-job math, communications,critical thinking, and graphic arts. The "CafeteriaWorkers Skill Enhancement Training Program" isa joint labor-management program developed bythe Food and Beverage

Workers with ARA Services, Inc; CanteenCorporation; Guest Services, Inc.; MarriottCorporation; Service America, Inc.; and about adozen other food- service firms.

The ability to develop the SCANS know-how intheir employees may be a matter of survival formost of the nation’s small businesses (defined asthose having $5 million and under in annualrevenues, or 100 or fewer employees). Strategiesfor requiring this ability must include thedevelopment of coalitions made up of thebusinesses themselves, trade and professionalassociations, state and local governmentemployers, and labor organizations whosemembers need the SCANS know-how to remaincompetitive (see Sidebar E for a description of ahospitality-industry coalition). The basicoperational principle, of course, is synergy: Whathelps one helps all, and the whole becomes morethan the sum of its parts.40

_________________________

40The definition of industry extends to governance at all levels. The SCANS Government-as-Employer Task Force has prepareda report, Government as High Performance Employer , noted in Appendix C.

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SIDEBAR E

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HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY

In January 1992, 17 organizations representing the hospitality industry (including the restaurant, hotel,and tourism industries and their suppliers) met and agreed to create a Convocation of NationalHospitality Industry Associations. The convocation will develop industry standards around the workplaceknow-how identified by SCANS.

The hospitality industry employs approximately 10 million workers. Most of the employers are membersof one or more of the associations represented in the convocation. Many of the organizations have stateand local chapters; combined, they make up a huge network.

The convocation’s aim is to attract competent employees into the industry and to enhance education andtraining curriculum. The convocation adopted the following strategy:

Step 1. Define a universe of positions that are representative of the industry, including industry-specificpositions (e.g., chef or restaurant manager) and support positions (e.g. executive secretary or accountant).

Step 2. Develop model descriptions for the positions identified. Each description will include a positionsummary; task descriptions designed around the SCANS competencies; and general qualificationsincluding educational background, experience, and special qualifications required to perform in theposition.

Step 3. Establish the required level of performance for each job task. Members of the Council on Hotel,Restaurant, and Institutional Education (CHRIE)---the leading organization involved in teaching, trainingand learning, research, and practice in the field of hospitality and tourism---will be asked to developspecific curriculum exercises to assess the competencies and teach them in the context of the industry.

Convocation members expect to use the standards to qualify workers seeking entry into career ladders inthe hospitality industry, and to communicate these standards to all educators and schools. Theconvocation expects that schools teaching the SCANS know-how in the five core academic disciplineswill use the curriculum exercises and assessments to teach the competencies identified by SCANS.

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58

Chapter 6STANDARDS, ASSESSMENTS,

AND CERTIFICATION

The Commission believes that achievementthroughout American schools must be raised andthat all students should attain the skills andknowledge needed for productive participation inthe workplace of tomorrow. This task will requiretransforming the practices of schooling and havingeducators and the public at large agree on newobjectives for learning and new ways of teachingand studying. It will also require developingwidely understood standards of performance aswell as new assessments to measure theirattainment.

STANDARDS AND ASSESSMENT

Educational standards, arrived at through a publicprocess of discussion and debate, can play acentral role in reaching the needed agreement.Clearly articulated standards can communicate toeveryone---teachers, students, parents---what theyought to be aiming for during the school years.The conversation can stimulate the development ofhigh- performance schools and workplaces, andcan link schools more effectively to the world ofwork. Above all, the standards can serve toincrease the likelihood that all American youngpeople---including the poor, minorities, and thechildren of immigrants---will have the opportunity

Commissioner, a critic of current standards andassessment practices, recently testified:

American children today do not have anequal chance to learn in school. Expectationsare not the same for all, the opportunities forlearning are not equivalent. Almosteverywhere, we expect less of children frompoor and minority families; we therefore askless of them, and, above all, we offer themless. Schools with unequal resources, formaltracking systems, and informal groupinginside classrooms create de facto differentcurricula for different groups of students.These differences are often masked by theabsence of clear standards. A and B gradesdon’t mean the same thing in differentschools. Parents of poor and minoritychildren are told that their children are doingfine, "working to their ability." How can theyknow that "working to ability" meansworking to a much lower expectation thanothers?

Clear and public standards---the same onesfor all groups of students---are the only waythis situation is likely to end. With cleartargets for learning for everyone, parents and

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g pp yto learn what they will need to know and be able todo in order to participate effectively in the nation’seconomy. As one SCANS

g g y , padvocates of poor and minority children willknow exactly what should be expected oftheir children. And they will be able to insistthat the instruction offered will allow thechildren to meet those expectations. Onlywith public, clearly understandable standardsfor all students can we end the doublestandard that is now depriving so manychildren of the chance to study a challengingcurricu-

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lum and to have access to good jobs or furthereducation when they finish school.41

Many groups in the United States are participatingin a continuing national conversation on standards,testing, and assessment, and there is much newactivity in this area (see Sidebar F). The NationalEducation Goals Panel endorsed the idea of a newnational assessment system in 1991. The NationalCouncil on Education Standards and Testingconcluded in 1992 that national standards and a"system of assessments, measuring progresstoward the standards" should be put in place42. Afoundation-funded effort with nationwide reach,the New Standards Project, is exploring how tocreate a "national examination system" based noton tests but on what it calls "the Three P’s":student projects, portfolios of student work, andperformance evaluation.

Tests Versus Assessment

Much of this new activity is a reaction to whatmany people term an excess of testing in ournation’s schools---an activity that involves, by oneestimate, at least 20 million student days, anddirect expenses of 100 million tax dollarsannually. Critics of our current propensity to teststudents repeatedly argue that today’s tests (1) aredesigned to label, sort, and select individualswithout regard to whether these

tests promote learning; (2) damage test-takers bypitting students against one another in ways thatresult in long- lasting labels like "smart" and"dumb"; and (3) distort the educational process,because instruction often models "multiple-choicethinking" rather than critical analysis.

Experts agree that assessment is profoundlydifferent from testing. The United States hasalready tried to test its way to excellence ineducation, and the effort has failed. By the end ofthe 1980s, 47 states required statewide testing, atleast for minimum competence. Students,particularly low-income minority youngsters,showed modest gains in basic skills achievement,but performance in the higher-order skills requiredfor high performance continued to bedisappointing. Test results describe the problem atthe end of the educational process and for thatpurpose they may be useful. Assessment promisesto build excellence into the educational process ona day-by-day basis, rather than trying to test it in atthe end.

Criteria for an Effective AssessmentSystem

What does an assessment system need to beeffective? Any system that meets the following sixcriteria is well on its way:43

1. It defines and communicates what is to belearned---that is, the outcomes that

_________________________

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41Summary of testimony by SCANS Commissioner Lauren Resnick before the House of Representatives’ EducationSubcommittee, January 1992.

42NCEST, Raising Standards for American Education .

43For a discussion of assessment, see Gregory R. Anrig, "National Tests: Nay. Nationwide Assessment: Yea," Testimony beforeHouse Committee on Education and Labor (March 14, 1991). See also Teaching the SCANS Competencies (forthcoming) forexamples of assessment items prepared by a number of the organizations listed in Sidebar F.

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SIDEBAR F

PIECES OF THE STANDARDS AND ASSESSMENT PUZZLE

Several groups, organizations, and states are already at work on major elements of a new assessmentsystem. Among the projects in progress are the following:

New Standards Project. This effort, based at the University of Pittsburgh and the National Center onEducation and the Economy in Rochester, New York, is funded by the John D. and Catherine T.MacArthur Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trust. It serves as a model for much of the nationalstandard-setting and assessment activity. The project has begun work with 17 states and local schooldistricts around the country to show how students can be helped to achieve high standards by setting cleartargets for instruction and by providing the extra help and resources to those who need them to achievethe standards.

College Entrance Examination Board. The College Board is developing Pacesetter, an array ofsecondary-school syllabi, related assessments, and professional development activities for teachers. Thesyllabi spell out for all students standards to raise student expectations and improve performance. Theprogram is being developed in cooperation with leading disciplinary associations and educationalpractitioners at all levels. The initial offering in mathematics is projected for 1993, to be followed byEnglish, world history, science, and foreign languages.

Educational Testing Service. ETS is developing WORKLINK, an electronic information system linkinglocal schools and employers. WORKLINK is an "employer friendly" record to make school performancecount in the workplace. It provides to employers (1) a reformatted high school transcript that is easy tointerpret; (2) work-skills assessment covering such aptitudes as reading and using manuals, everydaymath, and writing skills; (3) information on job-related behavior, including punctuality, timely workcompletion, and willingness to follow directions; and (4) information on work experience andout-of-school training. Students will be able to use their records as a r’esum’e, and employers will be ableto locate potential employees from a computerized WORKLINK data base managed locally. (Ther’esum’e shown in Exhibit K is based, in part, on WORKLINK).

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are expected to show up in the knowledge andskills of the students. These outcomes become, ineffect, standards for all. A useful assessment notmerely indicates success or failure in meeting thestandards but identifies the degree of progressmade in meeting them.

It assures that students are being taught what thesystem calls for, and that teachers are significantlyinvolved in determining educational standards,outcomes, and goals.

It permits comparison of local performance tonational benchmarks.

It protects students against sorting and labeling bymoving away from distinguishing between "good"and "bad" to measuring performance againststandards of what students should know and beable to do.

It is dynamic, meaning it can be improved on thebasis of experience and of advances in knowledge.

It motivates students who believe that theassessment will count in the world beyond highschool because they see that employers makedecisions based upon the assessment.

The Commission supports these criteria andbelieves it is possible to move beyond the puzzlethat frustrates most assessments: how to design anassessment system that has the credibility ofabsolute standards built into it without penalizingstudents who fail to reach the standards.

DESIGNING A SYSTEM

Moving from the six criteria just listed to a fair andequitable system of standard setting and assessmentrequires going beyond

simply creating new forms of tests. It also involvesdeveloping varied instructional opportunities andproviding appropriate resources for students withspecial needs. (See Sidebar G for one special case,persons with limited English proficiency.) Theproblem is to design a system that establishesstudents’ rights to an education up to a recognized,absolute standard of performance without puttingthe burden of failure on the backs of students. Hereis the Commission’s solution:

Establish for all students, beginning inmiddle school, a cumulative r’esum’e. Ther’esum’e will contain information aboutcourses taken, projects completed, andproficiency level attained in eachcompetency. When a student reaches theperformance standard for certification in aSCANS competency, that certification willbe noted on the r’esum’e. When the studenthas accomplished enough to meet an overallstandard, the r’esum’e will show that he orshe has been awarded a certificate of initialmastery (CIM). The CIM establishes thelevel of achievement to which the student isentitled. It is society’s obligation to provideeach student with multiple opportunities toachieve the CIM in school or other settingssuch as youth centers or on the job. Societyand student are responsible, together, forreaching the standard.

Students will be free to use their r sum inseeking employment or further education atany time. Employers can be expected todemand from students the highest level ofcertification that the job demands (e.g.,high-performance workplaces can demandhigh skills, including---but not limitedto---those required for the CIM).

In the near future, while only a minority ofjobs are in high-performance work-

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SIDEBAR G

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TEACHING AND ASSESSING PERSONS WITH LIMITED ENGLISH PROFICIENCY

The United States is a nation of immigrants and is likely to remain so. The 1990 Census reports adramatic increase in immigration from countries where Spanish or Asian and Pacific Island languages arespoken. California reports that in the future, minorities, most of whom come from immigrant families,will make up 50 to 70 percent of its population. For the 1989-90 school year, some 3 million of thechildren and adults in the nation’s schools were classified as "limited English proficient" (LEP). At a timewhen the United States plays an increasing role in the global economy, the language capabilities ofimmigrant students and their familiarity with two cultures should be used for the benefit of all.

Whether they are enrolled in developmental or bilingual education classes, all LEP students need ongoingopportunities to combine second-language learning and literacy development with problem-solvingactivities. These activities should let students use the diverse knowledge they already possess.Cross-cultural comparisons should give students a chance to link thei home experience with the skillsneeded to succeed at school and in the workplace.

LEP students can benefit from program designs and educational strategies such as the following:

Needs assessments and diagnostics that (1) are culturally and linguistically appropriate for a givenlanguage group; (2) help evaluate the areas in which LEP students are well versed; and (3) indicatethose areas where additional development is needed. These assessments must be able to distinguishproblem-solving (cognitive) skills from language skills---in other words, a student may be able toperform a task but may have trouble with the English vocabulary or structures used in thedirections.

Progress assessments and performance evaluations that rely on multiple ways to measure success.Students must be provided with opportunities to demonstrate what they know and whay they cando without being constantly held back by their lack of experience with the English language. Forlanguage-minority students especially, assessment must occur in many contexts.

Issues of linguistics and cultural pluralism will increase in prominence and urgency as demographicforces dramatically change the workforce. Integrating SCANS know-how with language and literacydevelopment can provide schools and workplaces with a way to address these forces positively.

places, students with the CIM will naturally bemore attractive to high- performance employers.(The data presented earlier in Exhibit C show thathigher SCANS know-how is associated withhigher-paying jobs.) As more high-performancejobs are created, the payoff for having the CIM willincrease. Meanwhile, as more CIM holders becomeavailable, employers will be encouraged to createhigh-performance workplaces.

The proposed r’esum’e would be a universallyrecognized statement of experience andaccomplishment. The information would mean thesame thing to everybody: this student has theSCANS know-how noted here.

The information would have this meaning becausethe r’esum’e will contain more than a mere recordof courses taken and grades attained-theinformation on a current high

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school transcript. Beginning in middle school, eachstudent would accumulate a record of portfolios,projects completed, teacher evaluations, projectsamples, assessment results, and the like. Asstudents reach higher and higher levels ofperformance for any particular subject matter orSCANS competency, the fact will be noted in ther’esum’e. (See Exhibit K for a hypothetical r’esum’e.)

The benefits of such a r’esum’e for student andemployee are considerable: For the student, ther’esum’e becomes a permanent record of genuineattainment. As more and more high-performancejobs require higher and higher competence, ther’esum’e will have a more obvious payoff for thestudent. Employers will benefit from the realisticexpectation that their businesses can demand higherlevels of competency, and becomehigh-performance workplaces.

In the Commission’s view, it is essential that thecertification system incorporate the other part of theequation---avoiding penalties for students who failto reach the standards. The Commission advocatesworld-class standards. Initially, many students canbe expected to fall short, and, as we have said, theburden of that failure should not be placed solely onthe backs of students.

If the new assessment system is to work equitably,students and workers should be entitled to multipleopportunities to acquire the competence needed toearn a decent living. The Commission believes thatsociety has an obligation to balance the demand forhigh standards with a commitment to help all youngpeo-

ple attain them. That is, schools and theworkplace should offer multiple chances to worktoward the standard-in school, in skills centers, inyouth programs, and on the job.

The Commission believes that most students willearn their certificate of initial mastery by age 16,but no age limit should be imposed. Students maytake as long as they need, and the schools will beobliged to provide education that enables studentsto acquire the certificate, and to provide theservices necessary for students of any age, bothin-school and out-of-school, to meet this goal.Thus the system is not "pass/fail" but "ready/tryagain."

The levels of performance required for a CIMshould be benchmarked to the highest standard inthe world for 16-year-olds. They should bechosen on the basis of estimates of the skillsneeded to succeed in further education and toparticipate productively in the workplace oftomorrow. Under today’s civil rights law, manyemployers will be barred from using the CIM as aticket for job selection because their jobs do notneed all the skills that the CIM will certify. Butsome advanced workplaces do need workers withall these skills, and these are the jobs with thebest pay and the best chances for careeradvancement. All employers could, however,review all of the other information on ther’esum’e. Consistent with civil rights law, theycould match the qualifications evident on ther’esum’e with the level and mix of skills neededfor the jobs they have available.

The knowledge that the chances of securing agood job are significantly increased

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EXHIBIT K

HYPOTHETICAL R’ESUM’E

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Jane Smith19 Main StreetAnytownHome Phone: (817) 777-3333

Date of Report: 5/1/92Soc. Sec.: 599-46-1234Date of Birth: 3/7/73Age: 19

SCANS Workplace CompetencyResourcesInterpersonal SkillsInformationTechnologySystems

Date10/9112/9111/921/924/92

Proficiency Level12323

Core Academic and Elective CoursesEnglishMathematicsScienceHistoryGeographyFine ArtsVocational/Industrial Education

Date11/9112/912/914/918/9111/914/92

Proficiency Level3332142

SCANS Personal QualitiesResponsibilitySelf-EsteemSociabilitySelf-ManagementIntegrity/Honesty

Average RatingExcellentExcellentExcellentExcellentGood

No. of Ratings1010876

Portfolios and Other Materials Available1. Report on Grounds Keeping (Chemistry)2. Video on Architectural Styles (Social Studies)3. Newspaper Article Written

ReferenceMr. KentMs. JonesMs. French

ExtracurricularActivitiesNewspaperBasketball Varsity

RoleReporterCenter

Date9/89-1/909/90-6/91

ReferenceFrank Jones (Advisor)Dean Smith (Coach)

Awards and HonorsTeen Volunteer of theYearClass Secretary

Date6/919/91-1/92

SourceRotary ClubLincoln High School

ReferenceJohn GroveEmma Rice

(continued)

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EXHIBIT K (Continued)

Points Toward Certificate of Initial Mastery Earned300

Required500

(Supplied by Student) Work ExperienceVolunteer Work

Summer Camp Counselor

Office (Word Processor)

Date6/88-6/89

6/91-8/87

1/90-5/92

PlaceSt. Joseph HomelessShelter

Camp Kiowa

PDQ Secretarial Help

ReferenceFather John O’Connell(508) 296-3304Susan Miller(508) 628-5128Myrna Copper(508) 389-0202

by certification will motivate students to worktoward acquiring the necessary skills (and to prodtheir parents to put pressure on the schools toimprove students’ ability to do so). Because thisinformation would be extremely useful to employersin making hiring decisions and to colleges inevaluating applications, students would have astrong motivation to learn the SCANS foundationskills and workplace competencies, and employersand colleges would have a strong incentive torequire them. It would be up to the consumers ofthis information, whether employers, colleges, themilitary, or others, to decide on what weight to giveeach element in the r’esum’e, using their own needsas guides.

DEVELOPING STANDARDS FOR SCANSCOMPETENCIES

Neither the r’esum’e nor the obligation of society toeducate students will mean much

unless clear standards of student performancecome to be widely accepted by teachers, parents,school leaders, businesses, and communities.These standards cannot be imposed from aboveor afar, but must come to pervade educationbecause they are the internalized goals ofeveryone working in it. They must be highstandards that prepare students well for good jobsin the economy of the future.

The process of developing standards must bepublic and involve a wide set of parties.Educators, employers, parents, workers, andstudents must come to common understandingsof how competent school performance can berelated to performance on the job. Standardsshould be developed by states and localities, butbenchmarked to national and internationalstandards. A system to certify that these standards(and the assessments that go with them) meetthese benchmarks is needed to ensure the"portability" of credentials.

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The National Council on Education Standards andTesting recommended in January 1992 that theSCANS competencies be integrated into standardsdeveloped for academic subjects. We hope that thecurriculum-development work of several groups---the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics,the National Council of Teachers of English, theNational Science Teachers Association, andothers---will follow the council’s advice.Otherwise, SCANS competencies will be taught inseparate tracks, and the opportunity for anintegrated education of equal quality for allchildren will have been missed.

Clear and high standards of performance shouldmeet several criteria: (1) They must be publiclyand widely discussed and locally set; educators,trainers, employers, labor organizations, and thepublic at large should fully understand thestandards. (2) Teachers and trainers must knowwhat they are expected to accomplish. (3)Students, workers, and parents must understandwhat is expected of them. And (4) school systemsand government should know what is required ofthem.

This Commission has begun the process ofdeveloping standards for the SCANS know-howby specifying the content of the knowledge andskills that schools should teach.44 We haveexpressed this content at two levels. Our first,overarching statement for each competency areawas contained in What Work Requires of Schoolsand is repeated in Appendix

B of this document. A more detailed description ofthe required content will be available in acompanion volume to this report, Teaching theSCANS Competencies.45 Further work will berequired to develop content standards appropriateto all levels of schooling.

The next step in standard setting is to establishexpected levels of student performance in thesubject matter. For example, as we stated in ourinitial report, this Commission believes that everystudent leaving school should be able todemonstrate certain foundation skills at thefollowing level.

Read and write well enough to handlerecords, memoranda, and correspondencewithout difficulty; locate, understand, andinterpret written information; andcommunicate ideas clearly and concisely inwriting, using prose, graphs, and charts asrequired.

Understand mathematics well enough tomake simple computations, estimate results,interpret and develop diagrams and charts,work with computer programs, and applymathematics in real- world situations (suchas estimating unit costs or volumediscounts).

Speak clearly and persuasively as the jobrequires-responding to complaints, makinggroup presentations, and asking questionswhen instructions are unclear or competingjob requirements are ambiguous.

Listen carefully to understand messages, tobenefit from time in training spent, and topick up the motivations and hidden messagesof customers, clients, co-workers, orsupervisors.

_________________________

44See NCEST, Raising Standards for American Eduacation .

45See Appendix C for more information about this publication and about its companion volume, Skills and Tasks for Jobs.

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Defining complete performance standards for thefoundation skills requires agreement on the types ofrecords, memoranda, correspondence, graphs,charts, and so on that are meant in these statements.

It is the judgment of the Commission that studentperformance standards should be set at a levelsufficient to enable all students to earn a decentliving. Our data (see Exhibit C in Chapter 2)suggest that this means reaching at least themidpoint of the five levels of difficulty shown inthe scales contained in Skills and Tasks for Jobs.Examples of tasks at this level are shown in ExhibitL. These represent the standards required forsuccessful entry into positions that have a careerladder or other opportunity for advancementassociated with them.

It is important, however, to recognize thatdifferent jobs require different skills. Therefore itis not necessary---and indeed would violate recentcivil rights legislation---to require every applicantfor every role to achieve at the third level in everyskill. As one Commissioner stated, "The analogyis to the decathlon. I made up in running thehurdles what I lost in the shot-put." The principlestated in Chapter 3 holds---all Americans shouldhave multiple opportunities to attain proficiencyin the SCANS know-how at a level sufficient toearn a decent living. The mix of skills requiredwill vary according to the career aspirations ofindividual students. What is important is that eachperson must have the opportunity to attain someset of skills at a sufficiently high level ofperformance to obtain a good job and earn adecent living.

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EXHIBIT L

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TASKS FROM DIVERSE OCCUPATIONS REPRESENTATIVE OF LEVEL OF PERFORMAREQUIRED FOR ENTRY INTO JOBS WITH CAREER LADDER

TASK

Resources Travel Agent: Setspriorities for worktasks on a daily basisso that travelarrangements arecompleted in a timelymanner.

Chef:Prepares weeklysalesprojections---conductsinventory of foodsupplies; calculates thecosts of purchased andon-hand food;determines sales.

MedicalAssistant:Acquires,maintains, andtracks supplies onhand---inventoriessupplies andequipment, fills outreorder forms, andobtains extrasupplies whenmerchandise is onsale.

Quality ControlInspector:Establisystem for inspectelevators within a and time frame whallowing for othercontingencies.

InterpersonalSkills

Child-CareAide:Works as amember of a team inthe classroom.

Outside EquipmentTechnician:Coordinateswith a peer technician toinstall a point-to-pointdata circuit in twodifferent cities.

Carpenter:Sharesexperiences andknowledge withother workers, andcooperates withothers on a varietyof tasks toaccomplish projectgoals.

Accounting/FinanAnalyst:Teaches aco-worker the procsending bimonthly

Information Travel Agent:Useson-line computerterminal to retrieveinformation relating tocustomer requests,plans itinerary, andbooks airline tickets.

Blue-Collar WorkerSupervisor:Records andmaintains purchaserequests, purchaseinvoices, and costinformation on rawmaterials.

Child-careAide:Compilesaccurate writtenrecords including allfacets of the child’splay for the officeand the parents.

Order-Filler:Coma down-time situatco-workers, and exsituation so that evcan visualize and uit.

Systems MedicalAssistant:Understandsthe systems of theorganization and theorganization’s ultimategoal (i.e., excellentpatient care).

Accounting/FinancialAnalyst:Performsanalyses comparingcurrent expenditureswith projected needs andrevenues.

Shipping andReceivingClerk:Unloads anddirects materialthroughout the plantto storage and theassembly line inaccordance withcompany policy.

Food ServiceWorker:Evaluateperformance of woadjusts work assigincrease staff effic

(continued)

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EXHIBIT L(Continued)

TASKS FROM DIVERSE OCCUPATIONS REPRESENTATIVE OF LEVEL OF PERFORMKNOW-HOW REQUIRED FOR ENTRY INTO JOBS WITH CAREER LADD

TASK

Technology Travel Agent:Uses theon-line computer toretrieve informationrelating to thecustomer’s request,plan the itinerary, andbook the airline ticket.

Accounting/FinancialAnalyst:Prepares themonthly debtschedule, includingreviews of financialstatements.

Expeditor/PurchasingAgent:Accesses thecomputer to retrieverequired forms used torequest bids and toplace purchase orders.

Industry TrainingSpecialist:Uses avaicomputer and videotechnology to enhanrealism of training anconserve time.

Basic Skills DentalHygienist:Readsprofessional manualsto understand issuesrelated to newtechniques andequipment.

Sales Representative,HotelServices:Assessesclient accounts todetermine adherenceto company standards.

Optician:Measures acustomer’s facialfeatures to calculatebifocal segmentheights.

Law EnforcementOfficer:Prepares wrreports of incidents acrimes.

ThinkingSkills

Expeditor/PurchasingAgent:Decides whatsupplier to use during abid evaluation basedon supplierinformation stored inthe computer.

Blue-Collar WorkerSupervisor: Setspriorities forprocessing orders toresolve a conflict inscheduling.

Truck DeliverySalesperson/OutsideSales:Collects moneyfrom delinquentcustomers and usesjudgment on extendingcredit.

Contractor:Analyzeand corrects the probwhen timber piles brbefore reaching specbearing loads.

PersonalQualities

Optician:Respondsappropriately tocustomer requests,demonstratesunderstanding ofcustomer needs, andexhibits friendlinessand politeness tocustomers.

Quality ControlInspector:Performsindependent researchto assess compliance.

ComputerOperator:Assumesresponsibility for thearrangement andcompletion of jobs runon the mainframe.

TelemarketingRepresentative:Dispa sense of concern aninterest in customersbusiness and compan

Source: Skills and Tasks for Jobs.

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CONCLUSION

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A LEARNING-A-LIVING SYSTEM

As we said in our first report and again in this one,the Commission understands that preparation forwork is only part of the mission of schools. We alsorecognize that school is only part of the learningprocess. President Bush has spoken of the need forAmerica to be a nation of learners and for the"education revolution" to extend beyond the schoolsinto the community. Achieving this goal requiresthat every community build a system that clearlyconnects learning with earning a living.

COMMUNITY PARTICIPANTS

The National Urban League, which has for yearsserved as an education resource to the minoritycommunity, prepared Exhibit M for theCommission. It illustrates that thecommunity---parents, teachers, employers andcommunity-based organizations, such as the UrbanLeague---all play a role in developinghigh-performance learners and workers. Thesecommunity members must work together if theSCANS goals are to be achieved.

Schools will have to reinvent themselves to teachthe SCANS competencies. Employers, public andprivate, will have to assess the SCANS know-howof their work force and develop training strategies toimprove their employees’ competency.

The Federal Government will have to financeresearch and development and mea-

sure the nation’s progress toward highperformance. In this regard, SCANS is pleased tonote that the Departments of Labor and Educationand the Office of Personnel Management havejoined in a multiyear project to develop SCANSassessment measures, making it possible toinclude the SCANS competencies in the NationalAssessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)

. CONNECTING LEARNING ANDEARNING

Every community must have a coherent system toease the transition between school and work foryoungsters and to foster lifelong learning foradults. The SCANS efforts have been directed toproviding our communities with a tool forbuilding such systems: a language to connecteducation and work. Such a common language isneeded if all participants are to have theinformation they need. Agreement on the SCANSlanguage will facilitate the flow of information inthe "learning a living" system as shown inExhibit N.

The box on the left side of Exhibit N representsformal education. Within it, instruction in theSCANS workplace competencies and foundationskills is integrated with the academic curriculumuntil at least the junior year of high school.Students learn the SCANS know-how in English,math, science, history, and geography, in otherclasses (e.g., art), and in extracurricular activities.

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The basic idea is that all students follow a commonacademic program, a single track, until they areabout 16. After age 16, some students are morelikely to be learning the SCANS competencies inthe more specialized contexts of work, perhapseven specializing in an industry such asmanufacturing or hospitality. Some of thesestudents will spend their last two years in highschool in a "2+2 tech-prep program" that willconclude with two years in a community

college and an associate degree. Other studentswill continue to learn SCANS competencies inacademic courses as they move toward a four-yearcollege program. Still others will go directly towork after high school graduation and participatein work-based learning, including apprenticeship.

The box on the right side of Exhibit N representsemployers and work-based educa-

EXHIBIT M

PARTICIPANTS IN THE "LEARNING-A-LIVING" SYSTEM

Source: National Urban League.

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tion. This box includes the human resourcefunctions of recruiting, developing, and retainingemployees. It also includes learning that continuesfor a lifetime and is usually done while learnersare employed. Workplace education producesportable certificates that are valued in manyworkplaces.

Information flows from employers to educatorsthrough recruiting and employee developmentactivities, including the ways in which employeesprogress up career ladders.

Employers tell educators "what work requires ofschool." Educators, in their turn, inform employersof the competencies that students have attained.Teachers certify "what students know and can do."

Students move easily from school-based learning towork-based learning, or from high school to avariety of postsecondary certificate-grantinginstitutions. Such institutions include four-year andcommunity colleges, proprietary schools, andemployer-union offerings of work-

EXHIBIT N

INFORMATION FLOW IN THE "LEARNING-A-LIVING" SYSTEM

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site learning. Dropouts enter the "second chance"system. Some immigrants who have come to theUnited States past high school age take "remedial"or "developmental" classes. Members of thesegroups are able to proceed to postsecondary work.

A lifelong learning system serves all adults,including those who lack basic education skills,and adults who did not complete high school.Instead of having to enroll in programs labeled"basic literacy," these adults are offered coursesthat teach literacy and other basic skills in thecontext of job requirements for the SCANScompetencies.46

Job referral organizations connect students withjobs and with education for careers. Theseorganizations use the SCANS language to integratethe three languages that are used today: those of theacademic high school (algebra and Americanhistory), employers (r’esum’es), and educationproviders involved in vocational preparation(welding and auto repair).

The referral organization assesses students’ skillsand knowledge, knows the skills required for jobs,understands the future prospects for jobs and firmsin their labor markets, and refers clients to somecombination of employment and educationalprogram.47 The referral organization also helpsstudents to enter a career track and helps employersto build high-performance workplaces.

In the learning-a-living system, assessment ofadults, either on the job or outside work, is notbased on existing instruments such as the Test ofAdult Basic Education (TABE) or grade-levelreading tests. Instead, referral agencies oremployers are able to assess the SCANScompetencies within a relatively short time, givingadults credit for accomplishments in previousemployment. High school students receive collegecredit for Advanced Placement courses; adultstake credit for demonstrated competence in theSCANS know-how.

The foregoing paragraphs do not describe today’searning-a-living system, in which neitheremployers nor educators receive or deliverinformation effectively. The SCANS aim is toimprove the information flow-and the learning andthe earning-so that the economy will deliver thehigh rates of productivity and wage increases thatcharacterized the United States in the years from1937 to 1973.

BUILDING THE SYSTEM

The work of the Secretary’s Commission onAchieving Necessary Skills involved two issuesthat are part of any serious consideration about lifein the United States in the 21st century: animproved education system and a more productivenational economy. Our findings andrecommendations provide a blueprint for linkingthese two in a way that will reward our people

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with an improved standard of living. Theoutcomes that are needed are shown in Exhibit O.Unless the nation takes forceful action on thisagenda, the nation’s schools, employers, students,and workers will not prosper in the next century.

We hope that this, our final report, provides ablueprint that communities at the national, state,and local levels can and will use. Each communitymust decide what resources will be

allocated to create a system that will meet itsspecific goals. But first, each community mustbecome involved in a conversation about its placein a fast-changing world as we approach the year2000. Our nation’s ability to lead in a globaleconomy will depend on the outcome of thoseconversations. This Commission is confident thatonce communities are informed, citizens willcommit themselves to maintaining the Americandream for themselves and their children.

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EXHIBIT O

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RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE "LEARNING A LIVING" SYSTEM

THE COMMISSION RECOMMENDS FULL IMPLEMENTATIONOF THE FOLLOWING ACTIONS BY THE YEAR 2000:

Reinventing Schools

Workplace know-how (the SCANS foundation and workplace competencies) should be taughtalong the entire continuum of education, from kindergarten through college.

Every student should complete middle school (about age 14) with an introduction to workplaceknow-how.

Every student by about age 16 should attain initial mastery of the SCANS know-how.

Every student should complete high school sufficiently proficient in the SCANS know-how to earna decent living.

All federally-funded programs for youth and adults, including vocational education programs,should teach the SCANS know-how.

Fostering Work-Based Learning

Federal agencies should incorporate SCANS workplace competencies into their own employeeprograms.

Private-sector work-based training programs should incorporate training in the SCANS workplacecompetencies.

Coalitions of businesses, associations, government employers, and labor organizations should teachthe SCANS competencies to the current workforce, including employees of small businesses.

Reorganizing the Workplace

The vast majority of employers should adopt the standards of quality and high performance thatnow characterize our most competitive companies.

Companies should develop internal training programs to bring employees to the proficiency in theSCANS competencies needed for high-performance work organizations.

Restructuring Assessment

A national education-based assessment system should be implemented that will permit educationalinstitutions to certify the levels of the SCANS competencies that their students have achieved.

Public and private employers should define requirements for higher-level competencies.

Employment-based assessments should permit diagnoses of individual learning needs.

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APPENDIX AACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Secretary’s Commission on AchievingNecessary Skills (SCANS) will go out of existencein April 1992, just two years since it was launchedin mid-May of 1990. It has been a true workingCommission. Together with an outstanding staffled by its executive director, Arnold Packer, wehave labored to deal with a complex set ofintellectually challenging, intertwined, andpotentially emotional issues. Each Commissionerserved and worked on an industry task force andon a committee related to one of the issues dealtwith in this report. Although there was muchheated debate, none of it was ideological; indeed,the representatives of business, labor, andeducation were more often challenging thandefending their own communities.

SCANS was conceived by Roberts T. Jones,Assistant Secretary of the Employment andTraining Administration (ETA). He andthen-Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole created theCommission. Success would not have beenpossible without the continued and energeticsupport of Secretary Lynn Martin over more thanhalf of the Commission’s existence. In addition,Raymond J. Uhalde and Sally Jo Vasicko of ETAhave been most supportive of the Commission’sefforts.

Arnold Packer has been more than executivedirector, for his parentage of the seminal studyWorkforce 2000 laid the cornerstone of the reformstructure we continue to assemble. His intellect,commitment, dedication, and leadership underlieall that we present in this effort.

The Commission’s work could not have beenaccomplished without the exceptional effort of theresearch contractors. Michael Kane, projectdirector for Pelavin Associates, the primecontractor for this effort, coordinated the work ofthe several organizations involved, helped theCommission shape its ideas, and worked long intothe night to put them into words. Norman Petersonof the American Institutes for Research designedand led the field research. Sol Pelavin and DavidGoslin, presidents of these two researchorganizations, were personally and productivelyinvolved, as was Sue Berryman at the Institute forEducation and the Economy. James Harvey, ofJames Harvey Associates, wrote the drafts thatgave this document its structure. Finally, ScottWidmeyer and Kevin Bonderud of The WidmeyerGroup helped the Commission disseminate itsresults to the public at large and especially to theeducation community. Others who have assistedare listed on the following page.

A great debt of gratitude is owed to the SCANSstaff, especially John Wirt, deputy director, whobrought his knowledge of education to theCommission and to the topic of assessment, one ofthe most intellectually challenging issues thatSCANS addressed. Ambrose Bittner workedclosely with the labor and government-as-employertask forces and Roland Brack with the educationtask force and community organizations. ConsueloRicart is the reason why there is aSpanish-language version of What Work Requiresof Schools and why

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such notable progress has been made by theassociations from the hospitality industry. MichaelSchmidt, on loan from OPM, was extremelyhelpful. Patsy Terhune kept the entire effort on task.

Finally, I have truly relished my association withall those who have been involved in the process,those who are mentioned, and all who have calledand written to encourage, guide, or correct ourefforts.

William E. Brock

Chairman

ADDITIONAL KEY STAFF

Department of Labor: Kimball Baker, DianeP. Davis, Gerri Fiala, Bonnie Friedman,Allison Goddard, Elaine Golla, John Hawk,Bryan Keilty, Ronald Rubbin, Shirley M.Smith, and David O. Williams

Occupational Analysis Field Centers: PaulCleary, Boston, Massachusetts; Tom Kearney,Detroit; Stanley M. Rose, Raleigh, NorthCarolina; Barbara Smith, Salt Lake City; andGerome Stevens, St. Louis, Missouri

Pelavin Associates, Inc.: Ann Meltzer,deputy project director; Nancy Matheson;Tom White; Carol Copple; Gwen Pegram;and Jo Ann Blue

American Institutes for Research:Deborah Whetzel, Scott Oppler, andRoselda Henry

National Alliance of Business: LouisBertsche

The Widmeyer Group: PhyllisBlaunstein, Edward Fiske, and Doug Smith

James Harvey and Associates: BruceBoston and Frank Harvey

Frost Associates: Hugh Frost

Research and Evaluation Associates:Sherrita Porter

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EMPLOYERS

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Many companies and employees generouslycontributed their time to the job analysis researchconducted by the Commission:

AAA Auto Club, World Wide Travel; Alan K.Jorgenson Construction; Alexandria PoliceDepartment; Aetna; American Empress; AmericanInstitutes for Research; ARA Food Service;Arlington County Police Department; ArthurAndersen & Company; AVX Corporation; Bally’sCasino Resorts Reno; Beauty Boutique; BellAtlantic Network; Bogart; Bowen EngineeringCorporation; C&P Telephon Company; CactusCantina; Cafe Atlantico; Carolina Power & Light;Carousel Square Food Service; Carpenter’s DistrictCouncil; Carr Printing Company; ChryslerMotors; Cigna; Clarion Hotel; Confidential;Farmers National Bank; Co-operative OpticalServices; Cooper

Tools/Lufkin; D.C. General Hospital;Dayton-Hudson Corporation; Dearborn FederalCredit Union; Federal Express; Fete Accomplie;GE Aircraft Systems; Greater SoutheastCommunity Hospital; Group Health Association;Hyatt Regency; International Brotherhood ofElectrical Workers; M. Hall Stanton ElementarySchool; Marriott Corporation; MarylandDepartment of Licensing and Regulation; MBGraphics; MCI; Mildred D. Monroe ElementarySchool; National Security Agency; National JointApprenticeship and Training Committee;Nordstrom; Ross Dress for Less; Sheraton ParkAvenue; Sibley Memorial Hospital; Sovran Bank;St. Joseph’s Hospital; TGI Friday’s; The Hartford;The News Journal; Truland; University of NorthCarolina at Chapel Hill Dental School; UnitedParcel Service; Wacovia Bank; and WestmoreElementary School.

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EXPERTS

Curtis Banks, Howard University; Henry Braun,Educational Testing Service; Cynthia Brown,Council of Chief State School Officers; GordonCawelti, Association for Supervision andCurriculum Development; Marilyn Gowing, Officeof Personnel Management; Robert Guion, BowlingGreen University; Joseph P. Hickey, Council ofState Governments; Edward Keller, NationalAssociation of Elementary School Principals;Thomas Koerner, National Association ofSecondary School Principals; Martharose Laffey,National School Boards

Association; Alan Lesgold, University ofPittsburgh; Richard D. Miller, AmericanAssociation of School Administrators; Jane Pines,Human Resources Development Institute; TerryRosen, American Federation of State, County andMunicipal Employees; Lenore Saltman,Department of Defense; Joan Seamon, U.S.Department of Education; Kate Snider, AmericanAssociation of Colleges of Teacher Education;Candance Sullivan, National Association of StateBoards of Education; and Joan Wills, Institute forEducational Leadership.

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APPENDIX BDEFINITIONS OF SCANS KNOW-HOW

WORKPLACE COMPETENCIES

RESOURCES

Manages Time-Selects relevant, goal-relatedactivities, ranks them in order of importance,allocates time to activities, and understands,prepares, and follows schedules.

Manages Money-Uses or prepares budgets,including making cost and revenue forecasts;keeps detailed records to track budgetperformance; and makes appropriate adjustments.

Manages Material and Facility Resources-Acquires, stores, and distributes materials,supplies, parts, equipment, space, or final productsin order to make the best use of them.

Manages Human Resources-Assesses knowledgeand skills, distributes work accordingly, evaluatesperformance, and provides feedback.

INTERPERSONAL

Participates as a Member of a Team-Workscooperatively with others and contributes to groupefforts with ideas, suggestions, and effort.

Teaches Others-Helps others learn needed

Exercises Leadership-Communicates thoughts,feelings, and ideas to justify a position, encourage,persuade, convince, or otherwise motivate anindividual or groups, including responsiblychallenging existing procedures, policies, orauthority.

Negotiates to Arrive at a Decision-Workstowards an agreement that may involve exchangingspecific resources or resolving divergent interests.

Works with Cultural Diversity-Works well withmen and women and with people from a variety ofethnic, social, or educational backgrounds.

INFORMATION

Acquires and Evaluates Information-Identifies aneed for data, obtains the data from existingsources or creates them, and evaluates theirrelevance and accuracy.

Organizes and Maintains Information-Organizes, processes, and maintains written orcomputerized records and other forms ofinformation in a systematic fashion.

Interprets and Communicates Information-

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Teaches Others-Helps others learn neededknowledge and skills.

Serves Clients/Customers-Works andcommunicates with clients and customers tosatisfy their expectations.

Interprets and Commun cates Informat on-Selects and analyzes information andcommunicates the results to others using oral,written, graphic, pictorial, or multimedia methods.

Uses Computers to Process Information-Employs computers to acquire, organize, analyze,and communicate information.

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SYSTEMS

Understands Systems-Knows how social,organizational, and technological systems work andoperates effectively within them.

Monitors and Corrects Performance-Distinguishes trends, predicts impacts of actions onsystem operations, diagnoses deviations in thefunctioning of a system/organization, and takesnecessary action to correct performance.

Improves and Designs Systems-Makessuggestions to modify existing systems in order toimprove the quality of products or services anddevelops new or alternative systems.

TECHNOLOGY

Selects Technology-Judges which sets ofprocedures, tools, or machines, includingcomputers and their programs, will produce thedesired results.

Applies Technology to Task-Understands theoverall intents and the proper procedures forsetting up and operating machines, includingcomputers and their programming systems.

Maintains and Troubleshoots Technology-Prevents, identifies, or solves problems inmachines, computers, and other technologies.

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THE FOUNDATION SKILLS

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BASIC SKILLS

Reading-Locates, understands, and interpretswritten information in prose anddocuments-including manuals, graphs, andschedules-to perform tasks; learns from text bydetermining the main idea or essential message;identifies relevant details, facts, and specifications;infers or locates the meaning of unknown ortechnical vocabulary; and judges the accuracy,appropriateness, style, and plausibility of reports,proposals, or theories of other writers.

Writing-Communicates thoughts, ideas,information, and messages in writing; recordsinformation completely and accurately; composesand creates documents such as letters, directions,manuals, reports, proposals, graphs, and flow chartswith the language, style, organization, and formatappropriate to the subject matter, purpose, andaudience; includes, where appropriate, supportingdocumentation, and attends to level of detail; andchecks, edits, and revises for correct information,appropriate emphasis, form, grammar, spelling, andpunctuation.

Arithmetic-Performs basic computations; usesbasic numerical concepts such as whole numbersand percentages in practical situations; makesreasonable estimates of arithmetic results without acalculator; and uses tables, graphs, diagrams, andcharts to obtain or convey quantitative information.

Mathematics-Approaches practical problems bychoosing appropriately from a variety ofmathematical techniques; uses quantitative data toconstruct logical explanations for real world

situations; expresses mathematical ideas andconcepts orally and in writing; and understandsthe role of chance in the occurrence andprediction of events.

Listening-Receives, attends to, interprets, andresponds to verbal messages and other cues suchas body language in ways that are appropriate tothe purpose-for example, to comprehend, learn,critically evaluate, appreciate, or support thespeaker.

Speaking-Organizes ideas and communicatesoral messages appropriate to listeners andsituations; participates in conversation,discussion, and group presentations; selects anappropriate medium for conveying a message;uses verbal language and other cues such as bodylanguage in a way appropriate in style, tone, andlevel of complexity to the audience and theoccasion; speaks clearly and communicates amessage; understands and responds to listenerfeedback; and asks questions when needed.

THINKING SKILLS

Creative Thinking-Generates new ideas bymaking nonlinear or unusual connections,changing or reshaping goals, and imagining newpossibilities; and uses imagination freely,combining ideas or information in new ways,making connections between seemingly unrelatedideas, and reshaping goals in ways that revealnew possibilities.

Decision Making-Specifies goals andconstraints, generates alternatives, considersrisks, and evaluates and chooses best alternatives.

Problem Solving-Recognizes that a problemexists (i.e., that there is a discrepancy between

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what is and what should be); identifies possiblereasons for the discrepancy, and devises andimplements a plan of action to resolve it; andevaluates and monitors progress, revising the planas indicated by findings.

Mental Visualization-Sees things in the mind’seye by organizing and processing symbols,pictures, graphs, objects, or other information-forexample, sees a building from a blueprint, asystem’s operation from schematics, the flow ofwork activities from narrative descriptions, or thetaste of food from reading a recipe.

Knowing How to Learn-Recognizes and can uselearning techniques to apply and adapt existingand new knowledge and skills in both familiar andchanging situations; and is aware of learning toolssuch as personal learning styles (visual, aural,etc.), formal learning strategies (notetaking orclustering items that share some characteristics),and informal learning strategies (awareness ofunidentified false assumptions that may lead tofaulty conclusions).

Reasoning-Discovers a rule or principleunderlying the relationship between two or moreobjects and applies it in solving a problem-forexample, uses logic to draw conclusions fromavailable information, extracts rules or principlesfrom a set of objects or a written text, or appliesrules and principles to a new situation (ordetermines which conclusions are correct whengiven a set of facts and conclusions).

PERSONAL QUALITIES

Responsibility-Exerts a high level of effort andperseverance toward goal attainment;

works hard to become excellent at doing tasks bysetting high standards, paying attention to details,working well even when assigned an unpleasanttask, and displaying a high level of concentration;and displays high standards of attendance,punctuality, enthusiasm, vitality, and optimism inapproaching and completing tasks.

Self-Esteem-Believes in own self-worth andmaintains a positive view of self, demonstratesknowledge of own skills and abilities, is aware ofone’s impression on others, and knows ownemotional capacity and needs and how to addressthem.

Sociability-Demonstrates understanding,friendliness, adaptability, empathy, and politenessin new and ongoing group settings; asserts self infamiliar and unfamiliar social situations; relateswell to others; responds appropriately as thesituation requires; and takes an interest in whatothers say and do.

Self-Management-Accurately assesses ownknowledge, skills, and abilities; sets well-definedand realistic personal goals; monitors progresstoward goal attainment and motivates self throughgoal achievement; and exhibits self-control andresponds to feedback unemotionally andnondefensively.

Integrity/Honesty-Recognizes when being facedwith making a decision or exhibiting behavior thatmay break with commonly held personal or societalvalues; understands the effects of violating thesebeliefs and codes on an organization, oneself, andothers; and chooses an ethical course of action.

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APPENDIX COTHER SCANS MATERIAL

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More information about the topics covered in thisreport is available from the U.S. GovernmentPrinting Office (GPO). You can order what youneed by using the form on page 87.

LEARNING A LIVING: A BLUEPRINTFOR HIGH PERFORMANCE-PART I

Part I of this document is available as a separatepublication. Part I summarizes why change isneeded in our schools and workplaces, identifiesthree parts of the learning system that must change,and lists the main recommendations of the report.(36 pages)

WHAT WORK REQUIRES OF SCHOOLS

The initial SCANS report is also available fromGPO. The report defines the five competenciesand three-part foundation that constitute theSCANS know-how. The five competencies areallocating resources, working with others, usinginformation, understanding systems, and usingtechnology. (61 pages)

LO QUE TRABAJO NECESITA DE LASESCUELAS

This is the Spanish version of What WorkRequires of Schools.

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SKILLS AND TASKS FOR JOBS

This SCANS report is designed as a resource foreducators or employers to use in developingcurriculum for teaching the SCANS competenciesand foundation skills, or for persons who counsel"students" in schools and workplaces. It consists ofall the descriptive information obtained by SCANSin its job analysis. (535 pages)

The job task information is presented in two ways:First, the tasks for each SCANS competency andfoundation skill are listed, and scaled by level ofdifficulty. Then, the tasks are listed by job for eachof the 50 jobs for which data were collected. Thereare over 900 tasks in the volume.

TEACHING THE SCANS COMPETENCIES

This report provides expanded definitions of thefive SCANS competencies as well as keyconcepts involved in incorporating them into theschool curriculum. A section of approximately 10pages is devoted to each competency. Otherresources for integrating the competencies in theteaching of core subjects are identified. Inaddition examples of teaching the SCANScompetencies or engaging in skill identificationefforts are drawn from 27 different schools,apprenticeship, and business-educationpartnership programs. Another chapter describesthe IndianaPLUS Program. There is also achapter devoted to teaching SCANS to studentswith limited English proficiency. Finally, somesample assessment items are included. (180pages)

SECOND TO NONE

A videotape on SCANS, Second to None, isavailable for sale from the National AudiovisualCenter, 8700 Edgeworth Drive, Capitol Heights,MD, 20743-3701. Tel. (301) 763-1850. The tapeis one-half hour long and costs $45.00 per copy.

To order these reports, complete the order formon the following page (You may send aphotocopy instead.)

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Documents

Learning a Living