An Assessment of School Supervised Work Education Programs. Part II: Urban Cooperative Work Education Programs and Follow-Up Study. Final Report. Volume 2: Work Education Program Outcomes--A Twenty-Four Month Follow-Up Study

Abstract

This is the second of a three-volume final report of a study to assess the effectiveness of secondary and postsecondary cooperative education programs in the nation's hundred largest cities and to analyze the postprogram experiences of participants and nonparticipants. This volume presents the findings of the 24-month followup study of students formerly enrolled in the programs and their nonenrolled counterparts and compares the two groups. (Volume 1, an overview of the entire study, describes methodology and findings and Volume 3 contains the individual program case studies.) The 50 program sites included 30 occupational training (cooperative work education) programs, 14 dropout prevention programs, and 6 career exploration programs. The followup study team interviewed 803 former students who had participated in work education programs (and had been interviewed two years previously during part I of the study) and also 701 nonparticipating comparison students. Findings of the followup study are detailed in 46 tables and 2 figures, indicating employment status and stability, wage levels and job satisfaction, and comparisons. Data from this study are also compared with data collected by the National Center for Educational Statistics in a series of national longitudinal studies of the educational and vocational experiences of high school seniors. (MF)