Employer participation in school-to-work programs

This article assesses the extent to which employers participate in school-to-work partnerships and work-based learning, using data from the National Employer Survey (NES). It opens with a brief discussion of the history of the school-to-work movement and the development of the School-to-Work Opportunities Act, which seeks to improve the preparation of college- and non-college-bound students for the workforce. The authors then present a review of the literature that focuses on incentives for employer participation in these programs and obstacles to implementing the programs on a national scale. The authors then report on previous attempts to measure the number of participating employers and compare these estimates with a recent analysis of data from the NES. They find that, while 25 percent of U.S. companies participate in a school-to-work partnership and another 40 percent provide a work-based learning experience, it is not clear how substantive such involvement and experiences are.