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Published: 1990

Total Pages: 46

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Presenters at a public hearing testified about strategies that were working and those that were considered not to be working in the Wisconsin vocational education system. The strategies that were cited as "working" were: education provided to businesses by VTAE (Vocational-Technical Adult Education district) colleges; interaction between business and education; collaboration among entities, such as the Job Centers; support of organized labor for training; onsite literacy training for workers; high school vocational programs that are becoming updated; cooperation between high school and postsecondary programs; and services to at-risk students. Among those strategies cited as not working to the extent necessary to meet work force needs or factors affecting such strategies were: variations in responsiveness by VTAE colleges; employees' lack of basic literacy, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills; the need for more agency collaboration; the skilled worker shortage and the need to train the handicapped and disadvantaged; discrimination against older workers; effects on high school vocational programs of new graduation and university requirements; the need for workers to function in a global work force; increased demands on schools and the dropout rate; the need for more career counseling for youth and adults; and the fact that women are clustered in traditionally lower-paid jobs. Recommendations included: expansion of literacy program efforts with the assistance of additional state funding; implementation of an educational model by the Department of Public Instruction that would provide every student the best opportunity to become functionally literate; and changes in the VTAE policies to enable the VTAE colleges to become more responsive to the changing needs of business and industry and to prepare the system to meet the work force needs of the next century.