[1] The National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, April 1983).
[2] E. Gareth Hoachlander, Participation in Secondary Vocational Education, 198287 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, January 1992).
[3] See Appendix C for a more detailed definition of students who were included in this report.
[4] Antoinette Gifford, John Tuma, and E. Gareth Hoachlander, The Secondary School Taxonomy Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, National Assessment of Vocational Education, 1989).
[5] The number of credits required for high school graduation vary from state to state, but these data show that on average, high school graduates earned more credits than the average state required. According to data collected by the Education Commission of the States, the median number of credits required for graduation by states was 20 in 1992. However, these data ranged from no state mandated credit requirements to 24 credits. Cited in the Digest of Education Statistics: 1993 (Washington, D.C.: ), table 153.
[6] U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, National Assessment of Vocational Education Final Report to Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, July 1994), v. II, 140.
[7] In all of the tables in this report, average credits are calculated across all graduates who share the characteristic described by the row variable (in this case, all graduates). Hence, the average number of credits completed is jointly determined by the percentage of graduates exhibiting the characteristic who participated in a particular curricular area [the rate of participation] and the average number of credits completed by those participants [the intensity of participation]. The average number of credits completed in a particular curricular area by those who participated in that area can be calculated by dividing the average number of credits completed by the rate of participation. For example, those who participated in the general labor market preparation curriculum earned an average of 1.1 credits (0.7 62.4% = 1.1), which is substantially more than the average number of credits completed when calculated across all graduates. Note that the closer the rate of participation is to 100 percent, the smaller is the difference in the estimates of average credits earned between participants and all graduates.
[8] Disability status for 1992 is based on a different reporting source in this report than in some other NCES reports that use the 1992 transcript data, such as Vocational Education in the United States: the Early 1990s. The variable used in this report classifies students as disabled only if their transcripts indicate participation in a special education program. For this reason, the disability status data for 1992 reported here will not match the disability status data in those other reports, although the enrollment patterns are much the same.
[9] These courses can be at the level of the first course in a sequence, the second or higher course in a sequence, or specialty courses, although there is no way to determine from the transcripts whether the courses taken by a particular student actually constitute a coherent program.
[10] This is one instance where the within-group trends were sufficiently different to make the between-group differences change over time. Asians were less likely than members of the other racial and ethnic groups to have completed 3.0 or more credits in a single vocational field in 1982, but by 1992 there were no significant differences in rates of concentration among the different groups.
[11] The small amount of variation in English course taking, and the declining levels of variation in math and science course taking, may be related to academic graduation requirements. As the number of credits required approaches the number of years students are in high school, the amount of possible variation can be expected to fall.
[12] The original SST was developed for the 1986 National Assessment of Vocational Education (NAVE) by Cynthia L. Brown, E. Gareth Hoachlander, and Robert H. Meyer, with the assistance of National Assessment staff, staff of the NAVE Support Center, and an external review panel. The original version of the SST included a fourth curriculum, special education, but because of the relatively small number of students completing these credits and the uncertain coverage of special education courses in several of the transcript data sets, subsequent versions of the SST did not include a separate special education curriculum.
[13] J.N.K. Rao and D.R. Thomas, "Chi-Squared Tests for Contingency Tables," in Skinner, Holt, and Smith, Analysis of Complex Surveys (New York: Wiley and Sons, 1989), chapter 4.
[Appendix A: Standard Error Tables]
