The origin of CTL : A Grassroots Movement

Rightly understood and practiced, CTL has the capacity to remedy some of the most
serious deficiencies in traditional education. These deficiencies have been described in virious
goverment reports covering a period of more than 15 year. The vigorous cal for reform that
was sounded in 1983 in A Nation at Risk : The Imperative for Education reform was followed
by an 1989 summit meeting on education held in Charlottersville, Virginia, and attended by
states` governors and the president of the Unite States. Those attending the summit called for
national goals to be attained by the year 2000. Those goals, to be achieved by the year 2000,
include the following :
 All children in america will start school ready to learn
 The high school graduation rate will increase to at least 90 percent
 American student will leave grades four, eight, and twelve having demonstrated
competence in challenging subject matter including english, mathematics, science,
history, and geography; and every school in america will ensure that all students learn
to use their minds well, so they may be prepared for responsible citizenship, further
learning, and productive employment in our modern economy
 Students will be first in the world in science and mathematics achievement.
 Every adult American will be literate and will prosses the knowledge and skills
necessary to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights, and responsibilities
of citizenship
 Every school in American will be free of drug and violence and will offer a disciolined
environment conducive to learning. (U.S. DOE,1992,p. 1)12
In 1990, the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce echoed this insistence on
excellence in American’s Choice: High Skills or Low Wage. Between 1991 and 1993, the
Secretary of Labor’s Commision on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) produced four
influential report, one of which, Learning a Living: A Blueprint fot High Performance,
suggested reform that educators immediately began to enact.
In addition to these govermment reports, a number of bookd were published urging
educators to replace business as usual with new purpose and strategies. Among the most
influential of these were Theodore B. Sizer’s Horace’s Compromise: The Dilemma of
American High School (1984); Dale Parnell’s The Neglected Majority(1985); Tech
Prep/Associate Degree: A Win/Win Experience (1991) edited by Dan Hull and Dale Parnell;
and Dan Hull’s Opening Minds, Opening Doorz: The Rebirth of American Education (1993).
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. The dominant theme reverberating in these books and reports, a theme that must concern a
democratic society, is that all students, not just those who attend 4-years colleges and
universities, deserve a quality education. The theme captured the popular imagination, taking
the form initially of the Tech Prep movement.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Tech Prep/Associate Degree (TPAD)
movemnet gathered momentum (Hull, 1993, pp. 7, 22-23).14 The Tech Prep movement held
that all students, not just those bound for 4-year colleges, were capable not only of lerning
sophisticsted academic material, but also of attaining high academic standards. The phrase
“Tech Prep” came to stand for reform designed to give vocational-technical students academic
excellence as well as technical expertise. Tech Prep refresh to
 A sequence of study beginning in high school and continuing throught at least two years
of postsecondary occupational education. The program parallels the college prep course of
study and present an alternative to the “minimum-requirement “ diploma. It prepares students
for high- skill technical occupations and allow either direct entry into the workplace after high
school graduation or continuation of study which leads to an associate degree in a two-year
college.(Hull,1993).15