Beyond College For All: Career Paths for the Forgotten Half

Chapter 10. Hidden Links: Teachers’ Social Construction of Employer Linkages

217 Chapter 10 Hidden Links: Teachers’ Social Construction of Employer Linkages C hapter 9 reported that high schools help students get jobs, and that this assistance leads to better long-term earnings outcomes . But the data behind this finding do not tell us how this happens.1 Theory sometimes explains processes, but not in this case. Functionalist theories assume that schools and labor markets are mutually responsive by some automatic process, but these theories are vague about the specific mechanisms that make them responsive. In contrast, network theory contends that market responsiveness often depends on social relationships. Unlike German and Japanese schools, however, most American high schools have no formal social relationships with employers for making job placements. High school career services do not provide job placement, guidance counselors rarely have job contacts, and schools do not specify any actions that staff should take to help students get jobs. School-business partnerships , co-op programs, and internships exist, but they do not involve placement into jobs after graduation. Nor does it seem likely that employers would respond to schools’ efforts. Unlike German and Japanese employers, who believe that high schools provide useful, relevant, and trustworthy information, American employers believe that high school information is irrelevant , not to be trusted, and not very useful (chapter 6). However, the employers we interviewed indicate that they have unmet information needs, and a few employers report that they have relationships with school staff, so we wonder whether some teachers help their students get jobs by meeting employers’ needs. Based on interviews with 110 vocational teachers in twelve diverse high schools, the central finding of this chapter is that some teachers 218 Beyond College for All take informal actions to foster trusted relationships with employers, and that they use these relationships to learn employers’ needs and to place their students in jobs. These actions are not required by their jobs. Like the formal linkages in Japan and Germany, teachers act as informal intermediaries for conveying hard-to-assess, relevant, and trusted information between students and employers, and as a result, some employers hire applicants they might not have hired otherwise, including females, minorities, and youths with other disadvantages. These previously unnoticed linkage activities have theoretical implications for enabling schools to provide authoritative evaluations of students to employers and thereby to increase the social capital available to work-bound youths. These findings also have policy implications for creating dependable career pathways for disadvantaged youths. Functionalist and Network Theories According to functionalist theory, school “functions to allocate human resources within the role-structure of the adult society” (Parsons 1959, 130). While noting the influence of social background, Talcott Parsons contends that in recent decades selection . . . [largely] takes place on a single main axis of achievement . . . “earned” by differential performance of the tasks set by the teacher, who is acting as an agent of the community. . . . There is a relatively systematic process of evaluation of the pupils’ performances . . . in the form of report card marks [which function both to provide incentives to students and to enable the] school system [to act] as an allocating agency . . . for future status in society. . . . Grades are based on skill attainments and “moral” qualities, like “deportment, . . . responsible citizenship, . . . work-habits, . . . leadership, and initiative.” (135, 137) Consequently, this educational process is highly beneficial to the operation of the economy for two reasons: it provides incentives for all students to gain appropriate skills and work habits, and it provides a selective mechanism for assigning youth to appropriate roles in society. Similarly, human capital theory in economics contends that schools develop students’ productive capabilities (human capital) in response to labor market needs, and even some Marxist writers contend that schools serve employers’ needs (Bowles and Gintis 1976). Like sociological functionalism, economic functionalism portrays a smooth interface between schools and the economy that requires no special programs or efforts. Hidden Links 219 The functionalist view that markets work well on their own without intermediaries implies that no one needs to take actions to help students get jobs. Although students’ work-entry problems suggest that these assumptions are wrong, these assumptions are widely held and often guide policy actions. First, school staff are not encouraged to give information to employers . Teachers view their responsibilities as confined to the classroom (Lortie 1975). Teachers rarely know employers, they tend to mistrust employers, and they do not want to interact with them (Useem 1986). Similarly, guidance counselors, the school...