Students' Reasons for Attending or Not Attending an Available Technical High School

Abstract

The problem. The purpose of this study was to determine why high school seniors did or did not choose to attend a technical high school on a full or part-time basis. Procedure. The study centered around students' concerns for programs, sports, other extracurricular, transportation, friends' influence, family influence, counselor influence, race, the shared-time concept, and level of satisfaction with school selected. These concerns were correlated with census data and observations were made of the concentrations of frequencies. Findings. None of the correlation coefficients were large enough to be significant at the desired level, thus all hypotheses were held tenable. Upon examining the degree of correlations, eleven of the eighteen coefficients were low or negligible. However, the direction of the coefficients appeared to be usable information. The observations reflected a greater variety of concentration of concerns for neighborhood students than for the technical students. The technical students rated their top four concerns for school selection in the following order: program, other extracurricular, advice or pressure from family, and transportation to and from school The neighborhood students rated their top four concerns for school selection in the following order: transportation, program, other extracurricular, and advice or pressure from friends. Conclusions. The directions of the statistical correlations of the students' concerns and secondary census data should lend guidance to those planning and organizing options. The concentrations of the responses indicated similar priorities for the technical and neighborhood students. The shared-time concept seemed to be an option the students had high interest in, especially if transportation was provided. A large percentage of the students were satisfied with their selection of school, but the reasons for those selections indicated that students might have selected the shared-time option if transportation was provided. Recommendations. The study indicated that the current full-time vocational-technical school program should be continued. In addition, the shared-time vocational-technical program option is a viable alternative or addition. Both programs require flexibility in scheduling transportation, extracurricular activities, etc.