After 2 years of promoting more integration of academic and vocational curriculums, the Southern Regional Education Board identified 15 educational practices that may raise the basic competencies of vocational students: (1) positive practices can be collected and implemented; (2) vocational completers from pilot sites requiring competency tests have performed better than expected in reading and mathematics; (3) students learn significantly more competencies in some schools than in others; (4) expectations affect performance; (5) students had higher reading scores in sites where teachers required them to read for learning; (6) students have higher mathematics scores if they take higher-level courses and apply the skills; (7) students have higher science scores if they take laboratory science courses and if learning progresses from concrete to abstract; (8) the courses students choose are more important in advancing their achievement than the number of credits they accrue in a given field; (9) students learn more when vocational teachers stress academics; (10) at least one-half of students in vocational education say too little is expected of them; (11) higher achieving pilot sites have more students pursuing a coherent and rigorous sequence of vocational and academic courses; (12) many vocational students can master higher-level concepts when they are taught through applications; (13) consensus about the purpose of vocational education should be reached; (14) closing the academic-vocational gap requires communication between teachers; and (15) vocational teachers should spend more time reinforcing reading and writing skills. (KC)