Career Ideas Blog

This question can be answered in two words: THEY WORK! Career academies are responsive both to the changing needs of students the global economy. They are also an answer to high school improvement.

Research increasingly supports the idea that bigger isn’t necessarily better when it comes to educating teenagers (or people of any age for that matter). The simple truth is that too many students are now attending “super-sized” high schools and they become lost in the mast of students. This trend promotes students being isolated, alienated, and disengaged. This, in turn, leads to school becoming boring, meaningless, and frustrating. There is no connection between what the students learn in school and what they experience in the “real” world. And this is just as likely to be true for potentially high-achieving students as it is for those at-risk of failure.

Compounding these trends is that quite often the school structure, focus, and curriculum are just as outdated as the school size. In fact, the typical American high school looks a lot like it did when the parents of today’s teens went to school: same schedule, same grading scale, same subjects, and same calendar. This system worked fine during the industrial era when one-third of students went on to college, another third found well paying jobs with a high school diploma, and even drop-outs and low achievers stood a chance of finding gainful employment.

However, that’s not the case today. It’s a new world out there. Powered by ever-changing, mind-boggling technology, today’s students enter a workplace where information is power, where jobs require highly technical skills and knowledge, where a solid education is the key to getting anywhere. Now, more than ever before, education must prepare lifelong learners who are ready to succeed in the workforce.

The good news is that you don’t have to reinvent the entire educational system to enjoy the benefits (and there are many) of career academies. It’s more a matter of redefining the high school experience. Starting right where you are, using resources you already have, and common sense ideas about the way education should be.

Thus, career academies are an idea whose time has come. In career academies across this nation, we see students who want to come to school; teachers who want to teach; and communities and employers who reap the benefits of well-prepared graduates ready to take on the world.

That’s the big deal about career academies!

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by Sandy Mittelsteadt

To address the high school drop out rate and improve the number of students graduating from high school, educators, policymakers and community business leaders are supporting the strategy of career academies in high schools. Career academies are not the latest fad; they have been around for at least forty years. Career academy experts know what works and what doesn’t. The Career Academy Toolkit is a book that describes the process of creating and establishing a career academy in great detail.

So what are the benefits of these career academies? They are that students have improved high school attendance, additional earned credits, higher grade point averages and graduation rates, and are more career and college ready.

The first benefit of career academies is improved high school attendance: Because students elect to be in an academy, they are more apt to attend school. The more students stay in class, the more they are motivated to learn. The more motivated students are, they more they are engaged in learning. The more engaged students are, the more they learn. This, them, becomes a circle: the more they learn, the more they are motivated to learn more.

Motivation is one of the major keys to the success of academies. Academies do several motivation strategies, such as integration of the curriculum between both academic and technical courses. Now students not only learn the knowledge, but they have the opportunity to apply it. We, at Bright Futures Press, call this “Sticky Learning.” Because academies have partnerships between the academy and the community, students can then go into the “real world” to see how their learning truly fits there. This is exciting for students and reinforces the classroom learning.

Additional earned credits by students in a career academy is the second benefit. Based on benefit number one, students who stay in school tend to earn more high school credits and the more high school credits students earn; the more they are apt to graduate.

Another benefit is higher grade point averages. Students need credits to graduate and students who stay in school earn the credits to graduate. Students on the path to graduation have more self esteem and have improved motivation to learn more, which increases their grade point averages. Students who graduate from high school are generally encouraged to attend college or post-secondary learning.

The fourth benefit is that students are more career and college ready. Students who feel they are college ready make an effort to attend college or receive post-secondary learning. Students who immediately go to work are more readily to receive company policy and any additional training that the company supplies.

Now let’s discuss the cons of career academies. There are three major cons to career academies. One is that they are more expensive to establish and implement. The second is that they are difficult to schedule, and lastly, they require partnerships between education and the community.

Career academies work! They require more time and resources in order to be successful, but they are well worth the effort. They are a time-tested strategy that results in more students who graduate on time ready both/or for a career or college. If you are more interested in career academies, contact Sandy Mittelsteadt at sandra.mittelsteadt or 661.900.8922. Sandy had been working with career academies from the local community level to the national level. She knows all aspects of career academy development.

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