Download or read book Implementing Career Academies in a Large Comprehensive High School written by Delmas Lee Watkins and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author's abstract: The purpose of this study is to examine the experiences of high school individuals in implementing and sustaining Career Academies in a large comprehensive high school. The Career Academy is a high school reform model that integrates school-to-work elements in a personalized learning environment. The Career Academy structure provides partnerships between high schools and employers to enhance students exposure to career development and work-based learning opportunities. The Career Academy model has proven to be a successful reform initiative for keeping students in school and positively impacting their post-secondary outcomes. Success is dependent of the contingent on the full implementation including a strong curriculum and instruction component. The researcher gathered information by using the qualitative method to examine the experiences of how one large high school implemented and sustained Career Academies. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with individuals from one high school involved in the successful implementation and sustenance of Career Academies. A case study narrative format was used to document the experiences of individuals involved in the implementation and sustenance of Career Academies. 2 Three conclusions can be drawn from the results of the study. First, high school leaders must have a clear reason for implementing Career Academies. The administrators and teachers in the study are focused on educating all students by providing a challenge integrated curriculum and establishing relationships that prepare them for life beyond high school. Secondly, there must be buy-in to the implementation of Career Academies. The Board of Education and district was supportive to implementing Career Academies. Professional development needs to be continuous and ongoing as improvements and adjustments are made steady implementation. Lastly, the structure and support of Career Academies must be a priority for effectiveness of the initiative. Career Academies do require additional work and, therefore, entail additional expense. Teachers must meet on a regular basis as a team to develop integrated curriculum, coordinate employer involvement, and organize links to college and other postsecondary options for students.
Download or read book Making It Happen written by Mary G. Visher and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The phrase "preparing students for college and career" has become so ubiquitous that it has become almost a mantra in educators' discourse in recent years. Whether mentioned in the Common Core State Standards, in the mission statements of high schools, or in political campaigns, improving the college and career readiness of young people is a concept that few can disagree with. Much attention has focused on how to prepare students "academically" for life after high school. But "readiness" also means having the knowledge and skills to make informed choices about careers and postsecondary education options and--once graduated--to successfully navigate both worlds. High schools are expected to teach these skills and knowledge but are rarely given the guidance or tools to do so. With a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education, MDRC and its project partner Bloom Associates developed and piloted a program to help schools build or strengthen their college and career exploration programs. Called "Exploring Career and College Options (ECCO)," the program was designed specifically for career academies but can be adapted to fit many educational settings. "Career academies" are schools within schools that enroll up to several hundred students. They are organized by a career theme, such as health sciences or media arts. Besides regular high school courses, career academy students enroll in a sequence of career-technical courses centering on the theme area. Finally, students participate in internships and other experiences in workplaces--which is often called "work-based learning"--to reinforce the connections between what they learn in the classroom and their future careers. An earlier random assignment study of career academies conducted by MDRC demonstrated the effectiveness of the model. Over the years, as the number of career academies grew, the parallel pressure to ensure that all students meet high academic standards inadvertently crowded out time for career exploration activities--the very activities that nonexperimental evidence from the MDRC study suggests may have played an instrumental role in causing the large increases in earnings that career academy participants experienced over the eight-year period following high school graduation. Career academies typically cite a lack of time, skills, and resources as the reason for not offering such activities to all of their students. ECCO is a capacity-building program to help career academies offer opportunities to students to learn about their workplace and postsecondary options through four core components: (1) a series of one-hour in-class lessons; (2) visits to local work sites; (3) visits to college campuses; and (4) a six-week internship offered to all students in the summer before or during their senior year. The curriculum includes guidance for educators on how to arrange and manage students' out-of-school experiences as well as guides for partnering employers. This report summarizes findings from a three-year study of the implementation of the ECCO program. ECCO was launched in 18 career academies in six school districts in three states: (1) California; (2) Florida; and (3) Georgia. The purposes of the study are to document the experiences of these schools in adopting the program and to assess the extent to which, when given support and resources, programs like ECCO can be fully implemented. The study also collected descriptive data to assess the promise of the program to improve student participation in career and college exploration activities and to improve their awareness of postsecondary options. Appended are: (1) Data Sources and Survey Response Analysis; (2) Additional Findings About Implementation; and (3) Additional Analyses of Student Outcomes and Methodological Explanations. Individual chapters contain footnotes. (Contains 38 tables, 12 figures, and 6 boxes.) [This report was written with Marie-Andree Somers.].
Download or read book EXAMINING THE EFFECT OF IMPLEMENTING A CAREER ACADEMY WITHIN AN UNDER PERFORMING HIGH SCHOOL written by Will Glaster Artis and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William G. Artis, Jr., EXAMINING THE EFFECT OF IMPLEMENTING A CAREER ACADEMY WITHIN AN UNDER-PERFORMING HIGH SCHOOL (Under the direction of Dr. Travis Lewis) Department of Educational Leadership, May 2021. Career academies provide high school students with an opportunity to complete high school coursework while deeply exploring a potential career field concentration. Such academy models aim to improve high graduation rates and college and career readiness of students. However, the implementation of a career academy program can be challenging and may not always lead to the results intended. This action research study explores the effect of implementing a career academy in a large, underperforming traditional high school. Perceptions of career academy teachers as they participate in the implementation are explored. Additionally, student outcome measures in the form of achievement test scores and conduct reporting serve as indicators of the effect of implementation. The Four Keys to College and Career Readiness Model by David Conley served to guide the career academy implementation process
Download or read book Implementing High School JROTC Career Academies written by Lawrence M. Hanser and published by RAND Corporation. This book was released on 2000 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1992, the U.S. Departments of Defencse and Education joined together to create a high school program aimed at encouraging at-risk youth to remain in school until graduation. The program is a marriage of the defense-sponsored Junior Resrve Officer's Training Corps (JROTC) program and a comprehensive high school reform initiative referred to as career academeis. This report grew out of the sponsors' interest in tracking the implentation of the program both as a means to improve it and to expand it to additional sites.
Download or read book High School Career Academies written by Nan L. Maxwell and published by W.E. Upjohn Institute. This book was released on 2000 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Career Academy Implementation written by Vikki Williams and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author's abstract: As educational systems are constantly challenged with public demands to decrease dropout rates and increase student achievement, school reform models are spreading as a form of school improvement across America. Educational reform moves in cycles, and the change has moved to smaller learning communities in an effort to improve education. Smaller Learning Communities (SLC's) have attracted currency in the world of education, and many school districts have adopted this transformational model as a means to support students' academic success. Smaller learning communities alter the internal structure of a traditional high school to small schools within a school. One specific model of a smaller learning community, known as career academies, has populated many suburban school districts. School leaders are primary sources for implementing such school reform models. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of school leaders who have experienced the implementation process of career academies. To produce the written research, data were collected, organized, transcribed, and analyzed into emerging themes and patterns through phenomenological interviews using open-ended questions with ten suburban school district leaders. This study yielded factors and barriers experienced by school leaders as they implemented the school reform model: career academies. The results from this study indicated that school leaders experienced many factors and structures towards the change process and several barriers that were challenges during the implementation process of career academies. With implementing the career academy initiative in this study, it is evident that barriers outweighed the factors. School leaders in a suburban school district in Georgia are faced with many challenges as they attempt to implement and sustain career academies. They endure scheduling, financial resources, building structure, changes in leadership, lack of support from superintendent and board members, teacher buy-in, communication, cultural changes, and the district integrating too many initiatives at the same time as issues they face while implementing career academies. As a result, effort to meet the challenges and demands our nation faces in education in the next decade, more emphasis must be placed on a plan to assist and support school leaders and their efforts to practice leadership roles for implementing or transforming schools into SLC models.
Download or read book Career Academies written by David Stern and published by Jossey-Bass. This book was released on 1992-10-12 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains the unique design and functioning of the career academy - a vigorous school-within-a-school that focuses on career preparation - and shows how it goes beyond traditional vocational programs to integrate academic and vocational curriculum, raise student ambitions, increase career options, and provide a meaningful learning context for both potential dropouts and college-bound youth. The authors provide education policy makers, administrators, and teachers with step-by-step guidance for setting up career academies. Drawing on their extensive experience in researching, administering, and evaluating career academies over the past decade, the authors offer advice on handling staffing, budgeting, student selection, and parental involvement. They explain how to build effective school-business partnerships by recruiting employers to serve as curriculum advisers, speakers, field trip hosts, and student job supervisors. And they use examples of thriving academy programs to illustrate how career academies are leading the way in bringing rigor and relevance back to the classroom.
Download or read book New Directions for High School Career and Technical Education in the 21st Century written by Richard L. Lynch and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Urban Teacher Academy Project Toolkit written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is an urgent need not only to attract more people into the teaching profession but also to build a more diverse, highly qualified, and culturally sensitive teaching force that can meet the needs of a rapidly changing school-age population. This Toolkit takes best practices from high school teacher academies around the United States and organizes them into the steps needed to design and implement programs. The purpose of the Toolkit is to help school districts plan and institutionalize high school teaching academies in order to nurture and "grow" prospective teachers committed to serving their schools and communities. Research done by the Urban Teacher Academy Project suggests that there are approximately 50 teacher academy programs in the country. These high school teacher academies are teaching-focused, comprehensive academic programs within larger schools, most of which offer electives related to teaching, learning, and children, with precollege internships in schools and partnerships with colleges and universities that provide a pathway into college and teacher education. The guide's first chapter gives strategies for putting the elements of a successful teaching career academy into place. The second chapter explains the important elements of effective programs and gives a look at how these elements have been implemented in other teaching academies. The third chapter provides advice on how to document and assess a program. An appendix provides useful information about other national precollegiate teacher recruitment programs to supplement or support teaching career academy activities. A planner's checklist is included to outline steps in designing a teaching career academy. An appendix contains descriptions of three teaching career academy programs, and a list of useful resources for establishing a teaching career academy is included. (SLD)
Download or read book Evidence Summary for Career Academies Top Tier Evidence Initiative written by Coalition for Evidence-based Policy and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 4 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: U.S. social programs, set up to address important problems, often fall short by funding specific models/strategies ("interventions") that are not effective. When evaluated in scientifically-rigorous studies, social interventions in K-12 education, job training, crime prevention, and other areas are frequently found ineffective or marginally effective. Interventions that produce sizable, sustained effects on important life outcomes tend to be the exception. The Top Tier Evidence Initiative seeks to assist policy officials in identifying interventions meeting the Congressional Top Tier evidence standard, defined in recent legislative provisions as "well-designed randomized controlled trials [showing] sizeable, sustained effects on important outcomes." The summary of evidence presented in this report is based on a systematic search of the literature, and correspondence with leading researchers, to identify all well-designed and implemented randomized controlled trials of Career Academies. The 9 Career Academies studied in this summary operate within large high schools in low-income, urban areas, and have three distinguishing characteristics: (1) They are organized as small learning communities (150 to 200 students) to create a more supportive, personalized learning environment; (2) They combine academic and career and technical curricula around a career theme; and (3) They establish partnerships with local employers to provide career awareness and work-based learning opportunities for students. Each Academy typically focuses on a specific field (e.g., health care). Students are recruited to attend, and then must submit an application. Approved applicants enter a Career Academy in 9th or 10th grade, and are taught by a single team of teachers through grade 12. Among key findings are an 11% increase in average annual earnings ($2,460 per year), sustained over the eight years after scheduled high school graduation. The effect was concentrated among men (who experienced a 17% earnings increase), and was not statistically significant for women. This summary of the evidence identified one such study--a large, multi-site trial--described in this report. Strong evidence of effectiveness applies to the Career Academy model evaluated in this trial as opposed to other types of Career Academies. The Panel of experts finds that this intervention meets the Congressional Top Tier evidence standard. Intervention benefits and costs are discussed.
Download or read book Engaging Schools written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2003-12-21 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When it comes to motivating people to learn, disadvantaged urban adolescents are usually perceived as a hard sell. Yet, in a recent MetLife survey, 89 percent of the low-income students claimed "I really want to learn" applied to them. What is it about the school environmentâ€"pedagogy, curriculum, climate, organizationâ€"that encourages or discourages engagement in school activities? How do peers, family, and community affect adolescents' attitudes towards learning? Engaging Schools reviews current research on what shapes adolescents' school engagement and motivation to learnâ€"including new findings on students' sense of belongingâ€"and looks at ways these can be used to reform urban high schools. This book discusses what changes hold the greatest promise for increasing students' motivation to learn in these schools. It looks at various approaches to reform through different methods of instruction and assessment, adjustments in school size, vocational teaching, and other key areas. Examples of innovative schools, classrooms, and out-of-school programs that have proved successful in getting high school kids excited about learning are also included.
Download or read book The Effect of the Involvement Within Career Academies by Elective Participation of Eleventh and Twelfth Grade High School Students During the Implementation Year written by Nancy A. Johnston and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Homegrown Lessons written by Edward Pauly and published by Jossey-Bass. This book was released on 1995-04-05 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through first-hand stories and experiences, the authors show how educators overcame challenges to effectively implement a range of programs - from career academies and restructured vocational education to tech prep and youth apprenticeships. They offer specific examples of what employers and educators can do to make their programs work. They reveal, for instance, how programs were changed to meet the needs of both low-achieving and high-achieving students. They detail how programs were successfully advertised to students and parents, overcoming initial skepticism. And they tell how programs reached out to employers to convince them to provide work-based learning experiences for students.
Download or read book College and Career Ready in the 21st Century written by James R. Stone III and published by Teachers College Press. This book was released on 2015-04-17 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than half of 9th graders in the United States will never complete a college degree. High schools must do more than prepare some students for college: They must prepare all American youth for productive lives as well as continued learning beyond high school. In this timely volume, two educational leaders advocate for a more meaningful high school experience. To accomplish this, the authors argue that we need to change the focus of our current high school reform efforts from "college for all" to "careers for all." This work shows how schools can prepare young people both for the emerging workplace and postsecondary education.
Download or read book Career Programming Linking Youth to the World of Work written by Kathryn Hynes and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-07-17 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across education, out-of-school-time programming, and workforce development, researchers and practitioners are seeking ways to bolster the career readiness of our nation’s youth, particularly low-income youth. This issue brings together information from a variety of disciplines and fields to help researchers, practitioners, and policymakers understand what we know and need to learn to provide youth with effective, engaging career-related programming. The articles highlight key findings about how youth learn about careers and develop a vocational identity, whether adolescent employment is beneficial for youth, and how to align our various systems to promote positive youth development. Models of career programming from education, afterschool, and workforce development are highlighted, as are strategies for collaborating with businesses. The volume emphasizes the practical implications of research findings, keeping the focus on how to develop evidence-based practices to support career development for youth. This is the 134th volume of New Directions for Youth Development, the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series dedicated to bringing together everyone concerned with helping young people, including scholars, practitioners, and people from different disciplines and professions.
Download or read book Comprehensive Reform for Urban High Schools written by Nettie E. Legters and published by Teachers College Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text offers the Talent Development Approach as an alternative to contemporary US educational reform efforts. It details organizational, curricular and instructional strategies to provide practitioners with a workable blueprint for whole school reform.
Download or read book The Perceived Impact of Vocational Career Academies on Comprehensive High Schools in the State of New Jersey written by Gina Marie Coccodrilli Mateka and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
