Career Academies Fact Sheet

What is a Career Academy?	Career Academies are a high school reform approach consisting of three core elements. Career Academies: Are organized as schools-within-schools in which high school students stay with a core group of teachers over three or four years. In such an environment, students are able to build strong relationships with peers and teachers. Offer a combination of academic and vocational curricula and use a career theme to integrate the two. The curriculum usually includes math, English, and social studies or science combined with occupation-related classes that focus on the Academy’s career theme such as business and finance, computers and electronics, or travel and tourism. Establish partnerships with local employers in an effort to build stronger connections between school and work and to provide students with a range of career development and work-based learning opportunities.
What are the goals of a Career Academy?	The goal of the school-within-a-school structure is to promote more constructive relationships between and among teachers and students, and thereby to increase students’ engagement and success in high school. In addition, the Academies aim to provide opportunities for integrating academic and occupation-related instruction through both the classroom and workplace. The goal of this effort is to enhance the Academy classes’ relevance to the real world while maintaining academic rigor.
What is the purpose of the Career Academies Evaluation?	In 1993, the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) began a national evaluation of the Career Academy approach. Its primary goal is to provide policymakers and educators with reliable evidence about the impact Career Academies have on students’ performance, engagement, and achievement in high school, and their transition to post-secondary education and the labor market. It will also offer lessons about how Career Academies operate and are sustained, and about the pathways through which they affect students’ experiences in school and beyond.
What is the significance of the Career Academies Evaluation?	The study has attracted national attention because of growing policy interest in reforming high schools. It has provided an opportunity to gather strong evidence on the effectiveness of one of the options authorized in the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994. In addition, with the rapid expansion of Career Academies and other high school reforms encompassing similar principles, the need for a reliable evaluation has been heightened. The study results are highly relevant to a variety of school reform issues, including the small schools movement, the integration of academic and occupational education, teaching practices, student groupings in the classroom, and strategies for introducing students to the workplace.
Who is conducting and supporting the evaluation?	MDRC, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization based in New York City, with a regional office in San Francisco, is conducting the evaluation. The research team is composed of MDRC senior research staff. Funding is provided by the U.S. Departments of Education and Labor, CRESPAR (co-directed by the Johns Hopkins University and Howard University), and 16 private foundations, including the DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund, Ford Foundation, Commonwealth Fund, and Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.
What is the study design?	The Career Academies Evaluation is unusual in its scale, design, and scope. The study is based on 9 sites from across the country, and is following approximately 1,700 students through their high school years and for up to four years following their scheduled graduation. The evaluation employs a large-scale random assignment research design—a rarity in education research—which provides a uniquely rigorous way of comparing the performance of students who had access to an Academy with that of a comparable group of students who did not have access to the program.
What are the sites in the evaluation?	The 9 sites are: Business and Finance Academy, George Westinghouse High School, Pittsburgh, PA; Academy of Finance, Lake Clifton/Eastern High School, Baltimore, MD; Public Service Academy, Anacostia High School, Washington, D.C.; Academy of Travel and Tourism, Miami Beach Senior High School, Miami Beach, FL; Health Professions Academy, Socorro High School, Socorro, TX; Global Business Academy, Valley High School, Santa Ana, CA; Watsonville Video Academy, Watsonville High School, Watsonville, CA; Electronics Academy, Silver Creek High School, San Jose, CA; and Electronics Academy, Independence High School, San Jose, CA.
What does the current report cover?	This is the fourth report published on the Career Academies Evaluation. It focuses on the Academies’ impact on students’ engagement and performance in high school, personal development, and plans for the future. The three central questions of the fourth report are: To what extent does the Career Academy approach alter the high school environment in ways that better support students academically and developmentally? To what extent does the Career Academy approach change educational, employment, and youth development outcomes for students at greater or lesser risk of school failure? How do the manner and context in which Career Academy programs are implemented influence their effect on student outcomes?
What data are used?	Multiple data sources were used in the analysis for the fourth report, including student course records, a survey of 12^th grade students, scores from a standardized achievement test administered by MDRC, and qualitative field research.