Overview:
To address the high school dropout rate and improve the number of students graduating from high school, educators, legislators, and community business leaders are supporting the high school career academies strategy. Professional academies are not the latest fad; they have been around for at least forty years. Experts in the professional academy know what works and what doesn’t. Career Academy Toolkit is a book that describes the process of creating and establishing a career academy in great detail.
So what are the pros and cons of these professional academies? The advantages of career academies are that students have improved high school attendance, earned additional credits, higher grade point averages and graduation rates, and are more prepared for career and college. Cons include that professional academies are more expensive to set up and implement, difficult to program, and require partnerships between education and the community. Let’s take a look at each of these pros and cons in more detail.
Advantages of professional academies:
1. Enhanced High School Attendance: Because students choose to be in an academy, they are better able to attend school. The more students stay in class, the more motivated they will be to learn. The more motivated students are, the more they engage in learning. The more engaged students are, the more they learn. This, they, becomes a circle: the more they learn, the more motivated they are to learn more.
Motivation is one of the main keys to the success of the academies. The academies perform various motivational strategies, such as the integration of the curriculum between academic and technical courses. Now students not only learn the knowledge, 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 really fits there. This is exciting for students and reinforces learning in the classroom.
2. Additional Credits Earned: Based on Professional Number One, students who stay in school tend to earn more high school credits and more high school credits students earn; the more likely they are to graduate.
3. Higher grade point averages: This brings us to professional number three. Students need credits to graduate and students who remain in school earn the credits to graduate. Students on the road to graduation have higher self-esteem and have improved motivation to learn more, increasing their grade point averages. Generally, students graduating from high school are encouraged to attend college or post-secondary learning.
4. More college and career readiness: Students who feel college ready make an effort to attend college or receive postsecondary learning. Students who go immediately to work are more likely to receive company policy and any additional training that the company provides.
Now let’s discuss the downsides of professional academies. There are three major downsides to professional academies. One is that they are more expensive to set up and implement. The second is that they are difficult to program and, lastly, require partnerships between education and the community.
Cons of professional academies:
1. More expensive to set up and implement: Because the academies include a “real world” theme with community partners, this app of the learning process requires more money for student field trips and internships, in addition to money to pay teacher internships. The additional resources don’t stop there, funds are needed to pay for teacher time to collaborate on curriculum development and time to collaborate with business partners and institutions of postsecondary learning. And all of this requires more professional development for educators. It is true that professional academies are more expensive to operate, but the ROI (return on investment) is worth it (that is, additional income for better student attendance).
2. Difficult to Schedule – Due to the integrated curriculum, field trips and student internships, teaching team activities and career academies are a nightmare to schedule. However, many professional academies have overcome this obstacle and are willing to help high schools that have decided to establish academies. Additional resources include professional academy consultants who are experts in this field and will assist schools for a fee. Because these experts save time and money, they should be considered a viable option.
3. Education-Community Partnerships: This is the most complicated of the three cons of professional academies. Business and education speak different languages and there needs to be someone who can translate what each one says. These partnerships require both a start-up and a development process. Establishing the association is more difficult than it sounds. Most schools choose “romance” over “marriage.” They tend to ask for money (short-term goal) rather than the value that the business can bring to the relationship, such as mentoring, learning in real-world places, etc., which is “marriage.” Once the partnership has started, teachers need time for the relationship to continue to progress, and time is something that more schools are unwilling to pay for. The school that thinks the teacher will stop and visit the business on the way home from school (with the teacher’s money) is dooming the education / business relationship.
Conclution:
Professional academies work! They require more time and resources to be successful, but are well worth the effort. They are a time-tested strategy that results in more students graduating on time and being both career and college ready.