My VP sent me a great article this morning. Saving Young Men With Career Academies (as published in The Washington Post) is article about how schools like mine and other so many others like us are changing the way we educate today’s students. The article details a study done by the MDRC which tracked students admitted to career academies and those that weren’t. The MDRC started following a group of over 1,700 students in 1993. The majority, 55%, were admitted to one of nine academies, by lottery, in Maryland, California, Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas, and the District of Columbia. The remaining 45% were the not admitted to one of the academies and became the control. They continued to be tracked for eight years after graduating high school. The results were shocking.
“The Career Academies produced an average increase of $311 in real monthly earnings for young men. This amounts to a 17 percent increase over and above the average earnings of $1,792 per month of young men in the non-Academy group. . .”
We know it’s not all about the TAKS scores. Of course those are important, but those aren’t what is going to make a person successful in life. Being successful in life is about taking care of your family and being a productive member of society. Career academies are there to teach those skills that can help students get a job and support their future families. The data proves the career academies are doing just that! As great as it would be to see happen, not everyone is going to go college. We need to reach out to those students who aren’t going to attend college and teach them a life skill rather than shove Shakespeare down their throat and then send them out into the real world.
“They (career academies) produced young men who got better-paying jobs, were more likely to live independently with children and a spouse or partner and were more likely to be married and have custody of their children.”
This is a powerful statement! It truly validates we these types of schools are trying to accomplish. Of course, knowing Algebra, Geometry, Physics and the like are important to many students. But if we focus on those subjects only, aren’t we going to lose a great number of our students. Many students in high school are working to support their families while trying to get an education. Shouldn’t we be focused on helping them learn a life skill rather than if they know how to do Punnet Squares.
Next time the local media starts talking about TAKS scores and how the world is ending, remember that passing that test doesn’t really show all of the skills a person learned in school. That’s what I think anyway…
2 responses so far ↓
Gigi // August 4, 2008 at 4:35 pm
very interesting article. I had always had a skeptical idea of these career academies but they are useful to people who want to further their career and help them in life.
Beth Bradley // August 11, 2008 at 2:38 am
I had to look up Punnet Squares and have a couple of college degrees under my belt. Turns out we used those when I was in high school biology a million years ago. I just didn’t know what they were called. My point is, I guess, that I am not at all surprised by the results of the MDRC study, especially after spending two years working at a career academy. These kids need to learn so much more than traditional curriculum to hurdle not only the knowledge blockades in their way, but the cultural ones as well. As a friend of mine has put it, “They can’t know what they don’t know about.” Thanks for sharing.