5 Keys for Successful Career Academies

A career academy's success comes by design.  Academies and SLCs are not likely to succeed if they are yet another "program" to be implemented.  Where academies thrive is in schools where they are part of a whole-school, systemic improvement initiative.

Successful career academies have five characteristics in common.  This gave birth to the 5 Keys for Successful Career Academies created in 1998.  They are the basis for the NEP's TINA (The Initial Needs Assessment) and TONYA (The Ongoing Yearly Assessment), and are the unifying element of multi-year professional development plans at NEP schools.

For a career academy to succeed, thrive, and sustain itself, it will need the following 5 Keys:

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Key #1 Faculty's Sense of Mission Faculty and administration at the school share a common vision of what the school is supposed to become and agree on the value of what career academies will bring to the school.  The faculty members and school leaders feel

fcompelled to implement academies to accomplish specific outcomes.

The adminstration does not seek the "buy-in" of faculty.  Rather, faculty "ownership" of the process is preferred because the professionals in the classrooms will be the ones who primarily determine the success of the academies.

A plan is developed under expert guidance on outcomes, implementation and evaluation.

Outside funding is accepted only after Key #1 is established at the school site, or in the district.  If a school has decided on a direction for improvement first, then outside funding helps to facilitate and speed that improvement.  If it is reversed and funding is accepted before consensus is reached on the vision, then the school often works to transform itself only as long as the funding is available. This puts the site in danger of implementing a "program" that lasts three to five years, then disappears.  

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Key #2 Preparation Prior to attempting implementation, the site-based educators work to articulate the vision and have it shared by faculty,

district and appropriate feeder schools.  A thorough needs assessment (such as TINA) is conducted that identifies desired outcomes, a school's stregths and assets, areas of change, benchmarks, a timeline, a long-term staff development plan, and involvement in a network of schools for data sharing (such as the NEPwork).  Research is done into the various forms of implementation career academies can take (will the school implement a single academy, or an all-academy model where every student enrolled at the high  school is identified with an academy?).  This long-term plan is the basis for future ongoing assessments to gauge progress (such as TONYA).

It is at this step where a school determines how many academies they will implement before the implementation process process is completed.  If an all-academy model is selected, it is very important that the correct number of academies is decided upon.  Too few or too many academies at  a school site will wreak havoc with the master schedule (and teacher morale).  How many academies should a school site have?  The NEP uses the following formula to be used by grade level:

ACS x T = GLE

Divide total 9th grade enrollment by the GLE

ACS - The average class size at that grade level

T - The number of teachers who will be participating in academy instruction

GLE - The desired number of grade level enrollment per academy.

As an example, let's say a school wants to implement a career academy starting in the

ninth grade year. The school has 700 freshman enrolled.  The data breaks down as follows:

The average class size for their ninth grade classes is 30 students.  (CS = 30)

They plan to have five teachers participate in each academy; 4 core academic teachers and 1 vocational elective.  (T = 5)

30 x 5 = 150

150 students is the desired enrollment per academy.

With 700 freshman enrolled, and 150 being the GLE, this school's enrollment can most likely support five academies in the 9th grade.

Teachers are teaching in only one academy.  Forcing teachers to teach in more than one academy invites lack of quality participation and student learning experiences.

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Key #3 Career Areas Career themes are chosen for the schools early in the process based upon two main factors.  First, it must be determined what resources are in the community to support instructional experiences inside and outside of the classroom.

Second, which career areas that can be supported by the community are most expedient for promoting student mastery of state-mandated content standards.

Community experts can be utilized as adjunct faculty, guest speakers, and to assist with real-world learning experiences created for the classroom.  These partners can also host job shadowing and formal internship programs.

Career areas should be broad enough to allow teachers flexibility in creating learning experiences for students, and clearly understood and useful to students.  In Florida, Hawaii, and California, academies that focus on the travel and tourism industry are common.  In the American heartland of Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Iowa, agriculture academies are frequently found.  In any community, even with the most limited of community resources, commerce is always conducted and a health services infrastructure is normally in place.  This makes academies of business and academies

of health easily implemented almost anywhere.

Career partners are actively involved in planning instructional experiences.  They represent both local business interests and post-secondary institutions of all kinds (technical schools, community colleges, four year universities, etc).

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Key #4 Specific and Well-Planned Staff Development Successful academies outline a course of staff development based on their initial needs assessment (such as TINA).  This plan targets areas of need the staff has and also provides a

mechanism to build capacity among the staff for future staff development that does not rely on an outside provider.  Staff development includes training, consultation with an outside expert, staff-directed follow-up via professional learning communities and/or peer coaching, conferences, site visits and more.

Even though new academies often require teachers to receive training in a number of areas, it is best when the staff agrees on one or two areas per year to focus on for professional growth.  All staff development training, follow-up, coaching, etc., is then focused on those specific areas to promote mastery by the staff.  The opposite approach (to be avoided) is to provide a faculty with training on a number of topics, giving teachers a little awareness of all of them, but mastery of none of them.

Training is provided by staff with expertise or outside trainers who have proven expertise.  Beware: A number of trainers became "experts" in career academy implementation as soon as federal funding became available.  It is imperative that schools research their service providers and technical assistance advisors as carefully as they research career academies themselves.

Some questions to ask prospective providers:

1. How long have you been conducting the training we want you to do?
2. How many schools or districts have you worked with?
3. Can you provide us with names and contact information for five of them?
4. Have you actually taught in a career academy?
5. Have schools you worked with managed to sustain their iniative - if so, who?
6. Have schools you worked with maintained or improved student performance?

Be picky about who you invite to your school.  Your teachers' time is of the utmost value and staff development is expensive.  Great staff development is worth both the time and the funds.

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Key #5 Well-Integrated Curriculum Academic vigor is important to school success.  Vigor is in place when a school has rigor (meaning high expectations and standards), support structures in place to help students

meet those expectations, and the students working hard because they want to meet the expectations.  (Rigor without the other characteristics is just academic rigor-mortis.)  This vigor is found in both academic and vocational classes.

Successful curriculum integration is found at all levels: Classroom Level, Partner Level and Team Level®.  The learning experiences relate to the student's life outside of the classroom and includes all of the components of Meangingful Instruction®.  The curriculum is flexible to allow teachers leeway in creating and planning instruction, as well as giving teachers the opportunity to capitalize on learning opportunities arising during instruction that were not forseen.

Teachers are given adequate planning time to create powerful learning experiences for students. This planning time can take the following forms:

• A common planning period
• Meeting time after school - but during the contractual day
• Regularly scheduled off-campus planning reatreats where substitute teachers are brought in to cover team members' classes
• After hours with appropriate stipends/compensation with the approval of the teachers and their union
• A combination of these

The sole purpose of implementing career academies is to improve the student experience at school by increasing success and achievement.  This is done through demanding and meaningful learning experiences.  These can only be created and properly assessed when teachers are provided the appropriate time to accomplish that.  This time should not be "something else on a teacher's plate," but a means of consolidating the many responsibilities our instructional faculty find themselves juggling, thereby helping them to be more effective in the classroom and successful in their calling.