They Said It Couldn't Be Done: Implementing a Career Academy Program for a Diverse High School Population

Abstract

Society is increasingly critical of public education in the United States. Students fail to learn good communication, thinking, numerical, technical, or workplace skills, and leave school unprepared to meet the demands of the marketplace. Many factors are cited as contributing to the poor performance of urban high school students. These factors include societal changes such as the growing proportion of young people who are from minority or immigrant populations, a breakdown of the social institutions that have traditionally supported young people and their families, and the change in the demands of a skilled workforce (Dayton, Raby, Stem, & Weisberg, 1992).The educational system is seen as contributing to the low performance of urban high school students through (a) tracking students by "ability ," thereby reinforcing and exacerbating social and class stereotyping; (b) increasing the size and impersonality of high schools; (c) holding low expectations for students and not accepting them culturally; (d) offering uninspiring curricula that lack academic rigor and fail to provide the skills young people need after high school; (e) offering narrow vocational training for jobs with little future; and (f) failing to offer Requests for reprints should be sent to Abbe Shorr, HHS had 2,665 students enrolled year-round. The student population was 68% Hispanic, 22% White, 4% African American, and the remaining 6% were a mix of Asian, Filipino, American Indian, and Pacific Islander. Of the White students, 79% were from Soviet Armenia. Fifty-eight percent of the student population was classified as LEP. Eighty-five percent of the students qualified for the federal free and reduced-price lunch program. Because the city of Hollywood has long been a magnet for the runaway teenager, an unusually high percentage of homeless youth attend HHS daily. In addition, five gay and lesbian group homes feed directly into HHS.The Hollywood community is considered the Ellis Island of the 1990s. Almost 28% of HHS's students were immigrants who attended schools in the United States for less than 3 complete years. The birth regions represented at HHS are Bangladesh,

Youth With Disabilities in the Criminal Justice System

“…GED study is an option for some but not all reentering youth. Such mechanisms as work-based learning (Waxer, 2004) and other forms of "contextual instruction" (Bond, 2004, p. 30), the development of smaller "academies" within a school (Elliot, Hanser, & Gilroy, 2002;Shorr & Hon, 1999), and schoolbased enterprises (Ross, 2002) are examples of promising practices that can engage students who have had negative experiences in traditional classroom settings. Some schools appeared to be unaware of these creative options or unwilling to modify their traditional practices.…”

The effect of an intervention personalizing mathematics to students’ career and popular culture interests on mathematics interest and learning.

“…This research also has implications for career academy models (e.g., Fletcher & Tan, 2022;Stern, 1992), which are often framed as innovative programs to support marginalized students (e.g., Shorr & Hon, 1999). While the effectiveness of the complete package of the career academy model has been the subject of some research, little is known about the individual curricular and instructional factors-like making targeted career connections in mathematics classrooms-that may contribute or detract from their overall effectiveness.…”

Project HOPE

“…Specifically, students showed increased career planning and exploration self-efficacy, educational and vocational development selfefficacy, the number of careers considered, and congruence between their interests and career choices. Although career intervention outcomes were overwhelmingly positive, without additional sources of qualitative data, it is difficult to distill which career intervention component influenced specific outcomes Shorr and Hon (1999). implemented and studied outcomes for the Career Academy Program designed to create a "community atmosphere for the students and staff" (p. 381).…”