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Career Academies
To ease the transition from school to work, especially for students who do poorly in high school, career academies have blossomed in many parts of the country. These are schools-within-a-school in which academic and vocational instruction is integrated around an occupational theme and in which employers are actively involved in mentoring and providing internship and employment opportunities for students.
The Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) is in the final stages of an evaluation to determine whether the career academy approach has had positive effects on school attendance, retention, graduation, and enrollment in post-secondary education and participation in the labor force. The study covers almost 2,000 students from ten participating high schools. MDRC's James Kemple and JoAnn Rock received a grant to prepare a book that will summarize the key empirical results involving the first cohort of students who graduated in June 1996.