The National Academy Foundation’s Career Academies: Shaping Postsecondary Transitions

The career academy model—a school-within-a-school, career-focused high school program of study, often with related work experience—has spread rapidly throughout the United States in the last 20 years, in large part because educators and policymakers believe it to be a promising approach for encouraging academic achievement and facilitating students’ transition to college and careers. Learning to what extent well-designed career academies deliver on this promise is the focus of this book chapter. The authors collected and analyzed data from student transcripts and surveys as well as from site visits to a selection of career academies affiliated with the National Academy Foundation network. They found that participating in the career academy did not have any positive or negative influence on student grade point averages. Academy seniors did report completing more college-level courses while in high school than did students not in academies. Finally, academy seniors in finance-themed academies were more likely than comparison seniors to report they had been admitted to and were planning to attend a four-year college. This chapter appeared in Improving School-to-Work Transitions, edited by David Neumark.