James J. Kemple, Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, December 2001
Career academies have spread rapidly as states, districts, and individual schools urgently seek ways to boost the performance of high school students, but this ten-year longitudinal study by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) found that the academies do little to elevate test scores or graduation rates. Career academies are characterized by a school-within-a-school organizational structure, curricula that combine academic and career themes, and partnerships with local employers. The MDRC evaluation examined the performance of 1,700 career academy applicants who were randomly assigned either to their school's career academy or to other high school programs. Researchers found that the career academies enhanced the high school experiences of their students in ways that were consistent with the reform's short-term goals, but these positive effects did not translate into stronger high school graduation rates or better initial transitions to post-secondary education and jobs. In trying to explain the absence of long term effects despite the substantial differences between the educational approaches of the career academies and regular high schools, MDRC concluded that the initiative shown by all of the students in applying to the career academies in the first place led both the career academy group and the control group to relatively high outcomes. The full MDRC report is not yet available; for now, you can view the executive summary at http://www.mdrc.org/Reports2001/CareerAcademies/CareerAcad-Overview.htm.
