Characteristics of Career Academies

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This REL Southeast study, Characteristics of Career Academies in 12 Florida School Districts, responds to a Florida Department of Education request for information on Florida career academies prior to enactment of the state’s 2007 Career and Professional Education Act. The 2007 act requires each school district in the state to have at least one career academy and establishes benchmarks and procedures to support high-quality career academies.

Career academies are a leading high school reform designed to better prepare students for college and the workplace through more personalized learning environments, integrated academic and technical courses organized around career themes, and work-based learning opportunities.

This study uses data from the Florida Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Education’s Common Core of Data for 2006/07. The study examines their structure and career clusters, the high schools offering them, and the students enrolled.

Key findings include:

• Career academies were offered by 79 percent of high schools (145 of 183) in the 12 districts in 2006/07, for a total of 596 career academies.

• Of the 145 high schools offering career academies, 70 (48 percent) used a school-within-a-school structure (career academies embedded in an existing high school), and 45 (31 percent) used a wall-to-wall career structure (an entire school organized around multiple career academies). Information on school structure was missing for the remaining 30 high schools (21 percent).

• On average, high schools offering wall-to-wall career academies had higher rates of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (42 percent compared with 37 percent) and of racial/ethnic minority students (84 percent and 53 percent) than did school-within-a-school career academies.

• Of the 332,010 high school students enrolled across the 12 school districts, 49,795 (15 percent) were enrolled in a career academy. More students enrolled in school-within-a-school career academies (25,587) than in wall-to-wall career academies (20,818).