Low attendance, poor behavior, low test scores, and low graduation rates among at-risk students have created a concern in urban school districts. The purpose of this study was to illuminate the impact of Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) Academy programs on students' academic performance. The theoretical foundation of the research…

The Antelope Valley Union High School District (AVUHSD), located in the Los Angeles, Bakersfield, and San Bernardino metro areas, receives students from eight area K-8 districts. AVUHSD is home to seven career academies with themes ranging from digital design and engineering to law and government, each of which integrates core content with…

Dual enrollment programs allow high school students to enroll in college courses and potentially earn college credit. The term concurrent enrollment is sometimes used interchangeably with dual enrollment, and sometimes to refer to a particular model of dual enrollment. In some programs, students earn high school and college credit simultaneously;…

Gladwell (2000) describes context as "the tipping point" for leveraging change. This paper explores how differentiated learning opportunities situated in the school context supported changes in practice for urban elementary teachers during the implementation of Writer's Work-shop (Calkins, 2003 & 2006). The teachers in this…

This capstone project examines how an elementary school principal and her leadership team transformed Leadership Prep Academy in Capital City into a collaborative, high performing community school. This five-year process of continuous improvement involved engaging students, staff, parents, and members of the community in developing a culture of…

Recent legislation in Florida mandated that all school districts open at least one career academy by the 2008-2009 school-year, impacting career academy implementation dramatically. As the number of career academies in Florida increases, ensuring success requires attention to the complexities of implementation. Qualitative research conducted with…

Transitioning from college can be a process in life that fills students with trepidation. They may experience feelings of uncertainty and anxiety over issues related to transferring to another college, going on to graduate school, entering military service, or moving into the world of work. Recognizing that these topics may cause distress to their…

Early college high schools are a new and rapidly spreading model that merges the high school and college experiences and that is designed to increase the number of students who graduate from high school and enroll and succeed in postsecondary education. This article presents results from a federally funded experimental study of the impact of the…

This article examines four influential programs--Citizen Schools, After School Matters, career academies, and Job Corps--to demonstrate the diversity of approaches to career programming for youth. It compares the specific program models and draws from the evaluation literature to discuss strengths and weaknesses of each. The article highlights…

What do we know about the impact and implementation of Career Academies? This paper provides answers to this question. Career Academies have been around for over 30 years. Their original design stressed facilitating the school-to-work transition. In the early 1990's the focus began to shift to preparing participating students for both college and…

In the summer of 2012, the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc) and the Alliance for Excellent Education conducted a survey of State Directors of Career Technical Education (CTE) to gauge state efforts to better connect CTE with a larger college- and career-readiness agenda. Survey questions…

The debate about high school reform is increasingly focused on the role of career-technical education (CTE) in helping to prepare "all" students for success in "both" postsecondary education and the workforce. The stand-alone vocational courses into which high school students with lower academic achievement were often channeled…

This report describes career academies in 12 Florida school districts in the 2006/07 school year. It examines their structure and career clusters, the high schools offering them, and the students enrolled. This study is driven by three research questions: (1) How many career academies were there, and of what types? (2) What were the…

A collaborative at several sites across the state of California will offer evidence of how successful linked learning, which connects academics to real-world work, can be. This article presents examples that illustrate the powerful connections and linkages that are generated by combining academic rigor with the relevance of applying learning to…

Career academies have been effective in reducing the high school dropout rates and increasing academic course taking and course credit accumulation among students (Kemple & Willner, 2008; Kemple & Snipes, 2000). However, not all students have access to career academy programs as they are not universally implemented across the state of…