Career Academy Support Network Starts Major School-Improvement Initiative

The Career Academy Support Network (CASN), based at Berkeley's Graduate School of Education, is undertaking a three-year project to help improve instruction in selected Bay Area high schools. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Walter S. Johnson Foundation are jointly supporting this project with a $500,000 grant.

"We've already got 90 existing career academies in the Bay Area," said Charles Dayton, CASN's coordinator. "This project is designed to intensify the self-improvement process in those academies and their host high schools."

A career academy is a small learning community within a larger high school, organized around a career theme. The college-prep curriculum connects classrooms to the world beyond high school and creates a more personalized environment where students and teachers share common interests and receive support from local employers. "There's unusually compelling evidence that career academies improve students' academic performance," added Dayton. "And the strongest effects are for those students who are at greatest risk of not completing high school."

CASN is one of several agencies nationally that are attempting to create or improve career academies. "One of our main activities is to work directly with teachers, administrators, and local employers in strategically chosen sites around the country," said Professor David Stern, the principal investigator for CASN.

CASN's new Bay Area effort may focus on the Oakland Unified School District and the East Side Union High School in San Jose. "The initiative is designed to help build the capacity of schools and districts to incorporate career academies, along with other small learning communities, into their ongoing effort to improve student performance," said Susan Tidyman, the grant coordinator and former administrator of the state's nearly 300 career academies.

CASN's plan involves strengthening the structure of career academies, improving instruction, and using evidence on student performance to guide improvement in academies and their host high schools. "We're using four basic methods to achieve these goals," Stern said. "We're planning to establish what we call 'a lighthouse academy' in each district. The lighthouse academy will serve as a demonstration site where CASN will work intensively with teacher teams to improve student learning based on evidence of student performance." Professionals from other career academies can guide their own efforts based on the experiences of these lighthouses.

The second strategy is to select and train "mobile mentors," experienced academy teachers, counselors, or administrators. Beginning this school year, CASN will arrange visits for these peer mentors to provide professional development and consultation to academies that need their particular expertise.

"We also plan to link academies with similar themes and help them share ideas and information," said Tidyman. For the most common career themes, CASN will develop a list of academies in the Bay Area that have the same theme. For these widely used themes, CASN will organize one-day regional meetings to exchange instructional ideas, employer contacts, and other information. In addition, CASN will organize regional meetings for academies that are at similar stages of development.

CASN also intends to use student data to improve teaching. "We plan to incorporate data analysis into an ongoing process of self-improvement for the career academies," Stern commented. "This analysis may reveal previously unknown relationships between student performance and certain features of academies. One of the ultimate goals is to contribute to the continuing improvement of the academy model itself," he said.

Information about the Career Academy Support Network (CASN) is available at http://casn.berkeley.edu/.

Student and specialist at a careet academy

Charles Dayton               David Stern            Susan Tidyman