Stuart Foundation Provides Major Support for GSE's Career Academy Network

The Stuart Foundation has awarded nearly half a million dollars in funding to the School of Education's Career Academy Support Network (CASN) to back a three-year effort to expand schools-within-schools in Seattle. The grant extends CASN's successful experiments in the Oakland and Atlanta districts and in Illinois, where career academies have followed the national pattern of improving attendance, credits, grades, and graduation rates.

"We believe strongly that career academies address the central problem holding back the achievement of far too many high school youth - the lack of engagement in their school work," said Charlie Dayton, project director. "And we believe that higher levels of engagement lead to higher performance and the attainment of standards."

The Stuart Foundation's support reinforces another three-year grant from the DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund to create the national Career Academy Support Network (CASN), housed in the Graduate School of Education. CASN has established a web site (http://casn.berkeley.edu) and clearinghouse of materials available to anyone interested in learning more about academies. "This project provides the first national support for the development of high-quality career academies," said Professor David Stern, principal investigator for both grants.

The first career academy appeared in 1969 in Philadelphia, where thousands of students now enroll in academies. In the early 1980s the model was brought to California, starting with two high schools in the Sequoia Union High School District just north of Palo Alto. The state of California began replicating the model in 1985, and now supports 200 career academies across the state.

From their inception, career academies have been closely scrutinized and evaluated for effectiveness, especially their impact on improving learning and future career opportunities for low-income youth. "CASN has developed a national consensus on the key design principles of high school career academies," said Dayton. "They include small learning communities; a college preparatory, career-related curriculum that can lead to college, work or both upon high school graduation; and strong partnerships with the community, especially employers and institutions of higher education."

The Stuart Foundation's grant will be used to help seed over 20 academies throughout the ten comprehensive high schools in the Seattle Public Schools. Dr. Alan Weisberg, who has a long and successful record of helping new sites start career academies, will coordinate the Seattle arm of the project.

Charles Dayton,
project director