What would happen if students in your high school could exchange rigorous graduation requirements preparing them for college for career paths in high school?

Enthusiasm

If you entered a high school at 6:30 a.m. and found students excited to be there and eagerly waiting to learn, what would you think? You'd probably think you were either hallucinating, having a bad reaction to a new medication or were dreaming. This is not the case in a high school in Los Angeles.

Mitchell Landsberg, LATimes Staff Writer, reports that Palmdale High school has "Zero Period" that begins at 6:35 a.m. These students arrive when it is still dark, must provide their own transportation, and give up sleep time. Landsberg reports, "The class is sports medicine, and it is offered by Palmdale's Health Careers Academy, a 15-year-old school-within-a-school that has become a model of what a successful career education program can be. Students in the academy learn such real-world skills as giving injections and reading X-rays and also take college-prep math, English and science with a medical focus."

California has other high school programs:

• film production
• finance
• technology
• agriculture
• construction
• culinary arts
• law and public safety
• performing arts
• auto repair
• and more

[Mitchell Landsberg, latimes.com, April 5, 2007]

These high schools do not believe that the only way to success is by taking the traditional prep classes intended for a four year college.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger

Vocational education is experiencing great support from non-profit foundations, senators, and the governor who is a product of an Austrian high school that trained students for a vocation. These vocational classes create relevance in the real world for many students who would have otherwise become so bored and probably dropped out.

Research

Presently, there does not seem to be much evidence that this type of high school greatly reduces dropout rates. However, it does send students out into the world of work better prepared and earning more money than if they had gone to a traditional high school.

Health Careers Academy

How does this academy differ from a typical high school curriculum?

• Instead of taking English, students take medical English
• Instead of history, students take medical U.S. history or medical world history
• Instead of general biology, they take kinesiology, forensic biology

The Statistics

How is this school doing academically?

• 100% graduate and go to college.
• 98% pass the California High School Exit Exam the first time--double the rate of the school as a whole.
• 95% attendance rate

But, this must be in an affluent area of Los Angeles where kids have all the advantages, right?

No. Palmdale is a largely poor, predominately Hispanic student body on a campus in the Antelope Valley. This program is being copied all over the United States. Florida, with help from Bill and Melinda Gates, is also developing the Career Academics Concept.

Education is changing quickly. Thomas Frey, of the DaVinci Institute, has his own views of the Future Look of Education.

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Read previous articles on Educational Issues.

Copyright article 2007 Barbara Pytel. All Rights Reserved.