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More and more jobs require some education past high school, yet we are not preparing enough students for college, careers or both. Career pathways from middle and high school through college and into the workplace can accelerate access to the middle class.

SREB’s High Schools That Work model has been redesigned to address the skills gap, based on the recommendations of two SREB commissions. It includes data on educational attainment needed for jobs, the aspirations of high school graduates, and how strong pathways relate to readiness for college and careers. .

Career Academies were first developed some 35 years ago with the aim of restructuring high schools into small learning communities and creating better pathways from high school to further education and the workplace. Since then, the Career Academy approach has taken root in an estimated 8,000 high schools across the country. The proliferation of Career Academies, along with their continuing relevance to high school reform policy initiatives at the federal, state, and local levels, has been fueled by Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation’s random assignment evaluation of the model. This study tracked a sample of students for 12 years and found strong and sustained impacts on their labor market outcomes, most notably earnings. These positive impacts occurred without any detrimental effects on education outcomes, such as graduation from high school or enrollment in postsecondary school. Operating as schools within schools and typically enrolling 30 to 60 students per grade, Career Academies are organized around such themes as health sciences, law, business and finance, and engineering.

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