The First Exploration On American Career Academies

To help students achieve transition from school to career has been the theme of vocational education in America even the world. The concept of"career education"is taking the place of"vocational education"gradually and has been paid more attention by governments, schools, students and parents. The character of American vocational education is to connect vocational courses to academic courses through every step from kindergarten to college, thus career academies built as one vocational program in high schools meet the trend of vocational education development and the requirement of several high school reforms. The beginning and the prosperity of career academies are built on several educational reform requirements and different social context. An analysis on the cause and history can explore better the development character and advantage of career academies. Through the analysis and comparison on several researches on career academies we can have a deeper understanding on the role of career academies. The paper has four chapters:Chapter One introduces the development of career academies. According to the character of each stage of development, the author divides it into three stages. The author introduces each stage of development in different social context and makes foreshadowing for the analysis of contributing factors of career academies.Chapter Two makes an analysis on contributing factors of career academies. The analysis is developed mainly from two aspects: external causes and internal causes. The author tries to seek for the factors that drive career academies from different perspectives in order to understand motive force in an entire and dialectic view.Chapter Three presents the features of running career academies. It presents a special mode of career academies from five aspects: rules of enrollment, teaching staff, course setting, manager team and financial support. These prove three main features of career academies accepted by most people: small learning communities, curriculum that includes academic courses with technical courses, employer partnerships related to the academy theme.Chapter Four evaluates the effects of career academies. This chapter quotes a lot of evidences on the effectiveness of career academies. The author sums up steady and active effects of career academies on improving students performance, perfecting teachers'attitude and professional development, meeting talents requirement of labor market.