On The Development Of Career Academies In The United States

The Career Academy is a school reform model that arose within a comprehensive high school in the United States in the late 1960s. Career Academies are usually organized as small learning communities that provide college-prep curricula with a career-related theme and embody local partnerships with employers and institutions of higher education. The Career Academy model has proven to be a time-tested strategy in improving oute(?)es for secondary education and workforce. Its inception and growth not only conform to the underlying trend of American vocational education reform, project the development path of American Career Education, but also reflect the school-running features of American high school education. Therefore, the study on the development of Career Academy will contribute to deepen our vocational education reform.This paper attempts to make a full and systematic study on the development of career academies, including its background, guidelines, cases, experience and enlightenment. Firstly, it expounds the connotation, features and theoretical grounding of career academies from a rational point of view, and then analyzes the evolution and contributing factors of career academies from time-space dimensions. Secondly, it highlights the influence of American education policy by exploring career academies completely on three levels, which are federal acts, state laws and organizational guidelines. Thirdly, taken Life Academy in California as a typical case, the paper reveals its dynamic progression, implementation framework, achievements and experiences from both horizontal and vertical views. Hence, a concrete application of Career Academy will be presented vividly. Finally, the development experience of Career Academy is discussed in the article. Based on these aspects according to the actual situation in China, some related suggestions are put forward to prompt our vocational education reform.