An Academy High School Opens The Door to Opportunity

Press Release
November 27, 2014
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Most students like Gerardo Lopez — Latinos and blacks from low-income and working-class families — enroll in community college, take a few remedial courses and drop out. They’ve been told they should go to college, but nobody’s told them what level of academic skills are necessary to pass college-level courses. Many think any major will qualify them for a good job. They don’t know how the system works.

Gerardo Lopez is preparing to turn his dreams into reality.

“Hands-on” learning opportunities drew Lopez, a Honduran immigrant, to the engineering academy at Phillip and Sala Burton Academic High School in San Francisco. “As a kid, I loved to make little cars, bringing parts together to make something come alive,” he says. But he didn’t know engineering was a possible career. His father is a hotel janitor; his mother is a housewife.

Now a senior, he spends two days a week as an “extern” at an architectural firm. Lopez hopes to major in mechanical engineering – or perhaps architecture – at a University of California campus or Stanford. If he hadn’t signed up for the engineering academy, “I wouldn’t have known what I wanted to do with my life,” he said.

Burton offers “career academies” in engineering, health sciences and information technology, all high-demand fields. Students take college-prep and career-prep courses together, visit workplaces, do job shadows and compete for summer internships.

The dropout rate is 40 percent for those who start at a four-year institution and much higher for two-year students. Others will go into debt for a degree employers don’t value.
“Employers say they can’t find the skilled workers they need,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan told business and education leaders at Burton High on Monday. But CEOs aren’t talking to superintendents. “There’s a total disconnect.”

College drop-out rates high

The dropout rate is 40 percent for those who start at a four-year institution and much higher for two-year students. Others will go into debt for a degree employers don’t value.

Only 11 percent of business leaders say college graduates are ready for the workforce, reports Gallup. But 96 percent of college leaders think graduates are well prepared.

“We need to build bridges to high-wage, high-skill jobs,” said Duncan. “So many kids are doing the right thing every day and they just don’t get that break.”

Focus on career skills, workplace experience, diversity

The National Academy Foundation, a network of career-themed academies, sponsored Duncan’s visit to Burton High. NAF CEO J.D. Hoye, San Francisco Superintendent Richard Carranza, and executives of Google, Apple, Verizon, Royal Bank of Canada and other companies talked with Duncan about getting “diverse” young people into the talent pool.

Career academies have made Burton a school of choice — not just a place for students waiting to get into their first-choice schools, said Principal Bill Kappenhagen.

Students need real-world experiences to understand why they need geometry or biology, he said. It’s “because you’ll need it to build stuff, you’ll need it to be a health professional.”

“I’m always early”

Elizabeth Sambath rides the bus for an hour each way to get to Burton High, which sits on a hill overlooking San Francisco Bay. “I’m always early,” she says.

Sambath told the panel about her summer internship at the Port of San Francisco, where she helped a civil engineer check the safety of the pier’s wooden beams -— known as “bowels,” she learned — and assisted the surveyor.  “I learned so much,” she said. She loved it.

The child of Cambodian refugees, she plans to study civil engineering — or perhaps environmental engineering  —  at UC Davis, Cal Poly or San Jose State.

Career academies aren’t new. In recent years, as vocational ed has become “career technical education,” academies have stressed college prep. There are paths to middle-class jobs that don’t require a college degree, said Hoye. “But parents are afraid we’re short-shrifting their kids.”

A 2008 study found academy high school graduates earned an average of 11 percent more annually than non-academy counterparts. Eight years after high school, career academy participants – especially males – were earning more and were more likely to be married and raising children.

Four of five go to college

Thirty-five percent of Burton High graduates enroll in four-year universities, said Kappenhagen. Another 43 percent go to community college and 22 percent go straight to the workforce.

The five-year graduation rate is high – 90 percent – for the four-year students, he said. But only 10 percent of those who go to City College of San Francisco graduate in five years.

President Obama’s 2020 goal — the U.S. will have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world — “is the North Star guiding all our efforts to improve education,” wrote Duncan in 2010.

Don’t overlook two-year college programs

Americans have come to believe that the only path to the middle class is a bachelor’s degree – in anything. Yet, workers with a technical certificate or two-year degree often earn more than non-technical four-year graduates.

“We’ve done a poor job of informing young people and their parents about the great jobs out there,” said Duncan. “It doesn’t have to be a college degree. There are six- or eight-week training programs that lead to great opportunities.”

NAFTrack Certified Hiring, a brand-new foundation initiative, is trying to help academy students find that first job. So far, 10 major employers have agreed to give special consideration to high school graduates who earn the credential.

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