Career academies add value to Polk education

February 02, 2012 | Articles Print

By PEGGY KEHOE, pkehoe@polkcountydemocrat.com

A graduation rate that’s 17 to 18 percent higher than traditional high schools is just one of the pluses that gets members of the Polk Academies District Advisory Council excited about Polk County’s nearly 40 career academies.

Some members of the council met with different school board members at lunches at The Stanford Inn in Bartow last week to discuss their plans for creating awareness of the academies and how to help the program grow.

After a visit to Nashville, where the school system is filled with “wall-to-wall” academies, essentially a number of different units or pods within each school, members of the council and the school system’s Workforce Education Department came back excited about the possibilities for Polk County. They hope board members will visit Nashville’s school system in March, and said Nasvhille leaders want to visit Polk County’s academies, as well.

Although commonly called career academies, these schools within schools could be based on arts, such as band, and other interests. Students would have common academic classes such as English, but also have their “pods” to belong to.

They have been spreading their message around the county, speaking to Polk Vision, the county commission and other groups to create awareness of what academies are about and how they’re helping redesign high schools, Debbie Burdett of United Way of Central Florida told School Board Members Dick Mullenax and Tim Harris last Wednesday. They met with Chairman Hazel Sellers, Vice Chairman Lori Cunningham and Member Frank O’Reilly the day before.

Also at Wednesday’s meeting were John Small, Polk Schools’ senior director of workforce education; Ashley Barnett and Mark Dunsford, from that department; and Naomi Boyer of Polk State College.

“We need to make the community more aware of the value academies add” and “how they help kids,” Burdett said, noting the county commission and Polk Vision weren’t aware that Polk County already has nearly 40 academies now.

Their graduation rate is about 91 percent versus 73-74 percent in traditional high schools, Burdett said. Groups like Polk Vision and the Florida Chamber are realizing that we have a talent gap statewide and Polk County’s academies line up perfectly with their plans.

Kids who can’t read by third grade often fail to catch up, often turn to drugs, drop out of school, and populate future prisons, Burdett said.

“Why not let Polk be known for redesigning high schools and not have to build more jails?”

Small said they visited the Nashville school system because many of its demographics are similar to Polk County’s. In 2006 Nashville was awarded a $6.5 million Smaller Learning Communities grant from the U.S. Department of Education and used it to restructure the whole high school system.

Within five years they changed all their high schools into wall-to-wall academies, Small explained, not necessarily career academies, but small learning communities, somewhat similar to Polk County’s Harrison Center for the Performing Arts, International Baccalaureate and Summerlin Academy.

Every child in the Nashville school system is in an academy. These are just geared to technical careers, but cover a variety of interests, including academics.

“They’ve had tremendous results,” Small said, raising the graduation rate more than 10 percent in five years. The system had one of the lowest graduation rates in the country for its size and now its 83 percent. It was named a Ford Next Generation Learning Hubs in 2011, one of seven in the country.

“We’re this huge system, with a lot of entities pushing in lots of directions,” Small said. “If you look at what we’ve done fragmented, think what we could have done together.”

Polk County has gone up to 5,500 students in academies now, he said. “We have some academies that are probably as good, if not better, than anywhere else in the country.”

Business partners have helped accomplish this, he noted.

The academies are “one of the greatest things we can market in the county,” Burdett said.