The academy rewards.

• Author: Johnson, Karen
• Position: Career academies for at-risk youngsters in public high schools - Includes related article

The city of Philadelphia was ablaze with the fires of civic unrest, rioting and looting in the summer of 1968. This inferno was fueled by high unemployment, abysmal poverty and restless youth with no opportunity to change their lives.

Out of these ashes rose an urban coalition determined to provide those opportunities. Representatives of the mayor's office and the school district worked with the Philadelphia Electric Company and Bell Telephone to establish the first public high school "career academy" in the United States for at-risk youngsters of the community. Philadelphia's Thomas Edison High School became the site of an electrical repair program.

From that small beginning -- one academy in one high school with one area of career training serving less than 100 students -- has grown the largest program in the country. Philadelphia academies last fall had enrolled 5,200 students in 28 separate academies located in 19 high schools offering preparation for 11 different career fields.

The very term "academy" implies an elite or select group. A career academy is often defined as a "school within a school" whose curriculum focuses on a particular occupation. Students choose an occupation their freshman year and are grouped with a small number of other students for several years. Classroom instruction relates to that career and personal and professional development. Instruction is supplemented with experience in the workplace such as visits to employers, summer internships and professional mentor programs.

Although these academies seem to be quite successful, critics want to know the rationale for grouping students by their career choice and singling them out for this type of "special" education.

GETTING READY FOR WORK

Many American youth are not prepared for the world of work- because high school curricula continue to focus on preparing students for college rather than for jobs. Nearly 62 percent of 1994 high school graduates went on to two- or four-year colleges, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but studies show that fewer than half of them will complete college. Only a quarter of young Americans earn a college degree, and there is an ever-widening gap between the earning ability of college-educate workers and those without college degrees The median weekly salary for full-time workers with a high school education was $398; those with bachelor's degrees are earning $641 per week.

Most education reform proponents agree that many...