CNBC Looks At Mountain Home Career Academies

CNBC offers an in-depth look at Mountain Home’s career academies, an approach to high school education that steers students into career tracks like engineering, communications, and health care.

Less than a decade ago, city and school leaders made the decision to pursue the career academies in an effort to better prepare graduates for post-high school pursuits.

Mountain Home Career Academies High School has taken a big gamble over the last decade. It transformed itself from a traditional high school into one consisting of three academies–engineering, communications, and healthcare.

Unlike many high schools which have career mentoring programs tucked inside a regular curriculum, Mountain Home is “wall to wall” academies. Each of its 875 students were tested as freshmen, and based on their learning styles, skills, and interests, the students have chosen which academy to join.

“Our community came to us and said their workforce was retiring, and they were looking at different areas where we could continue to grow our community and keep our graduates in town,” says principal Dana Brown, who oversaw the switchover. “At first it was scary…but if you empower people, people support what they help create.”

Brown says nearly a decade in, student test scores are above average, and more students are going to two- and four-year colleges after graduation. “There is a passion behind these students,” says academy coordinator Brigitte Shipman. “You can see it, and you can’t fake that.”

There is proof that the career academies have positioned students to make more money post-graduation, but it is questionable if the effort has resulted in students staying in the Mountain Home area.

Do career academies better prepare students for life after high school? Social policy research group MDRC looked at results from nine academies in or near large urban school districts and found that graduates earned, on average, 11 percent more over eight years compared to non-academy peers. The effect was concentrated among men. Nearly all academy students – 95 percent – graduated or completed their GEDs.

While more kids are scoring better and going to college, it’s not clear they are coming back to work in the town of Mountain Home, population 12,454. Principal Brown admits they need to improve their post graduation job tracking. There’s also been some concern that putting teenagers into academies limits their choices at a time when they should be exploring all options.

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