Can Career Academies Work as a School Turnaround Strategy?

Abstract

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, college and career readiness became the central focus of education policy in the United States. Career academies (CAs) are a popular way to support students in their postsecondary transitions, but little causal evidence exists about whether this model of schooling is effective in promoting learning and transition outcomes. We capitalize on the adoption of the CA model in a large school district that was under the threat of school turnaround and employ a generalized difference-in-differences approach to test whether adopting this model improved student outcomes. We find suggestive evidence that CA adoption improved graduation rates and that these effects were most likely concentrated among schools that had the lowest graduation rates at baseline.