Dive Brief:
- Various technical career prep programs in California are helping high school students graduate and start careers immediately with hands-on training and experience, and the state is supporting them with $1.5 billion in backing over the next five years.
- Specifically, the programs are meant to establish and strengthen partnerships between K-12 schools, community colleges, and businesses, with the primary goal of providing better college and career readiness for learners.
- One program at Canyon High, for example, trains students in aviation, aerospace engineering, aircraft maintenance, air traffic control, airport operations, and aerospace engineering through the use of modeling software programs and flight simulators; after just two years, students can apply to take a written pilot's test and start flying lessons.
Dive Insight:
Integrating academics with real-world work experience is a trend catching on nationally. Some personalized learning programs and models, like Big Picture Learning, incorporate outside work experiences into their normal curriculum. Personalized learning programs based on the idea of engaging students' pre-existing interests and passions now have many powerful supporters, including the Gates Foundation, and are becoming more commonplace. Internships are often included.
Yet this approach takes some amount of community buy-in, as students can end up replacing low-level workers in some fields. Districts also need to pay attention to state and local laws around the age of employment and any restrictions that may exist around how many hours per week minors are permitted to work.