The Plan
Your five-year master plan is a document that will be unique to each community. This document will evolve over time and should be re-examined and updated on a regular basis. The core purpose of the master plan is to project the economic value your career academy network will bring to your community. This calculation is the key to long-term career academy network growth, sustainability, and your continued ability to deliver improved educational outcomes.

Situation: Describe the current education situation as well as the workforce and economic development objectives. Some examples of needed data include:

- List of high schools and alternative settings…total student population
- Existing career academies, smaller learning communities, magnet schools, charters
- Community educational data (i.e. Drop out rate, attendance, remediation, English proficiency)
- Key community organizations, including those related to workforce and economic development, now involved in supporting education reform, nature of their support, and their representatives
- Formal and informal relationships between high schools and post-secondary institutions
- Economic development studies identifying growth industries and projected workforce needs
- Summary of friends and foes… it is important to identify potential detractors as well as supporters

Mission: Brief description of the career academy network envisioned by the community over a five-year timeframe in terms of pathways to be developed and percentage of students to be served. Projection of financial benefits to be accrued by the community to be earned through educational and workforce improvements. See the financial calculator outlined below.

Execution: List of career pathways that will best serve the community’s long-range workforce and economic development needs, identification of specific high schools that will host career academies in each targeted pathway and sequence of new academies over five year period. Consider the formation of industry councils and the hiring of career cluster entrepreneurs to coordinate these councils and support for the career academies within each pathway. Outline middle school career exploration activities that are planned and post-secondary relationships that will be actively sought.

Administration: Description of all individuals specifically tasked within business, educational and governmental organizations to execute the plan, including roles and responsibilities, interim funding needs and sources, long-term financial calculations and a master timeline.

Command and Communication: Overview of the chain of command governing the redesign process and of the communication protocol during the planning and implementation phases of the plan. Outline of the community-wide marketing program to inform all stakeholders over the five years covered by this plan.

You will find helpful information in the Ford PAS NGL best practices document to support the development of the master plan. Each best practice fits into the five paragraphs noted above.

DATA SETS AND FINANCIAL CALCULATOR

Data is a powerful ally in prompting and informing the change process. Improvement in data over time reflects positive changes in the lives of our young people and a reduction in the costs of education to our community. We have assembled a number of data sets that provide guidance to the type of changes we can forecast for our communities as we build our career academy networks. These data sets are provided in the preamble to our official 12 Point Action Plan document.

Furthermore, we must attach a dollar value to data improvement. By doing so, we can compel our leadership to protect our career academy networks and fund their modest incremental costs.

Here is a list of data sets that we should assemble and an initial projection of dollar value.

Drop out rate. We should see a dramatic reduction of the number of 9th graders not completing 12th grade. Use the reduction in drop out rate achieved in Sacramento City district to project improvement for the population of your students who will be educated in career academies during the next five years. Then estimate the reduction in the number of drop outs and multiply that figure by the $260,000 life time cost for each dropout. Look at local percentage of young criminals who are drop outs and get quotes locally on cost of incarceration. It is worth noting that Sacramento data is particularly interesting because it is based on all students, eliminating what is sometimes called the “creaming” effect.

Attendance. Lift in attendance consistently follows the successful implementation of career academies. This rise occurs due to the combined effects of the smaller learning community settings and relevance offered by the career and technical courses. We should be able to estimate and project the dollar value to the district from increased attendance. For instance, Sacramento City district in California dramatically lifted attendance while reducing the number of students who left high school before graduation. The district estimates the four year reduced drop out rate, when calculated by the year for four years, yielded $14,332,800 in additional income for the district generated from ADA.

Suspensions and dismissals. Sacramento demonstrated dramatic reductions in these data points over four academic years. Career academy academic teachers tell us the first thing they notice is the reduction in the time they need to devote to planning for discipline problems. Financially, it is logical that districts will be able to translate improved discipline into reduced costs of security, administrator time, and outside legal services.

Secondary remediation and English-language proficiency. We should be able to measure an improvement in state test scores which will translate into fewer students needing remediation in math and English. Such improvement would lead to a reduction in district funds spent on FTE for remedial instructors. It should also have a significant effect on reducing the Hispanic drop out rate by connecting school achievement with the workplace. Informal data tells us that English language proficiency is achieved three times faster for ESL students in career academies. We should be able to project lower FTE spent on ESL teachers as a result.

Post-secondary remediation. Most community and four-year colleges report high levels of recent graduates who need to take non-credit academic remedial courses.. Among community colleges, a national average of 60% of incoming community college freshmen need academic remediation. We know from Montgomery County Community College that entering career academy students require 50% less academic remediation, 12% versus 24%. We need formal research on reduced post-secondary remediation to project the financial and human costs we can avoid.

Advanced course taking. Sacramento City and Bay Area data sets tell us that more students take advanced courses in successful career academies. In some communities, this improvement translates into increased access to state scholarships. We should be able to project this financial benefit which is also an important contributor to our students’ ability to complete college.

Graduate rate of students aiming at key high wage/high skill fields. West Florida’s Haas Center has completed a study of the community financial benefit in terms of a larger tax base from increasing the graduation of students in high wage/high skill pathways. MDRC’s longitudinal data provides us with excellent peer-reviewed data on improved annual earnings (18% or $10,000) of career academy students over their non-academy counterparts. Our master plan should be able to project this economic value as we increase the number of students graduating ready to work in these pathways. Furthermore, these successful students also lift a community’s ability to attract new companies and convince existing employers to expand in the community.