Financially threatened loftier school career academies volition get a lifeline and new career tech programs will become a elevator, now that Gov. Jerry Chocolate-brown has signed legislation committing $68 million for those and related projects over the next two years.

Students in the engineering academy at Dublin High School. (click to enlarge)

Students in the engineering science university at Dublin High School. Source: California Department of Teaching  (click to overstate).

SB 1070 volition sustain the career applied science programs in loftier schools and community colleges that were to lose their funding and authorization at the end of this fiscal year in June. At present they will have boosted fourth dimension, and the Legislature will take two more years, to consider their hereafter. The bill'due south author is Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, who has been a CTE champion in the Legislature.

The chief beneficiary will be 163 California Partnership Academies, almost a tertiary of the total 503 in the state, that were started three years ago under some other bill that Steinberg sponsored. Their funding will continue through June 2015.

Partnership Academies are small three-year schools inside comprehensive loftier schools that offering career and higher opportunities: college prep courses, academic counseling, job internships, and career grooming in areas ranging from applied science and architecture to manufacturing, agronomics, and health science. They must serve primarily minority students who take done poorly in school. Though their runway record is proficient – with significantly higher graduation and college admission rates than similar students statewide – their future was in dubiety without secure funding, fifty-fifty though the amount per school in state aid ($59,000, to support a coordinator'south time and collaborative planning among Academy teachers) is not huge. And not all will become money the second yr, when funding shrinks from $48 million to $20 million. They'll accept to compete with information showing outcomes, such as attendance and graduation rates and readiness for the side by side phase at a community college. Near of the grants under SB 1070 will be competitive, administered by the California Section of Pedagogy and the Community Colleges Chancellor's Office.

"If a Partnership Academy can demonstrate good performance, it volition get the money," said Patrick Ainsworth, director of the Career and College Transition Division of the state Education Section. "This is one of the few performance-based systems."

Linked to community higher

Those programs that create a pathway to further specialized training, workforce development, or a degree at a community higher – peculiarly in high-demand professions – will stand the best chance of being funded. An example of such an arrangement is the Engineering Academy at Cordova High School, which has an agreement with American River Higher'southward Technology program. Students tin earn upwardly to 6 units of higher credit if they get an A or B in the course and laissez passer a portfolio assessment at the end of the year.

About a third of the $48 million next year will go toward G-12 CTE grants. Funding categories too Partnership Academies include:

  • Supporting the University of California Curriculum Integration Institutes, which design CTE courses, like Business Statistics and Applied Medical English, that satisfy admissions requirements to a UC or CSU campus;
  • Creating pilot "linked learning" district-wide or loftier school-wide programs that integrate job internships and give students opportunities for feel learning in career areas that interest them;
  • Continuing community higher Career Advocacy Academies and underwriting professional development for their instructors.

The $48 million for 2013-14 and $20 million for 2014-15 will come up from the Quality Education Investment Act, a $3 billion program created to settle a lawsuit brought past the California Teachers Association confronting Gov. Schwarzenegger for failing to repay schoolhouse districts and community colleges coin borrowed from Proposition 98 in 2004-05. SB 1070 is from the portion of QEIA that went to the customs higher system.

To get more reports like this one, click here to sign upward for EdSource's no-cost daily electronic mail on latest developments in education.