OPINION: Anchorage School District deserves praise for new ‘academy’ system

I want to applaud the Anchorage School District and School Board for their recently announced system of focused “academies” for our secondary school students. I’m not speaking as an education expert but as a parent of a 16-year-old previous ASD student.

Although my student appreciated a good experience as a freshman in the Advanced Placement program at West High, she decided to move to Boise, Idaho, to a pre-medical charter school with a defined focus. At that school, they have university instructors, so they graduate with a two-year college degree and are fully licensed EMT III’s.

Part of that direction for the public school system originated in Boise’s concern for a lack of medical personnel in their health care system, and it is my understanding that we have a similar problem in Alaska.

And it is not just health care. Many Alaskan industries are faced with having to import people, many times on an itinerant basis, to find employees. The ASD approach could help with that problem as well. While we present college as the ideal situation for our students, 40% of them won’t go to college, and they deserve the kind of focused education that will let them be successful in careers that don’t require a college degree.

When we were trying to fill well-paying positions in the maritime world and we spoke to educators about making promotions in secondary schools, they told us that most students weren’t selecting professions by seventh and eighth grade, but they were deselecting them by then. Part of this is looking down on working-class jobs and also the false narrative that we are somehow a “post-industrial” society. Working-class jobs have been the backbone of our middle class that has now been hollowed out, leaving low-paying service jobs as the alternative.

Of course, I would never discourage a student from getting a college degree, but people need to be realistic about what that means. If you search “Is a college degree worth it” online, you will find a report by the Foundation for Government Accountability.

What they found was that those students with a clear focus on their wanted profession had the highest success rates in college. This bodes well for the ASD program to provide focus for students.

They also found that for those who went just to be “going to college,” only two in five completed their degrees within four years. And of those who graduated, only 50% were working in the fields of their majors.

In the meantime, many of them incurred huge commitments to student loans, with the payment streams going on for “an average of 20 years.”

This information should be presented to students and parents to allow them to make sound decisions for their future.

While we celebrate our top students who go on to advanced degrees and top professions, we need to give equal respect to those who select a more industrial career. Many of these jobs are high-paying union jobs, with full family health care plans and solid retirement funds. And no long term student debt.

The Anchorage School District should be praised for adopting this focused “academy” approach along with stated “job training, internships, and certifications.” Although the district states that this will require some difficult transitions, we should all get behind them for a successful implementation.

Paul Fuhs is a former mayor of Unalaska, former Alaska Commissioner of Commerce and Economic Development and is currently CEO of Alaska Hydrogen Industries LLC.

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