OPINION: Anchorage schools’ academies will require significant tradeoffs

The ADN editorial board recently commended ASD’s Academies of Anchorage (AoA) as a “worthwhile experiment” and a “win for Alaska businesses,” adding that the new model will “give students more options without compromising their educational experience.” Although real needs and good intentions underpin the AoA, ASD has limited resources at its disposal. Under our current circumstances, the initiative will likely require ASD to make tradeoffs which, if enacted, will compromise thousands of students’ educational experiences. Decades of research on the model ASD has chosen to adopt, moreover, suggest that the efficacy of the initiative we are poised to undertake may have significant limits.

ASD administrators have envisioned the transformation of career technical education (CTE) offerings in each of its comprehensive high schools since at least 2017 as a means to improve high school graduation rates. But leaders paused the initiative amidst ASD’s growing financial constraints, the 2018 earthquake and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The idea — which has recently crystallized around implementing “career academies” — re-emerged during the 2021-22 school year when a decline in graduation rates from ASD’s 2019 peak, an influx of COVID-19 relief funds, and a school board goal in support of increasing students’ “life and college and/or career readiness” (CCL) inspired administrators to reassess ASD readiness for transformation, sign contracts to be guided through it, and send at least 150 educators and community members to visit model school systems.

Career academies have been around since the last decades of the 20th century to decrease dropout rates. (In 2015, an updated intervention report underscored their potential to help with this area.) In essence, they are small learning communities of roughly 150-200 students in which academic, career and technical curricula are combined around a career theme and for whom local employers provide career awareness and work-based learning opportunities.

Their efficacy may be less compelling when we consider outcomes by gender, and their effects on academic outcomes, however. In 2004, researchers found that while career academies “improved the labor market prospects of young men,” the same did not hold true for young women. In 2019, research further indicated that although career academies in an adequately resourced district can increase male students’ high school graduation rates and can increase industry credentialing outcomes, academies have “little effect on academic performance” (ie on math or literacy), “rates of AP course-taking during high school,” or influence on female students’ graduation or college enrollment rates.

Despite these shortcomings, a number of career academies exist, and the Academies of Nashville, Tennessee, and Akron, Ohio, continue to serve as ASD’s leading examples of well-resourced academies in action. The former arose in the middle of the 2000s in response to a Johns Hopkins study that had referred to Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) schools as “dropout factories.” After acquiring seed funding and focusing their efforts on Freshman Academies “and doing them well” for three years, MNPS initiated what became the Academies of Nashville: a career academy model for all students which has increased graduation rates from about 58% to rates that — at about 82% in 2023 — are now on par with ASD’s overall 2023 rates.

Currently, Nashville relies on more than 300 corporate and community partners and a budgeted ratio of 11-14 pupils per certificated staff (depending on school) to teach their students. (For comparison, this is more than twice as people-intensive as ASD’s fiscal 2024 budget ratio of 27-28 pupils per certificated staff.) Nashville’s programs also benefit from millions of dollars’ worth of donated time, funds and supplies, up-to-date learning spaces and opportunities for job shadowing.

Similarly, students in the Academies of Akron — whose own leaders looked to Nashville as a model system back in 2011 — enjoy $800 million in new facilities, substantial financial and volunteer investments made by corporate giants like Goodyear, and class sizes akin to Nashville’s. They, too, have seen graduation rates increase since starting their Academies with a single pilot school.

Though ASD performed a remarkable turnaround in its graduation rates between 2011 and 2019, data still show that our male students are graduating at lower rates than female students; that students who qualify as economically disadvantaged and/or who receive Special Education (SPED) services graduate at lower rates than those who do not; and that significant graduation rate gaps exist between white students and students of color. These very real discrepancies are at the heart of ASD’s intentions. The challenge is how to do so amidst our challenges.

ASD’s fiscal constraints for the 2025-26 budget cycle are enormous and the best-case scenario now looks like a $71 million deficit. But even if the district closes a number of schools (starting in 2025-26), spends fund balance far-below best practices, and further increases its attrition estimates, it will be hard to cut a $71 million deficit even in half. Even before considering the AoA’s needs, I believe the School Board will be forced to eliminate an as-yet-undefined alphabet soup of successful programs and increase class sizes for the 2025-26 school year.

But currently, the administration’s proposed additional investment of $3.5 million to establish the AoA for the 2025-26 school year will have to come from the District’s General Fund. This investment will be partnered with another $3 million ASD is poised to receive from its Fostering Diverse Schools grant.

Allocating funds districtwide, however, will not focus those resources on the largest clusters of at-risk students (or schools) which most stand to benefit from available funds and the career academy approach. Given that a 40-point spread exists between the graduation rates of students enrolled in credit-recovery programs and its comprehensive high schools, on one hand, and a 16-point spread exists between the graduation rates of our highest and lowest-performing comprehensive high schools, on the other, my personal perspective is that allocating scarce resources across all of ASD’s eight comprehensive high schools is inefficient at best, may be ineffective, and will cause the Board to implement significant tradeoffs elsewhere in the system.

What are the tradeoffs? Under the AoA plan, ASD will hire 12 new administrators and 30 high school teachers for the 2025-26 school year. (Eight of those administrators were pulled away from classrooms this past year to become Freshman Academy coaches and help with AoA planning. Four new Assistant Principals will be added for 2025-26.) But if ASD diverts $3.5 million from the General Fund to support those 30 new teachers, will the District be able to maintain younger students’ growth in reading and math? (For context, over the past year, ASD students have demonstrated faster-than-average rates of catch-up growth in both early literacy and math.) Additional resources for elementary and middle school students remain sorely needed.

Meanwhile, both graduation requirements and student courseloads will need to be changed. Pending an Administrative proposal and Board approval this fall, ASD will require students to juggle seven or eight courses per semester starting in 2025-26, rather than six. While this will open up both elective and remedial opportunities, it will radically decrease instructional time in any given course.

Pivoting from 6 to 7 courses would eliminate 32 of the 258 minutes currently allocated to any given class over a one-week timeframe. This would amount to a 12.4% cut. Over a year, that would be like ending studies about four and a half weeks early. Pivoting to an eight-course schedule, by contrast, would amount to 60 fewer minutes per week in every course. Cutting 23.3% of instructional time would be akin to ending the school year more than eight weeks early.

But while the 2025-26 changes feel relatively far away, back to school season for 2024-25 is around the corner. Starting this August, ASD intends for all Freshmen enrolled in comprehensive high schools to participate in Freshman Academies and a semester-long career academy (FACE) exploration course. Primary goals are to improve attendance, reduce ninth-grade Ds and Fs, reduce suspensions and decrease dropout rate. The FACE course is also designed to help students decide which Academy and pathway they would like to attend, should they choose to participate in the AoA starting in 10th grade.

While these goals remain critical — and data show that some students indeed get lost in the transition to high school — this fall’s implementation of FACE requires ASD to divert both teachers and students from an important social studies sequence in favor of having students beta-test an exploratory course that is not yet fully designed, is still seeking community partnerships, isn’t a board-approved graduation requirement, doesn’t fulfill college admissions requirements, and will require additional district investments.

However well-intentioned, the AoA’s changes will affect the entire system. But given that the Board as a body has supported the AoA and the administration believes in it, I hope that the community and district administration find a way to make implementation plausible and supportive of every student’s trajectory. And I sincerely hope that everyone under the impression the AoA are “a worthwhile experiment,” are going to be a “win” for local businesses, and can increase students’ options without compromising their educational opportunities leans on the governor to approve every penny the Legislature appropriated for education before his June 28 veto deadline, publicly calls for the millions of dollars in corporate funding and volunteer time ASD desperately needs from its partners to be able to implement this vision, and elects a slate of pro-education candidates in the upcoming November elections.

Kelly Lessens is a member of the Anchorage School Board and parent to two ASD students. Opinions shared here are her own and do not reflect the board or the district as a whole.

The views expressed here are the writer’s and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.