Robert C. Williams’ great-grandmother made sure he attended school.
“My story is that I always loved going to school and I had to go to school,” Williams recalled.
However, he “joined the wrong crowd” and began to lose interest in the course, wondering how it fit into his future.
He says he was on the verge of dropping out of Edison High School in 1980, when he got back on track to graduate, and his life’s path was set by Philadelphia Academy, a program started in the school district just over a decade earlier. That’s what it means. ,Co., Ltd
Williams attended an intramural school of applied electrical science, which happened to be the first school established in the city. Williams had a decades-long career as an electrician and electrician.
“That was the best thing they did for me,” he said.
The school district established Philadelphia Academy in 1969 out of concern that students of color were being disproportionately excluded from non-academic, “vocational” courses. Since then, the organization has walked a fine line between keeping students interested in school and giving them practical skills without narrowing their horizons. But over the past few years, the organization has refined and expanded its mission to meet the needs of a changing workforce.
As with the group’s inception, Philadelphia Academy is focused on student dropout prevention. Its 9th Grade Success Network helps 24 high schools focus on the needs of first-year students, who often begin the slide toward dropping out. And that programming is still rooted in specific careers and professions.
But Philadelphia Academy, which now has about 6,800 students, also emphasizes the importance of college admissions and clearly defines its role as providing options for students while connecting their education with the real world. We are also moving away from a self-contained model and evolving to support career and technical education programs at 32 schools.
“Our mission now is to find ways to make schools places that students want to attend through engaging and practical courses,” said Christopher Goins, the organization’s executive director. “They decide their own direction.”
The initiative recently found that high schools where Philadelphia Academy is based have increased the percentage of Black and Latino ninth-graders on track to graduate at a higher rate than high schools without the program. We have published data showing that.
The group is branching out into fields that some may not associate with career-oriented programs. Earlier this month, the organization received a state grant of approximately $399,200 to support a career pathway program focused on early childhood education at Parkway West High School.
Also in October, the City Council adopted a resolution from Councilman Anthony Phillips recognizing the Academy of Philadelphia.
Nazira Terry, a Parkway West senior who lives in Strawberry Mansion, applied to the high school specifically because of its early childhood program. “I want to be involved with kids,” she said, adding that she has “a lot” of younger siblings.
Terry dreams of eventually working in or even owning a day care center.
Program expands students’ range and career options
The school district established Philadelphia Academy (PAI) 55 years ago in response to alarming dropout rates, especially among black boys. It was recommended by civic leader Charles Bowser and Lee Everett, an executive at urban energy company PECO, as a strategy to keep students on track for graduation.
For most of its history, the academy has operated as a school-within-a-school, emphasizing practical skills in fields such as construction, medicine, and hospitality. We have also formed partnerships with local industry to help students connect more deeply with the world of work.
Of the 32 career and technical education programs supported by PAI, eight are currently middle schools. That’s because the organization wants to instill the seeds of career awareness in young students and ensure that they enter high school prepared to take more rigorous coursework, especially math.
“We expanded it to middle school so they don’t go off course and go into ninth grade,” Goins said.
Under the current PAI model, students visit employers and participate in workshops on career development, financial literacy, resume writing, and interviewing.
For many years, academies focused on banking, law, and aerospace engineering have existed. Programs currently supported range from culinary arts to cybersecurity, construction to tourism, health to sports marketing, and gardening to film and video.
The program, which focuses on careers in early childhood education, may be relatively new, but it has expanded its focus on black boys from dropout prevention to “a solid foundation that helps more black men become educators.” Goins said the organization’s evolution to establishing a pipeline is a return to its roots. .
Approximately 4% of teachers in Philadelphia are black men. The national figure is about 2%.
Parkway West Principal Will Brown said if you had told him when he was 12 years old that he would become a teacher when he grew up, he would have laughed. But he became one after doing an internship working with young children in high school. He is currently the principal of a school with 220 students.
He envisions Parkway West’s early childhood education program preparing students for all levels of education and other careers that involve working with children and families.
Parkway West High School Principal Will Brown works with students in the Early Childhood Academy.
“Not everyone wants to be a teacher, but if they decide to become a counselor or social worker, we want them to have a basic knowledge of youth,” Brown said.
Kingston Wright, an 11th grade student at the school, said, “I didn’t know this school offered early childhood education until I came here.”
But now, based on his experience learning about young children, he has decided that he wants to pursue a career in “some kind of education.” Over the summer, he did a six-week internship at a daycare center. “I like working with (kids),” said Wright, 16. “That influenced me.”
Junior Jay Bush, also 16, said he wants to become a history teacher. “This lesson helps us understand what our children need,” he said.
Data shows Philadelphia Academy is helping students with their classes.
Recent data provided to Chalkbeat by PAI shows that the support the program provides may be reducing students’ overall academic burden.
Last school year, 68.8% of the district’s 9th graders were on track to graduate in schools supported by PAI. That was 2.2 percentage points higher than those schools in 2022-23, according to the group’s analysis.
The district says ninth-graders are “on track” if they earn at least a C in the four core subjects of math, science, English and social studies, as well as one other subject. According to the district, students who are on track at the end of ninth grade are more than twice as likely to graduate.
The goal achievement rate for black boys was 66.7%, 5.7 points higher than last year, and the goal achievement rate for black girls was 71.3%, 5.8 points higher.
The overall on-track progress rate for all district high schools without academy programs is 77.9%. This number also includes selective admission schools, and has been decreasing recently.
PAI Assistant Director Kathryn May works in the 9th Grade Success Network. She said Jules E. Mastbaum High School has seen a 19.7 percent increase in track participation since 2021 to 69 percent.
“We’ve seen many practices that work in one school be adopted in other schools,” Professor May said.
May, who supervises Mastbaum’s ninth-grade assistant principal, Amy Foster, studies data to determine which students need additional support and believes “interventions can be put in place.” she said.
Foster said the team at Philadelphia Academy works with teachers whose students are chronically failing classes to adjust instruction to help more students pass classes like Algebra 1. He said that it is helping him consider ways to do so.
As for Robert C. Williams, he was grateful for his career in the electrical field, but always felt something was missing. He was working in the engineering department of a Marriott hotel, but took the day off to watch an episode of “Oprah.” The theme is “finding your passion,” he said.
“I remember that when I asked my great-grandmother what she wanted to be, she always said ‘teacher,'” Williams recalled.
So, while working, he enrolled in community college in Philadelphia, then Temple University, and then Lincoln University. He earned two degrees in education. For years, he continued to interview for teaching positions but was not hired.
Eventually, a call came in from the Philadelphia area. Mastbaum is recruiting for an electrical teacher.
He just started his seventh year there.
Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where he covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Please contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.
