Mountain Home (Mt. Home), Arkansas, is a community in the beautiful southern Ozark Mountains, nestled between Lake Bull Shoals and Lake Norfork and located by the world famous White and North Fork Rivers. In fact, it is ranked as the number two community for Field and Stream’s Best Fishing Towns in America. With a population of 12,215, it serves 1,180 high school students grades 9–12. Grade 9 is located on a separate campus. Demographically, 95 percent of students are Caucasian, three percent are Hispanic, and two percent are African-American.

The region is known for its work force that has strong ethics, perseverance, and pride. Although very rural, this community has Baxter Healthcare Inc, a multinational engineering corporation and Baxter Regional Medical Center. Both of these businesses are in the position that they must “grow” their own workforce and literally, the career academies in Mt. Home High School are named as part of their workforce solution. There is a strong dichotomy in the community: the highly educated professional population is affluent; however, many families see high school graduation as the end of school. Predictably, those live in poverty. Although the county is sixth in percapita wealth compared to the rest of the state, the high school has 52–60 percent of its students in the free and reduced lunch program. As well as posing a dilemma for the community, this poverty is a real challenge for the high school. The school is using career academies to help solve this challenge to provide students with real and effective intervention into home life, probation realities, offering students support necessary to graduate and providing scaffolding support into post secondary education and careers. The Mentorship Program involves two professionals from the community who adopt the academic advisory groups for their grades 10–12 tenure in high school. Fifty-six advisory groups and a total of 112 community professionals create effective relationships and networking for students. The Internship Program allows students to experience real life learning in semester work experiences.

Education has been important to the community, even from its earliest beginnings in 1850. The school district is committed to “make every effort to provide the educational opportunities necessary so that each individual may become a competent, self-providing citizen who is trained to take his/her place as a functioning member of society.” Besides receiving a high diploma at the high school, students can attend Arkansas State University, which is located on the west side of town. ASUMH and MHHS Career Academies with the help of Ford Motor Company Fund developed an articulation that allows students who complete CTE Program of Study and one semester successfully at the college to receive between 6–12 hours of free college credit. The credit is local credit for Applied Science two year degrees.

The educators in the school district are continuously seeking more innovative and effective ways to improve offerings for the students and community. At the beginning of the 2003–04 school year, Mt. Home High School implemented career academies for all students. In order to restructure as a wall-to-wall high school with three academies, Mt. Home High School became a conversion charter high school. Besides providing funding for restructuring, a charter high school allows for waivers that are important to academy students, who have the opportunities to job-shadow, intern, etc.

Next Generation Learning Community Designation by Ford Motor Company Fund
A Ford PAS Next Generation Learning Community designation program used the 12 best practices indicators of success to evaluate this community in 2006–07 school year. Based on this analysis, Mt. Home qualified as a Leadership-level Rural Model Next Generation Learning Community Designation, which the school received in August of 2007.

Mt. Home School District uses career academies, which puts the power of workplace “relevance” and business “relationships” to work to excite young people about education as well as prepare them for the workplace and postsecondary education. When successfully implemented, career academies also improve attendance, grades, and graduation rates and help to ensure a smooth transition from high school to postsecondary and workplace success. They also are thought to reduce the need for academic remediation at postsecondary institutions, foster more rapid acquisition of proficiency in the English language, and improve test scores.

Mt. Home states it has “three academies–one school.” The academies are:

For two years, the Mt. Home School District teachers, administrators, and business/industry partners studied the career academy concept and adopted this model to achieve the following purposes:
•   provide students with a clear and realistic focus for setting long and short team goals and greater sense of relevancy
•   provide smaller schools within a school for more student monitoring and support
•   provide an impetus for raising academic standards
•   provide for teaming and interdisciplinary applications
•   provide a format for energizing the students, staff, parents, and community.

The academies capitalize on student interests and aptitudes to provide a curriculum that both challenges and motivate all students. By clustering career-related electives into a coherent sequence of courses and linking them to core academic courses, the academy concept provides students with a sense of relevance across the entire curriculum. Academies help students integrate the critical link of how a particular course helps them prepare for college or a career. Teachers work together to integrate and coordinate their lessons around common themes and projects so that students receive an enhanced curriculum. And, a more coordinated effort is made to bring outside resources, such as expert speakers and real-world applications from the world of employment, into the classroom. The academies further promote student participation in extracurricular activities by allowing students to see how extracurricular activities tie into their interests and give valuable experiences for them after high school.

The career academy mentor and internship programs have proven to be invaluable to students, as well as the business community. In fact, these community members have become a crucial part of the education process. For example, Baxter Healthcare Inc. has provided Mt. Home academies with engineers, who have given their time and expertise to support the students in their participation in the award winning FIRST Robotics program. This helps the school to make learning relevant to the students and in turn, the school graduates students who fit the needs of the area.

Wachovia Securities has partnered with Mt. Home Communications, Arts and Business Academy to implement a high school student-run business WRAP (Wachovia Rewarding Academy Progress) for 4th graders. This effort is in the pilot stages but the local Wachovia branch has provided a leadership retreat for the 17 CAB WRAP Leaders, tutored them in the development of an organizational chart that encompasses the Communications, Arts, and Business roles, and given them the funding to support the business.

Baxter Regional Medical Center hosts 12 senior Health and Human Services student interns each year in a year-long medical specialties class. These students rotate throughout the hospital medical departments to get a “hands-on” understanding of the job possibilities and expectations.

The community business partners at large have hosted over 350 senior interns in all areas over the past five years; this means that almost 20 percent of the seniors at Mt. Home High School have internships. Thus, the academies provide a direct real world learning experience that would not have without participating in an academy. These business partners also have adopted the 56 Academy Academic Advisory groups and meet with them once a month.

Best Practice of the Indicators of Success
The Ford Next Generation Learning Communities (NGL) initiative has identified 12 Indicators of success or “best practices” that are associated with helping a community self-assess the quality and thoroughness of its career academy implementation plan by analyzing program elements that distinguished or proficient and by analyzing elements that need improvement.

There are two of these best practices that support successful implementation of the Mt. Home School District career academies.

The first relates to NGL Indicator of Success Number Five, titled “Career Academy Evaluations Support Continuous Improvement.” After attending the Ford NGL Leadership Institute, Mt. Home established a Business Advisory Group for each academy. This process brought unprecedented opportunities to the academies. For example, the local Wachovia Securities branch has underwritten a student-led business that “sells” motivation to fourth grade students. The student leadership group will follow a business plan and participate in a 44-member business organization chart carefully developed by the local Wachovia Securities director of investment. In the first semester, the framework is developed; in the second, the business is piloted; and in the following year, the business will be fully launched. Wachovia has indicated a long-term commitment to this enterprise.

The second best practice is NGL Indicator of Success Number Six, titled “District Centralizes All Programs Likely to Involve Business.” Mt. Home High School has created a full-time Career Academy Coordinator position. The coordinator has developed a cohesive infrastructure so that academies, community organizations, business and industry, and volunteers all benefit from clarity and consistency in communication.

In addition, faculty from all three academies participated in summer externships with their respective business and industry partners. As a result, the senior internship program has been expanded so that teachers connect their academic classes more directly with career pathways through career speakers, and various class activities.

Key Milestones, Successes, and Process
•   Ford Motor Company Fund designated Mt. Home Academies at the Leadership Level for Rural Areas.
•   One hundred percent of seniors have clear post-secondary plans in place.
•   Internships: More than 350 seniors have participated in business internships over the last five years.
•   Mentorship Program: Each of the 56 student advisories has a Professional Mentor.
•   Eighty-two percent of Mt. Home students are involved in an extra or co-curricular activity/club. In 2002 when career academies were implemented, only 23 percent of students were involved
•   National Career Academy Coalition ranks Mt. Home’s academies as follows; HHS is a national model; ACME is a national model; and CAB is nationally certified.

Lessons Learned
•   Initial buy-in must involving key people including school board members, administration, teachers, and the community is critical.
•   Academy teams should be comprised of teachers, counselors, and administrators.
•   Community support volunteers develop new roles and standards through this process.
•   Business Partners and the Business Partners Councils should be established for each academy.
•   The Mentor Program described above provides students with professional role models and networking opportunities.
•   Real systemic sustainability takes at least five to six years.
•   District should provide annual specific academy budget; State Dept. of Workforce Education support is another funding resource through new Perkins IV guidelines and business/industry support has enormous potential.
•   The school should re-locate all teachers to their new location by academy in the first year.
•   The Master schedule for teachers should reflect 70 percent or above academy purity.
•   Advisory Programs deepen the guidance.
•   The students are more fully served if a district creates a clear transition program from grades 7–12.
•   Shared leadership is a natural outcome through the development of academy teams and continuation of content departments. Mt. Home's Leadership team is comprised of principals, counselors, dept. chairs, and academy leaders, and meets once a month.

Challenges
•   Sustainability
•   Orienting new teachers and providing ongoing team building experiences.
•   Maintaining level of enthusiasm both on campus and at central office through a central office administrative change.
•   Deepening business and industry connections.
•   Expansion of support for students to transition from middle school to junior high school to the high school academies through an Advisory Program that begins in 5th grade and continues through 12th grade with a clear sequenced curriculum.

Related Resources