Grading the Academies

I’m an unabashed supporter of MARSD’s three high school academies, Bio Medical, Business, and Performing Arts. At least in theory. The program’s goals are to encourage academically challenging coursework, provide valuable life experiences, and increase students’ chances of gaining acceptance to selective colleges. However, at the program’s inception, I recommended the business academies’ curriculum be more rigorous, particularly in developing communications and analytical skills. Early results suggest the students may agree.

This year, the number of 8th grade applicants to the Bio Medical Academy tripled from 11 to 33 and the freshman class will double from 8 to 16. In Performing Arts, applicants nearly doubled from 8 to 15 and the class will grow by 50% from 8 to 12.

On the flip side, Business Academy applicants dropped by a third from 16 to 11 and the freshman class halved from 13 to 6. (Non-academy students will be allowed to take academy classes so class enrollment should still meet minimum requirements.)

Although one year’s results don’t make a trend, the differences are so striking that we’d be foolish to ignore them.

The first thing to remember is all three academies are competing for our most academically motivated students. These are the students most likely to pursue college degrees, most likely to pursue challenging courses, and most likely to know which course will most help them.

The most academically challenging of the academies is the bio medical, with a heavy emphasis on math and science. All participants are required to take at least two AP math classes and two AP science classes plus a research internship prior to graduation.

Next is the performing arts. Students are required to take four years of either dance, theatre, or music.

Last is the business academy. Students are not required to take a single advanced course prior to graduation and several of the classes appear silly at best. In their freshman year, the only business academy class is “Business Computer Applications”, a fancy title for learning how to use Microsoft Office. In the sophomore year, they have a selection of “Intro to” half-year business classes. In their junior year, they take accounting, which is mostly about learning to balance a ledger and bears little resemblance to finance. Their senior year involves a business plan, some more intro classes, economics, and something called investment math.

(By the way, for anyone playing the stock market game, the only winning strategy is to find a single penny stock and bet the entire wad on options. Either you’ll win or lose the game. Use any other strategy and you’re almost certain to lose.)

Accordingly, projected freshman enrollment is directly proportional to each academy’s level of challenge. Bio Medical – 47.1%, Performing Arts - 35.3%, and Business Academy – 17.6%.

The obvious solution is to increase the academic rigor of the business academy. Unfortunately, there are several obstacles to doing so.

First, I suspect there was an unconscious decision to have one “non-challenging” academy for students who may not wish to pursue the arts but also didn’t want to be subjected to heavy-duty math and science classes.

Second, our staff may not be qualified to teach the two most promising areas of business – technology and financing. Remember, our school district doesn’t teach a single computer programming class and the web design class only uses FrontPage, a Microsoft application that is shunned within the professional community.

Third, do we want to compete with the other academies? Bio Medical and Performing Arts likely draw different students. Would an invigorated Business Academy attract more students or just siphon students from the other programs?

I suspect there is a limited pool of applicants but competition among the academies can only help. Therefore, I would recommend drastic changes to the business curriculum. I suggest requiring the following courses within the business academy: AP English, AP Economics, AP Calculus AB, and AP Statistics. Next, I would dump the softball classes (which would still be available as electives outside the academy) and introduce such classes as Probability, Communications, Persuasive Writing, History of Business and Entrepreneurship, Finance, and Investment Models.

The academies were designed to attract and develop our best and brightest students and our students have wisely chosen the most rigorous academies. It’s time to raise our business curriculum to academy level. >>> Read more!