Academica: Closing the Income Achievement Gap
US-based Academica is an education management organisation that supports 200 charter schools, a non-profit college, and an online digital learning community. Charter schools are public schools chartered by non-profits to promote market- driven innovation, competition, and accountability. Academica’s clients have separate boards, they are self-governing and have a mix of public and private funding.
This hybrid, partnership-driven approach has allowed the network to revolutionise traditional teaching. Its concept of creating ‘curating communities’ and combining face-to-face teaching with a digital portal make students active agents in their own learning. This is not the norm in most high schools, which tend to focus on ‘delivering’ knowledge.
As a result, Florida charter high school students are more likely to graduate high school, enroll in college, finish college, and earn more in their mid-20s than the average high school student. There is no correlation between achievement (or lack of it) and receiving free school meals, the typical measure of poverty. Academica has closed the income achievement gap.
This case study was prepared for the 2019 Oxford Economics of Mutuality Forum
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