In June 2007, Governor Charlie Crist signed into law Senate Bill 1232. This legislation provides the platform for career academies to become more closely aligned with business needs for education and skills training throughout Florida. By the 2008-2009 school year, all students in Florida schools will have access to career academies modeled after the Career High-Skill Occupational Initiative for Career Education (CHOICE) program in Okaloosa County. The trademark of the CHOICE Institutes is the strong partnership between the institutes, employers, and colleges and universities. All CHOICE Institute programs lead directly to either industry-level certification or articulated college-level credit. As career academies spread across the state under the auspices of this new law, it is critical that they develop in a manner consistent with the identified economic needs of the communities, counties, and state that they serve.

The Employ Florida Banner Center of Excellence asked the Haas Center to perform a statewide evaluation of the future labor market occupational needs for the State of Florida. The study was designed to produce an economic assessment of future industry structure, forecast demand for occupational job growth, earnings gap analysis, and business and educational needs throughout Florida. It is important that we understand two key factors for the successful linkage between secondary education and success in the future workforce via career academies. First, it is critical to identify the industries that will provide secondary students with career success over a lifetime of participation in the workforce. Second, we must understand what defines a successful career academy program.

Florida’s Competitive Advantage

According to Roadmap to Florida’s Future, 2007-2012 Strategic Plan for Economic Development, Florida is one of the fastest-growing U.S. states in terms of population, economic output, personal income, and employment. Adding about a third of a million new residents each year, Florida’s economy and labor markets continue to thrive in population-driven industries such as construction, real estate, healthcare, education, personal services, and retail trade. Florida’s tourism and international trade are on the rise and numerical job increases are the highest in the nation.

As Florida’s economy grows, the focal point of economic activity is shifting from individual cities and towns to economic regions that encompass multiple cities and counties. Labor, business, and consumer markets in the state increasingly are organized at a regional level, as a result of connections between clusters of interrelated industries and other economic assets, such as universities, research labs, and military bases.

Within larger industry sectors, much attention has been devoted to selecting a limited number of sectors generating high quality jobs in which Florida may be able to develop or sustain a competitive advantage. Florida can further foster this competitive advantage by considering ways in which to implement career technical training focused on these sectors. Economic development promotion activities, including tax incentives for business location decisions, are largely targeted to the following key sectors:

• Life Sciences (including Biotechnology, Medical Device Manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and Health Care) • Information Technology (including IT Products/Services, Software Development, Modeling/Simulation/Training, Photonics/Lasers/Optics, Microelectronics, and Telecommunications) • Aviation / Aerospace • Homeland Security / Defense • Financial / Professional Services • Manufacturing

These sectors are heavily promoted as target industries by state government and economic development groups.

Occupational Forecasts

With the changing structure of the U.S. economy driving a fundamental restructuring of traditional education programs, forecasting regional occupation growth is critical to shaping the direction of career technical education. Growth in service sector employment created by the economy entering into a new era of globalization and technological change provides benefits in the form of additional demand for the increasingly productive and efficient service sector occupations, but also threats in the form of international competition for services that can be more easily shipped abroad.

The tables presented here show expected growth in Life Sciences and Manufacturing, which are expected to add the most jobs of all of the industry sectors listed above. Additionally, these two industry sectors face little to no threat from globalization.

Overall, life sciences occupations requiring a vocational certificate are expected to add 77,456 jobs through 2014 with little threat from globalization. Additionally, many occupations classified under manufacturing are expected to add significant new employment through 2014. Job opportunities for state level laborers, carpenters, and manufacturing sales representatives are collectively forecast to increase by 58,000 jobs over this period. In terms of the need for career technical education, many high-growth occupations identified require a vocational certificate.

Successful Career Academy Implementation

The characteristics of a successful career academy implementation will likely include the following: • A comprehensive school within a school focused on providing students early training in an important area of the economy • An external review process to ensure the quality of education within the career academy; • A curriculum or set of curricula developed with input from local businesses and workforce boards to ensure the relevancy of the program; • The existence of programs with coursework that either a) leads directly to industry certification in a particular area, b) articulates into college credit under agreements with colleges and universities, and/or c) is provided as a dual enrollment course with a college or university.

Career academies have the potential to provide secondary students with the knowledge and skills that will be important in future high-skill, high-wage jobs. Understanding the skills sets that are and will be important for jobs across Florida as well as the steps necessary to ensure successful career academy implementation can potentially lead to the creation of a workforce that supports blooming industries in Florida. This ensures good jobs for Florida employees and a workforce for Florida employers that possesses the needed skills.