Education Nation: Rural Arkansas Town Rethinks High School

Article here. Notice everyone is doing better, and the article mentions that men in particular respond to it. I only wish that I had gone to a high school like this one! Excerpt:

'Mountain Home Career Academies High School has taken a big gamble over the last decade. It transformed itself from a traditional high school into one consisting of three academies--engineering, communications, and healthcare. Unlike many high schools which have career mentoring programs tucked inside a regular curriculum, Mountain Home is "wall to wall" academies. Each of its 875 students were tested as freshmen, and based on their learning styles, skills, and interests, the students have chosen which academy to join.
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Thomas McLees is a senior who moved here from Montana, where he attended a traditional high school. After some thought, he chose Mountain Home's engineering academy. "I knew I was more 'hands on' because all my life I had been taking apart computers, toasters, my mom got really made at me for that." He comes from a long line of military veterans. "I want to make military body armor and medical stuff."

Do career academies better prepare students for life after high school? Social policy research group MDRC looked at results from nine academies in or near large urban school districts and found that graduates earned, on average, 11 percent more over eight years compared to non-academy peers. The effect was concentrated among men. Nearly all academy students--95 percent--graduated or completed their GEDs.'