Yadkin Valley Regional Career Academy aims to ensure that students graduate with the skills and mindset needed to thrive in a 21st century economy transformed by technology and industries with a promising outlook in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. The school emphasizes student-centered teaching and learning through project-based instruction with active and ongoing links to specific career fields, including global logistics, advanced technologies/manufacturing, and health sciences/medical informatics.

The school, which opened to students in 2012, was created to fill a specific, defined need in an area of the state hit hard by globalization and other economic dislocations during the last decade. The school’s genesis was a broad-based effort to respond to that changing economic landscape, which has disrupted traditional manufacturing industries such as furniture, textiles and tobacco. Local business leaders spearheaded a regional task force that helped school leaders evaluate area career preparation programs while also investigating the economic challenges facing Yadkin Valley overall.

The career academy approach combines both academic and career-related courses as a way to enhance the rigor and the relevance of the high school curriculum. The concept of career academies has existed in some form for decades as a model to increase students’ academic engagement and performance along with the credentials and skills needed to be successful in the workplace after graduation. But what distinguishes Valley Academy from other career academies is that business has been given a meaningful role to help lead the planning for the structure and format of the school’s program.

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