Arlington ISD Partnership With Businesses Helps Students Make Career Choices Early

Arlington TX

03 March, 2022

6:36 PM

Description

By Kristen Barton, Fort Worth Report March 3, 2022 Sitting in her microbiology class at Martin High School, Tina Phan realized her interest in optometry and ophthalmology. To explore that more, she's getting real-life experience at Kleiman Evangelista Eye Centers of Texas in Arlington through a partnership with Arlington ISD. "I was really excited to come here to reassure myself to see this is what I was interested in," Phan, 18, said. "Some people have to waste their own time to go out and find their own experiences, and then, what if they don't like it? Then they have to go find another path, but since I'm still in high school, I'm glad I was able to get this opportunity to kind of figure out myself to see if I want to further my education to go towards the field." Phan is a senior at Martin High School, but she also is part of the Health Science/Biomedical Health Science Practicum Program at the district's Dan Dipert Career and Technical Center. The center accepts students from all district high schools to take career and technical education classes. It has partnerships with local businesses and health care facilities to allow students to shadow in their field. The center could help increase the amount of graduates in the district considered college, career or military ready by the state. In the Texas Education Agency's annual Texas Academic Performance Report, Arlington ISD was just below the state average of graduates career or military ready at 14.2% in the 2019-20 school year. The state average was 18.7%. To read the full article, click here. Fort Worth Report is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that produces factual, in-depth journalism about city and county government, schools, healthcare, business, and arts and culture in Tarrant County. Always free to read; subscribe to newsletters, read coverage or support our newsroom at fortworthreport.org.