The High School of Economics and Finance, located in the heart of New York City's financial district, requires all students to spend time in paid internships at Wall Street firms as well as in unpaid community service. The academy model was first developed in the late 1960s in Philadelphia and later in the early 1980s in California. In its first incarnations, the smaller structure was designed to better serve students at risk of dropping out of high school. Today, hundreds of career academies in California and around the country are teaching the core academic curriculum through application to broad occupational or industry themes such as health careers, business and finance, natural resources, manufacturing sciences, space sciences, communications media, travel and tourism, law and government, graphic arts, and environmental studies. As in a single-theme school, each academy provides academic and vocational instruction related to its focus.
Some academies cover all four years of high school, others only the last two or three years.
The options are the Children's Hospital Collaborative, the CVS Pharmacy House, and the Crossroads House. The early selection is not as limiting as it may seem, because the school and its business partners use a flexible approach to recognize the full range of students' career choices when arranging the required work internships. For instance, one student in the Hospital house was interested in architecture, and was therefore given an internship in the hospital's space planning office. In the more completely self-contained academies, students take all of their classes, both academic and vocational, with other academy students, and the teachers in these classes work together to coordinate the curriculum. At Encina High School outside of Sacramento, California, teachers in English, math, biology, and health occupations team up in a health academy.