Building a pneumatic rocket launcher
Young women in the academy
Mentored into a mentor
Her list
What a young woman should know
We asked young women in the academy what a young woman should know about it. Four answered, on paper.
- “Nothing like a regular class that makes you hide your true self.”
- “A place to help each other up.”
- “It’s a safe space.”
- “There’s lots of support.”
- “Prioritize the student and promote women leaders.”
- “Equality and equal footing.”
- “Embraces you to the fullest.”
- “Maturity, growth and a peaceful environment.”
Up the margin: “Embrace yourself before others.”
Her answer
“Grow as your own person and build up your professionalism.”
“One main thing I want to let young women know about the BTA is how it could help you grow as your own person and build up your professionalism. BTA has helped me with that, so I am sure it could also help someone else out.
The BTA is like a community that helps each other out when needed.
What convinces someone to join the Academy is the fun events we get to go to, like the BTA GPA events, and how fun they are! Also our super cool field trips.”
Her letter, to a young woman
- “You have a voice, so use it and do great things.”
- “Mistakes are needed to learn and grow. Without them, everything is just boring.”
- “A strong woman is also a sensitive woman, because you need balance to keep yourself upright.”
- “Don’t let people control who you are.”
- “Finding yourself shouldn’t be easy. It should be an experience of ups and downs.”
In the margin, beside 03“You need both qualities to stay grounded, and nothing is wrong with being sensitive as a woman.”
Beside 05“Ups and downs are normal in life, but it helps to know that it just means you are learning and growing, not failing.”
“I kinda thought it was.”
In the margin, under “nothing is wrong with being sensitive as a woman.”Three of the four said it separately
“A place to help each other up.” “A community that helps each other out.” And from the board, below: “supported through mentorship while also being transformed into a mentor.”
Everything in quotation marks on this page is a student’s own words, lightly edited for spelling and punctuation. Everything else is ours. The drawings are from the letter. Nobody is named. Crossed-out words are left out.
Her answer, from the student board
“The academy allows students to take charge”
The headline at the top of this page is ours, drawn from her line about being “transformed into a mentor.” Her answer, whole:
“BusinessTech Academy is about empowering young women into future leaders. It demonstrates support, kindness and commitment. It allows future leaders to be supported through mentorship while also being transformed into a mentor. The board shows commitment through the preparation of events, preparing and organizing events teaches you problem-solving techniques and habits. The board shows a group of empowered young students that make a difference to the Academy. The academy allows students to take charge and guides them to being future leaders.”
She wrote “dedication,” crossed it out, and wrote “commitment.” She crossed out “guides you through” and wrote “teaches you.”
+12pts
Young women in these academies came out ahead on being ready for college — and it was one of the only real differences the study found.
MDRC · California Partnership Academies · 2024 · students chosen by lottery
What the trial found
Nothing, and then one thing
In 2024 a research group called MDRC studied California Partnership Academies — this same kind of program, in this state. Students had been picked by lottery, the way names are drawn from a hat. That detail is the whole reason the study counts: it means the students inside the program and the students outside it were alike to begin with, so a difference later on is down to the program and not to who chose to sign up.
On the main things it measured, the study found no difference. Graduation: 92.9 percent either way. Going on to college after high school: no real difference. Readiness overall: no real difference.
Then one group moved. Young women in the academies came out twelve points ahead on the study’s measure of college readiness. Researchers call a result significant when it is big enough that plain luck is an unlikely explanation. This one was — and almost nothing else in the report was.
Students who were both low-income and behind in school. A real difference, not luck.
Same study
Fewer students dropped out — and the study says the effect was “more pronounced for females than males.”
Bonilla, California, 2020
The part we are not going to hide
The older evidencefavoured young men.
The best-known study of career academies — MDRC again, in 2008, following what students earned for eight years afterwards — found they made about eleven percent more money. But look at who. The gain sat with young men, who earned seventeen percent more, close to thirty thousand dollars over those eight years. For young women, that pay gain was not there.
So the honest answer has two halves. The evidence from outside California, on earnings favoured young men. The two California studies — the 2024 academy study and a 2020 study of students dropping out — both point the other way, toward young women. Nobody has pay data for this model yet. MDRC does not publish it until 2028 and 2032.
We are not saying the question is settled. We are saying that where California has looked, the effect on young women is the one that keeps turning up — and that it turned up in a study that otherwise found nothing.
Read the full evidence review
Our own evidence
Who is actually in the room
Everything above this line is about other people’s students. This part is about ours — and it is not a study. It is our own roster, counting young women in each group. Both sides of the comparison sit in the same building.
Young women, as a share of each group
Same site, same teacher, same year.
One of those groups was built on purpose. The other was not. The computer science class anyone can sign up for runs near thirty percent young women, which is about where the state as a whole sits. Each new Academy group has been more balanced than the one before it.
This is who enrolled, not how they did. And it is our own count, not an outside one — which is exactly why it sits under its own heading instead of with the studies above. It does not prove the academy causes anything. It shows who is in the room. Who is in the room is the one thing those studies cannot tell you about this building.
For scale: CSforCA, a California computer science group, reports that 34 percent of the state’s AP computer science test-takers identify as female or non-binary. That counts a narrower group than all computer science classes, so treat it as a rough reference rather than a direct comparison.
What that looks like on a Wednesday
A pneumatic rocket launcher, with Collins Aerospace
Engineers from Collins Aerospace work alongside the academy on the build — laying out the platform, fitting the valve and the pump, driving the fasteners, and working the small parts under a lamp at the bench. The photographs are one afternoon of it.
Where California has looked, this is what it keeps finding
This is built into how the academy runs, not added on top — it shapes who gets appointed, who mentors whom, and the path into the President’s chair.