Junior Achievement Wrapped: Exploring Statistics and Trends from the 2022-2023 School Year
Author: Beck Harhai
Community Involvement
Published:
Monday, 04 Sep 2023
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Image caption: JA Wrapped 2022-2023
Junior Achievement of Western PA’s (JA’s) 2022-2023 fiscal year was a year of growth, success and empowerment for students, schools and educators across the region. Despite nationwide teacher shortages, a volatile economy and lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, we persisted to improve upon newly established events and programs, like 18 Under Eighteen, the Empower Her Summit and JA BizTown®, while continuing to expand our traditional classroom programming to students never reached before.
Keep reading to see our numbers and statistics come to life in the 2022-2023 JA Wrapped report.
Student Numbers
Last school year, we reached a total of 44,791 students in our region, a 47% increase over the previous year. Such a large number of students can be difficult to conceptualize. For reference, approximately 45,000 people:
- Attend Ohio State University as undergraduate students
- Ran the 2022 New York City Marathon
- Can be seated twice inside Madison Square Garden
- Serve in the United States Coast Guard
Diving deeper, these students hail from 56 counties across western Pennsylvania and northern West Virgina, and about 55% of them qualify for free or reduced lunches, fulfilling a goal of expanding our programming in low-income communities and schools.
Overall, during the 2022-2023 school year, these 44,791 students participated in an impressive 253,000 hours of JA programming – 35.6% more hours than the year before.
Volunteer Numbers
Last year, 1,757 people volunteered with JA. Elementary programming was the most popular grade level for our volunteers, with about 76% selecting those classes. Middle school and high school programming followed with 23% and 1% of our volunteer pool, respectively.
Top Programs
Although all JA programs bring value to students, three of them were the most popular in our region – JA Inspire™ Virtual Career Fair, JA BizTown®, and JA Our Community®. These programs each represent the core values of JA in diverse, exciting ways:
- JA Inspire™ Virtual Career Fair uses virtual technology to provide 7th-12th grade students the opportunity to interact with local companies and industries to discover new opportunities and inspire career readiness. Last year, approximately 8,000 students registered and participated in JA Inspire™, making this program our largest and most successful of the year.
- JA BizTown® is a fully interactive, mock town that simulates the day-to-day functions of thriving communities to help 4th-6th graders connect what they learned in school with the realities of the business world and everyday life. Last year, we welcomed over 4,000 students through our doors to learn what it takes to be successful as an adult.
- JA Our Community® immerses students into the daily life of their community – the people who work there, the money decisions they make, the flow of the community’s economy – to discover the importance of being an involved and responsible community member. Last year, over 3,000 students took part in this elementary-based program.
Looking to the Future
Going forward, we are committed to maintaining our status as the region’s premiere educational provider while expanding our focus to additional areas of need.
Our goals for the upcoming years provide the opportunity to usher in success for students and educators and the overall well-being of the region as we teach young people skills in career readiness, financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and community leadership.
The goals detail:
- Creating new career pathways by developing youth leadership opportunities and workforce readiness curriculum through collaborative partnerships with trade and technical schools.
- Expanding student reach to include over 500 regional kid-entrepreneurs, 10,000 classrooms in over 500 schools and 200,000 overall students throughout the region.
- Providing additional support to students in need by increasing our household programming reach and awarding $1 million in K-12 scholarships to low-income families.
Our ability to reach these goals is only as strong as our stakeholders and supporters in the region. If you’re an educator or parent who’s interested in JA programming, please contact Toni Schlieper to bring JA into your classroom or home. Organizations or individuals looking to support JA can contact Bill Lucas for more information.
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