A History of Students Reached
Junior Achievement of South Central PA reached over 101,000 students for the first time in the 2018-19 school year. Since 1955, JA has reached over 1,000,000 students in South Central PA.
Early Years: From 1961 to 1982 all JA programs were after school programs using the JA Company Program. Student numbers remained fairly constant during this period of time.
Middle Years: In 1983, JA introduced the first classroom programs with Project Business. The numbers began to increase and we began to expand the number of schools involved. Gradually the after school program faded and was eliminated in 1990.
York Strategy Years: In the late 1990s we launched the York area strategic plan. This plan called for focusing on 14 school districts in York County. This resulted in an explosion of student growth.
Exchange City/BizTown Years: In 2002 we opened Exchange City. We were the sixth area in the country to open a site. Exchange City was converted to JA BizTown in 2006. Student numbers peaked at 33,000 in 2004.
Return to High School Years: In 2008 we launched JA Finance Park and began our return to high school. We added a JA Symposium for young women and then in 2012 our STEM Summit.
Middle Grades Initiative: In 2015 we launched our JA in a Day program for Middle Grades. In 2018 this program reached 19,000 students.
The rapid growth however has come in the past decade. In 1991, we were reaching slightly under 10,000 students. By 2001 we increased to 20,000 students and to 30,000 by 2004.
Merger with JA Central PA: In 2016 with the merger with JA of Central PA we reached 70,000.
Benchmarks on JA of South Central PA
JA USA® provides regular comparisons between JA offices. This benchmark process is intended to help measure performance between offices. The benchmarks compare the JA office here with similar size offices based on students reached.
One of the benchmarks used is Market Share. This is the percent of students participating in JA programs as compared to the total public enrollment for the area. JASCPA has consistently out-performed most offices.