What do you want to be when you grow up?

Essentially, that’s the question sixth-graders across the Vicksburg Warren School District will be asked in surveys this month, the results of which will help determine which classes they will take during the next six years.

“If a student wants to be a doctor,” Superintendent Dr. Elizabeth Duran Swinford told members of the Vicksburg Rotary Club during their weekly meeting Thursday, “we’re going to build a set series of classes that would align with the interest.

“Instead of taking an elective because it’s an available class, now we’re making sure the electives you take are relevant to the pathway you have selected,” she said.

Initially, the surveys will help determine which classes the sixth-graders take in junior high. However, because the students will be surveyed again in the seventh, eighth and 10th grades, students will have multiple chances to change their study plans.

Jean Massey, associate superintendent for career and technical education at the Mississippi Department of Education, said the idea behind Pathways to Success — the name given to the program — is to raise students’ interest in career early on and increase the state’s graduation rate, which was 71.4 percent for the 2009-10 academic year.

“When kids leave high school, we want them to be prepared for a secondary experience,” she said. “The main goal is to help kids identify with one of the 16 pathways. If they change their minds, it’s OK.”

She said eighth grade was chosen because it precedes high school.

“Eighth grade is the time to start thinking about entering high school,” she said.

Swinford said she believes decisions should come earlier.

“Here in the Vicksburg Warren School District, we feel that eighth grade is a little bit too late,” she said. “We’re going to give the ICAP, individual career plan, for students in the sixth grade.”

Swinford said the plan includes giving students a survey of career-related questions and placing them in one of 16 comprehensive career clusters based on their answers. The survey asks students about their personal qualities and their interests in activities and school subjects. Each cluster, designed by MDE, lists classes relevant to the career interest.

Class placement also is determined by student achievement and grades, Swinford said.

Neither St. Aloysius High School, the city’s parochial school, nor Porters Chapel Academy, a private school, offers the career path surveys, the principals at those schools said Thursday.