Hmmm. Let’s see what’s different in “a vocational environment.” THEY GET PAID. These people may not be real interested in their jobs but they are generally very interested in making money (which they can then use to do things they really are interested in).

Though that may be selling them short. I have had a number of uninterested, poorly behaved students who got interested in what they were doing for pay, and began to want to “do a good job” at it. The difference in how responsible they were was kind of amazing.

I don’t think this is true, at least it wasn’t true 25 years ago when my father taught high-school drafting in inner-city San Antonio. I’ve been with my father several times when former students came up and thanked him for keeping them in school.

Vocational education has an additional benefit, too. Back in those days, students often HAD to drop out. They didn’t want to, but their families were poor and needed for them to go work. The ones with a couple of years of vocational education already behind them were often able to get entry-level jobs in their field, as bricklayers or drafters or plumbers, even though they hadn’t been able to graduate.

Some of the students did go on to college, a couple even became architects. The college-is-for-all concept is one of the worst ideas of the late 20th century.

> You can teach the basics in the context of ANY curriculum,
> but you have to do it.

Absolutely.

The bigger issue is that kids are graduating without being able to write a decent letter, never having read anything other than the few books that they were assigned (probably just used Spark Notes for those too), and unable to do basic algebra. You can teach the basics in the context of ANY curriculum, but you have to do it.

Without a realistic commitment to high-level vocational training, the mantra, “some kids don’t want to be in high school,” leads to training for low skilled work.

I am concerned about the sorting process. If students and their parents are able to choose freely between the vocational and academic tracks, and both types of schools are well funded, then I have no objections. Lacking that, however, it’s very easy for the voc/tech schools to become the dumping grounds for the difficult to educate.

Our district’s high schools in the SLCs at least are offering both opportunities for the kids — lower and better paying routes that need post high school training…

For Peter W — do you have data on why kids drop out? For some sure, they are already viewed as the adult at home and heaven forbid they be told what to do by a “dumb” educator who has no clue what they are already responsible for day in and day out. Sadly many of these kids end up in MIP-Conduct because no one understands what is truly happening in their lives nor do they care to take the time to find out. Others, yes, get caught up with gangs and cannot get out.

Still…I imagine there are kids that drop out because they were never allowed to pursue the main, productive area they were interested in. Our district is seeing success with these kids in the Big Picture School. Hopefully other alternative ways to a high school degree will prove successful as well.

If anyone has the data please share…

Which is not to say at all that we don’t need rigorous voc ed courses; we certainly do…but the people who would benefit would be the people Bill described – people who were able to finish HS and in most cases even get into college.

HS drop outs are mostly bored of being told what to do, and that won’t change in a vocational environment.

Not true. The truth is that the survey reveals that 77 percent of high school dropouts (who responded to the survey) SAID they quit school because they were bored.

Don’t get me wrong – it ticks me off that career-oriented classes often get the rep of being the “dummy” classes. Many technical classes are incredibly challenging – just in a different way from academic classes. But I am somewhat leery of statistics based on self-reporting, particularly when it comes to analysis of one’s successes or failures.

I think it’s quite probable (and understandable) that people prefer to take credit for what they see as their successes and externalize blame for what they see as their failures.