My Vocational Ed Problem

It is not the kind of course that is the problem, but the way it is taught. I would argue that you can create good science and math and social studies and English classes for those kids that would keep them motivated, and leave open the possibility that they could still go to college. Although this would be hard, it would keep their options open, unlike your idea.

Have you looked at the Academy programs in some California schools? They were big 10 years ago when I visited Oakland and wrote about them. They had very good vocational programs. At one school it was health sciences, preparing kids for lab or hospital tech work. But they were still getting enough of the math and science and English to quality for the UC or California State systems. The message was: this course will qualify you for part-time lab work while you work your way through college. That doesn't close out options, the way I think your plan would.

And I do not think you would have any larger a dropout rate than you would have with your all-vocational program. I don't think the problem is kids not being interested in college and academics. I think it is kids not wanting to be in school, and having to do what teachers tell them, vocational or otherwise, and I think the way to handle that is a better organized school, and better teaching.

Also, on the vocational side, schools have proved often to be terrible at teaching what industry actually wants, except in those cases where the school is run by the company that is hiring the students. So I doubt, despite your good intentions, that you could produce in a public school the kind of graduate that the company would want. There are too many other players, people who don't understand the industry, who would decide what is being taught, and too many chances for them to mess up your vision.

If you, Chris Peters, a smart guy who would not mess it up, started a charter school based on your vision, it might work. If you are going in that direction, let me know. That might be a story.

PETERS:You seemed to be making five essential points in rebutting my plan. I'll try to fairly summarize each one and then give you my response.

JayPoint 1: Allowing high school students to choose an exclusively vocational track for their last two or three years would cut off their option of going to a four-year college. Staying on a college prep track -- even if they don't like it -- at least keeps the opportunity open.

Your point seems to assume that completing a college prep sequence and succeeding in a college prep sequence are the same or close to the same thing. The vast majority of high school grads now complete a college prep sequence (four years of social studies and English, three years of math and science, two years of foreign language, etc.). Typically two thirds of these kids however do so with either less than a B average or by substituting easy remedial or non-lab math and science classes for the hard stuff like geometry, Algebra 2, chemistry and physics (known as the Big Four College-Killers among AVID coordinators). In other words, they complete the college prep sequence but they don't qualify for college. Aren't these kids having their opportunities "cut off" in the same way that my voc. ed. kids would be -- with the added insult that they are not learning anything useful in the process?

JayPoint 2: 15-year-olds cannot be trusted to make their own curricular choices, being too inclined to take the easy way out.

I'd take it a step further and say none of us are ever qualified to make our own curricular choices and tend to spend most of our lives taking the easy way out. But we've got to start taking a crack at it some time. Fifteen seems to me a far better age to do so than 18 because the 15-year-olds still have a couple of precious years of free education left that they'd prefer not to be legally required to waste. 15 is also better because by that time it is almost always abundantly clear whether or not a student is being successful on the college prep track (most, as I said, aren't) and they should be given the chance to pursue some other meaningful options other than that of limping through an ersatz college prep program that is the educational equivalent of fourth quarter garbage time in a game where they are behind by several touchdowns.

JayPoint 3: Any kid with a "spark" should be in a rigorous college prep program and those that don't have a "spark" probably won't be motivated by voc. ed. anymore than they would by college prep.

If by "spark" we mean an inner-faith in their own specialness and potential to achieve along with a willingness to work hard to realize them both, my experience is that all but the most-alienated and abused kids (and even many of them, miraculously enough) have it. It is mathematically impossible however for most of these kids with spark to go to a four-year college. Even if they all bought into the idea of college and worked . . . to get here, colleges would (and have) just keep raising their standards so that no more 30 to 40 percent at most could make it.