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D-Ed Reckoning: Income Inequality in America
I hate when I post a comment, then realize it would make a great post!
I was recently speaking to the director of vocational education at our local community college. He was telling me how hard it is to find students for some of their programs.He was out recruiting for his welding certificate program. Even though graduates started out making 40 to 50K a year, there is an huge shortage of qualified pipe welders.
Unfortunately, our school system seems to screw with kids on two levels. First they drill it into kids that if you don't have a college degree you are doomed, then they provide an inadequate education.
Friday, May 18, 2007
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9 comments:
It's not the schools that tells students they won't be successful w/o a college degree, rather it's the policy makers who insist that schools teach curriculum that only focuses on getting kids into colleges.
A good 'fer instance is the school district my two older children attend (where I live) and the district I teach in have implemented "A-G" requirements that all high school students have to meet in order to graduate. These A-G requirements are similar to what is seen in the UC/CSU college system. The meeting of these A-G requirements did not come about because the teachers wanted it, rather it was imposed on high schools through the state.
Meanwhile, there are cuts to vocational training programs and other programs that don't "prepare" kids for college. I think that most teachers can appreciate that not all kids want to attend college straight out of high school. In fact, I've yet to talk to one high school teacher (or any teacher for that matter) that think that all kids have to go to college to be successful in life.
It's definitely policy makers.
The DOE has been trying to kill vocational programs altogether.
Now it looks as if the DOE is seriously undermining liberal arts education in liberal arts colleges.
I haven't sorted through it yet, but I fear the worst.
New York state got rid of all shop classes.
But everyone still has to take "Home and Health."
Boys are forced to cook and sew; they aren't allowed to learn shop.
I would be thrilled if my son could become a pipe welder. It will give him a way to support himself through college.
Seriously.
We've been discussing how to get three kids through college. So if and when said kid gets his PhD he can always fall back on the welding as a way of supporting himself when no academic jobs are to be found.
I wish I had had that option.
"...they aren't allowed to learn shop."
Rather than learn shop, they learn to shop.
Actually, it's hard to find a vocational school that doesn't offer a degree. It's a game, really. People want that piece of paper. But even without the distribution courses to get that piece of paper, many vocational schools offer much more rigor and career opportunities than many small colleges. I bet one could get a degree somewhere in industrial mechanics (welding or machine repair).
How long will it be before a college degree is devalued? We had a game once. Count the college exit signs along route 128 around Boston. I've lived in New England all of my life and I've never heard of some of these colleges. It can't be there are that many more well-prepared students. It's just that supply is meeting demand by lowering expectations - at $40K a pop. College is a booming business these days.
"...it's the policy makers who insist that schools teach curriculum that only focuses on getting kids into colleges."
As long as you make a distinction between high school and lower grades. Schools start assuming that many kids aren't "college material" in early grades. You see this when curricula like Everyday Math doesn't really teach division by fractions using invert and multiply because most adults don't need to do that sort of thing.
As for high school requirements, I would have to see the requirements before I made a judgment. I have yet to see a state-mandated test that was anywhere near grade level. For math, I have never seen a high school graduation requirement that required anything more than algebra and maybe a little bit of trig. Maybe, just maybe, you could let the lowest high school track get away with less, but I'm not sure I would even go along with that. What might seem impossible or completely unfair to a high school student could be the result of years of bad curricula and low expectations - the result of social promotion. A high school degree either means something or it doesn't.
Again, a lot of this is vague talk that can only be analyzed by looking at the details.
Well, Steve H., I can only speak from my own experience about the district I live in and the district I teach in. Both have implemented A-G requirements with the explicit goal of getting all students ready to enter college. This focus as led to the demise of shop programs in both districts.
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