Put the Vocational and Technical back into Vo-Tech. In my district, the Vo-tech school is treated by many parents as another college prep charter school.
Part of the problem, nationally and in Delaware, is that the Congress expanded their definition of what a vo-tech school can teach, and as a result some (nationally and in Delaware) provide college-pathways. On the surface, there is nothing wrong with that. However, this reduces the number of slots in our vo-techs for students seeking trade-pathways, this has led some of our vo-techs to use past grades as an enrollment preference, the superior funding of our vo-techs make it harder for trade-pathways to be offered in our traditional high schools, and the fact that the creation of our vo-tech system has sharply reduced the trades-pathways in our traditional high schools. Thus, in Delaware we, too, need more tradespeople. Just as critically, we have more high school dropouts than I believe we should have, due to the artificially-low number of trade pathway seats in Delaware public schools. Delaware’s laser-focus on SAT for all students is also not helping our state recognize that trade-pathways are as important as college-pathways. – Paul Baumbach Via Facebook