When my dad was in high school the votech classes built a modular house every year. When that house was auctioned off every year, it fetched more money than it would cost to buy the same house from the modular people. The high school house had a reputation for being a superior quality build. People whose children had spent their lives in private school would pull their students into that public high school because it too was superior on the academic side. Now people will move just to keep their kids from having to go there.
Our local school system's problem has a clear beginning point for this---it was when consolidation began. It started with eliminating junior high schools by putting 8th graders back in middle school and moving 9th graders into the already crowded HS. To make room, vocational classes were almost completely eliminated across the board. Then came elementary school consolidations, Then came middle school shakeups though I wouldn't call it consolidation---they just started this bizarre shuffle of campuses and toying with the lines, Elementary schools became middle schools and middle schools become elementary schools. No rhyme or reason to it really. We now have schools sitting empty the city won't sell or do anything with but they will occasionally re-open one and close another while doing work to the ones re-opened and nothing to the ones re-closed. Add into all this zero-tolerance and the squeeze of no child left behind and budget pressures, and it seems like the goal now is to drive as many people out of the public school system as possible.
Yes we should promote vocational training, but we also need to promote college prep as well. Schools are just a quagmire of problems that never seem to get better. Most of the problems seem to originate with administrators having lost their fucking minds in pursuit of "change".
