Should U.S. consider a 2-tier HS diploma to accommodate non-college track kids

Parents Forum
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<p>Back in the Jurassic Age when I was a HS sophomore in a suburban public school, because of a course I elected take out-of-sequence, I was placed in the Lunch period with the vocational kids instead of with the college-track kids with whom the school always placed me together. That was a life-broadening experience for me. </p>

<p>One of my lunch companions, a Senior, related to me how his family and all his remotely-extended family were going to attend his HS graduation because he was the very first one ever in his family & extended family circle to graduate from HS. That really blew me away. This was a white middle-class kid. Until I heard that, the concept of not graduating from HS never even existed to me as a possibility. </p>

<p>The next year, I rejoined the college-track kids for lunch. After that I hardly saw the vocational kids, even though we were all attending classes under the same roof. It was as if there was a parallel universe going on in that one building. </p>

<p>Now I think about those vocational kids and wonder how living in the same town and attending the same school we ended up with such totally different life expectations at such an early point in our lives. It amazes me to this day that for those vocational kids, the possibility of not graduating from HS was real.</p>

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<p>Kids need to dream big and colleges need big admission application money, so why limit either? Even we adults with college kids dream doing something different, so why set HS kids to a fixed path?</p>

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<p>You mean, like college prep as the nation wants to set all kids to now?</p>

<p>I’m another who grew up with educated parents, went to a good public hs, went to a great public college, and settled in for my adult life quite happily. To me, there really wasn’t any other world. Then, after having had kids, I decided I wanted a job that was more time friendly than some others and started working in our local high school (NOT the same one I went to, but it probably wouldn’t matter if it were).</p>

<p>Believe it or not, there are kids who don’t want that sort of future. They want a good adult life, but not the college (or even 10th - 12th grade “academic” courses) experience. Many have summer jobs out working for relatives or friends. They like these jobs and want to pursue them. They have a passion for them. They spend their spare time learning more about them (sometimes). They feel chained to a desk and held back in plain old classes and have no interest in them whatsoever. When state tests come around they often make neat designs with the bubbles (since they aren’t allowed to sleep). They often are discipline problems in school since it’s easier to act up and be macho than to let others know you can’t handle the material. (And some CAN’T handle it.)</p>

<p>These are good jobs these kids aspire to (meaning jobs that can earn them a living) and jobs our nation wants people in. (Do you not want someone to build your house/roads, cut your hair, fix your car, serve you in a restaurant, stock shelves in stores, etc?)</p>

<p>Why, exactly, does our nation decide ALL kids must follow the same college prep plan? There is no one path that works for all kids. Kids need choices and we need to accept that any choice that provides a student with a viable plan for self-support as an adult is a good plan.</p>

<p>Stop chaining these kids to desks and telling them they MUST pass state tests in Algebra, Literature, Bio, whatever, and let them go (after 9th grade) into the vocation of their choice. We’re not forcing them to go - we’re letting them go. Anyone who would want to stay ought to be able to.</p>

<p>I applaud those districts with a vo-tech alternative. They are doing things right.</p>

<p>Many who can’t pass state tests end up without any sort of high school diploma and locked out of many jobs and all this after 3 - 4 years of misery in school. That is no sort of life IMO.</p>

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<p>I haven’t read all of the posts but surely I’m not the only one living in a school district that already has two levels of hs diplomas? Standard and advanced?</p>

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<p>What I am suggesting is that the standard diploma is unnecessarily too advanced for a significant number of kids</p>

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<p>^^You know what? I agree. I almost added “however, the two levels are not all that different” to my post.</p>

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<p>A big part of the reason is differences by race, income, and parental education in who takes a college prep curriculum, who graduates from college, and other measures of academic achievement. If you agree with books like Murray and Herrnstein’s “The Bell Curve” and Murray’s “Real Education” you are not surprised by these differences. If you don’t you may regard these differences as evidence of an unjust society and the existence of large amounts of untapped potential.</p>

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<p>Again, what exactly are these jobs these 16-17 year olds can do with these limited high school diplomas. It’s all well and good to want this for the kids but the business climate doesn’t support this…</p>

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<p>Currently there is a large economic and social penalty for being a “high school dropout”. Therefore many people who dropped out are deficient in some way, in terms of brains or character, or they would have stuck it out. Employers use the high school diploma not as a sign of academic achievement but as a way to filter out undesirables. As evidence of this, employers of high school grads rarely ask for high school transcripts or scores from the NCLB-mandated tests.</p>

<p>If we could remove the stigma of being a “high school dropout”, lots of normal people would stop school before grade 12, and employers would be willing to at least consider “dropouts” because the pool of dropouts would include many good workers. Employers did not shun dropouts in 1950 for this reason.</p>

<p>What do you learn in high school that makes you better able to work in Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, or a grocery store?</p>

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<p>Beliavsky–that still doesn’t answer my question. It’s not about a drop out, it’s about what companies will hire 16-17 year olds as full time employees working at a job that pays a livable wage? What jobs do they have for these kids?</p>

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<p>“Livable wage” is an almost meaningless phrase. A wage may be enough to support a young person sharing an apartment with two roommates or who is still living with his parents but not be enough to support a family of four. Related to what I wrote above, more companies would hire 16-17 year-olds if attitudes changed.</p>

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<p>I agree with the OP’s idea. Here’s how the Swiss version works:</p>

<p>[Who</a> Needs College? The Swiss Opt for Vocational School | World | TIME.com](<a href=“http://world.time.com/2012/10/04/who-needs-college-the-swiss-opt-for-vocational-school/]Who”>Who Needs College? The Swiss Opt for Vocational School | TIME.com)</p>

<p>About two-thirds of 15 and 16 year olds who finish nine years of obligatory schooling choose to continue their education through Vocational Education and Training (VET), a system that churns out skilled workers who are the backbone of the country’s thriving economy.</p>

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<p>Beliavsky–again, companies are NOT going to hire 16-17 year olds for full time positions when they are not legal adults–diploma or not. Sure, they can probably work full time at McDonald’s as long as they aren’t in high school, but they certainly are not going to be able to work at a machine shop, or as a mechanic, or any other tech type job. There are labor law issues at play here.</p>

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<p>^ ^</p>

<p>For that system to work, even the “college track” at many US K-12 schools…including some mediocre privates need to ramp up their standards in basics such as writing and basic math up to algebra/geometry. </p>

<p>It’s a serious issue when a sizable chunk of the college track kids have to take remedial writing and math courses as college freshmen. In the math area…I’ve seen remedial students struggling through learning multiplication/division of fractions and one elementary ed ex-GF of a friend feel put upon during undergrad by struggling through basic algebra that’s usually offered in 9th grade in many decent US high schools. </p>

<p>Heck, the GED is regarded as so substandard based on previous hiring experience that even the US Army has had a restrictive max quota on % of GED recruits they accepted…and those recruits must score much higher on the ASVAB than their regular HS graduate counterparts. Only way around that restrictive quota is for the potential recruit to take some undergrad courses which then makes him/her the equivalent of a regular HS grad in the Army’s perspective. </p>

<p>Understandable considering back in the late '90s while tutoring a dropout sibling of a friend, I found the GED had extremely shallow coverage of algebra and geometry to the point it barely was the equivalent of 10th grade math at a decent regular high school.</p>

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<p>OP asked about tiers, not the wisdom of dropping out. “Dropouts” is a separate issue.</p>

<p>Why does the idea of a vo-tech track suggest dropping out of hs? Who said it means 16-17 yer olds are looking for jobs? They are not dropping out, they are in training, plus working to meet state standards for a hs degree. This is different than keeping them on the same general path with college bound kids, then asking them to enroll in cc or a tech training program at 18, at a cost. </p>

<p>What makes a 20 y.o. trade program grad better able to get his/her trade job just for having done the training between 18-20, rather than 16-18?</p>

<p>Are we in a bubble here? So focused on the dream aspects of college that we assume our tradesmen are unemployable? We are surrouded by successful people working in the trades-(“Millionaire Next Door” comes to mind.) They are dedicated to their industries or businesses, good parents, good citizens- and just as likely to be smart and interesting. Do they really need Engl 12 and World History to be the people they want to be?</p>

<p>Btw, many of our highly educated sons and daughters will be in a frustrating search for jobs, upon college graduation. Many of their vo-tech peers will be a few years into their work. Many of ours will end up in good jobs and be surprised to learn not all the folks doing the same job will have degrees. Or, not from par institutions that gave the same breadth and depth of knowledge. </p>

<p>I think we are blinded by the “promises” of a college degree. In our notions of offering fair shots to all kids (justice and equality,) are we trying to impose our own standards and hopes on kids who don’t want that direction? Is it fair to push all kids at college?</p>

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<p>lookingforward–because the OP suggested an 11th year diploma for kids not on a college track–that puts these kids in the 16-17 year old range. It’s isn’t about “better” just older. Again, at 16-17 they are not legal adults and that creates a lot of issues with federal labor laws, which, as I said earlier, would have to change to accommodate this educational change and I just don’t see that happening. It isn’t that the jobs are “bad” jobs, it’s that most companies CAN’T hire a 16 year old to install plumbing in a building.</p>

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<p>ucbalumnus–yes. we live in an area that values education. I will contend, forever, however, that it is not the fault of the high school in inner cities that their kids are not up to par with their suburban counterparts…</p>

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<p>Steve, I missed that important number, thanks. As you can tell, I like the idea of a vo-tech hs degree. In the respect you have corrected me to- ok, putting a kid out there with only an 11th grade patch degree is frought with issues.</p>

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<p>What do the standard high school diploma graduation requirements include in your area?</p>

<p>Remember that *skilled<a href=“i.e.%20good”>/i</a> blue collar jobs not requiring a bachelor’s degree do require a reasonable base of skills in reading, writing, and math (consider the example of a service manual for a car, or a carpenter determining the lengths of wood to build an A-frame with specific angles).</p>

<p>Also, high schools typically require at least a basic understanding of US history and government, since people just out of high school become eligible to vote (of course, the understanding of US history and government among voters and college-educated politicians is often questionable). Some voting decisions would be helped by understanding of science, economics, etc. (would politicians be able to make some of the “liar, liar, pants on fire” claims if everyone had a good enough understanding to realize that they are false?).</p>

<p>In addition, consider concepts like compound interest and probability that creep into daily life. Should high school graduates be sent into the world unprepared to make informed decisions with saving and borrowing, or comparing the risk of various choices of action?</p>

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<p>Here are the durations of compulsory years of education for different countries. Notice that quite a few first-world countries require less than 12 years, including Norway, France, Australia, Canada. These are not slacker countries-- ok, you could argue about France…
[Duration</a> of compulsory education statistics - Countries compared - NationMaster](<a href=“http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_dur_of_com_edu-education-duration-of-compulsory]Duration”>http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_dur_of_com_edu-education-duration-of-compulsory)</p>