I have an idea that I believe will help kids in poor areas and keep some in school.

How about reinstituting some vocational education into the high schools?

Can you imagine what it would do for a kid from a poor area to graduate high school not only with a diploma but perhaps 2 years of apprenticeship training in electronics, plumbing, auto repair?

Heck it would benefit any kid but if you put some more hope into young people they are more likely to see a better future.

It doesn't even keep kids from going to 4 year colleges down the road. But instead of having to take loans they have a good wage career to help pay for the 4 year education.

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"A rising tide has lifted all yachts." Warren Buffett

Obama is not a dark skinned, anti-war socialist who gives away free health care; you're thinking of Jesus.

They still have it in public schools here, but it's limited- auto shop and wood shop, and cosmetology. I know that, at least for the cosmetology course, students can actually be ready to take their state licensing exam by the time they graduate, and bypass beauty school entirely. My daughter-in-law did this; there are worse ways to make a living than cutting hair.

My concern is that low-income students not be coerced or steered in this direction, while the children of the affluent are steered toward college prep courses.
Everybody should be able to plan for the future they want, not the one school administrators assume they deserve.

Many high schools already have this sort of thing. And I must say, it is a good thing.

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Should Vocation Ed go back into high schools?

yes yes and ...yes

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Hell Yes,I'm all for it,That's a great idea!

Yes, maybe even allow the last couple of years of school to be used working hands on with a local licensed vtycontractor at least part of the time.

I cannot, in the name of Zeus's butthole, understand how a "poor" kid cannot learn the three Rs, and a vocation at the same time. I might substitute the adjective "lazy" for "poor". I mean, who wants a moron undertaking auto mechanics and then working on his vehicle?

Put Vo-Tech back into schools?? I wasn't aware that it had been taken out of them.

This is one of those areas where getting rid of most public education and privatizing the system would be great. If there was enough of a demand for vo-tech education, then the private schools would be established to provide it. Simple supply and demand.

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Our nation has not always lived up to its ideals, yet those ideals have never ceased to guide us. They expose our flaws, and lead us to mend them. We are the beneficiaries of the work of the generations before us and it is each generation's responsibility to continue that work. - Laura Bush

Leftists and very small children don't seem to be able to understand that the Government isn't there to "fix" the economy, anymore than a tick is there to fix your dog.~Oftencold

Ditto. Perhaps the wealthier school districts- and the poorest ones, which can't afford them- have dropped them. They're still going strong in middle America, however, to my knowledge.