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1) Re: This Bill Actually Makes Some Sense [by cannedmushrooms on April 6, 2009]I am a CTE instructor and see these students everyday and how they are bringing more and more skills to the table every year in technology driven classes. CTE is an amazing place where students can learn to use those skills and prepare them for challenges they might face in a field of study that actually leads somewhere. People believe that CTE is all about pushing the student into the workplace and that’s all CTE does, they could not be more wrong. We push students to college and prepare them so they will be ahead when they hit their career in college also. Whoever still believes that places hire right out of high school is living in a land of make believe, or is promoting students to become future factory workers and we have seen where that path has lead. You think little Paul or Jan look at there dad being laid off and say to themselves "boy I can't wait to be a factory worker like my dad". These new students will be creating new jobs, they look at the adults nowadays as people that can't even use their computer correctly, and communicate on a global level through social networking sites that span every inch on the internet. Students will eventually take the classes that the Merit are pushing in college as a core class. So how does them taking example Algebra II twice in their life help them get a job?
I will defiantly be rooting for this bill. I just hope people that don’t come in contact with students every day ruin it for them. They need this bill to pass!
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It takes us back to the "good old days" of the 1950s and pre-Great Society 1960s, when (in some places -- New York State public schools were among them) a student could earn either a "college prep" or "general education" diploma. The former entailed completing a much more academically demanding curriculum.
Back then we understood that one program does not necessarily fit all students.
Systems like that work OK so long as students who have high ability but are "undecided" career-wise about what they want to do after high school are directed by counselors and parents toward the more demanding college prep curriculum. This is the one that ensures capable students will leave high school with academic preparation for the greatest possible range of life choices in their futures.
More directly, it's going to be a lot tougher for the kid who spent high school in a vo-tech program prepping to be Joe The Plumber to shift gears and go to college so he can become a teacher, or lawyer or ... than it is for the college prepped kid to later become Joe The Plumber if that turns out to be what he wants to do.
That isn't dissing Joe The Plumber. It is stating a reality of life.
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If a kid can't pass this watered down public education graduation test then why do you think he or she will be helped by this?
The kid still won't be able to read.
The kid still won't be able to add.
The kid probably won't be able to tie his own shoes if he can't pass high school today.
Again I ask, how will this help the illiterate child?????
I have an idea, how about you kill the teachers unions, fire all the union so called teachers, rehire the good ones at 20% more pay and let them teach. The average 4th grader 60 years ago was much smarter than the public indoctrinated good little serf that they are sending out into the cruel world everyday with nothing more than giant egos, excellent self esteem, and not a lick of common sense or employable skills. And on top of that you want to dictate that businesses should pay all these illiterate workers more money.
You all need to get a real job in the real world.
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