Posted on 11/23/2024 1:53:35 PM PST by algore
Edgar was a pain in the neck.
Or maybe we should say, it was difficult for some of the teachers at Edgar’s high school to appreciate his distinct learning style. Edgar was disruptive. He had a smart mouth and tried to talk his way out of everything, including his poor grades in core classes.
Today, barely out of high school, Edgar is the lead foreman for a California-based union carpentry company that designs and builds upscale retail shops for high-end clients like Louis Vuitton. He is well established on a lucrative career path at a time when some of his former classmates are still racking up debt at four-year colleges.
Not everyone at Edgar’s high school considered him to be a problem student. Kirk Shafer, who today works as the career and technical education (CTE) director at Brandywine High School in Niles, Michigan, never understood what all the fuss was about when it came to Edgar. In the eyes of Shafer — an experienced woodworker as well as Edgar’s former woodshop instructor at a different school — Edgar was the model student.
“I knew he'd be successful,” Shafer told me recently. “But the other teachers couldn’t handle him. And that always confused me. He was my best student! I love that kid. He was a talker. He was mischievous. He just was in the wrong environment.”
Among the tangle of events in the early 21st century that would hamstring the U.S. manufacturing base for at least a decade sat the No Child Left Behind Act, the sweeping public school reform act passed with bipartisan support and signed into law in 2002.
At the heart of the act was the creation of federal guidelines for student achievement that were measured through annual standardized tests. The results of these tests, focused on reading and math and administered by the states, were the core metrics used to evaluate school performance, teacher performance and school funding.
Here’s how Shafer explains the impact that No Child Left Behind had on CTE: “The CTE classes were non-core classes,” he says. “The law made the requirements to graduate much more stringent, and since the CTE classes were non-core classes, students didn’t have as much access to them anymore. Even the students who were struggling in their core classes, who are sometimes our best students because they excel with hands-on learning, didn’t have time in their schedules anymore.”
If you have ever wondered why “shop” classes disappeared from many public schools during the aughts and early 2010s, this is part of the reason why.
The good news is that state school systems across the country, like Brandywine Middle/High School, are beginning to figure out solutions. Brandywine is part of a consortium of school districts in Berrien County that operate under a model, approved by the Michigan Department of Education, in which individual school districts can partner and share a range of CTE programs among students within the county. In other words, students at one high school can attend CTE programs at other schools.
Brandywine’s CTE program offers metalworking/machining, mechanical drafting, as well as a woodworking/cabinet making program, auto shop and others. Students enrolled in these programs often travel from other schools to attend classes at Brandywine, with transportation between schools provided. Crucially, some of the courses in these programs count as math credits.
Another nuance: In Michigan, teaching a secondary CTE program requires two years or 4,000 hours of “recent and relevant” experience in the occupational area. All 4,000 hours may come from direct business or industry experience. The level of required experience varies between states, but these guidelines recognize that hiring qualified instructors for something like Brandywine’s machine tool program is difficult enough without requiring a teaching certificate or degree on top of industry experience.
Individual state funding for CTE programs, along with other revenue sources like federal Perkins grants, are providing vital support for a manufacturing industry desperate for talent. But as Shafer knows, given the industry’s needs — as well as those of students with different learning styles and aspirations — these sources are still far from sufficient.
Shafer is trying to raise the funds needed to build the Brandywine Manufacturing Center — a new building that will house equipment to serve the three disciplines that fall under the system’s manufacturing umbrella (a machine tool discipline, cabinet making, and mechanical drafting). Shafer is in the middle of negotiations with local businesses for funding and naming rights.
Smart business leaders will see the opportunity here. Just as state and federal education departments immediately need to increase support for CTE programs around the country, solving the skilled worker crisis in the American manufacturing industry will require that businesses put more skin in the game.
And why wouldn’t they? The data alone provides the evidence: The Michigan Department of Education says that 95% of high school students enrolled in a CTE program graduated in 2022. Michigan’s overall graduation rate? 81%. Even the federal Department of Education touts this statistic on its CTE website: Eight years after their expected graduation date, students who focused on CTE courses while in high school had higher median annual earnings than students who did not focus on CTE.
And as long as we’re making righteous demands, I ask our overworked and underpaid middle- and high-school teachers and counselors to recognize the vital role that CTE programs play for kids who may not excel in traditional classroom settings. So when the next Edgar strides into the room, you’ll know what to do.
I forgot what the options were, but every student could choose a project to work on toward the end of the semester, I chose a gun rack thinking it would be useful if it actually worked as it was supposed to.
I credit the teacher with giving me advice and what to do next in order to get it put together. I cut the individual pieces, sanded it down, put it all together, stained it put strips of felt where the guns rested.
Excellent project for a young lad!
In the competition for Perkins funding, community colleges have manipulated the narrative to create the narrative that a student needs at least two years of college education to succeed in a trade (frequently selling it as a 2+2 program).
This financially starved the programs at the high school level as the colleges took all of the funding.
Most core CTE skills can be taught from the 9th grade and on. Physical application of skills like measurement and communications also help students in the core courses by allowing them to see the value of those classes too.
Sad, it is. I grew up learning most of the trades as a side issue; can still do most home plumbing, wiring and carpentry stuff today - these kids/young adults truly have no clue.
My most] useful high school classes for m my career were Personal Typing, Latin, and Home Ec.
Hanging in our kitchen every place we’ve lived is a beautiful wooden fish Hubby made in high school Shop.
Do you still have it?
“Sad, it is. I grew up learning most of the trades as a side issue; can still do most home plumbing, wiring and carpentry stuff today - these kids/young adults truly have no clue.”
Plus most car and AC repairs for me. Allowed me to raise my family on a single income and then retire early. The practicality of being able to fix something that will otherwise cost $150 to $200 per hour, AFTER TAXES, to have ‘the man’ do it cannot be understated. This stuff can still be taught to kids, but now only by their grandparents (in most cases).
My brother teaches CAD design and some sort of metal shop classes in Michigan. He gets hassles and zero support from administration. They have no idea about the real world outside their academic utopia.
Yep, gun rack here and a full size grandfathers clock. Our High School in Ashland,Ky. had an industrial arts building. Full wood, metal and electonics shop. We learned milling, wood and metal lathes even a small aluminium foundry. Most cans were steel so we had to forage for any aluminium to melt. This was ‘70-’72. The arts department had their own building. Along with”art” they also taught drafting and blurprints.
They also had a vocational program off campus. Glad to see it’s coming back.
Real gym classes would be good to bring back, too, a la the Kennedy era. Archery is not exercise
LOL !!!
You hear the UPS Truck coming down the street and You and the Dog run out to the street to meet it and the Dog signs for the package while I’m sniffing the Drivers ass.
I was in the advanced track but took a wood shop and electronic shop. The electronic shop was worthless because it delt with transistors not home wiring, but the wood shop lessons and interests developed I have used all my life. The one class they dropped was college prep typing for half a year. The only typing class offered was for secretaries for a full year. I could have used the shorter class. My kids were learning classifications of plants and other useless memory stuff.
And these days even thinking about making one these days would get you Suspended and put into a Mandatory Class to program your brain that you are a Psychopathic Gun Nut and a threat to Society...
“The electronic shop was worthless because it delt with transistors not home wiring, “
I still use the stuff I was taught in that class.
But you are right, home wiring would have been really useful.
I did a bunch of car audio where black was always ground, and then when I got my first house I was clueless
“ If you have ever wondered why “shop” classes disappeared from many public schools during the aughts and early 2010s, this is part of the reason why.”
Another disastrous law Bush signed.
L
Our high school offered metal shop, electrical shop, woodshop and auto mechanics. There was home economics for girls. Each of these classes taught skills good for a lifetime. When I had a complex science fair project and needed an incubator and a staining rack for microscope slides, I gave plans to our metal and electrical shops. The kids in those shops enjoyed making something that was needed in the school and I got a Superior on my science project. When I became a biology teacher, I argued for vocational ed classes long and loud, but the libtards insisted those classes were "tracking minorities into non-college careers". You often had students who acted out in biology class, had no interest in academics, but--put a hammer or wrench in that kid's hand and they literally became a different and productive person. And those kids forced to take college-bound courses were often failing and miserable. Let's hear it for vo-ed. Bring it back.
I did okay in shop class (woodworking) in 7th grade. I think I got a C+ on my cutting board. However, my mother used it for years and I brought it to my 50th high school reunion.
The 8th grade shop class was metalworking. I made a dust pan which we still use today!
I know what a screwdriver is! A mixed drink with vodka and orange juice.
We had home ec in my HS.
I took them all through jr and sr high and aced them all. it was easy to do when you knew it all already because you had a mom who actually taught you that stuff.
It kept my GPA from tanking. I didn’t learn I was smarter than I realized until I went back to college in my mid 20’s after dropping out initially. I went on to make it to dean’s list several semesters getting my meteorology degree.
I should have graduated on the Dean’s list, but after years of pounding into my head that you can’t get more accurate in decimal places than the initial numbers, they did just that and I missed dean’s list because they didn’t round as they beat into our heads that we had to.
So they calculated my GPS to the thousandth place for courses that had grades and credits only to the tenths place.
Missed it by a few thousandths.
FRUSTRATING!!!!!
Bet it drove you batty at the time.
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