Trades classes were once part of most public high schools. Then George W. Bush implemented his disastrous “No Child Left Behind” program. NCLB did not test for the trades. And it punished any school with low NCLB scores.
So most districts eliminated their trades programs, and focused on what NCLB tested for - higher math and English skills. End result? Trades programs were eliminated, and trades students were shoved into classes they neither wanted nor needed.
George W. Bush - the worst president ever. He harmed this country in ways that will be felt for generations.
Hyperbole much! Hardly the worst president ever!
I agree NCLB was terrible legislation. If you actually take a minute and remember, everybody was for it! Soccer moms, low info voters, the moderate mushy middle were all clamoring for it. The media kept a constant drumbeat going, the Beltway professional GOP PR boys\girls, senior GOP senators, GOP Congresscritters were all saying he had to do it to keep, get or expand GOP majorities. The bottom line he was politically bullied into it, also distracted by the internal and international politics of the WOT, so he caved. All one had to do to get anything legislative passed then was preface it “... It’s for the children ..” and no matter how stupid or harmful it was likely to pass. People thank God are much more skeptical of that argument now!
Also, the end of trade skills instruction at the HS level that started ending much earlier - the Nixon\Ford administrations. I remember when it was pulled out of my high school back when I was there in the 1970s and centralized in one place. Kids had to ride a bus roughly for an hour or more to get to this centralized location. World class stupid but the educrats assured “the people” it was the solution to educating all, particularly the non-college track. I remember liberal educrat morons gushing “It will be just like the way Europe does it!”. God! I hate those people! Much of the early push for that came from Jimmy Carter’s excretable Department of Education.
Don’t forget the rapid conversion of the education associations from professional societies to militant unions, that started in the late 1960s picked up speed in the 1970s hit light speed in the 1980s. That contributed greatly to the mess and still does.
George W. Bush did a lot of things wrong, most of which he had help doing so. However, the NCLB fiasco was due to a rolling ball of ‘education fantasy solutions’ crap starting in the 1960s, it gathered 30+ years of irresistible political momentum then dumped itself into the punch bowl of “Bush II’s” presidency where it had to be dealt with politically, which is what a politician does. It continues to fester today!