This is excellent and taking lessons from the Swiss apprenticeship programs. Typically working with local companies to provide training, in return they get excellent labor, and the labor pool is far better off without any student loans or burden of spending 5 years in college.
Michigan has a program where students can earn an associates degree (or something equivalent) by doing a 5th year after high school. I expect many of the participants could do it in 4, and I bet that the reason they can't is because of squabbling over funding.
We need to make a commitment to considerably expanding the opportunities available to 14-15 year olds in the public school system, not slightly expand their options after graduation.
3 tracks would be great (roughly, wants to finish high school, wants to finish high school with some skills and wants to finish high school on a trajectory for a 4 year degree).
Washington State has had a program called Running Start for years. You can graduate high school with your Associates degree, and it costs you nothing. You're now 2 years ahead of your class. But guess what, that FTE (Full Time Enrolled) money is diverted from the high school to the college. So guess which school doesn't promote Running Start...
Oh and I forgot about the "Skills Center" we had nearby, which actually had all the really cool classes that I didn't know we could take. There were actual game programming classes, electronics, and lots of vocational training, stuff that I didn't know you could take in high school. We got keyboarding classes and photography as the closest thing to any kind of computer classes. The only time students got to go over there is when they were "problematic," students with bad grades. So it ended up with this reputation. Again, the student funding ends up getting diverted away from the high school (as it should, IMO).
Basically anything that gov does can be boiled down to: “That’s just $X/capita”, IMO wrong way to think about it.
This funding can kickstart more things. More is good but should first measure the outcomes whether it works or not, how well is the funding used and understand it’s impact.
This is excellent and taking lessons from the Swiss apprenticeship programs. Typically working with local companies to provide training, in return they get excellent labor, and the labor pool is far better off without any student loans or burden of spending 5 years in college.