07/08/2017
Food for thought
High schools like Mercy – known as career and technical schools or vocational schools – are increasing their presence throughout the country, at a time when support for career and technical education is picking up steam as an alternative route to the middle class. There are roughly 90 career and technology schools and centers in Pennsylvania, at least 70 vocational high schools each in Ohio and Massachusetts, and similar numbers in other states.
In Germany, children of middle school age take tests and either move on to apprenticeships or a university preparation route, says James Stone III, director of the National Research Center for Career and Technical Education at the University of Louisville.
"We look at that and say, 'Oh, isn't that terrible?' Because we’re condemning kids based on a test at that age," Stone says. "But when you actually look at what they do and how they do it, the system works extraordinarily well. They have one of the lowest youth unemployment rates in the industrialized world, and going through an apprenticeship in no way prevents one from moving on to college."
