Graduation Rates - Cass / Crockett / Renaissance

[DetroitTeacher]

I just read somewhere [[or maybe my mom told me she read it) that the demand is no longer for college degrees, per se. Demand is high for skilled trades such as plumbing, auto mechanics, heating/cooling, welding, etc. I can see that...I pay my plumber and auto mechanic a pretty penny just to Dx the issue, let alone the money I shell out to actually have it fixed. I really wish they'd bring back the Vo-tech centers[[or even bring it back into the regular high schools) and offer it to more kids. I have students who I know won't fare well in college and really don't want to go. They would much rather forego all the academics and just focus on skilled trades. I point them in the direction of HFCC. They have great programs without all of the English, History, and academics involved. Yeah, you heard that coming from me. I just want my kids to be successful and whatever that takes, I am all for it.

[Zacha341]

I hear you DT. Randolph, Golightly, Davis Aerospace and Breithaupt career technical centers struggle to survive since the EAA [[Education Acheivement Authority) takeover of high schools such as Southeastern, Mumford etc.

These schools no longer allow their students the option to attend the career tech centers, thus enrollment has dropped significantly:

Programs in jeopardy at 5 Detroit Public Schools vocational centers

http://www.freep.com/article/2013021...tional-centers

....I really wish they'd bring back the Vo-tech centers[[or even bring it back into the regular high schools) and offer it to more kids.

[Bham1982]

These schools all have minimum GPAs and minimum attendance requirements in order to remain as students.

So the graduation rate, IMO, is a poor proxy for assessing performance. They will have strong graduation rates, by default. It's highly unlikely you will have good grades and attendance and then decide to not graduate.

I mean, let's pretend these schools were horrible [[they're certainly not). They would still have roughly the same graduation rates, since all the "bad kids" wouldn't be counted in the denominator [[they would have all been kicked out beforehand).