RE: Question 2: Integrating Career Prep-What's in the Plan

>From Recommendation 25 about the low employment value of a high school diploma:

"This reality reflects a low perception of what high school graduates know and can do, a higher valuation of the utility of specific career technical skills as distinguished from academic knowledge, a need for more highly developed cognitive skills than are commonly taught in high schools, or some combination of the foregoing"

If high school diplomas were differentiated to represent a range of possible accomplishments and mastery of academic and vocational skills, then they might be useful in helping employers make hiring choices. They could give some indication of an applicant's general academic attainment and whether they have any training in specific vocational skills the employer seeks. This gives kids not going to college a way to see their high school accomplishments as potential economic assets. It would also better represent the range human potentials and motivations and offer real choices to students no matter where they were headed. This idea that all kids should be on a college track is silly. It doesn't mean that they can't later develop the inclination and motivation to shift their lives into that direction. Nor does it mean that we shouldn't try to create a floor of academic skills that will serve students reasonably well in life, preserves a level of options and that is attainable.