If attendance is any indication, they're sure to get plenty of proposals. About 100 people packed the four-hour presentation, and many had specific ideas about how to lift sagging achievement and reduce high dropout and truancy rates. The district has teamed with the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce to set up the program at Mifflin, Marion-Franklin, East and West high schools. The goal is to design a curriculum that will help the students develop skills particularly suited to work in areas such as manufacturing, construction and computers. Central Ohio employers have a big stake in the city schools.
Schools have an obligation to prepare students for the real world.
Programs such as the proposed vocational academies benefit everyone. But with colleges continuing to trumpet their enrollment estimates, several state systems have begun to win support for their plans to serve those students over the next decade, even though many of them aren't expected until 2004. The Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina system voted in April to steer many of the 45,000 additional students expected in the next decade to seven underutilized campuses, including the state's five historically black institutions. Lawmakers are now considering the largest bond issue in state history, partly to prepare facilities for the new students.