http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2011/07/05/11-well-paying-jobs-that-dont-require-4-year-degree/

Too bad OUSD and such districts are busy teaching Blacks how to be Untouchables instead of how to get such a job. Understand, the Blacks are competing nationwide with Mexicans and other Third Worlders brought in by the government and handed work permits. It will be very increasingly difficult to get Blacks employed. That is intended, it’s what we are fighting.

Most Blacks are not college material. Cry about it all you want. You can’t make people do something because YOU might decide to do it. For whatever reason (there are several), blacks typically do not want to be Doctors, Lawyers, CPAs, CEOs, or anything else that requires the time, work, discipline, planning and debt required of a four year and graduate degree. You cannot beat people into the careers they don’t want.

They may want to be Entertainers. Without a better foundation, all their money will be taken from them if they even get off the ground.

OUSD being (for the moment) a black dominated district – should have a concentration on non-college occupational preparation. College bounds can be identified and spun off into a program of their own on their own campus. The bulk of the OUSD program should be in getting the students on the path to the best living possible within the scope of the education they will take.

The high school years are also the crucial period for development of deportment needed to gain admission to vocational entry level jobs. Every time OUSD allows a black student to be vulgar, disruptive, and to speak Bad English a further nail is driven into their coffins. Above all else – all “education”, getting control of deportment is key. This should be posted as a mission statement of OUSD and every similar school.

The homework with its extra practice made a big difference, yet the majority of the black boys did not complete the homework. (I volunteered 1.5 days in each of my son’s classrooms). The black boys were significantly more disruptive in class regardless of whether the teacher was black, Asian or white, younger or older.

The black boys (and girls) were tardy more often and had more absences.

I would love to see the district figures on black boys who transferred to hills schools to see if the trend was the same.

You have concisely and clearly stated the case. And items 1. and 2. are not unique to OUSD. The same policy and focus problems are true in the Tri-Valley and given their nature, may be true across the country. It is interesting that if the Policy were restated as “have no atudents who need to be retained”, Focus on mastery of the basics would achieve it. By second grade (three years), if mastery were the focus, all students — except true special ed kids — could learn to add up to 9 + 9, even with weak home or parental support.

We are not preparing students well enough in the early years, and that is where the real problem is.

He continually got kicked out of schools for cussing out his teachers. But having gotten to know him, it seemed mostly a response to the frustration of not being at grade level. He was capable of learning the material when it was first presented — I don’t know why he did not. And while I do not excuse his behavior, if I went to school and learned nothing for six years, I’d be tempted to cuss somebody out, too.

I understand the conversation about personal resonsibility. We are all responsible for the consequences of our actions. I’m just saying, it would be more effective for us and better for them, to make sure these boys learn in the early grades. If we did, there would be many fewer “problem boys” when they got older. In fact, what’s most interesting to me, is you wouldn’t even know which are the ones that would have been in trouble.

The products of this school are being placed in large bureaucracies that are growing. I suppose they crowd out black and brown applicants who have not been to such a vocational school. I would not consider hiring a public school graduate for such work (without the voc school credential) because there would be no reason to consider them sufficiently housebroken. Getting an entry level job now in a big employer requires more than a High School Diploma.

40 years ago it required a typing certificate among other things. I think that requirement has been done away with.

It is a sorry state of affairs that the public schools fail and neglect to make proletariat children ready for an entry level job – beyond McDonalds (minimum wage clerk). I don’t think it takes that much to do that much for these kids. The vocational school is actually spending time and money undoing the damage the high schools have done with these students.

Another point. You do not need ANY black teachers to teach the black/brown students. It’s nice if you have them, it’s optional. So that’s another thing the wanna savem types have wrong. Deliberately using race opposites actually might help the process along. You are not teaching for their comfort zone.

Now having said that the few black faculty I experienced were tougher, more demanding and more professional than the rest. They had to be. I doubt there are enough of such paragons available for the high schools.

Toni Smith and the Oakland school Board should be forced to have meetings and work at the poorly managed Oakland middle and High Schools where he expects success from these young men.

Toni’s Smith’s failure to improve Oakland’s Middle and High Schools hurt all Oaklanders not just African American men.

I was surprised to hear the observation that the incoming students are unable to read cursive handwriting. They only read printed English. They are made to work on that. They are unable to write a letter, a memo or anything else even slightly formal. They communicate within their Caste by Texting with heavy use of jargon.

In 18 months these poor creatures have to be made employable. It starts with a strict dress code (including hair). The school regulates everything down to the shoes, nails and all jewelery. The complete appearance of the students is subject to daily inspection with people being sent home. They have to be taught how to dress and grooming. Visible tattoos are not allowed. They have to cover them at all times. Flesh band-aids are used.

The students are being trained for office work for the most part so they are drilled in software commonly used in offices as well as typing, form and style (what I had in high school typing class), and terminology specific to various industries. There is math bookkeeping/accounting and a number of things to make them suitable for entry level jobs in industry and commerce. I didn’t ask about tuition or how that is paid (loans?).

The Vocational School coaches it’s students on what discourse is unsafe for work and what not to talk about with a co-worker. How to maintain boundaries, how to navigate office politics. The school is run as a business environment with similar rules about deportment.

18 months later they have an 80% plus placement rate at $12-$19 an hour.

I continue to call out the refusal of the government secondary schools to enforce grooming, dress, deportment and decorum in their “schools”. Their products are carefully placed in a fantasy land of permissiveness to help keep them in their Caste and unemployed. It seems to me that for the bulk of the black students – OUSD and LAUSD and districts like them are deliberately turning out Untouchables.

And if they are going to turn out an Untouchable Caste – even on the pretext that court decisions prevent discipline (which I don’t accept at all) – there is no reason or rule that keeps the schools from at least telling the Untouchables what is happening to them and what they are being groomed for. Just maybe an Untouchable Caste student and their family might want to opt out to a better and voluntary public school program…

I believe OUSD used to have such programs in high school. Now, like driver’s ed and training, you have to pay $$ to get this training privately. The Jr. Colleges are functioning as 13th grades and are not inclined to impose the discipline described above in their programs.

Poor kids have to pay for what I took for granted in public high school.

Oakland Unified has made school choice the centerpiece of its educational program, but I don’t believe it has ever examined the results of that policy.