I've advocated something like this to happen in Louisiana for the past few years. My plan is a little different and doesn't make high school freshman decide anything though, i wait until junior year. I picked junior year because by your junior year you've pretty much learned all the basic things you need to know and therefore and can go to a vocational school and not really miss anything important.
It should start well before then...sometime around fourth grade. By that point, you already have a pretty good handle on who's college material and who's not. Extra years of technical training could really benefit the kids that waste the following six to eight years learning stuff they'll never use.
Like the German system? http://library.thinkquest.org/10388/school.htm After elementary school the system differs enormously from the American way of education. For many years there have always been three traditional different school types after elementary school: These three schools are separated after the speed of learning, intelligence and/or choice of the students. There are the so-called "Hauptschule", "Realschule" and the "Gymnasium". The Hauptschule is the lowest level of education. It lasts from the 5th grade up to the 9th grade and after the 9th grade they achieve the lowest certificate of education. In the Realschule there are those who learn faster and they are taught until the 10th grade. They have the medium level of education after the 10th grade comparable to the General Certificate of Secondary Education (G.C.S.E.) in Great Britain. In the Gymnasium they can leave after the 10th grade with an equivalent certificate of the G.C.S.E., but according to their marks and engagement they can go on until the 13th grade (in a few states up to the 12th grade) and pass the A-levels afterwards. That is the highest level of education. A very good thing about the German school system is that the students always have the opportunity to reach a higher level of education if they WANT to. For example: Somebody who has achieved the G.C.S.E. after the 10th grade can attend a so-called "Fachgymnasium" and try to pass the A-levels. So everybody can improve his or her certificate.
Yes, very similar to the German system. Our current model is a one-size-fits-all approach, which clearly doesn't work. I can remember tons of classmates through the years that were obviously on the low side of the IQ curve. Yet these dummies were required to continue in classes they could never possibly need in their eventual line of work. That just doesn't make much sense to me. And the corrollary is that the same students would slow down the pace for the smarter kids, thus limiting their potential.
