The Schools Reviving Shop Class Offer a Hedge Against the AI Future
A Paper by Te-Ping Chen
This article was originally published in the Wall Street Journal on March 1, 2025.
In America’s most surprising cutting-edge classes, students pursue hand-on work with wood, metals, and machinery, getting a jump on lucrative old-school careers.
School districts around the U.S. are spending tens of millions of dollars to expand and revamp high-school shop classes for the 21st century. They are betting on the future of manual skills overlooked in the digital age, offering vocational-education classes that school officials say give students a broader view of career prospects with or without college.
With higher-education costs soaring and white-collar workers under threat by generative AI, the timing couldn’t be better.
In a suburb of Madison, Wis., Middleton High School completed a $90 million campus overhaul in 2022 that included new technical-education facilities. The school’s shop classes, for years tucked away in a back corridor, are now on display. Fishbowl-style glass walls show off the new manufacturing lab, equipped with computer-controlled machine tools and robotic arms.
Interest in the classes is high. About a quarter of the school’s 2,300 students signed up for at least one of the courses in construction, manufacturing, and woodworking at Middleton High, one of Wisconsin’s highest-rated campuses for academics.
“We want kids going to college to feel these courses fit on their transcripts along with AP and honors,” said Quincy Millerjohn, a former English teacher who is a welding instructor at the school. He shows his students local union pay scales for ironworkers, steamfitters and boilermakers, careers that can pay anywhere from $41 to $52 an hour.
“Kids can see these aren’t knuckle-dragging jobs,” Millerjohn said.
Welding teacher Quincy Millerjohn in one of the campus shops at Middleton High School in Middleton, Wis.
In Wisconsin, 32,000 high-school students took classes in architecture and construction during the 2022-2023 school year, a 10% increase over the prior year, state data show: 36,000 enrolled in manufacturing courses, a 13% increase over the same period.
“There’s a paradigm shift happening,” said Jake Mihm, an education consultant in the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. “They’re high-skill, high-wage jobs that are attractive to people because they’re hands-on, and heads-on.”
Renewed interest among local governments, school districts, businesses and voters has triggered the investment in shop classes, which for decades have lost enrollment, pushed aside by demand for college-prep courses. Ohio and other states offer schools financial incentives for classes that lead to industry certifications in such high-demand jobs as pharmaceutical technician and pipe fitter.
At Middleton High, wood shop teacher Justin Zander added classes to accommodate the 175 students who enroll each semester, up 75 from four years ago. He said he still had to turn away students.
Zander, who has taught shop classes for three decades, said students and parents better understand that blue-collar work can pay well. “People are more accepting now,” he said.
‘Good choice’
American high schools began jettisoning shop class following the 1983 publication of “A Nation at Risk,” a federal report that urged high schools to raise academic standards.
The 2002 No Child Left Behind Act emphasized standardized test results to measure student achievement. Many schools, under pressure to show academic improvement, spent less on art and music classes, as well as cut back on auto repair and other shop courses.
For decades, shop programs were dogged by allegations that schools shunted students from low-income families into blue-collar careers, while well-off students headed to college.
If there is a stigma to taking shop classes, Andres Mendoza Alcala, a Middleton High senior, isn’t seeing it. “I haven’t met a single person that looks down on someone else, just because they’re doing the trades instead of college,” the 18-year-old aspiring carpenter said. “They just say it’s a good choice. These are secure jobs.”
As white-collar hiring slows, more younger workers are finding blue-collar careers. The share of workers ages 20 to 24 in blue-collar jobs was 18% last May, two points higher than it was at the start of 2019, according to an analysis by payroll provider ADP. Enrollment in vocation-focused, two-year community colleges jumped 14% in fall 2024 compared with a year earlier. Enrollment at public four-year colleges rose 3% during that period.
Students participating in wood shop and home maintenance classes at Middleton High School.
Brandon Ross at PBK, an architecture firm based in Houston, sees the boom firsthand. School construction projects tied to vocational education account for around 10% of the firm’s work, he said, a figure that has doubled in the past five years.
PBK is designing a $140 million career and technical-education center for students in the Spring Branch Independent School District, which serves the Houston area. There will be an auto-repair shop, which hasn’t been available at district schools for years, as well as courses in fields as varied as healthcare, digital animation, filmmaking, culinary arts, cosmetology, and computer networking.
“Not everybody wants to go to college, and some people don’t want to go to college right away,” said Jennifer Blaine, the district superintendent. Enrollment in vocational classes is up 9% over the past four years, she said. The project, supported by a voter-approved bond issue, will accommodate 2,200 students each semester when completed.
About 150 students at Sutherlin High School in Sutherlin, Ore., take Josh Gary’s woodworking class, a number equal to nearly half the student body. When Gary took over the shop class in 2014, he had 30 students and little equipment. He bought used tools on Craigslist with his own money and raised funds selling picnic tables he made with students.
The wood shop now features laser cutters and computer-assisted routers that enable high-level detail work. Last year, Sutherlin High opened a $750,000 metal shop. A $375,000 state grant paid for new tools, and $50,000 from Harbor Freight Tools for Schools, a program launched by the tool-retailer’s founder, bought a pickup truck for use by the classes.
Gary likes to joke that he is a shop teacher who never took shop. When he was in high school during the late 1990s, he said, his father wouldn’t let him enroll. He went to college and law school but decided to teach.
“The trades are just more valued these days,” said Gary, noting that class valedictorians have taken his classes. “Electricians and plumbers make great money, and some of our higher-end students see that.”
Teacher Justin Zander’s wood shop at Middletown High School.
A welding student working at Middleton High School.
Test drive
Roughly half of college graduates end up in jobs where degrees aren’t needed, according to a 2024 analysis of more than 10 million résumés by labor analytics firm Burning Glass Institute and the nonprofit Strada Education Foundation.
Yet many high schools aren’t equipped to help students who want to skip college. One hurdle is cost. Vocational education is generally more expensive than math or English classes. Shop teachers at Middleton High spend around $20,000 a year on wood, steel, aluminum, and other materials. Updating equipment for manufacturing, woodworking and metalworking cost the district $600,000.
Recruiting shop teachers is tough, given the generous wages paid for skilled trade work.
For 22 years, Staci Sievert taught social studies at Seymour Community High School in Seymour, Wis. After the school went through three shop teachers in four years, Sievert told the principal she would learn to weld, work with wood, and teach the classes herself. She became a shop teacher in 2017.
“I just felt like we were shortchanging our kids, our community and our families if we weren’t raising the bar in tech ed,” Sievert said. In her region of northeast Wisconsin, more than a fifth of the jobs are in manufacturing. “This is who we are,” she said.
For some students, shop classes are a steppingstone, not a replacement for higher education.
Shop teacher Staci Sievert at Seymour Community High School.
While Breana Brackett was an honors student at Highland High School in Bakersfield, Calif., she took a construction class at the district’s Regional Occupational Center. She is now at California State University, Chico, working toward a degree in construction management.
The course she took in high school, Brackett said, “helped me be sure this is what I wanted to do before I spent money to go to college.”
Kern High School District, which encompasses Bakersfield, spent $100 million from a voter-approved bond measure and state grants to build a new vocational center in 2020 and expand its Regional Occupational Center. The two campuses are open to high-school juniors and seniors to take classes, some for-college credit. Roughly, 70% of the students who take courses there continue their education after high school, mostly at community college or trade schools, said Natasha Hughes, who recruits students for the district programs.
A teenager can make $20 an hour as a welder’s helper after graduating from high school with technical-education classes, Hughes said. Another year of welding instruction at a community college can boost pay to $60,000 a year for pipeline jobs in Bakersfield-area oil fields.
Even with the expansion of the district’s vocational classes, student demand outpaces available seats. Last school year, 6,200 students applied for 2,500 spots at the two vocational campuses. The waitlist for auto shop is 300 students, said Fernando Castro, one of the instructors.
Castro took a $50,000 pay cut when he left his job as an automotive technician in 2015. He said he was inspired by his mother, also a teacher. The district has since adjusted its salary formula to reflect industry experience. Castro now makes $100,000 a year, matching his former income.
“It’s the best job I’ve ever had,” he said, helping launch young adults into well-paying careers and having his summers free.
Tom Moser, service manager at Jim Burke Ford Lincoln, said the Bakersfield car dealership employs around two dozen graduates from the school district’s Regional Occupational Center, including two people he hired out of high school last year.
Experienced employees have been hard to find. “You’ll post a job and not get a qualified applicant in months,” Moser said. The dealership decided it was better to train workers who graduated from high-school shop classes. Workers who start at $19 an hour can work their way up to six-figure incomes in four years, he said.
“You can pretty much write your own ticket once you’ve acquired the skills,” Moser said.
Some students taking the district’s vocational courses learn they aren’t cut out for hands-on work. A number of students who sign up for Chad Wright’s early morning construction courses quit every year, he said. Some aren’t happy about having to rise as early as 5:30 a.m. to catch the bus for class. Others are surprised by how much endurance the course requires.
“Once they get in here and realize it’s three hours of actual standing up doing some work,” Wright said, “some of them get a little glassy-eyed and wonder what they signed up for.”
Yet, it is best to learn early about the rigors of the construction trades, he said, especially when early mornings are the best time to work during the hot summers in this part of California.
“I’m not trying to run anybody off,” Wright said. “But at the same time, I want them to understand what the real world has waiting.”
The Dog Fence…A Muddy Boots Blog
Guest writer David Griffith returns with another blog post from his Muddy Boots series: The Dog Fence.
We have had three dogs since moving to New Hope in 1993: Duncan, Piper, and our current Clover. We installed a Dog Fence with Duncan to allow him to roam the property without a leash, chase the deer and squirrels on an even footing, and give us peace of mind when outside.
It is remarkable how well they work once the dog is trained. A beep goes off a few feet from the wire that marks the perimeter, and the dog stops, not wanting to have the mild reminder from the collar shock.
It works well unless it is cut. Over the 30 years I must have spliced the wire 75 times. Sometimes, a lawn mower would catch the ground, sometimes edging the plant beds, sometimes a tree roots, to the point where a rainstorm could short the wire, sending a beeping signal to the panel. The challenge is finding the break first, repair, and test. The process sometimes would take 20 minutes, sometimes 20 hours.
Last week was one of the 20-hour sessions, and I had had enough. I called Invisible Fence, and we scheduled to replace the old wire field with a new one. Today, it is getting installed. OK, so where am I going with this?
Sometimes, we repair a broken system; while it works, it is still broken. Any rational person would have replaced the fence years ago. We hang on to our old way more than we like to admit. As I step away from the Episcopal Community Service ( ECS) and look at the systems designed to address poverty throughout the City of Philadelphia, I see many spliced wires and systems that break or don’t really change lives or, worse still, put people at risk.
This is why ECS took on a brain science-based coaching methodology to address long-term intergenerational poverty, which we call MindSet, and social and emotional learning with our Out of School Time ( OST) children. To do the best job of helping people gain economic mobility, you need to fix broken systems, and sometimes that is a replacement. We continue to use a broken system for many built-in reasons, but none warrant continuation if they don’t drive long-term change.
I am proud of ECS and our partners who have decided to take on the heavy lift and drive transformation rather than keep repairing the broken fences. We work through direct programs and services and advocate for public policy to change where it impacts people adversely.
Sometimes, you have to say “enough” and fix the fence.
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Do You Know What Your Customers Are Purchasing from You?
Guest writer Debbie Frakes encourages readers to keep track of customer activity in order to have a clear picture of your business in “Do You Know What Your Customers Are Purchasing From You?
To better understand your business and your customers, you have to take a close look at what they are buying from you the most, if you offer multiple products or services. By analyzing the types of purchases your customers make, you can determine what sells the best, how often it sells, and which branches or departments move more or less of specific items. Armed with that information, you will be able to make more informed decisions about your business strategy, optimize resource allocation, and maximize your profitability.
Why tracking types of purchases matters
As an equipment dealer, your success depends on connecting customers with the products and services they need. Identifying purchasing patterns helps you pinpoint what matters most to your audience. Using these insights, you can fine tune your marketing and advertising strategies to focus on high value products—boosting both your marketing ROI and your customers’ satisfaction. Monitoring types of purchases also prevents wasted spend on promoting lower demand items. Instead, you can invest in the areas that generate the greatest return for your company.
Understand your trigger products
Triggers are the products and services that cause customers to come into the store or dealer in the first place. At the grocery store, they are products like bread, eggs, and milk. At equipment dealers, they are things like emergency repairs, seasonal inspections, or specific types of machine breakdowns that lead to a replacement rental. It’s the type of goods or services that bring the customer through the door.
By tracking and analyzing customer purchases, you will start to see what your specific trigger products are. Once you recognize them, you can highlight those items in your marketing and advertising materials. That way, when a customer requires something like a seasonal inspection, they’ll think of you and schedule with you, then potentially purchase more products and services as a result.
Optimize your resources for maximum impact
Your marketing, sales, and financial resources are limited, so they should be used as strategically as possible. Regularly reviewing key business metrics, like the types of purchases that are most common, helps you determine which products to promote, so you feature them in email campaigns, highlight them on your website, and focus on them for any paid advertising. Beyond marketing, these insights also shape decisions on inventory and expansion. Knowing which products sell best allows you to introduce complementary offerings that align with customer demand.
Understanding the types of purchases that are most popular with your customers also helps you understand how well branches are performing and which ones are selling more or less of a specific product or service. If something is selling great at every branch but one, then there is probably an issue specific to that branch that you can address and solve, so their revenues will increase accordingly.
Expand customer awareness with strategic upselling
Once you know your customers’ purchasing behaviors, you can introduce them to additional products they may not have considered. They might visit your website or open an email for one item, but with the right strategy, they’ll discover more of what your dealership has to offer. Use your most popular products to drive engagement and increase overall sales.
Our partner, Zintoro, provides equipment dealers with comprehensive business analytics reporting, helping them track key business metrics like types of purchases, purchase frequency, customer retention, and more.
Schedule a Zintoro demo today to uncover valuable insights and start making data driven decisions!
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The Hidden Risk to Services
Guest writer Kevin Landers returns this week with a blog post on the hidden risk to services. Read on to learn more about how hidden IT chaos undermines dealership success.
For equipment dealerships, the service department stands as a pivotal revenue generator. A well-oiled service operation not only ensures customer satisfaction but also significantly boosts the dealership’s bottom line. At a minimum, a service department should generate millions annually. Which means every minute of downtime is money lost. Yet, many dealerships are sabotaging their own success with IT setups that are outdated, unreliable, or completely unmanaged.
Lurking beneath the surface of many dealerships are IT challenges that, if left unaddressed, can severely hamper service efficiency and profitability.
The Unseen IT Pitfalls in Dealerships
Modern equipment dealerships are increasingly reliant on technology to manage operations, from scheduling maintenance to processing orders. Yet, many are encumbered by outdated or poorly managed IT infrastructures. Common issues include:
The Strategic Importance of Robust IT Management
To transform IT from a potential liability into a strategic asset, dealerships should focus on the following areas:
Real-World Implications of IT Mismanagement
The consequences of neglecting IT management are tangible and detrimental:
The Path Forward: Embracing IT as a Catalyst for Growth
To harness the full potential of their service departments, dealerships must:
In the dynamic landscape of equipment dealerships, a strategic approach to IT management is not just beneficial—it is imperative. By addressing IT challenges head-on and embracing technology as an enabler, dealerships can unlock new levels of efficiency, profitability, and customer satisfaction. The journey toward IT excellence is a continuous one, but the rewards are well worth the effort.
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520 Chestnut Street
Guest writer David Griffith continues his Muddy Boots blog series this week with “520 Chestnut Street.”
I have lived and worked in the Philadelphia region on and off for the last 45 years. For many of those years, I walked past Independence Hall on my way to work. On occasion, I would go in, usually at an off-hour, and look, be quiet, and think of the history that has taken place within these walls.
Now more than ever, I marvel at the wisdom of these founders and the men and women who have continued the work that started at 520 Chestnut Street. It is said that “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” The wisdom of the three branches of government and the associated checks and balances. Flawed, most certainly, but a remarkable resilience in the face of challenges from within and without.
As we are near our 250th anniversary as a nation, we feel we have some decisions to make. Our history is that of a nation of immigrants and immigration. Legal immigration has fueled our growth, and the diversity brought has been a source of strength. Our history on race and gender equality has much pain and continues to be a source of friction, disagreement, and injustice.
How we move forward will set the stage for the next 250 years. It is critical we look forward and not backward; we look for the opportunity for growth, not the decay of the status quo. To find the common ground and include all Americans. There is a reason people want to move to America. Opportunity.
Imagine if thirty percent of people who live in poverty found the opportunity of a living wage job. Why would we not want the growth that would follow? A country and government with a strong private economy in the right balance focused on growth and all that implies drives opportunity. Imagine thirty percent more consumers.
However, that vision requires a strong, independent economy, a focused government operating under the rule of law and the checks and balances of the original founding vision, and a practical and strong public policy that drives the conditions for growth, innovation, security, and opportunity.
The time has come for the next 250 years. I would suggest we look back to move forward. We have our differences, but we also have the opportunity to gain experience from the differences and, in doing so, find the common ground we all crave. And that would be authentic leadership.
The us, them, needs to become the we.
As in “We the people.”
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What It Takes to Be a Great Training Instructor: Beyond the Basics
Guest writer Jim Dettore digs down into instructional practices in “What It Takes to Be a Great Training Instructor: Beyond the Basics.”
Being a great training instructor is more than knowing your material or speaking in front of a room. It’s about creating an experience that sticks with your learners long after they leave your session. Having spent over 30 years teaching technical, leadership, and communication skills, I’ve learned that delivering information is just the starting point. The true art of training lies in how you engage, connect, and bring the content and the learning space to life.
Since starting out training Grove Crane operators in the 1990s and moving into leadership and instructional roles in 1998, I’ve seen firsthand what makes some trainers exceptional. I’ve also sat through over 100 training classes and seminars myself, learning to spot the difference between average and outstanding instructors. I always wanted to emulate trainers like Lloyd Shull at Empire Cat’s Regional Dealer Learning Center, he made every session fun, engaging, and interactive. And people remembered what they learned.
Along the way, I’ve also been influenced by trainers like Amy Parrish of Iluma Learning, whose ability to create dynamic and engaging sessions is second to none. Teaching is about building connections and crafting a learning environment where people feel comfortable, curious, and motivated.
Let’s dive into what makes a great trainer, including not only communication and engagement tools but also how the physical training space itself can boost learning.
Without deep knowledge of your subject matter, you can’t create the credibility or trust needed in a learning space. A trainer who fumbles through the material or relies too heavily on slides loses the room fast.
A standout trainer:
Remember: knowledge creates confidence, and confidence creates trust.
Great communication goes beyond speaking clearly. The best trainers know how to modulate tone, pace, and language to keep their audience engaged.
Communication tips for trainers:
Communicating to large groups:
With bigger groups, the need for energy and presence increases. Walk the room when possible, and make sure your voice reaches the back. Repeat audience contributions to ensure everyone hears and feels included.
The physical environment is often overlooked, but it’s critical to fostering engagement and focus.
What to consider in your training space:
Humans are visual learners by nature. A blank slide deck and a monotone voice will drain energy fast.
Visual and sensory engagement ideas:
When I implemented simple visuals and allowed space for participants to physically interact, whether through sketching, building models, or hands-on exercises, engagement skyrocketed. Amy Parrish is a master at integrating movement and creativity into learning activities, blending traditional teaching with dynamic participation.
The best trainers:
Even providing sticky notes and markers can empower learners to participate visually during brainstorming sessions or group discussions.
Tips for keeping people engaged all day:
Great instructors don’t just teach; they connect. Participants are more likely to absorb content when they feel seen and valued.
One-on-one check-ins during breaks or after sessions can also help build rapport, especially with participants who may be struggling to engage.
Building group connection:
After three decades of delivering and observing training, here’s what consistently sets great trainers apart from average ones:
Emotional Intelligence:
Commitment to Growth:
Despite delivering over 500 classes, I still learn something new from every session. The best trainers are humble, constantly refining their craft.
Final Thoughts: Creating the Full Experience
At the end of the day, a successful training experience is a combination of:
When I think back to people like Lloyd Shull and Amy Parrish, what stands out isn’t just what they taught, it’s how they made their learners feel. They created spaces where people were comfortable, curious, and energized.
If you want to move from average to great as a trainer, invest in the full experience: the room, the tools, the human connection, and yourself.
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AI is Flipping the Economy on its Head – Here’s What You Need to Know
Guest writer Steve Clegg tackles the worries and opportunities that come with Artificial Intelligence in “AI is Flipping the Economy on its Head.”
Let’s talk about something huge that’s happening right now – AI is completely changing how our economy works. And trust me, this is way more interesting than it might sound at first.
What’s the Big Deal?
Think about how you buy stuff today versus 10 years ago. Remember when you had to:
Deal with pushy salespeople who knew nothing about what you actually wanted
Wait forever for customer service
Get stuck with one-size-fits-all products
Pay crazy fees for simple financial transactions
Well, AI is killing all of that. And it’s about time!
The Old Way is Dying (Good Riddance!)
For basically forever, business worked like a pyramid:
Big shots at the top making all the decisions
Middle managers pushing paper
Customers at the bottom dealing with whatever they got
That’s flipping upside down now. AI is putting customers where they should be – at the top.
Everything else is just support.
Here’s What’s Coming (Actually, It’s Already Here)
Super-Personal Everything
AI knows what you want before you do
Products that adapt to YOU
No more “sorry, that’s just our policy” nonsense
Money Getting Smarter
Real-time everything – prices, exchange rates, interest
No more waiting 3 days for a simple bank transfer
Local prices that make sense for YOUR area
Cutting Out the Middlemen
Direct person-to-person deals
Way lower costs
Faster everything
The Tricky Parts
Look, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. We’ve got some stuff to figure out:
What happens to jobs that AI can do better
Making sure AI plays fair
Updating laws that were written for the horse-and-buggy era
Dealing with money that’s backed by… well, nothing really
Why Should You Care?
Because this train is leaving the station, and you want to be on it, not under it. Companies that get this are crushing it. The ones still doing things the old way? Well, let’s just say Blockbuster probably wished they’d seen Netflix coming.
What’s Next?
We’re going to dive into how all this actually works – no boring technical stuff, just real talk about how AI is changing the game for:
How you buy and sell
How money moves around
How businesses run
How we all make a living
Ready to see where this is going? Stick around – it’s going to be a wild ride!
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Why Not Get Rid of Grades?
Why Not Get Rid of Grades?
“Why Not Get Rid of Grades?” was written by author Daniel Pink. As education moves into an uncertain future, now is the time to reassess our methods and change what no longer serves us.
If you’re looking for continued signs of inflation, bypass your local supermarket and head to Harvard Yard. Twenty years ago, the mean grade-point average for Harvard University undergraduates was 3.41. Today, Harvard’s average GPA has ballooned to 3.8. At America’s oldest university, 79 percent of the grades are now A’s and A-minuses ― a 32 percent increase from 10 years earlier.
Down the road in New Haven, Connecticut, grade inflation is equally rampant. In the 2022-2023 academic year, nearly 60 percent of the grades Yale University professors awarded undergraduates were an outright A, not even an A-minus. Only 20 percent of grades in the entire college were a B+ or below.
And so, it goes on campuses across America: Last century’s Gentleman’s C has become this century’s Everykid’s A.
When nations face hyperinflation, they sometimes resort to what’s called “redenomination.” They change the face value of the currency, often by lopping off zeroes, or even assign the currency a new name.
Why not consider something similar in higher ed and replace letter grades in college?
From Mount Holyoke to Mount Rushmore
Grades are so pervasive at all ages and stages of American education that we assume they are a natural component of learning. In fact, they are a recent invention. For most of human civilization, people learned perfectly well without letter grades. It was only when education became more democratized (a good thing) that it became simultaneously more systematized (sometimes a less good thing).
Grades and rankings emerged gradually through the 18th and 19th centuries, with Mount Holyoke College introducing the first modern letter grades in 1897. Other institutions — including Harvard and Yale, which had experimented with their own grading schemes — followed suit. And by the 1940s, the A-to-F scale became the standard: five letters carved into our schooling edifice the way four presidents are chiseled onto Mount Rushmore.
From their inception, grades were designed more for the efficiency of institutions than for the education of individuals. As student populations increased, grades were simple to calculate, easy to administer and convenient to communicate across an expanding education infrastructure. As Jeffrey Schinske and Kimberly Tanner write in their 2017 history of higher education grading, grades have always reflected “the constraints of institutional systems rather than the needs of learners.”
The notion that letter grades enhance learning was something that teachers, administrators and parents merely presumed. If every classroom from elementary schools to public universities was assigning grades, they must be a meaningful measure of learning. Besides, rewarding students with an A for doing schoolwork, while threatening them with an F for not doing it, seems like a smart way to motivate youngsters to master algebra or English.
But using grades as both a measure and a motivator was an inherently flawed pursuit. For starters, grades are far less consistent and reliable than their simplicity implies. A blood pressure reading will be the same in Austin as in Durham, North Carolina. But a Python coding assignment or an essay on the causes of the Spanish Civil War might receive different grades at the University of Texas than at Duke University. Ample evidence shows that grading can vary considerably from professor to professor even within a university; that some instructors aren’t even consistent with themselves, assigning different marks for identical work ; and that extraneous factors like penmanship and a student’s attractiveness can affect grades.
Le problème, c’est moi
More important, the letter system ran smack into Goodhart’s Law, an adage named for British economist Charles Goodhart, which holds that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases being a good measure. Grades began as a tool for assessing learning but quickly became the point of the exercise. For many students, the goal of school isn’t to learn. It’s to get an A.
Decades of research, at all levels of education, has demonstrated that grades can promote short-term performance rather than long-term understanding, encourage both superficial studying and outright cheating, and can undermine a student’s intrinsic interest in the material.
Stanford University’s Carol Dweck and other researchers have shown that “performance goals” (earning a high grade) and “learning goals” (mastering material) run on separate tracks. Meeting a performance goal doesn’t necessarily signal that someone has achieved a learning goal.
And if piles of peer-reviewed studies don’t convince you, there’s someone you should meet: Moi. I took French for six years in both high school and college. I received straight A’ss in every class, every semester.
I can’t speak French.
The reason: I was laser-locked on performance goals (getting an A on Friday’s quiz) rather than on learning goals (speaking French). I could cough up the third person singular subjunctive of irregular verbs on command. But if I ever found myself in Toulouse with a flat tire, I’d remain stuck on the side of the rue.
Goodhart’s Law also helps explain the relentless rise in A’s. Grade inflation first appeared in the 1960s, when professors awarded high grades to keep students in school and out of the Vietnam War. Today, the measure has become the target for other reasons. For example, a large portion of undergraduate courses are now taught by part-time temporary lecturers. Those instructors often dole out high grades because their continued employment depends in part on students’ course evaluations, and students give high ratings to lenient graders. Meantime, as tuition has soared, and colleges compete ferociously for parent dollars and student enrollment, high grades have become like swank dorms, gleaming gyms and gourmet dining halls: another amenity to keep customers happy.
Replacing rigor mortis with rigor
The flaws with grades are not some recent revelation. Thinkers like Alfie Kohn have been critiquing the A-F industrial complex for decades. And in elementary and secondary education, Montessori schools, Big Picture schools, , schools in the Mastery Transcript , and others have abandoned traditional grades.
But higher education offers promising territory for reform. For well over half of America’s young people, college operates as the gateway to adulthood. Yet large studies have consistently found that the correlation between college grades and job performance is minuscule. In the world that college students are about to enter, a 19th-century lettering scheme is about as useful in promoting excellence as a quill pen.
So, what’s the alternative?
At Hampshire College and Evergreen State College, professors provide narrative evaluations of student work rather than letter grades. Sarah Lawrence College assigns grades but places greater emphasis on written descriptions of how well students have mastered six critical abilities. Reed College records grades but doesn’t distribute them directly to students (provided they maintain a strong performance), instead promoting intellectual growth through detailed instructor evaluations and conferences. At Brown University, students can elect to take courses for satisfactory/no credit instead of a grade and can request written “course performance reports” on their work.
These reforms undo the current regime’s two main defects. They are measures, not targets. And they prioritize the growth of individuals over the convenience of institutions. They demand vastly more time and money than multiple choice tests and letter-studded transcripts because they regard students as complex individuals, not interchangeable parts. They treat college students the way we treat artists, athletes and scientists: by setting high expectations, demanding rigor, and offering detailed individualized feedback and opportunities to improve.
Some might say that these grade-eliminating methods are appropriate only for certain kinds of colleges: those that, shall we say, have a high granola-to-student ratio.
Nonsense.
Many innovations that began on what seemed like the hippie fringe have gone mainstream. Think yoga, vegetarianism and solar power. Other critics might deride these methods as “soft.” Nonsense again. What’s soft is letting some students fall through the cracks and giving others empty accolades for meager accomplishments.
In education, perhaps more than any realm of American life, the status quo is difficult to dislodge. But this is a starting point because once we pull on the thread of grades, the fabric of college education starts unraveling. Why does college last four years for just about every student in every major at every university? Why do courses run in rigid 15-week segments rather than allowing students to move at their own pace? Why do we segregate learning into discrete subjects when real-world problems span disciplines?
If we’re serious about preparing young people for the complexities of the 21st century, a radical shake-up of higher ed is in order. And what better place to begin than with A, B, C?
Pros and Cons of the Letter Grading System
Pros and Cons of the Letter Grading System
This piece was originally published in The Week US on March 30, 2023. Theara Coleman writes about the Pros and Cons of the Letter Grading System in higher education, and the move away from traditional letter grades by some colleges.
How does the traditional school of thought stack up against ‘un-grading,’ an unorthodox assessment method gaining traction among the nation’s educators?
By Theara Coleman, The Week US
Published March 30, 2023
In an attempt at easing the high school-to-college transition, some U.S. universities have begun implementing unorthodox student assessment methods, reigniting a debate over whether the traditional letter grading system still works. The new trend, called “un-grading,” is a part of “a growing movement to stop assigning conventional A through F letter grades to first-year college students and, sometimes, upperclassmen,” NPR reports. Though it existed before the pandemic, un-grading has “taken on new urgency” as of late, “as educators around the country think twice about assigning those judgmental letters A-F to students whose schooling has been disrupted for two years,” The Washington Post wrote last year. Teachers and faculty at Texas Christian University, the University of New Hampshire, and Florida Gulf Coast University, for example, are among the growing group experimenting with some form of un-grading, which might involve allowing students to pick between written and verbal exams and letting them choose how their homework impacts their final score.
To help make better sense of the debate, we’ve outlined a few of the pros and cons of traditional letter grading below:
Pro: Letter grades hold students accountable
Advocates for the conventional grading system say it helps students easily identify “their improvements, mistakes, and areas they can work on,” per Harlem World Magazine. Indeed, a precise scale for performance feedback allows students to discover their strengths and weaknesses and “build self-analytical skills.”
“Things like grades and clear assignments can be enormously useful handrails to help you make your way,” Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, told NPR. Assuming that students are “too fragile” to receive feedback from the teachers “strikes me as missing a pretty significant element of the purpose of higher education,” he added.
Con: Letter grades de-emphasize learning
Critics of the letter grading system say that “students have become so preoccupied with grades, they aren’t actually learning,” NPR summarizes. “Grades are not a representation of student learning, as hard as it is for us to break the mindset that if the student got an A, it means they learned,” said Jody Greene, special adviser to the provost for educational equity and academic success at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In fact, Greene added, letter grades “are terrible motivators for doing sustained and deep learning.”
The use of “letter grades as a currency” has “negatively distorted student motivation for generations,” Jack Schneider, professor of education at the University of Massachusetts, wrote for The New York Times “Regardless of their inclination to learn, many students strive first and foremost to get good grades.”
Pro: Letter grades are universally understood
“Grading systems are universal in nature,” Harlem World explained, and using a system that is understood across institutions makes it easier for students to “analyze and figure out where they stand in the world on the basis of their grades.”
Indeed, that the letter grading system is easy to understand is “one clear advantage over other models,” Evan Thompson wrote in a blog for ‘The Best Schools, an education resource website. “Everyone knows what grades mean,” making it “easy for students to understand where they stand in a class or on a particular subject.”
Con: Letter grades perpetuate an unfair system
Champions of un-grading say it addresses “the unfairness of a system in which some students are better ready for college than others,” NPR summarizes. For instance, UCSC’s Greene told NPR, lower-income students are most likely to feel anxiety about grades. “Let’s say they get a slightly failing grade on the first quiz. They are not likely to go and seek help. They’re likely to try and disappear,” Greene said.
Letter grades have been used to “justify and to provide unequal educational opportunities based on a student’s race or class,” Alison Yoshimoto-Towery, chief academic officer of the Los Angeles Unified School District, and Pedro A. Garcia, senior executive director of the division of instruction, said om a 2021 letter to principals. In continuing to use the old system, educators “inadvertently perpetuate achievement and opportunity gaps, rewarding our most privileged students and punishing those who are not.”
Pro: Letter grades encourage competition
Letter grades incentivize students to perform well by encouraging them to compete with each other, wrote educator Patricia Willis in a blog for Study.com, an online learning platform. Competitive students “are willing to work hard because they want to be first among their peers.” A pass/fail system, on the other hand, leaves “little incentive for students to work hard.” This can be especially true if students “feel that extra effort makes no difference in the end.”
Con: Letter grades fail to provide room for improvement
“The A-F letter-grading scale offers little room for improvement once the assignment, assessment, or course has concluded,” said Jon Alfuth, senior director of state policy at the education nonprofit KnowledgeWorks, in a letter to the editor at Education Week.
“Just because I did not answer a test question correctly today doesn’t mean I don’t have the capacity to learn it tomorrow and retake a test,” Yoshimoto-Towery told the Los Angeles Times. “Equitable grading practices align with the understanding that as people we learn at different rates and in different ways and we need multiple opportunities to do so.”
Personal Integrity: The Only Thing You Truly Own
Personal Integrity: The Only Thing You Truly Own
Guest writer Jim Dettore gets into the fundamentals of character with his blog post this week. Personal integrity really is the only thing you truly own, and it builds your reputation.
There’s an old saying that a man’s word is his bond. I believe that with everything in me. If I say I’m going to do something, I do it. At least, I try. And when I fail, which happens more often than I’d like to admit, I do my best to make it right. I’ll apologize, own up to it, and ask how I can fix it. That’s what integrity looks like to me.
But here’s the thing: integrity isn’t about perfection. Only one man ever walked this earth in perfect integrity, and He was nailed to a cross for it. The rest of us? We stumble, we fall, we make mistakes. But what separates people of integrity from everyone else is what happens after we fall. Do we get back up, dust ourselves off, and try again? Or do we shrug, make excuses, and let our failures define us?
For me, faith has played a huge role in my understanding of integrity. My belief in God has helped me stay on track when I could have easily veered off the rails. When I let someone down, I don’t just feel bad about it, I feel convicted. And that conviction doesn’t just weigh on me; it pushes me to do better. To be better. Not because I expect to reach perfection, but because striving for it is the right thing to do.
Teaching Integrity to the Next Generation
I try to teach my kids the same thing. I tell them that at the end of the day, their word is all they have. Make it golden. If they say they’re going to do something, I expect them to follow through. And when they don’t, I expect them to make it right. Not because I’m some drill sergeant of morality, but because life is hard enough without people who say one thing and do another. The world has enough of those. What it needs is people who stand by their word, even when it’s inconvenient. Even when it costs them something.
And I tell them this, not because I had a perfect example growing up, but because I didn’t. I grew up without a mom around to teach me these things. My dad worked hard, but he worked different shifts, and that meant he wasn’t always there to pass on the lessons that come from just being around. So, I learned the hard way. What I call “training by trauma.” Some people call it the school of hard knocks, but whatever you call it, it’s a brutal teacher. You learn by failing. You learn by getting burned. You learn by trusting the wrong people, making bad decisions, and realizing, too late, that you should have listened to that little voice in the back of your head.
But I also learned by watching. I learned from friends who had strong character. From mentors who didn’t just talk about integrity, but lived it. People who made me realize that integrity isn’t about what you say, it’s about what you do. And when what you do doesn’t match what you say, people notice. And trust? Well, trust disappears faster than a paycheck on Friday night when integrity goes out the window.
Trust: The Foundation of All Relationships
Trust is the foundation of every relationship we have. Marriages, friendships, business dealings, you name it. When trust is there, things run smooth. When it’s broken, everything falls apart. And you can’t fake trustworthiness. People see right through it. You don’t get to call yourself a man of integrity. Other people decide that. They watch you. They see how you handle tough situations. They notice if your word holds weight or if you throw it around like it doesn’t mean a thing.
And once you lose trust, good luck getting it back. It’s possible, but it’s an uphill battle. Like rebuilding a burned-down house with nothing but a pocketknife and some chewing gum. You have to be consistent. You have to show over and over again that you mean what you say. And you have to be patient because trust takes time. You can destroy it in seconds, but it takes years to rebuild.
The Hard Lessons of Integrity
I’ve had my fair share of hard lessons. Times when I let people down. Times when I thought I was doing the right thing, only to realize later that I’d missed the mark. But every failure has taught me something. Sometimes, the lesson was about humility and realizing that I wasn’t as reliable as I thought. Sometimes, it was about perseverance and learning that just because I failed once doesn’t mean I can’t try again. And sometimes, it was just about owning my mistakes, standing up, and saying, “I messed up. That’s on me. How do I fix it?”
That’s not easy to do. Nobody likes admitting they’re wrong. But I’ve found that people respect honesty more than perfection. They’d rather deal with someone who messes up and owns it than someone who pretends they never make mistakes. And the truth is, the people who act like they’ve got it all together? They’re usually the ones you need to watch out for.
The Bottom Line
At the end of the day, integrity isn’t about never failing. It’s about how you handle failure. It’s about whether you keep your promises, whether you stand by your word, and whether people can trust you to do what you say you’ll do. It’s about trying your best, even when it’s hard. And when you fall short, it’s about getting back up and trying again, maybe with a different approach, maybe with a little more wisdom than before.
Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that life is full of second chances. And third chances. And fourth chances. As long as you’re willing to do the work, as long as you’re willing to own your mistakes and make things right, there’s always a way forward.
That’s integrity. And that’s what I try to live by.
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The Schools Reviving Shop Class Offer a Hedge Against the AI Future
The Schools Reviving Shop Class Offer a Hedge Against the AI Future
A Paper by Te-Ping Chen
This article was originally published in the Wall Street Journal on March 1, 2025.
In America’s most surprising cutting-edge classes, students pursue hand-on work with wood, metals, and machinery, getting a jump on lucrative old-school careers.
School districts around the U.S. are spending tens of millions of dollars to expand and revamp high-school shop classes for the 21st century. They are betting on the future of manual skills overlooked in the digital age, offering vocational-education classes that school officials say give students a broader view of career prospects with or without college.
With higher-education costs soaring and white-collar workers under threat by generative AI, the timing couldn’t be better.
In a suburb of Madison, Wis., Middleton High School completed a $90 million campus overhaul in 2022 that included new technical-education facilities. The school’s shop classes, for years tucked away in a back corridor, are now on display. Fishbowl-style glass walls show off the new manufacturing lab, equipped with computer-controlled machine tools and robotic arms.
Interest in the classes is high. About a quarter of the school’s 2,300 students signed up for at least one of the courses in construction, manufacturing, and woodworking at Middleton High, one of Wisconsin’s highest-rated campuses for academics.
“We want kids going to college to feel these courses fit on their transcripts along with AP and honors,” said Quincy Millerjohn, a former English teacher who is a welding instructor at the school. He shows his students local union pay scales for ironworkers, steamfitters and boilermakers, careers that can pay anywhere from $41 to $52 an hour.
“Kids can see these aren’t knuckle-dragging jobs,” Millerjohn said.
Welding teacher Quincy Millerjohn in one of the campus shops at Middleton High School in Middleton, Wis.
In Wisconsin, 32,000 high-school students took classes in architecture and construction during the 2022-2023 school year, a 10% increase over the prior year, state data show: 36,000 enrolled in manufacturing courses, a 13% increase over the same period.
“There’s a paradigm shift happening,” said Jake Mihm, an education consultant in the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. “They’re high-skill, high-wage jobs that are attractive to people because they’re hands-on, and heads-on.”
Renewed interest among local governments, school districts, businesses and voters has triggered the investment in shop classes, which for decades have lost enrollment, pushed aside by demand for college-prep courses. Ohio and other states offer schools financial incentives for classes that lead to industry certifications in such high-demand jobs as pharmaceutical technician and pipe fitter.
At Middleton High, wood shop teacher Justin Zander added classes to accommodate the 175 students who enroll each semester, up 75 from four years ago. He said he still had to turn away students.
Zander, who has taught shop classes for three decades, said students and parents better understand that blue-collar work can pay well. “People are more accepting now,” he said.
‘Good choice’
American high schools began jettisoning shop class following the 1983 publication of “A Nation at Risk,” a federal report that urged high schools to raise academic standards.
The 2002 No Child Left Behind Act emphasized standardized test results to measure student achievement. Many schools, under pressure to show academic improvement, spent less on art and music classes, as well as cut back on auto repair and other shop courses.
For decades, shop programs were dogged by allegations that schools shunted students from low-income families into blue-collar careers, while well-off students headed to college.
If there is a stigma to taking shop classes, Andres Mendoza Alcala, a Middleton High senior, isn’t seeing it. “I haven’t met a single person that looks down on someone else, just because they’re doing the trades instead of college,” the 18-year-old aspiring carpenter said. “They just say it’s a good choice. These are secure jobs.”
As white-collar hiring slows, more younger workers are finding blue-collar careers. The share of workers ages 20 to 24 in blue-collar jobs was 18% last May, two points higher than it was at the start of 2019, according to an analysis by payroll provider ADP. Enrollment in vocation-focused, two-year community colleges jumped 14% in fall 2024 compared with a year earlier. Enrollment at public four-year colleges rose 3% during that period.
Students participating in wood shop and home maintenance classes at Middleton High School.
Brandon Ross at PBK, an architecture firm based in Houston, sees the boom firsthand. School construction projects tied to vocational education account for around 10% of the firm’s work, he said, a figure that has doubled in the past five years.
PBK is designing a $140 million career and technical-education center for students in the Spring Branch Independent School District, which serves the Houston area. There will be an auto-repair shop, which hasn’t been available at district schools for years, as well as courses in fields as varied as healthcare, digital animation, filmmaking, culinary arts, cosmetology, and computer networking.
“Not everybody wants to go to college, and some people don’t want to go to college right away,” said Jennifer Blaine, the district superintendent. Enrollment in vocational classes is up 9% over the past four years, she said. The project, supported by a voter-approved bond issue, will accommodate 2,200 students each semester when completed.
About 150 students at Sutherlin High School in Sutherlin, Ore., take Josh Gary’s woodworking class, a number equal to nearly half the student body. When Gary took over the shop class in 2014, he had 30 students and little equipment. He bought used tools on Craigslist with his own money and raised funds selling picnic tables he made with students.
The wood shop now features laser cutters and computer-assisted routers that enable high-level detail work. Last year, Sutherlin High opened a $750,000 metal shop. A $375,000 state grant paid for new tools, and $50,000 from Harbor Freight Tools for Schools, a program launched by the tool-retailer’s founder, bought a pickup truck for use by the classes.
Gary likes to joke that he is a shop teacher who never took shop. When he was in high school during the late 1990s, he said, his father wouldn’t let him enroll. He went to college and law school but decided to teach.
“The trades are just more valued these days,” said Gary, noting that class valedictorians have taken his classes. “Electricians and plumbers make great money, and some of our higher-end students see that.”
Teacher Justin Zander’s wood shop at Middletown High School.
A welding student working at Middleton High School.
Test drive
Roughly half of college graduates end up in jobs where degrees aren’t needed, according to a 2024 analysis of more than 10 million résumés by labor analytics firm Burning Glass Institute and the nonprofit Strada Education Foundation.
Yet many high schools aren’t equipped to help students who want to skip college. One hurdle is cost. Vocational education is generally more expensive than math or English classes. Shop teachers at Middleton High spend around $20,000 a year on wood, steel, aluminum, and other materials. Updating equipment for manufacturing, woodworking and metalworking cost the district $600,000.
Recruiting shop teachers is tough, given the generous wages paid for skilled trade work.
For 22 years, Staci Sievert taught social studies at Seymour Community High School in Seymour, Wis. After the school went through three shop teachers in four years, Sievert told the principal she would learn to weld, work with wood, and teach the classes herself. She became a shop teacher in 2017.
“I just felt like we were shortchanging our kids, our community and our families if we weren’t raising the bar in tech ed,” Sievert said. In her region of northeast Wisconsin, more than a fifth of the jobs are in manufacturing. “This is who we are,” she said.
For some students, shop classes are a steppingstone, not a replacement for higher education.
Shop teacher Staci Sievert at Seymour Community High School.
While Breana Brackett was an honors student at Highland High School in Bakersfield, Calif., she took a construction class at the district’s Regional Occupational Center. She is now at California State University, Chico, working toward a degree in construction management.
The course she took in high school, Brackett said, “helped me be sure this is what I wanted to do before I spent money to go to college.”
Kern High School District, which encompasses Bakersfield, spent $100 million from a voter-approved bond measure and state grants to build a new vocational center in 2020 and expand its Regional Occupational Center. The two campuses are open to high-school juniors and seniors to take classes, some for-college credit. Roughly, 70% of the students who take courses there continue their education after high school, mostly at community college or trade schools, said Natasha Hughes, who recruits students for the district programs.
A teenager can make $20 an hour as a welder’s helper after graduating from high school with technical-education classes, Hughes said. Another year of welding instruction at a community college can boost pay to $60,000 a year for pipeline jobs in Bakersfield-area oil fields.
Even with the expansion of the district’s vocational classes, student demand outpaces available seats. Last school year, 6,200 students applied for 2,500 spots at the two vocational campuses. The waitlist for auto shop is 300 students, said Fernando Castro, one of the instructors.
Castro took a $50,000 pay cut when he left his job as an automotive technician in 2015. He said he was inspired by his mother, also a teacher. The district has since adjusted its salary formula to reflect industry experience. Castro now makes $100,000 a year, matching his former income.
“It’s the best job I’ve ever had,” he said, helping launch young adults into well-paying careers and having his summers free.
Tom Moser, service manager at Jim Burke Ford Lincoln, said the Bakersfield car dealership employs around two dozen graduates from the school district’s Regional Occupational Center, including two people he hired out of high school last year.
Experienced employees have been hard to find. “You’ll post a job and not get a qualified applicant in months,” Moser said. The dealership decided it was better to train workers who graduated from high-school shop classes. Workers who start at $19 an hour can work their way up to six-figure incomes in four years, he said.
“You can pretty much write your own ticket once you’ve acquired the skills,” Moser said.
Some students taking the district’s vocational courses learn they aren’t cut out for hands-on work. A number of students who sign up for Chad Wright’s early morning construction courses quit every year, he said. Some aren’t happy about having to rise as early as 5:30 a.m. to catch the bus for class. Others are surprised by how much endurance the course requires.
“Once they get in here and realize it’s three hours of actual standing up doing some work,” Wright said, “some of them get a little glassy-eyed and wonder what they signed up for.”
Yet, it is best to learn early about the rigors of the construction trades, he said, especially when early mornings are the best time to work during the hot summers in this part of California.
“I’m not trying to run anybody off,” Wright said. “But at the same time, I want them to understand what the real world has waiting.”