Hamilton County needs a vocational school.
And county school officials need to back away from requiring a college-track high school curriculum for all of its students.
Are we advocating a dumbing down of schools? Absolutely not: Anything but that.
All students do not want or need to go to college. Some students simply can’t perform the full college track, but they can learn valuable skills, skills that will allow them to be welders, plumbers and carpenters. Those with higher academic skills can be the programmers or technical repair persons for the touchscreens and high-tech inputs that run the machinery of modern factories.
Right now, without a vocational track and a vocational-technical high school for these youngsters, we are dooming hundreds of Chattanooga’s young people who will not or cannot graduate high school with the skills they need to get a middle-class job.