Rattling Around

The real question is "What should we do to improve High School?" As you might imagine from my comments on college, I don't believe all secondary school students should be in a college prep track. And in the US, it is obvious that many of the students feel the same way (though there are many reasons for high school violence, drug use, and dropouts; you can't totally blame the conditions in high schools on curricula). But there have been countless designs of multi-track (or separate) schools; nearly every country from the UK to Russia has tried a different approach to secondary schools. Gymnasium, Lyceum, Teknikum, Vocational Tech, Gesamtschule, Realschule, Hauptschule... They have been related to social or economic class, to future jobs or university, to race, gender, religion, or language, to indoctrination or pre-military training. Some have been open to anyone, while others have a very restricted admittance; some are free and others very costly; some are prestigious and others saddle their students with an enduring stigma. And even with a single program, some schools are well-supported financially (and have excellent teachers, facilities, computers, extracurricular programs) while others struggle to provide even the most dismal education (efforts to even out these inequities, such as the Robin Hood taxing system in Texas, usually cut back on programs at rich school districts without markedly improving poor ones; as always, throwing money rarely solves problems).

If you are looking down here for my solution for high schools... sorry. I have some opinions, but no solutions.
(1) They should be safe, for both students and teachers; no weapons, no drugs, no gangs, no rapes, no beatings.
(2) Classes should be conducted in English; we simply can't provide education in every language that exists in this country... Urdu, Basque, Cantonese, Swahili, Pidgin, Arabic, Ukrainian, Finnish, Spanish, German, Czech, Japanese, Hawaiian, and Greek (among others).
(3) School taxes and bond issues must become affordable; e.g., I would pass new infrastructure costs on to the developers (more on this in some later post).
(4) It is more important for educators to know their subjects than to take education courses (oddly, the worst course I ever took in college was in the Education Department; what does that tell you?).
(5) Every student should be happy and proud about the track they follow, whether pre-university, pre-trade, pre-service, or simply preparing to be a good citizen.
(6) Every student, in every track, should be skilled at reading and with enough mathematical understanding to know what compound interest does; preferably before they enter high school, but certainly before they leave.
(7) I would like to see every student also acquire skills of cooperation; perhaps through school politics, clubs, sports, band, yearbook, or whatever cooperative venture most appeals. But not through gangs.
(8) I would hope that every student would have a creative outlet; writing, dance, dressmaking, art, poetry, drama, pimping their ride, jewelery construction, woodworking, freestyle boarding, scrapbooking...
(9) There should be a track that prepares kids for university; there should also be one that effectively apprentices kids to a trade (and allows them to earn some money at the same time). Neither should be thought of as superior to the other, and both should be available to everyone.
(10) I am not sure, but I think there should not be universal standardized testing (of either students or teachers), and that courses should not be designed as simply cram sessions for such tests. Also, teachers should be more autonomous in their design of lesson plans, selection of text books, and choice of course subjects (I know lots of people will rabidly object to that idea... the foam is dripping from their jaws even now).