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Writer's pictureJoanne Jacobs

Blue-collar voters want schools to listen to parents, offer career paths


Democrats need a "radically pragmatic" education and jobs agenda to earn working-class votes, writes Bruno V. Manno on The Liberal Patriot. A Progressive Policy Institute advisor, he served as U.S. assistant secretary of Education for policy.


Non-college-educated voters split on whether Republicans or Democrats "put the interests of working-class people first," a PPI survey shows. Most say the government favors the wealthy and college-educated.


Six in 10 working-class Americans voters believe public schools most serve “political activists” and “teachers’ unions” compared to four in ten who say “students” and “parents,”  Manno writes.


Nearly three-quarters of working-class voters would prefer “more public investment in apprenticeships and career pathways to help non-college workers acquire better skills” rather than other options centered on stronger labor unions or forgiving student loans.

Biden's attempts to forgive college loans are a bust with these voters. A majority said that forgiving student debt is unfair “to the majority of Americans who don’t get college degrees and will increase costs for students and taxpayers alike over the long term.”


Three-quarters of the electorate -- and two-thirds of those who turn out to vote -- do not have college degrees, Manno notes.


He thinks "opportunity pluralism" should replace the K-12 to college to jobs path. Young people could choose a variety of career and academic pathways to build skills, knowledge and social networks.


Many programs include workplace visits, internships, apprenticeships, dual enrollment, skills boot camps and job counseling, writes Manno. Some students take career courses, then go on to college for a degree. Others prefer to get into the workforce as quickly as possible.

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4 Kommentare


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Suman Sharma
02. Aug.

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superdestroyer
30. Juli

Everyone needs to remember that the easiest political response to school board members and politicians pushing for vocational education is a review of what the children of those school board members and politicians are doing. It is very rare to find the child of a community leader in vocational training.

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JK Brown
JK Brown
30. Juli

But if what is learned is economically useful, it's not real education. That is the refrain that professors and teachers asserted going back to the 1970s. Smart kids just didn't learn to do useful things in school, they were in college prep.


When I entered 9th grade i n 1976, that was the year they moved all the shop classes to a vo-tech school another 5 miles further out in the county. You had to go half a day and try as I might, you could not take the college prep level classes and go to the vo-tech. And the school did nothing to push back on the vo-tech kids being treated as poor students. My older brother had ta…


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m_t_anderson
30. Juli

Diversity is our strength! Except when it comes to career paths, then you absolutely MUST go to college, or become an abject failure.

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