[Paul T.]

i go to Technical high school and still you see the standardized tests taking president over the education in the technical areas. i had a talk with a student in pluming about our standardized test, the MCAS, i took this test as he did and we both took the SAT's recently and the SAT's did not reflect what we experienced in the MCAS nor did either test judge our skills in the professions we would take part in the rest of our lives. he made a few valid points about how our school should be judged on how many students can pass the certifications in there given technical areas. so we logically thought the technical or vocational high schools should not judged on test scores but send there best students to a contest that measures skills.there is an organization that lets you compete in the technical areas at a district, state, national and world level. this organization is Skills USA and i think if technical high schools were judged on this it would be a more accurate gauge of progress in schools. this year i partook in the contest and at districts i was amazed from the test scores. at states the competition was hard and i was blown away with some of the skills my fellow students possessed. unfortunetly my team was the only one to win gold at states (in mechatronics) but using the data my school under preformed in every category but my own. this means we should really beef up the shop education right? wrong we scored good on MCAS and that seems to be where the focus is still currently at. with the states mind set my program should receive more money, we do need the funding but using the data about skills usa the rest of the school needs it more. flawed system?