US upper secondary students take a larger proportion of instruction in vocational education and training (VET) than in mathematics or science, even as they have also begun to take far more instruction in core academic subjects aimed at entry to tertiary education. Yet the record of vocational path students in entry to and completion of tertiary education is not good, leading to suspicion of that path despite strong demand by students and employers seeking stronger “applied” as well as academic skills. US vocational education is disabled by a history of stigmatizing it as a second rate, second class path. A cultural pattern of reform by adding ever more ad hoc programs to fix it has only fragmented its overall impact, adding to the stigma of undesirability. The fates of “Tech Prep,” “School to Work,” national “skills standards,” and “one stop” career centers illustrate the fragmentation and weakness of federal and national policies and programs focused on funding decentralized local initiatives. There are signs of hope in many high-quality efforts by NGOs, now acting as a kind of VET quality “insurgency” that awaits national and federal political leadership to build the strong, coherent vocational path qualification system that lies latent, but so far not yet developed, in the United States. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012.
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