The system is definitely broken. The vocational classes in our local school are blow-off classes, mainly because the teachers aren't engaged or aren't qualified to teach the class but were emergency certified because there was no one else. We only recently discovered this because of an exchange student staying with my sister telling us about what all goes on.

We've always talked about our kid having some kind of skill and he's just not going to be encouraged to do that in the public school system. We're jumping on the home school train soon. There are so many opportunities with the freedom of learning all the things instead of what's on the yearly test.