America use to have technical and vocational secondary schools, I went to one of the last ones in a top 3 major city, right before the last remnants of that leg

America use to have technical and vocational secondary schools, I went to one of the last ones in a top 3 major city, right before the last remnants of that legacy were phased out. In the 1960s, my high school had automobile shop, architectural drafting, wood shop that produced professional level artifacts at the senior level; in the 1940s, it had put together a plane. Today, it is yet another "college prep" competing for funds via standardized testing results, segregating students who are capable at purely academic demands and exercises from the vast majority of everyone else. This shift was likely initiated both by the beginnings of austerity in the US and by a trends towards a cultural prejudice toward being able to work right out of high school (likely incubated that austerity), an outcome in no way exclusive to blue-collar work, but carried that connotation anyway and so became frowned upon (I distinctly remember this being a problem in the 90s, even though my grandfather worked his entire life at a General Electric factory, had bought a home for his family of 6, etc)