Looking for a hybrid

Looking for a hybrid

"The youth apprenticeship system is a win-win solution for business, education and our youth. It opens the door to kids who are not college bound and provides students with information and relevant experience that ties education to the workplace, to the community and to the future. But the rigid two-tier system in the German model is a drawback because it requires students to make an important career decision when they may not be ready. We want more flexibility in the American system."

-- Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson

"They [northern European nations] are way ahead of us in education and training the labor force. They do a super job training non-college graduates. That's an area we can learn from."

-- Raymond Scheppach, executive director, National Governors' Association.

"It's unrealistic to say, 'What the U.S. needs is to become Germany tomorrow.' We have to come up with some hybrid model that may not look like Germany but may have many of its components. If you want to have people earning higher wages, you need to equip people with skills that will garner them high wages. The apprenticeship system is one of the strategies to address the issue of displacement and poverty."

-- Lisa Lynch, chief economist, U.S. Department of Labor

"The U.S. is tremendously rich in 'second-chance' programs [colleges, technical schools] for people in their 20s and 30s. But can we compete if our trading partners are getting their people out the door at age 24 or 25? Can we lose a decade? The other issue is quality. European refugee kids, from Eastern and Western Europe, are doing math and physics at age 16 that our high school seniors are learning. And these are 'troubled kids.' "

-- Jeffrey King, German Marshall Fund

"We do a good job teaching knowledge, but students often don't retain it. They don't see how that knowledge can be transferred to real-life situations. With programs such as the apprentice program, students leave school with more skills, which will allow them to earn more money and have good social situations."

-- Woody Cox, Office of Life-Work Development, Minnesota Department of Children, Families and Learning, which oversees small apprenticeship programs in about 15 Minnesota school districts.

"Most of my students were not planning to take any more math or science. But in this curriculum, they take two more years of each. Most of my students weren't taking any formal computer technology courses beyond 10th grade. All my students are taking computer technology in every class, every day, every hour. All our students' grade-point averages went up 1 point, from a C to a B. The reason: The students now see a reason to learn."

-- Brian Ingvalson, assistant principal and apprentice coordinator, Fridley High School.