Independant study or vocational high school?

My daughter who struggles with ADD is having a very difficult time at Oakland School of the Arts and would have hard time in any regular high school. She would be much happier in Vocational training with a vet's office combined with individual tutoring. Hope to hear from anyone who has had experience with creating own independent home study combined with vocational training/mentoring? Any district and especially BUSD. Thanks! welcome any advice

Each student has to do a project that is related to their internship. There are academic classes as well, but much smaller than at a conventional high school -- for example, geometry was a ''big'' class with 24 students -- the whole school only has about 150 students. Much of the students' time is spent in an advisory group in which they study humanities and also work on their internship projects. Their advisor is their teacher, counselor, internship liaison, and at times, nanny and enforcer. The staff is amazing, so dedicated and resourceful, and they really walk the walk about getting students to follow through and be responsible. Our daughter has ADHD and she still struggles, but it is like night and day to last year when she was in a downward spiral at a conventional high school and we couldn't get anyone to pay attention. And even when they did, no one seemed to know what to do about it. MetWest Mom

Oakland Public High Schools - for a regular student?

The response to the recent request for information about Skyline High School stated: ''... your child can get a good education at either [Skyline or Oakland Tech], the problem is at both schools if your child does not get into the honors program, then neither school is a good bet. I can state that unequivocally.'' Is this true? Only honors students do well at Oakland Tech? Where are ordinary, middle-achieving (Cs, low Bs) public high school students supposed to get an education? I know there are some charter options (and I know about Envision Academy), but I thought either Tech or Skyline would be options for my not-very-focused-on-academics child, who is now in 8th grade.
Worried Oakland Mom (REALLY worried now)

You're right, not everyone is an honor student, but no one deserves to be herded into a school of 2000 to 3000 people. Would you go and work for a company where you had to change desks every hour and move at the same time as 2000 other people. Of course you wouldn't. Then why do we make our children do this? OK you can have the soapbox back. Jenny

The curriculum includes lots of career oriented experiences, including shadowing someone who works in health care and doing an internship as a senior with someone in health care. They learn first aid and CPR in 10th grade as well.

The teacher of the 10th grade biology and bio-lab class has been there a long time, and she told me that they keep an eye on the kids in Health Academy and if their GPA slips below 2.0, they meet with the student and strategize how to improve their grades.

You might want to check into this. There are academies at Skyline that I am sure work in similar ways. They don't seem to be as well known as Engineering or Performing arts, but I think they sound like a great way for average students to get some personal attention and possibly develop some clear goals for their future education and career.

Good luck. mom of an regular hs student