Unfortunately I think a lot of kids would shy away from doing this today as it can hurt your GPA -- because of weighting, an A in an AP class is worth more then an A in a shop class.

So if a school is mostly focused on college-bound students, it's kind of natural that these programs have fallen away.

I'm old enough that I did basic shop stuff in middle school -- soldering, bandsaw, even a table saw. No way that would fly today.