or austin polytechnic school, and what they do is they have said these are the jobs of the future. kids, this is is a school with a 70% dropout rate, and if you come to school and focus on literacy and mathematics, and we can focus on the skills that we know that businesses need, you will have a job in the future, and new york city, we need some of that as well. and so, sometimes this is at a favor because people say, no, prepare the kids only for college, but what we saw in new york city, when you actually engage kids in these kinds of pursuits, then they can go to college, but they are prepared for school and come to school. there are ways of doing this, but it takes thought, and it takes a way of putting it together. the clinton administration used to do this with the scho school-to-work programs and in britain we have the school to work programs and we can do this right now. >> thank you, randi weingarten of the teacher federation of america. >>> and making a stronger america and making the grade, and this sunday, we will have a special airing from detroit at 12:00 p.m. eastern

among them, polytechnic here in pasadena. >> at poly, our kids work hard. we wanted to make sure that didn't come at a cost. >> reporter: they'll pick up an extra hour in the morning. they successful l shuffled around class timed to keep dismiss times the same. >> they won't have to be in an academic class until 8:50, most of them. >> reporter: administrators are hopeful and so it would seem are many sleepy students. >>> and now back to our developing story. hurricane irene continues to pound the east coast. there are reports that at least eight people are now dead. the storm is expected to hit new york city early tomorrow. let's bring in nbc bay area's jay gray along the outer banks in north carolina with the latest for us. hello, jay. >> reporter: good evening. and this storm made landfall in the outer banks early this morning. it is still as we pan across the dunes and the beach to the sea packing a punch here in the outer banks. as irene ripped across the outer banks, the massive storm delivered heavy rains and harsh winds. but not the massive flooding