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.

Colleges don't care about weighted GPAs, only unweighted. Of course, they'd prefer if you take more advanced courses but they'd rather see that you perform well in the courses that you do take rather than struggle in courses that are too hard for you.