I took Home Ec sewing for 3 years in High School back in the early 70's. As each state starts adding more and more "required" courses to graduate, students stop taking electives. Here in Texas students are required to take 4 years of Math, Science, Social Studies and English. They also need 1 fine art, 2 years of the same foreign language, a semester of speech and 1.5 PE credits. That takes up 21 of the 28 credits a student would earn in 4 years. If a student wants to take 4 years of band, orchestra or choir, that uses up a huge chunk of their available electives. Home Ec here became a class for Special Ed and ESL students. Eventually we didn't even have enough students in those populations wanting Home Ec. Our state also requires all High School teachers to be fully qualified. They have to have a certain number of college credits in the subject area on top of passing a certification exam. With only one or two college students graduating in Texas that are qualified to teach Home Ec, there's no guarantee a school can confidently offer a class if they can't hire a qualified teacher. We have 9 High Schools in my city with over 16,000 students in grades 9-12. We would need 9 qualified Home Ec teachers to offer the subject. If we got both qualified teachers in the entire state, we would still be short 7 for the other schools.