The thing about the schools is terrible because instead of teaching children
how to think, helping them learn, providing sources of information, and
teaching skills, when corporations become involved, the schools are training
workers to fill the needs of corporations, not educating students. The average
public school no longer teaches civics or art or music. It teaches children to
pass standardized tests. It molds a compliant work force. The one advantage
that I had as a visually impaired child in the New York City public school
system, was that I could manipulate so that instead of spending time in the
regimented classroom with 30 other students from 9 to 3, I could spend a big
chunk of time in the sight conservation classroom where I was able to move
around freely and choose what I wanted to do. It was a precursor of what I read
about years later when there was a "free schools movement" which advocated
student directed learning in a free, relaxed environment. So back in the
1940's, I could choose any large print book in the huge book closet, and read
it, or I could draw pictures or create things for the bulletin board to keep it
up to date, or water the plants. Mostly, I read. In the regular classroom, you
had to sit in your seat in desks that were in fixed immoveable rows. No talking
was aloud. In seventh grade, I had a teacher who had us write spelling words,
five times each, for at least an hour a day.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2020 1:57 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] FW: How Corporations Are
Forcing Their Way Into America’s Public Schools
Not only do we need to be concerned about corporations dominating our public
education, but even more is their takeover of more and more of our public
services. It's a natural process from a People's government, to a Corporate
government.
The USA is well on its way.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/12/20, miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From: Jeff Bryant <info@ind.media>
Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2020 12:15 PM
To: miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: How Corporations Are Forcing Their Way Into America’s Public
Schools
Can't see this email?
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M_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/l-546932-2019-04-29-88km5v/d7flx8/55533
5943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
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Please join them.
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How Corporations Are Forcing Their Way Into America’s Public Schools
A story unfolding in Virginia reveals how corporations such as Amazon,
Cisco and Ford want to control schools right down to the curriculum.
By Jeff Bryant
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/-lng-en-pubid-donate-ind-media/d7flxd/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/-lng-en-pubid-donate-ind-media/d7flxg/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
In the expanding effort to privatize the nation’s public education
system, an ominous, less-understood strain of the movement is the
corporate influence in Career and Technical Education (CTE) that is
shaping the K-12 curriculum in local communities.
An apt case study of the growing corporate influence behind CTE is in
Virginia, where many parents, teachers and local officials are worried
that major corporations including Amazon
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/education-awseducate-/d7flxj/555335943?
h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
, Ford
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/2020-02-12/d7flxl/555335943?h=PwL9wpqM_
N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
and Cisco
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/2020-02-12/d7flxn/555335943?h=PwL9wpqM_
N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
—rather than educators and local, democratic governance—are deciding
what students learn in local schools.
CTE is a rebranding of what has been traditionally called vocational
education or voc-ed, the practice of teaching career and workplace
skills in an academic setting. While years ago, that may have included
courses in woodworking, auto mechanics, or cosmetology, the new,
improved version of CTE has greatly expanded
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/career-technical-education-cte/d7flxq/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
course offerings to many more “high-demand” careers, especially in
fields that require knowledge of science, technology, engineering, and
math (STEM).
Education policy advocates across the political spectrum, from
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/9-a2cd-307b06d0257b-story-html/d7flxs/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
to former First Lady Michelle Obama
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/Loc-0-FlexDataID-9644-PageID-1/d7flxv/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
, have praised expansions of CTE programs in schools. Fast-tracking
federal funds for CTE programs in schools has become
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/education-bill-bipartisan-html/d7flxx/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
the new bipartisan darling of education policy. CTE lobbyists and
advocates have successfully pressed
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/federal-funding-/d7flxz/555335943?h=PwL
9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
for expanded funding of their programs at federal
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/pump-1-2-billion-into-cte-aspx/d7fly2/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
and state
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/nds-increased-funding-for-cte-/d7fly4/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
levels. And a 2019 study
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/ion-pdf-sequence-1-isAllowed-y/d7fly6/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
by the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing advocacy group
based in Washington, D.C., found
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/n-enjoying-15-minutes-of-fame-/d7fly8/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
that since 2004, mentions of CTE in U.S. media outlets “have grown
over tenfold, and they have doubled since 2012.”
According to a September 2019 analysis
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/areer-and-technical-education-/d7flyb/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
from Brookings, “more than 7 million secondary school students and
nearly 4 million postsecondary students were enrolled in CTE
programming
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/-Published-Final-CFC-FINAL-pdf/d7flyd/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
.” And a 2018 review
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/rch-pubsinfo-asp-pubid-2018028/d7flyg/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
of CTE programs by the federal government’s National Center for
Education Statistics found 73 percent of school districts offered CTE
courses that give students both high school and postsecondary credit,
a potential benefit for students and parents who want to reduce the cost of
college.
What has folks in Chesterfield County, Virginia, concerned is the
particular brand of CTE that has come to their district. At a
September 2019 community event, middle school teacher Emma Clark and
others mentioned
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/066vshrZw-E-t-337/d7flyj/555335943?h=Pw
L9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
the district’s collaboration with Ford Next Generation Learning
(NGL), an offshoot of the Ford Motor Company that claims, according to
its website
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/2020-02-12/d7flxl/555335943?h=PwL9wpqM_
N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
, that it “mobilizes educators, employers, and community leaders to
create a new generation of young people who will graduate from high
school both
college- and career-ready.”
Chesterfield parents I spoke with also pointed to the district’s
collaboration with the Cisco Networking Academy
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/ter-docs-P51-FY09-Virginia-pdf/d7flyl/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
, an offshoot of the computer networking giant
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/2020-02-12/d7flyn/555335943?h=PwL9wpqM_
N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
that has its own branded
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/rticle-20150130-NEWS-150139972/d7flyq/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
course offering in the Chesterfield CTE curriculum.
In a phone conversation, Clark described the district’s collaborations
with these companies as “new layers” of school privatization. First,
corporations like these can use the rush to CTE to flood schools with
new course offerings that require technology the schools have to buy.
And another layer is the CTE programs businesses help to create
provide them with free job training.
The concern Chesterfield teachers and parents have about corporate
influence in K-12 public school curricula is magnified enormously due
to the entrance of Amazon into the equation.
The “centerpiece”
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/assets-pdfs-NOVA-Higher-Ed-pdf/d7flys/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
of Virginia’s successful effort to lure Amazon to build a new
headquarters in the state, according to state-based news outlets
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/28-5bbc-8f2a-947dfc3812e0-html/d7flyv/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
and state-issued reports
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/assets-pdfs-NOVA-Higher-Ed-pdf/d7flys/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
, was a commitment to more than double Virginia’s tech-talent
pipeline, beginning in K-12 schools.
“Virginia’s ultimate proposal was centered around an effort to provide
Amazon—or any other tech firm that wanted to come—with all the
educated workers it needed,” according
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/f-how-virginia-won-amazon-hq2-/d7flyx/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
to a report in the Washingtonian, and the state sealed the deal with
a pledge “to plow $1.1 billion into tech schooling.” The state’s
commitment to developing a tech-talent pipeline providing workers for
Amazon and other companies was key to inking the deal, says
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/w-virginia-won-amazon-hq2-html/d7flyz/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
an Amazon spokesperson in the Cincinnati Business Courier.
“We’re being hijacked in Virginia,” Kathryn Flinn explained to me.
Flinn is a 20-year resident of Chesterfield and mother of two
children, one a special-needs child, who both have attended
Chesterfield County Public Schools.
Flinn strongly considered a CTE track for her special-needs child, but
now maintains that the type of CTE she sees rolling out in
Chesterfield and elsewhere in Virginia “is very different from traditional
CTE.”
She noticed that CTE classes in her local schools were changing from
an emphasis on encouraging students to pursue their interests in
work-related skills and knowledge to courses that partnered with
specific corporations and businesses to form “career pathways” that
lock students into narrower courses of study as early as seventh grade.
The change to a more employer-driven curriculum has been especially
traumatic for Sara Ward, another Chesterfield parent I spoke with.
When the high school her son was to have attended became designated a
Ford NGL CTE academy, she noticed a change in his attitude about
school and his increased depressed mood.
In middle school, he had been placed in a gifted and talented
curriculum with courses in advanced math two years ahead of his peers.
But the Ford NGL-aligned curriculum at the high school was reorganized
into three career paths with “no way to opt out of them,” she explained.
The focus of the new math offerings, she believed, would be more about
applied math including manufacturing and accounting and not about
advanced concepts. “I want my child to decide how he’s going to use
math, not to be told what to do with math,” she said. Ward pulled her
son out of public schools and instead enrolled him in a private
program. It was “not something I ever thought I’d do,” she said.
These Chesterfield parents, along with local teachers and activists,
see their experiences as linked to not only a statewide but also a
national campaign by big business and tech companies to align school
curricula to corporate workforce training. They point to a February
2019 visit
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/9-a2cd-307b06d0257b-story-html/d7flxs/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
by DeVos to a Loudoun County school program, in northern Virginia,
where students take specialty classes in one of three academies
focusing on vocational training. The visit was orchestrated by the
Association for Career and Technical Education, according
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/s-of-loudoun-during-cte-month-/d7flz2/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
to a Loudoun County news outlet, “that celebrates the value and
achievements of nationwide CTE programs.” The Chesterfield folks I
spoke with suspect that many of the forces at work in their local
schools are at work in Loudoun and elsewhere to gear school curricula
to corporate agendas.
“We’re not against teaching students career skills” that could
eventually help them find employment, Flinn explained. “We’re against
corporations writing the curriculum.”
“We do want our kids to have technology skills that give them a strong
resumé when they come out of school,” Clark told
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/-5poAeY-feature-youtu-be-t-473/d7flz4/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
her Chesterfield audience, “but there is zero reason that we can’t
have educators writing and creating that curriculum as opposed to
corporations.”
A ‘False Promise’ of a Job
“These parents should be concerned,” Kenneth Saltman told me in a
phone call.
Saltman, a professor of educational leadership at the University of
Massachusetts-Dartmouth, has written extensively about school reform,
business interests in education, and education politics.
“A narrow focus on teaching skills really misses the boat on
developing abilities that will matter to people in the future,”
Saltman said. “We don’t really know what the jobs of the future will
be, so schools should be focused on developing students’ capacity to
think, question, and theorize in new contexts related to their
learning about the self and society. These goals will be gutted out by a
narrow skills-based agenda.”
Saltman argues that teaching students the more traditional, abstract
skills “is not really at odds with ensuring students can become fully
functioning in the economy. In many ways, a technical and skills-based
curriculum will undermine students’ future economic capacity.”
Research on the long-term impact of CTE on students has found a mixed
bag at best. A 2018 study of Massachusetts’ CTE program found
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/doi-full-10-1162-EDFP-a-00224/d7flz6/55
5335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
“participation in a high-quality CTE program boosts the probability
of on-time graduation from high school by 7 to 10 percentage points
for higher income students, and suggestively larger effects for their
lower-income peers.”
Another study
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/out-and-College-Going-Behavior/d7flz8/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
from 2017 found
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/-chances-going-to-college-html/d7flzb/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
“taking career and technical education classes in high school
increases students’ odds of graduating on time, but doesn’t improve
their chances of enrolling in college,” according to a report in Education
Week.
Matt Barnum, a reporter with Chalkbeat, analyzed a 2017 European study
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/t2yj5g6/d7flzd/555335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2h
JZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
on the impact of CTE and found
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/oints-to-a-potential-downside-/d7flzg/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
“a significant downside of such programs: students may benefit early
in their careers, but are harmed later in life as the economy changes
and they lack the general skills necessary to adapt.”
Research on the long-term impacts of students concentrating in STEM,
the favored focus of the CTE fad, has found equally uneven results.
In 2016, in testimony given to a U.S. Senate subcommittee meeting on
the proposed expansion of guest worker programs, Economic Policy
Institute associate and Rutgers University professor Hal Salzman
explained
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/rams-and-the-stem-workforce-2-/d7flzj/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
that colleges and universities in the U.S. “graduate twice the number
of STEM graduates as find a job each year.” About two-thirds of STEM
degree graduates end up employed in jobs that don’t require STEM
degrees, he added.
In the tech industry in particular, which figures most prominently in
Virginia’s CTE plans, only about a third of the workers in the sector
have STEM degrees, Salzman stated. And tech worker salaries have been
flat for decades, which would seem to intuitively indicate an
oversupply of workers, not the opposite.
“Very little evidence is consistent with the complaints about a skills
shortage,” a 2015 study of the so-called skills gap concluded
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/i-abs-10-1177-0019793914564961/d7flzl/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
, “and a wide range of evidence suggests the complaints are not warranted.”
Instead, employer demands for workforce training are often based on
the employers’ perceived notions about the availability of qualified
employees and the willingness of employers to invest in training and
lower their hiring requirements, observed
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/s-gap-modestino-shoag-ballance/d7flzn/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
economics reporter Matthew Yglesias in an article for Vox. To reach
this conclusion, Yglesias pointed to a paper by Alicia Sasser
Modestino, Daniel Shoag, and Joshua Ballance presented at a 2019
American Economic Association conference
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/nference-2019-preliminary-1021/d7flzq/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
that found that during periods of high unemployment, employers made
job descriptions “more stringent,” and when unemployment rates went
down, hiring requirements became “more relaxed.”
In my conversation with Kenneth Saltman, he contended that students
led to believe that business-branded CTE courses guarantee future
employment with the business are really buying into a “false promise,
or at least a careful hedging of a promise. The real promise is maybe
someday [you] will get a job.”
Clearly, students need multiple opportunities to learn as much as they can.
But that assumes no single entity can actually own the curriculum, and
decisions about what’s best for students to learn should not be based
on the self-interests of those who have something to gain by
controlling the system. Virginia appears to be dangerously headed in
the direction of changing that.
To learn more about school privatization, check out Who Controls Our
Schools? The Privatization of American Public Education
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/ation-destroying-democracy-and/d7flzs/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
, a free ebook published by the Independent Media Institute.
Click here to read a selection
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/ation-destroying-democracy-and/d7flzs/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
of Who Controls Our Schools? published on AlterNet, or here to access
the complete text
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/-our-schools-pdf-ebook-1-1-pdf/d7flzv/5
55335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
.
Jeff Bryant is a writing fellow and chief correspondent for Our
Schools
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/our-schools-/d7flx6/555335943?h=PwL9wpq
M_N2hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He is a communications
consultant, freelance writer, advocacy journalist, and director of the
Education Opportunity Network, a strategy and messaging center for
progressive education policy. His award-winning commentary and
reporting routinely appear in prominent online news outlets, and he
speaks frequently at national events about public education policy.
Follow him on Twitter @jeffbcdm
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/jeffbcdm/d7flzx/555335943?h=PwL9wpqM_N2
hJZw_f8yZd1oYXkSLOGYm6H9E70Y2CPo>
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