Delaware DOE Posts “Cheap Labor” Vendor Request To Market “Pathways to Prosperity”

Pathways to Prosperity is the greatest invention Delaware ever had!  If you believe that one, you stand to profit from what amounts to a cheap labor program designed to beef up corporate profit while using students to do so.

The Pathways Steering Committee recently recommended a Request for Proposal to make the Pathways To Prosperity initiative really shine.  They want a huge marketing push on this.  After all, this committee does include Del Tech, Rodel, and The Delaware Business Roundtable.  What corporate CEO doesn’t want cheap labor?  The best part is you don’t have to farm jobs out to foreign countries.  You can do it right here in your own state.  All you need are a bunch of students in high school or college and you can call them “paid internships”.  Once students complete these internships, they can earn a secondary diploma or a “certificate”.  How awesome!  NOT!

To be clear, I am ALL IN for students to continue education.  I am ALL IN for disengaged students becoming engaged.  What I am NOT all in for is companies taking advantage of school instruction for their own advantage.  This RFP from the Delaware Dept. of Education is a fascinating read.  RFPs always have some key information about what an initiative is REALLY about.  They have to sell it to a prospective vendor.

Delaware Pathways is an education and workforce partnership that creates a career pathways system for all youth.

Notice the word “all”.  Does all mean all?  Eventually.  Wait until Blockchain really gets going in public education…

This effort is guided by the Delaware Pathways Steering Committee, which represents a cross-sector group of policy makers, educators, employers, and community leaders who developed the Delaware Pathways Strategic Plan.

No parents.  No students.  No parents.  No students.  Shall I go on?

Registered Apprenticeship is a proven method of training which involves on-the-job work experience coupled with related instruction, typically offered in a classroom setting.

Please show me the statistics showing this “proven method”.  I am not against apprenticeships.  I am against taking advantage of apprenticeships for cheap labor.

Registered apprentices work for their employer or sponsor and are paid while they learn their respective trade. Registered Apprenticeship, in simple terms, is a program of “learning while earning.”

Are they paid at the same levels regular employees are who would perform the same job function?  Yeah, I didn’t think so.  And how much goes toward other entities while students are “paid”?  Who else gets a cut of this pay?  “Learning while earning” is definitely earning.  The companies earn a lot toward their bottom line.  Disgusting…

Registered Apprenticeships are offered in a variety of occupations. The majority of Registered Apprenticeships are four years in length or 8000 hours of on-the-job training. For each year of training, a minimum of 144 hours of related instruction is required.

8,000 hours is a whole heck of a lot of hours.  That is a lot of pay at a reduced scale that could be helping the average Delawarean.  Companies don’t want to train regular employees.  They LOVE this initiative.  And they will use taxpayer dollars to provide that training.  It is a win-win for companies.  This is exactly WHY they care about education so much.  I kind of thought education was about kids getting a well-rounded education in ALL subjects.  But this will radically transform that so kids only get instruction in certain subjects on the way to their “career path”.  Dumb them down, make sure kids don’t question authority, and then you own them for life.  Big Brother is here, owned by Education Inc.  Did you really think it was “for the kids”?  Please…

Upon completion of the required on-the-job training and related instruction, the apprentice is eligible for Journey papers. A journeyperson is nationally recognized as having a well-rounded ability in all phases of their trade.

Note the words “required” and “nationally recognized”.  Say goodbye to the days of applying for a job, getting hired, and then going through an orientation-training class.  This is the new hiring process for companies.  If you don’t get in on THEIR agenda, you are screwed.  And if you are an older person, looking to change careers, you are doubly screwed.

The intersection of Delaware Pathways and Registered Apprenticeship programs is a result of Delaware’s career pathways system, which begins in the public education system (K-12) through Career and Technical Education (CTE) pathways offered in charter, comprehensive, and technical school districts.

What a well-timed intersection.  Like it wasn’t planned for decades.  This is what happens when you let a “non-profit” like the Rodel Foundation dictate education policy.  This is what happens when you let corporations in education.  They plant the seeds and take over.

These pathways continue through adult education, occupational training programs, as well as Registered Apprenticeship and postsecondary programs that are administered by partnering state agencies, institutions of higher education, and other service providers.

Thus, we have Governor Carney’s “public-private partnerships” in full swing.  All hail the Chief!

As a result, Delaware’s career pathways system aligns secondary and postsecondary education and concurrently pairs rigorous academics and workforce education within the context of a specific occupation or occupational cluster.

“Rigorous academics” means the Common Core State Standards.  Which was, ironically enough, a Department of Defense initiative designed to change the human mind.  It was adopted by the Department of Education to actually change young minds to a digital technology environment.  But those standards have to be tested, thus crap like the Smarter Balanced Assessment and PARCC.  Make them once a year, get teachers and parents in a tizzy over them, and then institute a competency-based education environment.  Then comes the “stealth tests”- same tests as before, but broken up into chunks, to be given at the end of each unit in each class.  Impossible to opt out of those.  This takes it a step further, tying in the education and corporate worlds into a marriage of game-changing high stakes.

Participants who complete a career pathway attain a secondary school diploma or its equivalent, earn an industry-recognized credential, certificate, or license that holds value in the labor market, and have the opportunity to complete an Associate or Bachelor’s degree program at a Delaware college or university.

Don’t kid yourself.  This will be how it is done for ALL students in the future.  Call it what you want, but this will be a “digital badge” created specifically for your personal share on the Blockchain ledger.  The cradle to grave data tracking job creating machine is here!

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America Is Getting Bamboozled With Betsy Devos! She Is All In On The True Agenda: Cradle To Grave Workforces Of Tomorrow

It’s real easy to play Monday morning quarterback after your team just took a huge hit.  Donald Trump promised (and fooled) many citizens into thinking he could get rid of Common Core.  So much so that his pick for Secretary of Education is now backtracking on her years of actions financially supporting Common Core.  She sits on Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education.  This foundation LOVES Common Core and all that comes with it.  DeVos, through the Betsy and Steve DeVos Foundation, poured millions of dollars into pro-Common Core candidates.

On some Betsy DeVos Question and Answer website that sprung out of nowhere, she denounces Common Core.  This website was created on 8/16/16, but her picture was just added this month.  This isn’t some long-time website that shows the DeVos denunciation of Common Core.  This website was created specifically for the possibility of a Trump win.  Why would anyone put up a q and a website unless they knew what the opposition would immediately come out with?  This is what she has to say about Common Core.  Items in red are my response to that.

Q: There’s been a lot of talk about Common Core. Can you provide some straight talk on this topic?

Certainly. I am not a supporter—period.

Financial support into candidates and states that support it IS supporting it.

I do support high standards, strong accountability, and local control. When Governors such as John Engler, Mike Huckabee, and Mike Pence were driving the conversation on voluntary high standards driven by local voices, it all made sense. 

State standards, as written in the Every Student Succeeds Act, are now state decisions.  Trump couldn’t dump them if he tried.  There is a big difference between state and local decisions.  The states now call the shots on education.  The locals are just along for the ride.  Local control of education is a thing of the past.

Have organizations that I have been a part of supported Common Core? Of course. But that’s not my position. Sometimes it’s not just students who need to do their homework.

I don’t even know what that means Betsy DeVos.  Common Core wasn’t created because kids weren’t doing their homework.  It was set up for a VERY specific reason which I will get to soon.

However, along the way, it got turned into a federalized boondoggle.

A very intentional federalized boondoggle where states gave up ALL control to the feds.  Once the states adopted the standards, it didn’t end there.  In came the standardized testing, the accountability game that judges failing schools based on those same tests, as well as the longitudinal data (which was the real purpose which I will also get to later) creation in every state to allow student data to go out.  Once everything was set up in the states through Federal funds (most of which did not go to local schools but to state Departments of Education who paid education reform companies billions of dollars), then the reauthorization of ESEA came about.  ESSA is the shift towards this future.  Giving the illusion of state control based on federal mandates and snake-oil deals from the Obama administration.

Above all, I believe every child, no matter their zip code or their parents’ jobs, deserves access to a quality education.

Every single corporate education reformer says this, but being pro-school choice has not equated to greater educational improvement for children overall.  Especially children that are minorities, low-income, English Language learners, and students with disabilities. 

Betsy DeVos, through her foundation work for her own foundation as well as others, has been on of the biggest driving forces for the privatization of American public education.  But why?  Where is all of this going?

As I put up my post about DeVos selection for the U.S. Secretary of Education, I was met with an onslaught of comments stating she doesn’t support Common Core.  Actions speak louder than words.  I immediately directed readers to this excellent post showing how she DOES support Common Core and how.  And then I wrote this:

To put this in a very easy way to understand, Common Core was created to train young minds for constant all-the-time digital learning.  State assessments (based on Common Core) will become stealth assessments embedded in personalized learning/competency-based education environments. Once they bust the unions, traditional school districts will fall. Charters will go online. Our young kids will go to local non-profits to learn online while older kids learn online in a pay to earn environment through Charter Online Inc. Meanwhile, all this data from ed tech is tracking every student and whoring out their personal data and gearing them towards pre-determined professions that corporations want, not the kids. Who do you think will profit from this? Charters. Teachers will become glorified moderators while parents watch their rights slowly disappear. Their kids will go to community health-based centers for everything. This is the grand agenda. There is nothing Trump can do to stop it. Complete control over the future by corporations. Read into plans for Blockchain technology to see where all of this is going…. This has NEVER been about kids. It has always been about corporate profit.

We are now at a huge tipping point with public education.  I’ve actually seen parents today, on anti-Common Core Facebook pages, actually trying to convince me DeVos is a good pick and to give her a chance.  This is what the corporate education reformers do best.  They pit people against each other.  While everyone is arguing about this and that, they are getting things done.  Planting seeds to get the whole thing done.  They are the masters of distraction.  Bill Gates is just one of them.  Today, we saw another billionaire get the top education job in the country.  With no background of ever being an educator.  Do you really think it is a coincidence that the past three Secretaries of Education have been fervent supporters of school choice, charter schools, and “higher standards”?  You can call Common Core whatever you want.  But it is the same everywhere, in every state.  It is just a vessel to much bigger plans, a complete and utter transformation of society where the top will always be on the top, but true choice and upward mobility for the rest will be on the bottom.  It is central to destroying who we are as a nation.  A nation of freedom and free will.  That will be stripped from us, forever.  We will become the cradle to grave workforce with the rich and elite overlords looking down upon us.  The future generations of today’s rich and elite who use their money and influence to reshape society to their mold.

This was going to happen no matter who won the Presidency.  Clinton, Trump, Johnson, Stein… it didn’t matter.  Who do you really think is running the show?  Politicians?  No.  It is corporations.  Follow the money.  Read the stuff that is coming out right now through ESSA.  Sift through the smoke and open your eyes America.  And act.  Do something.  They have you fooled.  Everyone is going nuts about Trump, both sides.  Love or hate.  Meanwhile, no one is talking about the WOIA bills in every state.  Or the ed tech invasion happening in your schools.  Or the shift towards getting rid of number grades towards the same type of scores on standardized tests.  How many states are developing “Pathways” programs which shift education towards a pre-determined career rather than moving on to college?  Trump doesn’t matter.  Not in the long run.  Neither did Clinton.  This was going to happen before your very eyes.

Do you hear anyone, aside from student privacy groups, demanding Trump restore FERPA to pre-2008 and 2011 levels?  No.  Do you hear anyone making a big deal about the Bill Gates driven work group that is deciding data sharing at ALL levels?  No.  Do you know why?  Because they are distracting you.  And they are succeeding.

Someone wrote to me on Facebook today that to change things would require a rebellion.  That person wasn’t promoting it.  I am.  It is what we need.  And it has to happen now.  Please share this article.  Spread it.  Make sure people see it and see the truth about what is happening.  The reformers will say I am a conspiracy theorist.  I will gladly take that.  Because this is a vast conspiracy that has been playing out for decades.  And they aren’t done yet.  Time for a rebellion.