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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The Gates Foundation Isn’t Even Hiding It Anymore… The Complete Transformation Of Education Brought To You By Billionaires

Bill Gates wants a Federal Student Data Tracking System.  That’s right.  He also wants competency-based education, more career pathways programs, and personalized learning to take over public education.  This is the same guy who funded Common Core.  Remember that when you read the document released by the Gates Foundation today.  If I had to guess, now that many education bloggers have exposed all the agendas which will lead to the Bit-Coin inspired Blockchain Initiative, the corporate education reformers (clearly led by Bill Gates) have nothing to lose by getting it all out there now.  Now I know why U.S. Senator Chris Coons (Delaware) is chomping at the bit for his post-secondary legislation to get passed by Congress.

Read this.  Every single word.  Read between the lines.  This is the endgame they have been pushing for, the complete and utter destruction of public education in anticipation of online education for all.  Where you will be tracked from cradle to grave, with data allowed to be looked at through a federal database, which will track everything about you.  The sad part is they play to civil rights groups by assuring more success for minorities.  They screw over students with disabilities every chance they get.  But their manipulation of under-served communities is at an all-time high in this document.  Words like “outcome-based funding” scare the crap out of me, and it should for every single American.  Look at all the footnotes in the below document.  Look at the companies and think-tanks that are reaping immense profits for every bogus report they come out with.  Look how embedded this already is in every single state and our national government.

While this document is geared towards higher education, its goals are for ALL education.  It is all about creating the “workforce of tomorrow”.  He mentions Jobs For the Future at the very end of the document.  Just take a look at the corporate education reform madness they push out.  I have no doubt Gates is concerned about the workforce of tomorrow.  By making sure we are all learning online, Microsoft continues to profit.  And all the other ed tech companies are chomping at the bit for their big paydays of the future.  This is ALL about corporate profit.

Hillary Clinton will, in all likelihood, be our next President.  She is all in on this.  Every single step.  And she has been since the very beginning.  The question is if we can, as everyday Americans, education enough people to rise up and tell our government to stop selling out education to investors, hedge fund managers, and ed tech companies.  That will be the challenge.  How do you stop corporations and billionaires from taking over not only education but the entire economy?  It takes courage and strength, bravery and daring.  It is in all of us.  Now we have to bring it out more than ever so we can turn the future into one of our design, not those who wish to be prophets and profit.

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The above picture was from the following link: https://www.quora.com/Which-2016-presidential-candidate-does-Bill-Gates-support

 

Student-Military Connection Data Tracking Senate Bill 94 Will Help Many Students in Delaware!

Senate Bill 94, introduced yesterday by Delaware Senator Brian Bushweller, would allow tracking of a student with ties to the military.  But it can’t violate FERPA, or be used for accountability, or anything that could cause problems for the student.  But it would only be used by local districts to know of any military connections.  Okay… why?

According to Dr. Terri Hodges, President of the Delaware PTA, the reasoning behind the bill is this:

The Delaware PTA Military Outreach Committee began work on this issue a little over a year ago with a coalition of stakeholders and Sen. Bushweller to bring the issue of military awareness to the forefront in Delaware. We proposed a data tracking system to identify military connected students. The primary purpose behind this proposal was to bring awareness to the unique needs of military connected students and how those needs impact them academically, emotionally and socially. The majority of military connected students in Delaware attend schools off base, including in New Castle and Sussex. However, due to the lack of awareness and understanding of military culture and lifestyle, most of our schools are not aware of or familiar with the resources available for these families. The students are labeled as behavioral problems and do not receive appropriate interventions. Part of the problem is that non DoD schools have no way to identify military connected students so that they can channel those resources to those families. This is the purpose of the Bill. During our research phase, we worked with other state PTAs in states that have already passed similar legislation or are in the process of developing similar legislation.

So the idea behind the Bill is really to have a process to identify military connected students for the purposes of providing appropriate resources and supports specific to military families, like mine that attend a non- DoD school.

Hope that helps. Anyone interested in learning more or working with our Military Outreach Committee can contact me.

Originally, I thought this legislation was odd, but thanks to Dr. Hodges for explaining it to me.  This actually makes a lot of sense, and I support this 100%!  Please read the legislation below: