With a presidential election coming up, many of us are starting to look for a candidate who will dismantle “Common Core” and begin the process of returning control in education to the local communities. That begins with a President who campaigns, not just on opposing Common Core, but really showing that they understand this federal reform and the need to remove power from the federal government and return that control to the local communities.
That’s why it’s so disappointing to listen to Governor Jeb Bush and John Kasich. Both of these governors have been bad on the issue of Common Core.
The latest example coming from the Kasich administration is an “announcement” to give students an early lead on their career path. In this article you can see that Gov. Kasich is following the Obama/federal prescription in reforming public education.
It was Marc Tucker who came up with the agenda to transform public education into a dumbed down workforce development scheme. Marc Tucker sat on the Common Core Standards development Committee and tried to push through this transformation during the Clinton administration. Governor Kasich is doing nothing but following this prescription by bringing the Outcome Based Ed/Workforce Development model to Ohio. This isn’t innovative. In fact, this is pretty much what Governor Hassan is doing in New Hampshire. It’s called: FOLLOWING.
Parents want to see real leadership in their elected officials, leadership away from the failed federal reforms.
With workforce development and career development goals, the student is treated as a human resource not a unique individual with the freedom to take their ideas and become the person they want to become.
This is essentially the European model where students are tracked through school for the benefit of the state. Students are guided on a path, not for the benefit of the student but as a resource for the state. Do you really trust the bureaucrats to determine where all of our children fit into a centralized economy?
All of this began decades ago with federal legislation; School-to-Work (STWO) in 1994, Goals 2000 in 1994 and Improving America’s Schools Act (IASA) in 1994. What started out as “voluntary” became a vehicle of bribery and coercion. By tying federal money to standards, IASA made it virtually impossible for schools to opt out of the federal reforms.
Just look at Manchester’s school board when they were faced with administering the Smarter Balanced Assessment last year. Board members knew they were facing a fatally flawed assessment but just a threat of losing funding caused board members to vote against the best interest of their students and vote to administer the test.
Gov. Kasich’s new initiative follows the federal prescription that has been laid out by the feds. This is a person running for President? A governor that does not lead Ohio to excellence, but follows the federal prescription of dumbed down workforce training?
Workforce training means students become “human resources”, a term coined by the Marxist, George Hegel. This is the prescription laid out by Marc Tucker and now being implemented by Governor Kasich.
In this scheme a National Board will be responsible for funding the state planning grants. The State Council will then develop a plan for integrating a workforce development system.
Here is a chart from Illinois:
This is cradle to grave managing of the economy, workforce and human resources: YOUR CHILDREN.
Governor Kasich announces that little kids need to start thinking about jobs and careers. HUH? How about making sure little kids are learning to read, write, add and subtract? Why is he missing an opportunity to focus on literacy?
That’s the problem with workforce development, it shifts focus away from literacy in favor of dumbed down “workforce skills.”
How do we know this? Because this is nothing new or innovative. This is the old rehashed failed fads from the 1990’s and highlighted in this piece from Heritage. Parents need to read about the Outcome Based/Workforce Model that failed students in the 90’s. Obama’s agenda simply takes that failed model and nationalizes it. Governor Kasich and Governor Hassan then became the facilitators of that failed model.
In New Hampshire it’s called “Competency Based Education” and so far, we have NO independent data that this model has done anything to improve the quality of education for our children. Governor Hassan is following the federal model with no record of real improvement to our schools.
So what’s the difference between a Governor Kasich and President Obama on education? Unfortunately in terms of “education policy”, NO difference. It looks like under a Kasich administration you can expect more of the same dumbed down workforce development we see coming from President Obama. That’s not good for Ohio and it certainly wont be good for the rest of the country too.