Katy Citizen Watchdog$

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The Miller Career Center

 

Back To “Mary’s Corner”

 

The recently defeated bond initiative contained a proposal for adding programs and space to the Miller Career Center.

 

As a school board member in the 1990’s I was very supportive of the Vocational Program in the Katy Independent School District.  While limited in scope and funding, the program leaders tried very hard to provide appropriate vocational training for KISD students. I visited the Career Center many times, and served on the advisory board of the Center along with fellow board member, Ken Burton, the only other board member who showed real interest in the program.

 

When a new director of the vocational program was needed, I heartily approved of the superintendent’s selection of Bonny Green for that position, and she has proved over time her willingness and ability to competently deliver an outstanding vocational program as well as her desire to serve the program’s students.

 

A career utilizing vocational skills is appropriate for many students, and our school district needs to offer a viable program that is housed in an appropriate facility. I continue to be supportive of this program. The purpose of Career and Technology Education in our school district has evolved into an effort to create career awareness, combining it with technological skills so that students can move into the workforce. Having said all that, I must repeat my oft stated caveat:  I know of no parent of a first grade student who aspires to have that child enter and graduate from a vocational program.

 

So how do I and the rest of the community get to the point where we believe that a vocational program is a necessity?

 

In the 1990’s the Secretary of Labor for the Federal Government issued what was called the “SCANS” report (Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills.)  This was an effort to “reform” public education as we knew it by replacing the acquisition of academic skills with workplace skills. This program was called “School to Work.“ (Go to http://www.academicinnovations.com/report.html  or http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/envrnmnt/stw/sw0stw94.htm

for  a more comprehensive if somewhat biased discussion of this report and the School to Work Act of 1994.)  Every parent should read these reports so that he can understand what “education reform” really means.

 

In Texas a group of us discovered the scheme to reform or restructure public education in our state in 1997.  We tried mightily to stop it by telling our State Board of Education members.  We had a huge confrontation with Education Commissioner Mike Moses in the spring of 1997 at a monthly State Board of Education meeting after we discovered that this program had been implemented in Texas through the Department of Labor and not the Department of Education.  The reason for the State’s choice of the Labor Department stemmed from their desire to hide the effort from the public.  Their effort was in response to the federal laws that had been coming down the pike quite rapidly.  First there was the 1994 Improving America's Schools Act  , followed by the 1994 Goals 2000 Educate America Act and then the 1994 School-to-Work Act  (STW) as  the nail in the coffin. The Carl.D.Perkins Act of 1998 further implemented the vocational thrust of public education.

 

Of interest is the fact that the School to Work law has been sunsetted as it became self-perpetuating within each state as part of its design.  One will be hard pressed to find even a copy of this law on any government web site.  The Federal Government does not want the public to know the particulars of the law.  The link provided above leads to the web site of Congresswoman Diana Fessler, a courageous woman who while a state elected official in Ohio fought mightily to stop STW in her state. She maintains the site to keep the information on the movement available. The 2002 NCLB Act is the law we all live under and which affects so adversely all of our children who are in public schools.

 

School to Work (STW) was brought to Texas without much knowledge by anyone in the public.  The SCANS report initiated the plan and served as the basic document for implementation. Lest anyone think this is a partisan issue, the Bush family AND the Clinton family both had an equal hand in this deception of the public.

 

I am not a supporter of the SCANS report as it is the document which essentially undermines a traditional and time tested academic education for our students.  It serves to dumb down our public school students. In the 1990’s when all of these government legislative acts were transpiring, I found myself in a quandary, and I am still there.  My dilemma is this:  When our school district, because of faulty curricula, fails to teach our students how to read  and do basic math, we graduate a great many of our students as functional illiterates.

 

Hold on to your hats, for my next statement may sound preposterous, but it is provably true …such an effort is by design, as the thrust of the School to Work Federal legislation exists to dumb down 80% of our students.  And those 80% may all be from public schools with the 20% who are to be academically educated coming from private schools or home schooled students. The intent of STW is to create malleable compliant workers who read at a minimal level, who cannot think critically so they will not question their employers, and who will do as they are told--working at a very basic level. The SCANS report endorses such thinking, and I am adamantly opposed to such an effort. One can find statements in the Federal literature that state that in 1996, only 20% of the jobs available to “workers” require a college degree thus giving the government the impetus and the justification to dumb down so many students.

 

Those are alarming statements, but there is plenty of proof to support them.  I have a tape recording of the Texas State Board of Education’s Long Range Planning Committee meeting on October 13, 1995 where State Board of Education Chairman, Jack Christie, who was also the Katy ISD area’s elected representative to the SBOE, states that “we no longer need Shakespearean educated students.  They can’t get a job.  What we need are students trained for the workforce.” 

 

Mr. Christie, who graduated from San Jacinto Junior College and acquired a “doctorate” in chiropractic “medicine” from the Texas Chiropractic College, had no business being in charge of the State Board of Education and deciding for Texas parents that public schools were going to abandon academic endeavor for most students, but that is exactly what he did. His point of view was clearly biased and flawed. The point that Mr. Christie failed to understand is that parents expect their children to be academically educated, and the decision about WHO gets to have an academic education rests with parents and taxpayers, not Mr. Christie.  It is not a decision that should be made by our governments! The government does not exist to take care of us and direct our lives down paths we do not choose for ourselves.

 

What Mr. Christie did in that committee meeting has affected public education in Texas for over ten years and is now going to be spread to our public universities after the passage of the recent “tax reform” bill which has been signed by Governor Perry.  That bill allows the liberal leftists at the Texas Education Agency to mess with college level curriculum in the same way they have ruined the previously academic elementary and secondary school curriculum.

 

Big business is behind this movement, and the Business Roundtable members (at the CEO level) are essentially those who support the government’s restructuring initiatives.  In essence we are no longer creating work for the people we have; we are instead creating people for the work that we have.

 

I detest the movement away from the teaching of academics which has been traditional in our country’s public schools for centuries, and which movement was accomplished without any public discussions of whether this was a proper course. If we have students who are dumbed down, there’s nothing our public schools can offer them EXCEPT a vocational education.  They are to be TRAINED, not educated.  Everyone needs to understand the nuances of that statement. Training is not education. 

 

Even  though I abhor the SCANS and what that effort signifies in terms of government interference in the lives of private citizens, my only choice is to become a proponent of vocational training in our KISD public school system.  If children have no academic education, they cannot function in society.  We have to provide them with something with which they can earn a living. Please note, however, that I in no way support providing ALL of our students with vocational training. 

 

The Katy ISD Vocational Training Program is a viable solution for students who have not been given an academic background of learning. Training these students will at least give them a skill or a trade with which they can earn a living.

 

If we have multitudes of students asking to enter the program, with on-going and increasing numbers coming along, we have to provide for them. The Miller Career Center does not receive as much funding as it needs, and its facilities are old and inadequate.

 

The only way to stop the growth of the program is to return to an academic education, and that’s not about to happen because the public does not understand that an academic education has been removed from their public schools.

 

My suggestion is that the School Board find the money to fund the curricular program, Part I and Part II of the construction, and create a sound vocational program.

 

The District needs to hire more people to assist those running the program who have done exceptionally well with the little they have been given, fund the program and the building that they have been asking for since I was on the board over ten years ago, and get on with it. I assure you that the people in charge are the very best there are, and will perform competently and deliver a viable training program.

 

I would suggest that parents pay attention to what is happening with their children, and if they do not want their child to repair automobiles for a living or to be a cosmetologist or a technologist, then they need to work for restoration of an academically based curriculum or move outside of the public schools. 

 

Automobile repair and fixing hair and computers constitutes honest work, and I am always grateful that there are those who do that work very well. Entrepreneurs can turn such skills into lucrative professions.  We all know examples of that. But vocational training does not replace a sound academic liberal arts education which if successfully completed allows students to move on to further education and lead enriched lives. My father earned his living repairing refrigeration equipment.  While I considered him to be very intelligent, because he lacked a college degree, this vocational occupation was all he had.  He worked 60 to 80 hour weeks, was gone most evenings and sometimes on Saturdays and Sundays and worked until he was 70 taking care of the equipment in the grocery chain for which he worked.  He wanted no member of his family to follow in his footsteps, and he made certain that his wife, two daughters and four grandchildren all had the desire to acquire and the ability to obtain college degrees.  He wanted more for all of us than he had.  I would imagine that all parents in similar situations want more for their children than they had. And I want more for our public school students than my father had.

 

My purpose in writing this piece is to suggest that our school district needs to find funding immediately to improve the vocational facilities and hire additional instructors, and to further enhance the vocational program. There is existing bond money that could be utilized.

 

If we want to curtail the ever-expanding vocational program, we must start now to teach children to read and do basic math in elementary school so they have the ability to enter an academic world.

 

I would also suggest that the leaders of our school district who are bent on dumbing down our children need to be stopped.

 

© 2006 by Mary McGarr. All rights reserved.

Mary McGarr, Katy Citizen Watchdog$

Date: 06/05/2006