RMT: VP, Unions, Career Tech, and Common Core?

Ahh..Sunday, our “Riddle Me This” day for all things Common Core. So, without fail, here’s your riddle of the day.. What do you get when you take the Vice President, add a couple of well financed union groups, provide a lunch in the meantime, AND talk Career Tech Education that just HAPPENS to be Common Core aligned??

You get the 2014 ATF/AFL-CIO Career Tech Education Summit!

The Meeting:

Held just a few days ago, November 13th. All involved gathered at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington.

The American Teachers Federation was co-hosting this event. The agenda for the day was quite full of all kinds of topics about making the best investment, getting a great return on it (meaning humans), how vital a trained workforce is to our economy, and more. See the entire day’s schedule: http://ctesummit.aflcio.org/#!/agenda

The Known Common Core Supporters List:

Business Roundtable (which has a pro CCSS letter co-written with the ATF) See: http://businessroundtable.org/resources/letter-governors-brt-aft-common-core-state-standards

AFL-CIO’s website has a Common Core Toolkit link, but it takes you to the ATF and no longer is viable. I did find in their Legislative Guide full support for anything opposing quality public schooling, more federal involvement, and the need for programs like “Gear Up” (we’ll look into that another day). The group also is supportive all community colleges, which we’ve discovered in earlier posts are aligned to CCSS. See the Guide: http://www.aflcio.org/content/download/1729/15567/file/2013%20Legislative%20Handbook%20-%20Chapter%207.pdf

Those CC/CTE Supportive Groups Previously Unknown to Us:

Snap-on Tools, a known “CTE Friend” (See: http://www.careertech.org/sites/default/files/Snap-on.pdf)

United Technologies Propulsion & Aerospace Systems, connected via “STEM” (see: http://utcaerospacesystems.com/Company/Pages/corporate-giving.aspx)

Chicago Manufacturing Renaissance Council, connected through Workforce Development (see: http://www.mfgren.org/policy-and-strategy/workforce-development/)

North America’s Building Trades Unions, connected through Workforce Development (see page 6,7: http://www.bctd.org/BCTD/media/Documents/Legislative%20Issues/BCTD_LegProgram2013.pdf)

*Notes: 1) If you’re not sure how STEM factors into Common Core, I invite you to read my blog entry about the connections: (https://www.commoncorediva.com/2014/09/02/from-the-files-pcast-stem-and-common-core/)

2) Remember there are several articles here on my blog about the ties between Common Core and Career Tech Education.

The Vice President:

Click to enlarge this screen shot from Twitter

Other comments he made,

“Unions are the reason we have the best workers in the world.”
“America is about promise and how to help Americans have the skills they need for good paying jobs.”
“We have to maintain and enhance our workforce so we have the most sophisticated, best trained workforce in the world.”

“Unions have been teachers-lighting the fire in the working people. If you want to learn, join a union.”

The U.S. Secretary of Labor spoke as well. A You Tube video, almost 2 hours long is available, should you wish to find it.

How the Perkins Act is being used to promote CTE/CC alignment:

The Perkins Act was created back in 1984, since then it’s been updated a few times. However, the original intent was to increase the quality of education that was considered technical or, at the time, vocational. With the advent of Common Core via the Career Tech, Career Clusters, Career Pathways, it’s not longer ‘cool’ to use the word ‘vocation’, now it’s ‘career’. Last updated in 2006 here are the 3 parameters that MUST happen with the Act.: ‘1. Replaces “vocational education” with “career and technical education”
2. Maintains the Tech Prep program as a separate entity with federal funding within the legislation
3. Maintains state administrative funding at 5 percents of a state’s allocation
The new law also requires the development of articulation agreements and strengthens local
accountability provisions. The Perkins Act provides almost $1.3 billion annually to career and technical education programs in all 50 states until 2016.’ Each state gets to decide how to split the funding between secondary schools and post-secondary schools. (source: http://www.aypf.org/documents/PerkinsActFactSheet.pdf)

Related:

The National Conference of State Legislators has an entire page devoted to “Common Academic Standards” and includes the Perkins Act in this. Here’s an excerpt, “A growing number of states are looking at education as “P-16” rather than separate systems serving early education, K-12 and postsecondary education and updating or amending their statutes to facilitate this change. Important federal-state educational programs supported by the states, such as the Perkins Act programs and the TRIO program, must be better integrated with state postsecondary policy.” See the entire article (note: bear in mind the wording used )

http://www.ncsl.org/ncsl-in-dc/task-forces/policies-education.aspx

Back to Perkins:

Sometime after 2006, when the Perkins Act was last updated (making it Perkins Act 4), this presentation was given by the NASDCTEc (National Association of State Directors of Career and Technical Education Consortium) Executive Director Kimberly Green, shares that the Perkins Act funding will reinforce Career Tech Education, Career Clusters; that such programs will be ‘rigorous’ and globally preparing each student; that academic and technical standards will be integrated; that education, workforce, and the economy will be united; stressing some sort of degree, credentials, or similar; the one of the best ways to accomplish all these are the 16 Career Clusters; that well known CCSS supportive groups are helping this effort (like College Board, the National Governors Assoc., etc.); that curriculum alignment, standards alignment, and data collection are all part and parcel; finally, we all must change attitudes about CTE.

See the full presentation: http://www.cew.wisc.edu/docs/Presentation.pdf

*The NASDCTEc is the Washington, D.C. group where CTE is housed. (see: http://www.careertech.org/who-we-are)

When you have friends in strategic places, you can advance the agenda without attention!

CTE’s website has a page devoted to its “Friends”. If you’ll remember, Snap-on Tools (above) is one. If you’ve already clicked on the link to see how they advance the agenda of CTE, good. If not, here it is. Their advancement of CTE is based off the belief that success is rooted in our workforce. This belief is expressed in a book written by a Harvard professor. As we’ve learned before, Harvard is knee deep in Common Core.
Another friend, “First Book”. The logo is a cute one where you see what looks like a little one with their nose deep in a book. By making sure the books delivered to those in need are along the CTE Career Clusters, it’s as they stated, ‘a win-win’. (see: http://www.careertech.org/sites/default/files/FirstBook.pdf)

Yet another friend, “Toyota” helps CTE by having lots of specialized jobs which need skilled workers. ‘If you’re a CTE student, then you’ll be just the right kind of employee.’ Hmmm, I’m not saying this, but I know some day to day stories where some of these auto CTE students are not getting the right education in secondary schools (one such student had never learned to spell his own name), so I’m not sure how becoming a CTE auto worker will fix that, but then..I’m not a friend of Common Core, CTE. (see Toyota’s commitment to CTE: http://www.careertech.org/sites/default/files/Toyota.pdf)

To see the rest of the “Friends”, visit: http://www.careertech.org/friends-cte

Final riddle: Did you know there’s a caucus for this?

Career Tech Education has its very own caucus in Washington! Yes, indeed. Here’s the website address:

http://www.acteonline.org/caucus/#.VGU06fnF8lc

The mission statement, “The Career and Technical Education Caucus is a bi-partisan group of Members of Congress created to enhance awareness in Congress of the importance of career and technical education in preparing a well-educated and skilled workforce in America.”

This caucus comes complete with a ‘support fund’ where donations are used to help fund research, etc. (be sure to click on that tab) There’s also an upcoming “Career Tech Vision Conference” next week, Nov. 19th..if we hurry we can get to Nashville, TN to hear U.S. Dept. of Labor Secretary, Mr. Perez; Diane Ravitch and others promote CTE. Here’s the flyer: http://careertechvision.com/ If we get there in time for the pre-conference activities, we can get in on the Harvard/Pearson “Pathways to Prosperity” inspired construction career pathway. Even the U.S. Army will be there.

Why, I bet, if we hurry we might even get a sneak peak at the Grand Ole Opry!