Agenda Junkies

Warriors Against the Core! Warriors Opposed to Federally Led Education!!

Are you tired of all the agenda, reform, and propaganda which comes with  CCSS, or, as it is more politically correct, ‘College and Career Readiness’?!

It all reminds me of a bunch of  junkies. Especially when you factor in the amount of money spent to ‘snow’ our nation into believing Common Core and its Machine are the best thing for America since ‘dirt was invented’.

No, Warriors, quite the opposite is true: Common Core and ALL that goes with it have driven our nation straight to ‘pot’!

I call those involved ‘agenda driven junkies’. Question is who among our leaders from D.C. to downtown are strung out on the lies? The agenda junkies don’t only help string education along, they are taking their toxicity into your neighborhoods.

The U.S. Dept. of Education (with some pretty ‘addictive’ help) has published a Plan to turn our communities into ‘USERS’.

The simplest way to state it: Public private partnerships (P3s) were purposefully expanded in ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act). If you factor in the other federal laws where the P3s are also embedded (WIOA, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and the HEA, Higher Education Act), you’ll start to see the ‘need for a fix’: businesses need workers to build the economy. What ‘cheaper’ way in which to train workers than by selling a ‘crack’ education like is was the best drug in town?!

                             Our students are the businesses’ ‘fix’.

U.S. Dept. Of Education’s Community User Plan:

I literally stumbled across this Aug. 2016 document just a few days ago. Of course, the agenda junkies at US Ed, came up with a ‘cool’ sounding name for the Plan, but the main point: how the P3s and/or CBAs will use our communities for workforce based education.

So, what’s the name of the Plan?

The Highs And Lows Of The Plan:
1) The relationships between education and local businesses (P3s) is still pretty new. So, in order to make the most of this, the Plan lays out how to use this ‘urban and development tool’ as the source for filling the need of educated workforce. (Oh, by the way, did you know ESSA involves the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development?!)

2)  CBAs (Community Benefit Agreements), according to the Plan are slightly different than P3s in the overreach in education. Both carry a steep price: our schools.

3) By combining CTE and CBAs, your town can be assured of a steady ‘supply’ of educated workers strung out on agenda, not academics; on feeding your local economy not feeding their minds. Here’s how the Plan worded it, “This paper will help state and local policymakers understand the potential use of CBAs to support the delivery of high-quality CTE services in schools and colleges serving their surrounding communities. CBAs can serve as a potent tool for delivering comprehensive CTE programs that benefit a broad population of resident youths and adults. This desired outcome can be accomplished only if those charged with negotiating CBAs understand the benefits of well-designed CTE programs—and the importance of engaging CTE educators from the secondary and postsecondary levels in planning discussions.”

4) The ‘common agenda’ of the Plan? A unified, stronger community.

5) The Plan cites 2 Case Studies where CBAs and early CTE efforts were combined.Of these it appears these date back to 2004 and extend to the current year.
One involves Home Depot, Inc. (*Note: Home Depot, Inc. was tied to the new Chair of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Ed/Workforce Committee, Rep. Virginia Foxx in my “Fox in a Hen House” article, published yesterday.)

6) A source cited in the Plan refers to a 2013 construction career book, The Construction Careers Handbook, published by the Partnership for Working Families (2013), and how those who want to push CTE can create labor/education conversations. The goal? To make CTE even more rigorous!

7) See the screen shot below for  the 6 goals a CBA full of agenda is being pushed on our nation:

To access the entire Plan: ncicte_cbas_marcello

To see a 2014 U.S. Dept. of Ed/NCiCTE 108 page Report on Financing CTE across America:
NCICTE_CTE_Finance_Study

Those Pushing The Plan:

To see the 2015 NCiCTE article where I updated you on this federally funded group and how they can be tied to the Aspen Institute, Gates Foundation, and others:
https://www.commoncorediva.com/2015/05/21/tech-thursday-career-tech-education-federal-style-update/

NCiCTE is funded by the U.S. Dept. of Ed.  Find it: http://ctecenter.ed.gov/
(*Notes:
a) Read their Mission Statement.
b) Be sure to refer to the NCiCTE’s Research Papers. This one is titled “Applying Human Capital Performance Bonds to Career and Technical Education” (See: http://s3.amazonaws.com/NCICTE/pdf/ncicte_financing.pdf ) The second one is all about defining and assessing College/Career Readiness: https://s3.amazonaws.com/NCICTE/training/training_2/module_2/resources/NCICTE%20Training%202%20Module%202.pdf ) )

The RTI International, Inc. is the newer name for the Research Triangle Institute based right in Research Triangle (Raleigh-Durham, NC). On their website, the Career and Technical Education can be found on the “Education and Workforce Development” page.
The group shares that they are busy behind the scene of ‘education’ and ‘global’ workforce. They collect massive amounts of data. Here’s an excerpt, “Clients in the education space rely on us to track elements such as early childhood health, school readiness, academic performance, noncognitive skills development, high school graduation and the transition to college, financial aid and college completion, and workforce education.”

To see the RTI, Int’l, Inc.’s full Ed/Workforce page:
 https://www.rti.org/practice-area/education-and-workforce-development

(*Note: When you visit this full page, be sure to click on the Career and Adult Education and Workforce Development section. It’s where I found (once again) definitive proof CCSS and CTE are united. See the image below.)

To access the CCSS/CTE Employability Framework:
 http://cte.ed.gov/employabilityskills/index.php/background/what#

(*Also noteworthy: When RTI, Int’l, Inc. was still RTI, the Gates Foundation awarded this group many grants from 2009 (and earlier) to 2016. Most of the grants are in the health care field, but as we’ve seen, Warriors, Gates Foundation Grants are used for all kinds of reform directly OR indirectly impacting education. To see the 2 pages of Grants: 
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database#q/k=Research%20Triangle%20Institute )

Closing:

Warriors, whom among our leaders are the ‘agenda junkies’? Ask your Congress members have they read these NCiCTE documents? Especially in light of the upcoming CTE Bills in the House’s Ed/Workforce Committee and the Senate’s HELP Committee!
There are many, however, knowing our government is creating communities aligned to CTE, what about a national CTE Workforce Plan? It’s already in the works. The LADDER Act.