Parents and Educators:
Are you concerned that your children are now being required to choose a career in the eighth grade and be put on a "Career Pathway" as soon as they enter high school? Do you feel they are wise enough, mature enough, and experienced enough to make such a big decision at such a young age?
The words being used make it appear that there is no choice in this matter, that it is mandatory. The following is how an announcement reads in the newsletter going out to all parents of 8th graders at Rincon Valley Middle School, Santa Rosa, California; "Did you know that all students are required to select a career pathway as they enter high school."
When asked if this is truly a requirement, Nancy Miller, the head of "Career Pathways," for Santa Rosa School District, answered, "Yes, this has been determined to be a requirement by the Santa Rosa School Board for their "Project Achieve."
It is not just Santa Rosa that is doing this, however. It is going on in cities and counties through out California, because it is coming down from state and federal legislation. Do local school boards still have the right to say no? Yes, they do. Perhaps, now is the time to test the system – to see just how much autonomy local school district trustees really have and how much power parents still have over the education of their own children. Read the following reasons why parents should be concerned and want to say no to Career Pathways. If you agree, please sign the accompanying petition asking for it to be removed from our schools.
Choosing a life’s career is something very important. It takes trying out different options and sometimes many years of experience and more maturity to finally make that decision. It is not a decision a child should have to make in the 8th grade or have that decision made for him.
Career Pathways greatly narrow the education your children are receiving. The classes all center on just one skill or one career. A high school only offers a limited amount of choices – maybe four. Maria Corrilla offers culinary arts, college, and two more. Education is also limited because students are taken out of the classroom and put into jobs for a few hours as interns, which takes away more valuable time that should be spent on academics. Is that the only purpose of education now – just to prepare "human resources" for a skill for the job market? Are we no different than any other resource, to be sent out on a conveyer belt, molded and ready for use?
It used to be the tradition of American schools that students were considered individual people not human resources. Education was not just about preparation for the job market, but preparation for life. Students were expected from their education to have developed strong character traits and wisdom to make right decisions and to be a benefit to society. Students were given a broad-based liberal arts education, with a variety of many different subjects, so that when they graduated from high school they would have a broad base of knowledge on which to rely to help them to go on to be whatever they would like – to get a job and start a career then or to go on to college. If they tried something and decided they did not like it, they had enough knowledge and skills and the freedom to try something else.
This was known as the American dream – the freedom to choose and the opportunity given to make your dream become a reality. You could become whatever you wanted if you worked hard enough for it, and then if you changed your mind, you had enough education to become something else.
Career Pathways destroys the American dream. Once your child is on his pathway, there is no getting off without having to start all over again. Once he graduates from high school, he will have only one skill or job he will be prepared for. If he doesn’t like it – tough! He would have to go back to school again to be trained for some other skill.
Only one of the pathways leads to college. What if your child chooses a pathway that does not lead to college and then changes his mind, again tough! He will have to get off the pathway and start all over again. All this will greatly limit the amount of youth going on to college. It used to be 60% of our graduating seniors went on to college. The people who have developed Career Pathways think a reasonable goal for our nation of youth going on to a university should be only 20%. Why is that? Why bring down the number of high school students attending college? That limits their ability to get really high paying jobs. Does someone just want more manual worker bees in our society? Who are they and why do they have the right to determine and change our society?
The Career Pathways System is based on the German and Russian system, where they only have 14% of their youth going on to a university. Germany now has an 11% unemployment rate. It is very hard for students to get the internships, and without them they are not able to get jobs. Is that what we want for our nation?
Career Pathways is coming down to all the states of our nation (they just have different names for it such as "smaller learning communities, magnet schools, school clusters, etc.") from the federal School-to-Work legislation passed in 1994 under President Clinton, along with Goals 2000 and the Workforce Investment Act and funded by HR6. It was reauthorized under President Bush with the passing of his education bill, HRI, 2001, or "No Child Left Behind." It is happening by special grants and funding. That is how the states are willing to accept it, because it comes with money attached. Local school boards are willing to accept it also because it comes with special funding.
Another concerning issue about the legislation is the unlimited power it grants to the governor over the career choices offered in his state and in each county. He and a non-elected board will determine what choices for careers will be best for your county and for your schools. What right does a governor have to do such a thing? Does he have a magic ball and can see into the future to know what industries and businesses will be for each county? This will create a planned economy and will destroy our freedoms to choose for ourselves and the opportunities to make our choices become a reality.
Let us just say no to the funding! We are on a big budget crunch in California with $25 billion in debt. Let us ask for the state and local school boards to use that funding for teacher’s salaries instead so we will not have to have any teachers laid off.
We urge you to take the accompanying petitions and gather signatures, then send them to Eagle Forum of California, PO Box 5335, Santa Rosa, CA 95402. We will make copies and send them to our local school board, but also to our county and state school boards and the governor’s office. Print this flyer and the petitions that can be down loaded from this website at the Career Path Petition Link. http://www.eagleforumofcalifornia.com/careerpath_petition.htm
If you have questions call (707) 539-8393.
For more information about Career Pathways or School to Work, we suggest you contact the web site of a group called the Maple River Education Coalition, or Mr.Ed.Co., consisting of a state senator, a college professor, and researcher, who have been researching this subject for many years and speaking about it. Their web site is www.EdWatch.org