The National Pulse – Corporate America Continues to Treat Students as Widgets

In this article, found here, written for The National Pulse by Dr. Karen Effrem, the issues of corporations and education policy makers dehumanizing students are discussed. Specifically, the problems with treating the education system as primarily a job training program are brought to light.

This education-as-workforce-preparation approach has also led to the imposition of Common Core, competency-based/personalized learning with its machine-based skills training, and the massive data collection and social emotional/personality profiling via education technology occurring in many schools. As chronicled here and other places in detail, this is all very dangerous to academic achievement, privacy, freedom of conscience, and being able to choose one’s own destiny.

But most importantly, it is not the right or the function of corporations or the federal government to treat people like widgets for their own use. Donohue mentioned in his speech that the Chamber is involved in what he terms the “Talent Pipeline Management.” This is analogous to former Exxon Mobil CEO and major Common Core proponent Rex Tillerson’s description of a student as a “product at the end of that high school graduation…Now is that product in a form that we, the customer, can use it? Or is it defective, and we’re not interested?”

These businesses and organizations do not have the right or authority to treat our children as mere links in their labor supply chain and to manipulate sensitive data (including social emotional and personality data often collected without consent via murky algorithms) to slot and shunt people into jobs according to the desires of Big Business and Big Government. Joy Pullman at The Federalist explains just how egregious and dangerous to our children and country this crony control really is:

You can find the entire article here on The National Pulse’s website.

Truth in American Education – Is American Government Rejecting Capitalism & Embracing a Managed Economy?

Because this trend towards a managed economy is so concerning, Dr. Effrem’s article from Truth in American Education is re-posted here in its entirety.

While skilled workers are needed to build new infrastructure and for our expanding economy after the tax cuts, the reauthorization of the Carl Perkins Career and Technical Education (CTE) Act of 2006 tries to accomplish those goals via the wrong method – replacing capitalism with central planning. The new bill, called The Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act, HR 2353, just passed Congress on voice votes and signed yesterday.

The increasingly centralized federal education and workforce system, of which Perkins is a part, is multifaceted: the Every Student Succeeds Act, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), the proposed merger of the Departments of Labor and Education, Common Core for use with digital badges,  computerized  “personalized” learning (PL)/competency-based education (CBE), and older laws like No Child Left Behind, Goals 2000, and School to Work. 

This longstanding, unconstitutional federal interference in education and labor markets, picking winners and losers, has not improved and will not improve academic or economic outcomes. Even worse, Perkins is the latest example of racing away from capitalism to embrace principles of government/corporate control found in European social democracies and failed command-and-control economies littering the 20^th century.

The Perkins reauthorization contains multiple passages embracing central economic planning. The bill requires the use of “State, regional, or local labor market data to determine alignment of eligible recipients’ programs of study to the needs of the State, regional, or local economy, including in-demand industry sectors and occupations identified by the State board, and to align career and technical education with such needs…” What happened to individual students and free markets making those decisions? 

The “State board” refers to government-appointed bureaucrats, including corporate bigwigs, on state workforce boards set up under the Workforce Investment Act (predecessor to WIOA) signed by President Clinton. This scheme elevates the needs of business over student desires, while playing Carnac to predict economic trends. 

These boards were essential to Marc Tucker’s plan to centralize the entire U.S. education and workforce system, outlined in his now infamous 1992 letter to the Clintons. It was and remains Tucker’s plan to “to remold the entire American system” into “a seamless web that literally extends from cradle to grave and is the same system for everyone,” coordinated by “a system of labor market boards at the local, state and federal levels” where curriculum, including “national standards” and “job matching,” will be handled by counselors “accessing the integrated computer-based program.”

In 2001, former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and policy analyst Michael Chapman described key components of Tucker’s system implemented via three federal laws signed by Clinton, including: Continue reading »

The National Pulse: Insanity: After Repeated Failures, Bill Gates to Spend $1.7 Billion More on Education

Dr. Karen Effrem unfolds the finer points, dangers and efforts of the Gates’ education failures.

When our children make egregious mistakes that harm others and cost money, we try to explain to them why they are on the wrong path and then hope and pray that they see the error of their ways. Unfortunately, Gates and his ilk are insulated from reality by their vast fortunes. So while we fight to protect our children’s education and futures from the effects of Gates’ Common Core and data mining efforts, we must pray that he finds some other cause in which to meddle and that our officials at all levels learn that these grants come with all sorts of costly strings, cause many problems, and are a very dangerous addiction. We must stand strong, speak truth to power — and believe in miracles.

Insanity: After Repeated Failures, Bill Gates to Spend $1.7 Billion More on Education

The National Pulse: Will California Bureaucrats Approve School Textbooks Praising LGBT Agenda?

Dr. Karen Effrem extends a pressing warning to parents!

• This assault on innocent children, especially young ones — combined with Common Core, social emotional learning and data mining — is just one more reason parents ought to carefully consider how they educate their children. Regardless of the machinations of these various groups and government entities, parents must stand and protect their children against this tyranny of the mind imposed by a radical minority and out-of-control government. We owe them and the nation nothing less.
• This highly subjective statute is the latest in a long line of California laws that undermine parental rights and authority and wade deeply into identity group politics. This will base the study of history not on achievements, but on membership in some identity group, totally undermining the concept of E pluribus unum – “Out of many, one.”

Will California Bureaucrats Approve School Textbooks Praising LGBT Agenda?