HOW TO SPOT SCHOOL TO WORK IN KATY ISD:

In a cleverly manipulated scheme, the purveyors of School to Work (STW) (beginning with Hillary Clinton and Ira Magaziner who concocted the plan), have ensconced the idea of ALL students having vocational skills in every manner possible in our public schools.

The idea is, once again, to not only create a vocational program for "some" students but to create a vocational program for "all" students.

The public schools, and Katy ISD is definitely among them, see their job as being certain that students can go straight to work after they graduate from high school doing "something!"

The term "career education" is the catch-all phrase.

If your child is enrolled in Katy ISD he/she is used to taking the TAKS test which stands for Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.  I'm sure you thought your child was taking a test over math and English and history, but you are wrong.

Actually those academic items are included, but your child is also having his "skills" assessed.  In other words, the test is designed to judge whether your child has acquired enough vocational skills to get a job upon graduation.

The TAKS are designed to see if the School to Work agenda has "worked" on your child!

Scary isn't it?

I'm guessing no parent sent his five year old off to school so that he could gain "skills."  Parents want their children to have an academic education.  They do not understand the gaining skills part.

The thing is, corporations and employers generally, have suggested for a long time that they need skilled labor for their companies and factories.  In order to meet that need, bad thinkers like Clinton and Magaziner decided that offering up vocational course work for every child was just what the doctor ordered.  If one has watched the bumbling efforts of Hillary Clinton over the last year (2015-2016), one knows how little she understands about what employers want!  Employers DO want a skilled labor force, but first of all, if they have an ounce of intelligence themselves, they want workers who are educated at least to the point of being able to take the normal academic coursework that all Americans have taken for hundreds of years.  They want them to be able to write, read, do math and speak well.  THEN, and only then, do they want them to acquire specific skills if they have chosen to enter the vocational work field.  In the past, employers were able to train (and note that this is not educate, but train) their hired workers to do the necessary work.  It didn't take long to train them if they had received the proper public school education.  The problem now is that the public schools, because they've gone off in every imaginable direction, do not properly educate our children. They socialize them, they manipulate their belief systems, they fail to challenge them academically, they do not even teach them to write cursively, they teach them computer skills that are outdated, and they do whatever they can to make it difficult for them to enter the workforce at a competitive level.  Thus, employers have gone to foreign countries to find suitable workers. That being the case, how valuable does anyone think "vocational education" at your local school district is worth?

Does what they are doing make sense to you?

And yet, parents, by not voting, by not paying attention, and by not caring, allow the public schools to continue to be less than they could be.

School to Work was a devious plan, and the planners knew that it was devious. The plan was devised by not only Clinton and Magaziner at the national level, but in Texas we have similar thinking individuals like Mike Moses (he brings us superintendents to hire in Katy ISD), Bob Thompson, (he has also brought us superintendents (Merrell and Frailey), Skip Meno, Jack Christie, most of the state and local School Board members at the time and ever since, and others implementing this debacle.  They KNEW that they were installing a scheme to dumb down our children.

How do they sleep at night knowing what they have done to so many children? All of these people have grown wealthy doing the things they do to dumb down our populace.

And no, I don't think that working in the vocational arena is bad or wrong.  What is bad and wrong is forcing children to be less than they could be by forcing them, through all kinds of manipulation and by offering a poor academic course, to pursue a vocational track when they could have done so much more with their lives! I know of no parent of a five year old child who bought a house, moved to Katy "for the schools" and wants their child to grow up and be a car mechanic or a beautician.  Most parents have higher aspirations for their children than that.

KISD constantly harps on the vocational aspect of the education they are delivering, and they try to get students to acquire vocational skills at every opportunity.  The TAKS and the TEKS are the state's way of determining how successful KISD is in manipulating your child.

The following is an article from March 17, 1993.  It was written by Sandra Meineke, the "This Week Correspondent" at the time, for the Houston Chronicle.

FORUM OFFERS GLIMPSE OF VOCATIONAL CAREERS

New career and applied technology programs being introduced in the Katy Independent School District for the 1993-94 school year will be unveiled Thursday at a public forum beginning at 7 P.M. at the Arthur Miller Career and Applied  Technology Center, 1734 Katyland Drive.

The forum, which is open to everyone in the community, "gives our vocational personnel an opportunity to discuss our career and applied technology program with members of the business community, students, and parents." said Bonny Green, director of vocational education.  "After a brief presentation about Miller Career Center's new program, we will open the floor to input from the business community and from parents.  This is basically an opportunity for us to hear from the community," she said.

One of the new programs for this fall that will be discussed is a dual-credit agreement between KISD and Houston Community College that will make Miller Vocational School the major satellite campus for HCC-Northwest College.  "Beginning with the 1993-94 school year, students may enroll in a six-year plan and receive community college credits toward an associate degree while taking high school courses at Miller."  Green said.  "this idea came from the input we received from previous public forums." [I know of no public forum where parents en masse demanded a vocational program for Katy ISD! MM] 

The agreement with HCC is a component of the Tech-Prep Degree Program which has become a national education reform movement and which is being integrated into KISD through the Career and Applied Technology Program.

The Tech-Prep Degree Program is an educational program that links the high school curriculum with the curriculum of the two-year community or technical college to produce a skilled technician capable of high productivity in today's workforce.  A comprehensive tech-prep program should parallel the college-prep program in high schools, said Green.  A student should be able to move from one program to another with little or no loss of time or credit.

The tech-prep program teaches academics by applied methodology. These academic courses use real-life examples and emphasize hands-on learning activities.  Liberal arts courses are included in the program, as well as courses in mathematics, science, communications and technology.  The curriculum is cooperatively developed by members of the secondary and higher education staffs, and business and industry representatives. [Ask yourself, when did we decide that "representatives from business and industry" should devise the coursework for public school students? MM]

Robert Fait, career counselor at Miller Career Center, said "Vocational schools are changing every year. Tech-prep is a partnership between the high school and the two-year college where students earn college credit for courses taken while still in high school.  Through tech-prep we are trying to provide students with the skills to become employable in a constantly changing job market.

There will also be changes in the co-operative education program for 1993-94.  Through co-operative education, students receive paid, on-the-job training for a minimum of 15 hours a week at a business which has established a partnership with KISD.  Joining co-op programs already in effect in agriculture, business, home economics and marketing will be a new co-op program in health occupations education.  Students enrolled in this program will observe and give assistance to professional health care personnel in the various departments at Katy Medical Center. [At the time of this implementation, I asked, as a school board member, which businesses had "partnered" with KISD.  They named two.  Can't remember one of them, but the other was the Hyatt Hotel.  I asked what our students would be doing there.  Bottom line, they would be learning to make the beds and clean the rooms.  I was appalled and said so. MM]

On-the-job training courses offered at the Miller Career Center are cosmetology, auto technology, business computer applications and computer maintenance technician.  "With the exception of cosmetology, which must be offered in a two-period block in 1993," said Fait,  "We will have English classes on the Miller campus next year for students who have had difficulty in scheduling the three-period block of time that was previously required to attend Miller."

Through the flexible schedule program, students will have the opportunity to take a specialized career and applied technology course for two periods, and a required English course for one period on the Miller campus, while still being able to take three additional courses at their home campus.

In an article on restructuring education from the October 1992 Vocational Education Journal, William E. Brock, chairman of the (Labor) Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills said, "The most effective way to educate our youth is to teach them in the context of real-life-situations and real problems."

By continually upgrading and changing the courses it offers, Miller Career and Applied Technology Center is trying through both head and hand knowledge to prepare KISD students for entering the marketplace directly out of high school either as a permanent occupation or as a means of earning money to provide for higher education.

[That last bit about using this "education" to "help earn money to provide for higher education" was the devious hook by which they justified to the liberal arts education supporters that this plan would not undermine that aspect of a public education.  Of course, like all the rest of it, it was a lie and a cover-up. A liberal arts education allows one to learn for life; a vocational education teaches skills that will probably be outdated in three years or less. MM]

Two points of interest come to mind.  Robert Fait was a very nice man, and I'm always happy to see him.  However, when one of my sons wanted to apply to Rice University, Mr. Fait said to him, "You don't want to apply to that college. Your parents don't have enough money to send you there."  Of course I did not hear him say that, but my kids never lied to me about things like that, so I believe he said it.  It was just his way of steering kids away from good colleges. And yes, we could afford it, Mr. Fait, and yes we even paid all of our son's way without a dime from Rice and paid for his brother to go there at the same time one of those years when they were both enrolled at Rice.

The other vignette happened when I got a call about four or five years ago from Bonny Green, the person who implemented this scheme in Katy ISD (and who is quoted in the article above).  She had left KISD in 2010 and had moved to Oklahoma when her husband was transferred.  She said she just called to tell me that she has realized that I was right to object to the School to Work initiative! To have her call me and tell me that was very gratifying, and I very much appreciated her making that effort. Considering all the questioning I did of what she was doing and the objections that I raised, I thought she was very magnanimous to admit that I was was right and she was wrong. Not many people would do that.