Rebecca Kemble, a stringer for the Progressive, covered a legislative committee hearing in Madison, Wisconsin, where business groups lined up to complain that the schools were not meeting their needs. They complained that they could not find workers with the right set of skills. Despite high unemployment in the area, manufacturers say that they can’t find suitably trained workers. They had no data to back up what they said, just opinions.
The extraordinary thing that Kemble did was to look at the kind of engineering jobs that were going unfilled. As Kemble writes:
Some manufacturers also claim that they can’t fill high-skilled engineering positions, but they don’t mention the salaries, benefits, and terms of employment associated with those jobs. A search of mechanical engineering positions currently open in the Milwaukee metropolitan area requiring a minimum of a bachelor’s degree and five years of experience yielded the most results in the $30,000 – $50,000/year salary category. Some of those positions are offered on a contract or temporary basis, meaning no benefits.
Another alarming development:
Already this year Scott Walker has signed into law a measure that stacks the governing board of the Milwaukee Area Technical College with business owners, giving them control of program, curriculum, hiring, and firing decisions.
The manufacturers are working together with friendly legislators to develop “laws that use the public education system to orient, train, and track kids into the corporate working world at a young age. Rep. Farrow mentioned that he would like that tracking to begin in first grade. But Tim Sullivan, who appeared before the committee as Scott Walker’s recently appointed “Special Consultant for Business and Workforce Development,” has even more ambitious ideas: ‘In workforce development we say, you begin at birth and end at the grave.’”
There was constant teacher-bashing during the day-long session. One educator tried to remind the committee that the public schools have a duty to educate the citizenry. But they were hopelessly antagonistic to anything but workforce training to serve their own needs.
I bet they didn’t know that Wisconsin has the highest graduation rate of any state in the nation.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The very short answer is YES. America has been in frantic neo-con drive to dismantle democracy, disfranchise even bigger segments of the population and turn the country into an oligarchy – or Plutonomy as the Citi bank memo described the US back in 2005.
Business is perfect for this task. Corporations are unaccountable tyrannies, in their sphere the public have no say but rather they are obligated to have no transparent policies. Furthermore the criminal class – top earners and CEO’s – are mainly contrived of sociopaths, who are blind and lack empathy to anyone who is not themselves. A recent research found out that the richer people are the less incline they will be to be sympathetic or care for anyone: http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/money-brain-2012-7/
Wisconsin has been leading the way in a class warfare against working people, that targets mainly unions,or those who are the last obstacle for the criminal class on their way to push everyone into poverty and loot the public money while depriving it from basic services and human rights. Scott Walker promised the billionaire and tax evader Diane Hendricks that Wisconsin will be unions free thanks to his ‘Divide and conquer’ strategy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7v8f8jBrW8
Indeed one of the great “benefits” of handing public education into corporate hands will be their ability to manipulate the public in a far deeper and permanent way then ever – so far their only tool was propaganda via corporate media.The aim is to turn the public into obedient low wage workers who do not complaint, don’t know how to bargain, can’t represent itself and is ignorant ever to challenge its exploitation and the mass unjust accumulation of wealth in the hand of crony capitalists.Only to be alive enough to work and consume Michael Moore once said that the next generation – with business devastating and controlling schools, while college becomes too expensive – will be only educated enough – math and reading – to work at Walmart or at the register in McDonald’s.
Professor Noam Chomsky observed regarding the trends in education in oligarchic America:”There have been many measures taken to try to turn the educational system towards more control, more indoctrination, more vocational training, imposing a debt, which traps students and young people into a life of conformity”
For the criminal class and their crony politicians, the failing of public education is a great success.
You nailed it with this post!! Thanks!!
Thanks, Diane! Actually, they do know that WI has the highest grad rates in the country, but dismissed the fact by saying things like, “Grad rates are meaningless to employers. You can graduate from high school with less than a C average.” Also, “mere seat time in school is meaningless. We have to focus on competencies required by employers.”
Things are really, really awful here. Our state Department of Public Instruction bent over backwards to get the NCLB waiver, which is requiring us to spend over $10 million on consultants to develop totally meaningless “report cards” for every school in the state. Meanwhile, Walker’s 10% cuts to public schools are forcing some Districts to increase class sizes to nearly 50 kids, while others have fired all their custodial staff (many of whom do double duty as informal social workers), and some Districts have even turned to hiring prison labor for building and grounds maintenance, because Scott Walker & his cronies ALSO capped the amount of property tax local authorities can raise.
That’s all above and beyond the loss of collective bargaining rights for teachers and other school district employees represented by unions.
Thanks again for keeping your readers informed about what could be the future in their states.
Reblogged this on Synthesist Chronicles and commented:
A very important update from Diane Ravitch, a leader in educational policy.
I’ve been looking at every post here for over a month, reading quite a few of them word for word. For some reason this one packed a wallop. For all the outrages in places like New Orleans and Philadelphia and Chicago, where opportunism is the norm (yes, I have Rahm Emanuel and Bobby Jindal in mind),when Wisconsin, birthplace of several progressive movements, including the Republican Ripon Society, is poised to become an educational meat grinder straight out of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, it’s time to stop and take a breath. How in the world is it possible that a school like MATC could fall into the hands of a group of self-interested, personally entitled business people. The political crosscurrents swirling around this report are mindboggling. The downtown campus of MATC sits across the street from the Bradley Center where the Milwaukee Bucks, owned by Democratic Senator Herb Kohl, play their home games. The Bradley family itself is associated with rightwing politics.
The antics of Governor Scott Walker, former Milwaukee County administrator, are well known. Somehow he and his cronies have gained the upper hand, and their dream of serfdom for the Milwaukee’s youth seems within their grasp. Meanwhile, a few blocks away at the private Milwaukee School of Engineering, students continue to thrive, with apparent prospects for a decent job after graduation.
When will sanity return to Wisconsin’s education system, ensuring equality of opportunity to Milwaukee’s youth? Don’t hold your breath. Meanwhile, I recommend that you find a video clip of “Another Brick in the Wall.” Watch it over and over, and understand that that’s what Governor Walker and his pals want for Milwaukee County’s kids.
Wow! Young people used to be children; now they are just the future work force. Notice not the future leaders, the future workers. The role of leaders is already spoken for by the children of the wealthy. Do you suppose they refer to their children as future workers?
here is a story related to this. http://www.progressive.org/wis_committee_says_high_schools_need_to_serve_business.html
The latest installment of corporate control over WI public ed: http://www.progressive.org/cronyism_corruption_define_walker_reign.html