It has become clear that the nation’s biggest corporations are avid supporters of the Common Core State Standards.
None has been more aggressive in supporting Common Core than Exxon Mobil.
Although normally you would expect to see ads from this company promoting the virtue of their products, they have invested large sums in promoting Common Core on television, YouTube, and news print.
In this discussion with Tom Brokaw, the CEO of Exxon Mobil says that we need CCSS so we can compare states, but that is what NAEP does.
Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil, wrote to Governor Corbett and top legislators in Pennsylvania, warning them to stop the delay on the Common Core.
I don’t understand this. I googled Exxon Mobil and Common Core, and got over 40,000 hits.
Has anyone seen a statement in which Exxon Mobil executives have shown any genuine knowledge of the Common Core standards? Have they read them? Do they know the research or are they just repeating talking points? Their ads spout cliches and generalities about higher standards and reaching higher.
Would Exxon Mobil executives please take the PARCC test or the Smarter Balanced Consortium test of Common Core and publish their scores?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Corporations just love 3rd world countries and they are doing everything they can to turn the US into one …
Spot on…
Agreed!
When I saw the commercial for the first time, I was flabbergasted. I commented to my husband, “What a waste of a lot of money. If Exxon would redirect every advertising dollar spent — both to create and produce the commercial, and to purchase media to air the commercial — to impoverished communities, I bet they could start to make a REAL difference. Wouldn’t that be money better spent?” Of course, it was a rhetorical question. Their commercials are just another reason for me to boycott Exxon and Mobil (I still have not recovered from Valdez).
I suspect it has little to do with educating America’s students, particularly those in the inner cities, but has much to do with ALEC and the goals of this power structure.
Ellen
Exxon Mobil has its largest US presence in my state, California. Not only does it not pay any state taxes for drilling and fracking, but it pays little for the spills and damage over decades, and this richest corporation in America gets huge “refunds” of taxpayer money from the government similar to the subsidies of the huge agra businesses.
In talking with Brokaw, King Rex claims that testing is vital for “outcomes”….guess he never spent much time nor thought about testing 7 year olds with iPads on unknown subject matter.
ALEC members all spout the party line.
Ellen Lubic
One Common Core standard, the easier to eliminate science curriculum teaching about climate change?
Hey, you might be on to something, Brooklyn mom.
I can’t understand Exxon’s interest in the Common Core, and none of the explanations I’ve read here are very compelling, at least not to me. But, hmmmm, making it easier to control science education, that might be worth their money.
The Common Core (CC) covers just English Language Arts and Math, not Science, History or Civics, nor Technology, Foreign Languages or any other content area. That’s one reason why all this talk about CC promoting college and career readiness for STEM and 21st Century global work skills is such a joke.
Maybe they want to keep it so that there are no Science standards and most workers are being trained to become minimally educated low-paid peons who won’t know better or need to know. It’s not necessary to control Science education when there is no focus on Science in schools and government is in your back pocket.
You haven’t seen the appendix, then, which covers literacy standards for “science, history and technical subjects.” Those of us who are not in ELA or Math are still expected to tow the CC line and have had to go to trainings as well.
Like it or not, CC “standards” for history, science, etc. are probably coming.
You’re right, Louisiana, I had not seen the Appendices. Thanks for mentioning them. I just read them and they are all about literacy in the content areas though.
If more standards are in the works, educators should really be scrambling to ensure teacher representation on the Work Teams that are actually writing the standards, including Early Childhood/Child Development specialists. Or are we contending with the same kind of covert process under leadership dominated by non-educators and testing companies as with the ELA and Math standards?
See http://WWW.asbj.com. American School Board Journal. Their newsletter ” The Last Word December 2913 details NBC’S 4TH annual Education Nation Summit in NTC. Produced by NBC with corporate partners including EXXON/MOBIL, PEARSON, UNIVERSITY OF PHOENIX and THE ROBINHOOD FOUNDATION.
URL. http://WWW.ASB.com/MainMenuCategory/Archives/2013/December/The-Last-Word-December-2013 aspx
No, thanks! I don’t want to regurgitate my lovely snowy and sunny Sunday morning brunch.
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
Ask yourselves why Arne Duncan has a symbiotic relationship with the Chamber of Commerce. He is also tied at the hip to the corporate owned mainstream media (MSM). He asked them both to defend and promote the Common Core last Spring. That would help to explain why big businesses like Exxon have responded in support –and use MSM to do so.
It’s because that’s how plutocracies function and continue to be enabled. Playing quid pro quo with the government = more power, $$$$$ and their own set of rules (which also means powerlessness, poverty and different rules for the rest of us.)
I agree. This is the corporate America doing the work of the governing elite in exchange for governance that favors corporate interests. Tied at the hip indeed.
Yup!
Exxon is on the ALEC corporate board:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC_Corporations
Exxon needs to keep their dipstick out of other people’s business and mine their own.
No doubt they “mine their own” in more ways than one.
Important article with lots of good links. “Millions in private money poured into Common Core promotion”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/12/10/millions-in-private-money-poured-into-common-core-promotion/
Their commercials have been puzzling. Must be where they are investing. I Jyst don’t know why.
I seem to remember that Bill Gates has an “interest” in Exxon, like he’s a very large shareholder or something. I will try and find the article I saw and post it here.
Gates’ foundation has 7,643,858 shares of Exxon valued at $657,678,000. You can see the full list here: http://www.insidermonkey.com/hedge-fund/bill+%26+melinda+gates+foundation+trust/421/
Nicely done.
BTW, Kim, you probably saw that info in the link that Diane posted earlier today to the Mother Jones article “The Gates Foundation’s Hypocritical Investments” located here: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/12/gates-foundations-24-most-egregious-investments
It isn’t necessarily that EXXON has a direct interest in CC. It’s that the leading institutions of the leaders of the ruling class have a game plan, which involves privatizing a lot of the public sphere and converting them into for-profit, global ventures. Which is why everywhere across the globe, the rulers are pursuing the same policies, the same standards, “harmonization” etc. Some part of the “High Cabal” (as Churchill called his higher-ups) wants CC; therefore the other members put money into it.
With businesses like Exxon responding to Duncan’s request that they support CC, we should be on the alert to note the high paid job that is awaiting Duncan after the next presidential election. (That is, IF he leaves the DoE, because he’s the darling of plutocrats from both sides of the aisle so he just might be asked to stay regardless of who’s elected.)
The US power structure is doing everything they can to destroy teaching as a profession. The wrecked economy, laws against disciplining students, packed innercity classrooms where six year olds are expected to read and write ‘at least a year above grade level, preferably two’ thanks to common core. The school-to-prison pipeline, deviously concealed as a civil right. Yep, that’ll do it.
I feel like Alice in Wonderland. Is Exxon the Mad Hatter or the Caterpillar on the Mushroom smoking dope? I know Rhee is the Queen shouting “Off With Their Heads” and the administers are the mouse hiding in the tea pot.
lol
Part 1
Exxon Mobil may be involved in “educational” endeavors, but its purpose is surely not education. The bottom line is that it’s about money.
Exxon Mobil is one of the corporate “reformers.” These “reformers” keep pushing all the “reforms” that have already been discredited. They want more “rigor” (the standards), more testing, and more accountability (though never for themselves). They keep reciting the myth that public education is “broken” and in “crisis,” and that their brand of “reform” is necessary to restore American “economic competitiveness.” They have, in fact, resurrected the theme of A Nation at Risk that, in essence, public schooling is a “threat” to national security. It’s a wonder that anyone takes their nonsense seriously. But big money can sway minds, and policies.
Let’s take the case of Exxon Mobil as an example. It’s a corporate behemoth, quite profitable. It’s also a tax scofflaw, a big polluter, a member and active participant in the right-wing shenanigans of ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), and a prolific funder of global warming and climate change denial.
Yet, in a letter to the governor of Pennsylvania in regard to the possible suspension of Common Core standards, the CEO of Exxon Mobil accused Common Core critics of spreading “misinformation.” He cited the nation’s “underperforming public education system.” And he insisted that Common Core is vital to keeping “the U.S economy competitive in the global marketplace.”
Two quick points:
The Sandia Report (1993) took apart the assertions of A Nation at Risk, concluding that (a) “business leaders surveyed are generally satisfied with the skill levels of their employees, and the problems that do exist do not appear to point to the k-12 education system as a root cause,” and (b) “The student performance data clearly indicate that today’s youth are achieving levels of education at least as high as any previous generation.”
2. The World Economic Forum ranks nations each year on economic competitiveness. The U.S. is typically a top-ranked country. But recently it’s slid toward the bottom of the top ten. The factors cited for the decline a by the WEF
weak corporate auditing and reporting standards, suspect corporate ethics, big deficits (brought on by Wall Street’s financial implosion) and unsustainable levels of debt. More recently, the WEF cited “a lack of macroeconomic stability” caused by decades of fiscal deficits and debt that “are likely to weigh heavily on the country’s future growth.” The economic policies that piled up all the debt were supported avidly by Exxon Mobil (and its corporate brethren).
They are now pointing the finger of blame for their own irresponsibility – and greed – at public education.
Part 2
It goes deeper. Exxon Mobil is one if the big corporate sponsors of (oxymoronic) Teach for America, which is no no friend of public schooling. It helps to fund the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI), dedicated to the (false) proposition that “The United States is losing its competitive edge in math and science while the rest of the world soars ahead.”
The NMSI board of directors includes Exxon Mobil VP for public and government affairs Ken Cohen, former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine (who says STEM education is vital to the “future of our economy”), and David Coleman (of the Common Core and the College Board). NMSI funders include the Gates Foundation, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, the Dell Foundation, the College Board, Boeing, JP Morgan Chase, and Exxon Mobil.
The NCSi claims, falsely, that there is a STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) “crisis” in the US. However, as Beryl Lieff Benderly reported recently in the Columbia Journalism Review (see: http://www.cjr.org/reports/what_scientist_shortage.php?page=all ):
“Leading experts on the STEM workforce, have said for years that the US produces ample numbers of excellent science students. In fact, according to the National Science Board’s authoritative publication Science and Engineering Indicators 2008, the country turns out three times as many STEM degrees as the economy can absorb into jobs related to their majors.”
But people like Bill Gates, and Norm Augustine. and Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson keep on pushing the STEM crisis myth. Why?
Benderly continues:
“Simply put, a desire for cheap, skilled labor, within the business world and academia, has fueled assertions—based on flimsy and distorted evidence—that American students lack the interest and ability to pursue careers in science and engineering, and has spurred policies that have flooded the market with foreign STEM workers. This has created a grim reality for the scientific and technical labor force: glutted job markets; few career jobs; low pay, long hours, and dismal job prospects for postdoctoral researchers in university labs; near indentured servitude for holders of temporary work visas.”
On its NMSI website tells us that “STEM education matters…our country’s student performance must improve in order for America to remain globally competitive. “ It says we need a lot more STEM college grads. And it misrepresents a decade of research in suggesting that the College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) program is necessary, because “The AP curriculum is the best indicator available of whether students are prepared for college-level work.” Statistical analysis however, concludes that among the factors contributing to the earning of a bachelor’s degree, Advanced Placement does not reach the “threshold level of significance.”
There’s an intricate connection of vested interests. And a web of lies.
You have to wonder. Have they no shame? And why do people believe this nonsense?
Well done, democracy! I think you ought to have your own blog.
Thank you, LG. I am considering doing that (a blog).
Super explanation! Thank you
Great, thank you.
And if you do begin a blog, please announce it here.
I am sure many of us would like to follow you!
Regarding the so called STEM shortage…
You are exactly correct.
I have quite a few un or under employed STEM degree holding friends and acquaintances.
I do not see how the shortage myth (and its twin, “everyone should have majored in STEM if they expected to get a job” myth ) persists against all evidence.
Thank you again for your posts.
That blog will be good reading, Democracy. Consider me a follower already.
Exxon Mobile came into the Boston Public Schools in about 2003, trying to destroy our contract by inserting merit pay through a project called the Massachusetts Math and Science Initiative (MMSI), a branch of the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI). And surprise! David Coleman is also a member of this board.
Despite its official-sounding name, this was a private project begun by Tom Luce who served in Bush’s cabinet as an under secretrary of education. Failing to win the governor’s race in Texas in 1990, he was inspired to form “two nonprofit ventures that led public schools across the United States to measure performance based on standardized tests.” One of the first iterations was called “Just for Kids”. An early innovator (read NCLB) – all good ideas come from Texas! Currently, he is now a “reformer”on the board of the Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE), Jeb!’s spawn.
The Mass Math and Science Initiative set up shop in my school (89% of our students were minorities). We already had an outstanding track record of well-prepared kids diligently working their way toward scores of 4 and 5 in a host of AP classes. But the goal was not to have kids do well, the goal was simply to get more kids to take AP classes. Why? Follow the money.
Although teachers had long taught AP courses successfully, no outsider consultants were involved. Suddenly, we were inundated with “verticle alignment” workshops, AP workbooks, CD’s, mandatory extra time for teacher AP training (including Saturdays) and cash payments to students taking the tests, as well as “merit pay” to AP teachers for high scores. In other words, what had been an in-house effort to take our most talented students a step forward toward distinguishing their academic records was co-opted to make bank for test fees, materials and consultants.
In the same time period, the College Board began to require that AP teachers write up and submit an AP curriculum to them for approval (un-reimbursed, of course), and AP training courses began to be required of teachers so that they would be “qualified” to teach those “endorsed” classes. More “ka-ching” at the cash register.
Remember that our faculty and students had a long track record of success in this arena. Under pressure from the school department, our numbers of students taking AP classes expanded exponentially, until nearly every student was enrolled in some AP class or another. So we met the goal of more kids, but of course our percentage of high scores fell off precipitously.
It so happened that my own kids were applying for college during this time period. I noticed that though AP had been on the lips of admissions officers of “elite” schools four years earlier for my older child, now there was little interest. Every admissions person I asked about this at competitive liberal arts colleges had the same answer – that credential has been devalued.
See:
http://www.nms.org/
http://www.nms.org/AboutNMSI/BoardofDirectors.aspx
http://www.dallasnews.com/business/columnists/robert-miller/20130402-odonnell-foundation-hires-tom-luce-dallas-attorney-and-education-advocate.ece
http://www.susanohanian.org/show_research.php?id=18
BTW, this ended in an arbitration on the issue of pay for performance, which the BTU won. What I most remember about the arbitration is the hubris with which the director of MMSI made bombastic claims that we were doomed educationally unless the yoke of the teachers’ union could be lifted from the students’ necks.
Thanks, Christine. Tom Luce is a real tool. Guess who cites him as though he were The Gospel? Jay Mathews, at The Post.
Jay Mathews has pushed AP relentlessly. Many, many students and parents –– not to mention school districts and college admissions folks –– have heeded his pandering.
His research base seems to consist of his own “analysis,” “research funded by the College Board (which invariably finds College Board products like the PSAT, the SAT, and AP to be stellar), and a 2004 propaganda piece by Tom Luce and Lee Thompson, “Do What Works.”
In “Do What Works,” Luce and Thompson accept at face value the inaccurate contents of “A Nation At Risk” (the Sandia Report undermined virtually everything in it). They wrote that “accountability” systems should be based on rewards and punishments, and that such systems provide a “promising framework, and federal legislation [NCLB] promotes this approach.”
Luce and Thompson called NCLB’s 100 percent proficiency requirement “bold and valuable” and “laudable” and “significant” and “clearly in sight.” Most knowledgeable people called it stupid and impossible.
Luce and Thompson wrote that “data clearly points to an effective means” to increase AP participation: “provide monetary rewards for students, teachers, and principals.”
This, by the way, not only flies in the face of almost all contemporary research on motivation and learning.
Luce is now hobnobbing with other “elites” at the National Math and Science Initiative. As I noted earlier, these folks want to blame public education (and teachers) for the travesty they’ve caused.
And they talk about being college ready? Statements made without the benefit of any research model, then No scholarly or peer reviewed articles to back up their talking points. Heaven help us, we are living in a Fox News world. Speak first and damn the truth if it contradicts your point.
The AP scourge is one f my Pet Peeves. High Schools are ranked by the percentage of students taking AP exams, but the actual score doesn’t matter. Not that many kids get a four or a five. Anything less than that is a waste of time. One teacher friend there was one plus, the AP students scored well on the Regents Exam.
@ Ellen” The College Board says that “research” shows that even those who take and “fail” an AP exam do better in college. Guess who funded the “research?” Yep, the College Board. It even has “research” showing that PSAT score predicts an AP score…but if one actually reads the “study,” it’s clear that the research mixes apples and coconuts.
Independent research doesn’t back up the College Board. Geiser (2007) notes, “systematic differences in student motivation, academic preparation, family background and high-school quality account for much of the observed difference in college outcomes between AP and non-AP students.” Klopfenstein and Thomas (2010) find that when these demographic characteristics are controlled for, the claims made for AP disappear.
As I’ve noted, David Coleman (of the Common Core and the National Math and Science Initiative) is now the head of the College Board. And the College Board is “all in” on Common Core, claiming that its products (PSAT, SAT, AP) are all “aligned” with Common Core.
Sadly, many administrators and educators (not to mention parents and students, and politicians) are buying the nonsense. And as long as they do, Common Core will continue to roll along.
Sorry, the idea that taking and failing an AP class gives the student a better handle on college courses is ludicrous, unless they mean it readies them to flunk other college classes. At the very least, it does psychological damage.
And how frustrating for both student and teacher to be forced to take or teach a class beyond ones current ability. That’s why college is higher education and not high school.
Mr. Tillerson is southern why doesn’t he look at those states that are Republician run and see how they refuse to put money into those school systems? Why is not talking about that? Maybe because he is part of that mind set and he is just running his mouth off? He is part of the problem not the solution.
“. . . so we can compare states. . .”
To what end???
This seemingly endless desire to make everything a comparison/competition is insane-especially in regard to the teaching and learning processes that are public education.
Competition only works when competitors want to compete. Some kids do not care. You cannot “make” kids be interested in going, o college, particularly when it is hard to get a decent job. This competition discourages not encourages. No place in the vast information is there a plan for those who don’t succeed. Shutting down schools won’t help. Drop out rates will increase. This is not about education.
I agree there too. Or the argument about so when a kid moves from one state to the other they are in the same place in school. Isn’t what makes each state unique that they are just that. . . unique.
I don’t really want the US to be a huge homogenized thing where all that differs is what kind if animals and plants once thrived before it was all commercialized by the global economy. What about fishing? What about syrup in Maine? Why does every US kid need to study the same thing at the same time? What a short novel. Ho hum. Do our kids really move from state to state in the middle of the year so much that EVERYONE needs to study the same thing at the and time?
Don’t like it. I don’t like that. When I moved to NC at she seven from New Orleans in October I was fine with leaving behind my weekly French classes and studying NC pirates and light houses. I don’t understand why some amount of regionalism can’t remain. It’s what makes folks charming. And interesting. And tied to their states. So they will want to be caretakers of it as adults. And creative stewards.
And what about folk music?
Joanna, valid point. But kids do move back and forth from the north to the south then back again. That’s why I’m not totally against the idea of a CC ( just not the current one). When a student moves from Georgia to Buffalo, NY, they shouldn’t be a year behind. They’d be even farther behind in the suburbs. It is an issue.
Ellen, “further” behind, not “farther.” :-). They would just be farther north if they moved from Georgia to Buffalo.
It seems to me the driving force behind a lot of this is still north vs south, rural vs urban, Puritan vs non.
In short, 1865 left a lot of questions still in the air.
Yes! Sometimes I wonder who really won the Civil War. So far, in the 21st century, it looks like the south.
Very well said, Joanna!
Ellen,
Are you saying that our Georgia Performance Standards (GPS..prior to CCSS) were not up the the NY standards?
I contend that the GPS was in many ways better than what I have seen of the CC so far.
I’m sure Georgia Standards are better than the CC, they are just different from those formerly used by NYS. In Buffalo, kids would move back and forth between family members, many who lived in the south. The standards did not match up. Of course local flavor is important, but there should be at least some common bond. Or perhaps the discrepancy between states was due more to the harmful effects of constant mobility and not due to the educational system.
Elle,
“perhaps the discrepancy between states was due more to the harmful effects of constant mobility and not due to the educational system.”
Yes, in my experience.
Over the years we have gotten quite a few northern kids who were a great deal behind in various ways.
Of course the real issue was SES of family and the serious issues that often accompanied the transient situation .
JoAnna – I think we’ve pinpointed the problem, it’s the solution that’s elusive.
That’s what I keep wondering. It’s the excuse that my district person keeps using for foisting a twice-yearly, unnecessary social studies standardized tests–to compare schools in the district. But who cares? And I could probably rank the schools without the test. Highest scorers? The wealthiest schools (duh!).
That’s because commonly used standardized tests measure family income better than anything else. And thats’s why colleges use the SAT and ACT as proxies for family income.
The ACT and the SAT are used for the purpose of “financial-aid leveraging.” Instead of using a $20,000 scholarship for one needy student, schools can break that amount into four $5,000 grants for wealthier students who score higher, and who will pay the rest of the tuition ($15,000 a year) and bring the school more cash. And those hifher SAT (or ACT) scores “will improve the school’s profile and thus its desirability.”
As Matthew Quirk wrote, “The ACT and the College Board don’t just sell hundreds of thousands of student profiles to schools; they also offer software and consulting services that can be used to set crude wealth and test-score cutoffs, to target or eliminate students before they apply…That students are rejected on the basis of income is one of the most closely held secrets in admissions; enrollment managers say the practice is far more prevalent than most schools let on.”
See: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/11/the-best-class-money-can-buy/4307/
Buffalo Public Schools have Say Yes which will pay for a college education at any SUNY or CUNY college, plus many others schools (including Harvard, Princeton, and Yale). Syracuse University and the University of Rochester are also on the list.
Now that cost is not an issue, how many children will redouble their efforts so they can attend one of these institutions of higher learning? It seems those who had always planned to be college bound are benefitting – but what about the others? We shall see.
Ok, now, to play devil’s advocate (for the sake of conversation) let’s let go of the politics or classification of Exxon for a minute.
I agree the state of public education because of RttT and CCSS is hopefully not a settling point—like we need to grow beyond this. BUT if you look at the nuts and bolts of working in an industry where they are finding workers unprepared, then we might want to at least listen to the overall gestalt of what they are advocating (for a second, pull back the curtain of what we don’t like about CCSS and imagine that Exxon wants American workers who are skilled and savvy because they want American workers to thrive).
I cannot get behind the notion that corporate America wants to eat America, even if it seems that way. I think corporate interests at large are profit driven and not without sin, but fellow Americans are fellow Americans and even though they have resorted to propaganda (same as many state governments, I might add), it might be wise to listen to WHY they like it. I do not believe Exxon wants zombies (like some assume Walmart does). They think CCSS will give them skilled workers. Let’s find out why they think that.
They’ve been brain washed by Rhee?
Maybe. But you were just pointing out the need for common standards.
Middle ground. Middle ground.
I so wish Rhee had not canceled that February face to face with Diane. We need that conversation to happen.
Some teachers need that script. They are not able to “go it alone”. And even those super creative people need some sort of anchor to keep them from going overboard. There has to be some “common ground”.
It’s not the concept – it’s the finished product and the implementation, plus the ridiculous high stakes assessments that I find objectionable. This whole process has been tainted and the goals impure. It could have been constructive, instead it is causing harm.
I was looking for the ideal and I got the crap.
@ Joanna: It’s a myth that American companies are finding workers “unprepared.” That’s true only in narrow segments of highly-skilled work, and that kind of work is not gushing with jobs.
As I pointed out earlier, the Sandia Report demolished the claims made in A Nation at Risk, whose central theme is now resurrected by the corporate “reformers.” The Sandia researchers concluded (in part) that “business leaders surveyed are generally satisfied with the skill levels of their employees, and the problems that do exist do not appear to point to the k-12 education system as a root cause.”
Too, there is no STEM “crisis.” And STEM is at the forefront of the “skills shortage” mythology. I’ve already noted why corporate American has jumped on the “reform” bandwagon: (1) to avoid taking any responsibility for the economic policies they’ve supported that have outsourced millions of jobs, eviscerated the American standard of living, piled up deficits and debt, and that broke the economy (requiring a huge taxpayer bailout), and (2) in the area of STEM, “a desire for cheap, skilled labor, within the business world and academia, has fueled assertions—based on flimsy and distorted evidence—that American students lack the interest and ability to pursue careers in science and engineering…”
A 2007 study by Lowell and Salzman found no STEM shortage (see: http://www.urban.org/publications/411562.html ). Indeed, Lowell and Salzman found that “the supply of S&E-qualified graduates is large and ranks among the best internationally. Further, the number of undergraduates completing S&E studies has grown, and the number of S&E graduates remains high by historical standards.” The “education system produces qualified graduates far in excess of demand.”
Many if not most corporate leaders are not forward-thinking “visionaries,” though plenty of them like to think they are. If they were, they’d be investing lots of money in training and development, and in creating and nurturing a well-cared for workforce (think of what the Waltons could do for their employees with their money). And they surely would not support trickle-down economic policies, which never seem to actually trickle down.
Exxon Mobil is a prime example. Its top priorities are “taxation, tax and tax.” Its CEO says this about its favorable tax treatment, which allows it to pay less percentage-wise than middle class citizens: “They’re not tax loopholes, they’re not subsidies, they’re just the tax code.” Guess who lobbies hard for that kind of tax code?
The following is a parody, but it’s likely much closer to the truth than anything Exxon Mobil tells us:
Beautiful.
Thank you!
Perhaps it is because they know that, although public schools are doing a good job of teaching children to read and write, they still need to improve. They may know that the general public tends to like their public schools. They may feel that Common Core is an improvement over current standards. I’m a teacher and I know that I feel they are better than the status quo. There is no insidious advantage that I can see to their support.
There are a whole bunch of reasons why Exxon would buy ads supporting the Common Cor(porat)e Standards:
– It’s good PR–it looks like they care about such a basic social good as education (something everyone can relate to).
– It probably doesn’t cost them anything. They can write off the cost of creating the ads through some creative accounting loophole. And that letter to Pennsylvania’s governor probably didn’t take long to compose. (“It feels so good to throw one’s weight around–easy stuff–especially when one of the major stockholders calls up and convinces me to support his latest important initiative…”)
– Supporting one of their signature initiatives curries favor with the administration–the branch of government in charge of granting drilling rights…
– It’s likely Exxon actually does support the Common Core–particularly for its data-mining and student tracking capacity and its potential to create a largely compliant workforce. Eventually schools will be assessing students early on and steering them toward specific careers as required by the larger society. That can only be a good thing for businesses like Exxon…
Because it admires other producers of toxic sludge that gums up ecosystems?
No one stays in their lane anymore.
This New Nonsense is on easy display all over this nation. We have bureaucrats telling doctors how to doctor, ex-video gamers advising the military, and guys like this dunderhead telling teachers what they’re supposed to do … and then reminding them that HE is the customer of education. Well, it seems that the customer is not always right after all.
This educational Ebenezer needs to get down on his knees and revisit his soul with five year olds … or young teens … or anyone else who lives in one of our schools. He’s become so detached and out of touch that children are now products. I recall what happens to societies when people are depersonalized by language …. it’s almost always a prelude to something very, very bad.
So, let’s try to help Rex. First, schools don’t exist as a sort of AAA proving ground so some of those kids can be drafted into your league of business. Lots aren’t interested in such an association. Many even loathe you … and the life you offer.
Schools are there to widen minds and foster creativity. Those are the attributes that will grow your business in the years ahead because when folks are on the job too long … like you, Rex … their brains turn to beads and static sets in.
You seem too comfortable to me. And you don’t seem to want anyone questioning your decisions … which says a great deal about your ego … and your lack of innovation.
You’ve earned no special say in how schools are run. Schools have a mission that is timeless … and nothing you insist upon will ever really change that. They will produce folks who are like minded, contra-minded … and even critical of what you do. Schools will produce competition for you … and perhaps even bring about your end … in the business sense.
And these people who will deliver day after day are kids now being tutored in creating new boundaries and new edges … and … are you ready for the, Rx? … they might even be rebels. Keep an eye out for them.
Denis Ian