How many times have you heard Arne Duncan or some corporate easer complain that they have to outsource jos because Americans lack the skills that their industry needs?
A new book by Wharton School of Professor Peter Capelli debunks th claim in his new book “Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs?”
Andrea Gabor reviews the book here. It sounds like a good read and sharp rebuke to those who continue to bash our public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Portland Press Herald ran an op-ed about this nonsense last week, and I used Professor Capelli’s book to refute their claims. Apparently, the paper was concerned enough to run an almost identical op-ed from another CEO less than a week later!
I noted to myself that the original op-ed seemed strangely close to the announcement by our Tea Party governor that he would be starting a charter school road show with a group of recently departed ALEC lobbyists. So, we seem to be witnessing a coordinated assault from the “skills gap” crowd, who originally used that canard to explain why the Federal Reserve’s scheme to prop up bank profits wasn’t improving the employment rate apply their bogus claims to bashing public schools.
I’ll make a prediction–We’ll soon see the phony skills gap used in combination with VAM to claim all public school teachers, and by implication the public schools, are failures, and therefore we need . . . wait for it . . . “choice”!
Of course, evidence makes no difference to these people–They think they are entitled to define reality. They know what they want and they’ll stop at nothing to get it; and they have the money to keep up the blizzard of bullshit until they win or are driven out of the public view.
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I’d like to ask him what is so wrong with being a delivery driver.
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Whoops, this is in response to LePage’s remarks in moosensquirrels’ post.
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But he is a delivery driver–for Jeb Bush.
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You can read and view the LePage road show here:
http://www.pressherald.com/news/Reforms-discussed-at-LePage-education-conference-touted-as-putting-students-first.html
The stomach-turning punch line:
Of course, LePage “curtailed” $185,000 from our District’s state education payments this year, forcing us to layoff personnel; and we’re looking at more cuts next year as well.
And Maine has far better school that Florida, but LePage is always chasing lesser-performing schools in order to bring charters–especially virtual charters–to Maine.
Now that’s commitment–to Jeb Bush.
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Yet that Group of Eight senators is looking at a plan to increase H1B visas, much to the relief of (and due to pressure from) major corporations, including Microsoft. Technically, an H1B visa is not “outsourcing”, but it’s tantamount to the same thing.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/senators-considering-plan-to-double-visas-for-high-tech-workers/
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