Virginia’s new education leader avoids the press and the public, but she is accessible to rightwing think tanks. She recently spoke at the American Engerprise Institute, where she outlined her goal for the state’s students: job readiness. Aimee Guidera comes from the Gates-funded Data Quality Campaign. She did not speak about preparing students for citizenship in a democracy. She did not speak about imbuing students with a love of learning. She focused only on meeting the needs of employers.
Virginia NPR reported on her appearance:
Virginia’s top education official says the state is “resting on our laurels” when it comes to educating public school students.
In a forum hosted by a conservative think tank last month, Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera said her top goal is preparing students for the job market.
“We are reorienting everything to how is education geared towards preparing people for the jobs of today and of tomorrow,” she said.
Guidera has kept a low profile since Gov. Glenn Youngkin named her to be Virginia’s education secretary in December. But in a forum hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, Guidera laid out her plans in more detail.
The former CEO of the Data Quality Campaign, an education reform group, pushed back on claims the administration was attempting to censor history. She said her team would push past “culture wars,” which Youngkin’s critics say were fermented by the governor.
Instead, she said she plans on focusing on meeting three “benchmarks”: creating students that are ready for “family-supporting jobs” and who are civically engaged, recruiting and retaining employers attracted by the commonwealth’s talent pool and growing the state economy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
While I agree that school should aid students in their careers, I see a much darker motivation in the modern shift to technical education. Gov. Lee in Tennessee is preaching from the same pulpit, so I assume that this is a national idea.
I have always encouraged my students to think of a job they might like and get training on that job. A student stopped by the other day who is being trained as a welder. He reminded me that I had suggested a trade to him when he was a 9th grader. I believe in what we used to call vocational education.
But who pays? Under present tax structure in our state. people who buy consumer items fund the education of students through mainly sales tax, which approaches 10% in Tennessee. Big box retail and industry, meanwhile, are given various tax breaks. When my old student gets a job, the industry he works for can give its shareholders a higher dividend because I pay for his training.
Does this seem right?
“And the modern counterparts of those wool workers might well ask further, what will happen to us if, like so many students, we go deep into debt to acquire the skills we’re told we need, only to learn that the economy no longer wants those skills?” “Sympathy for the Luddites” Krugman
Irrelevant is whether the Student pays for it as in the case of post secondary education or the State in the case of K-12 education. It is the ability to learn that we should be training for. Unless of course you are a greedy plutocrat looking for the State to provide what employers no longer do, train employees.
In terms of equality and Democracy automatons do not serve those needs.
Diane “We are reorienting everything to how is education geared towards preparing people for the jobs of today and of tomorrow,” she said. Your comment says it all. And she has apparently bought the “capitalism equates to government” idea, hook, line, and sinker.
She needs a huge AHA moment: I would ask: Isn’t anyone talking to her who knows what’s going on? CBK
love2teach I haven’t read that book but IF you are on target with your analysis, I’m glad to be informed that: “. . . the masses are inferior to the uber rich & therefore should & will just have to be happy with whatever the superior rich folks feel is appropriate to give them.”
I guess that since crime families are usually among the “uber rich,” . . .
Well . . . I guess that settles that. CBK
There already seems to be plenty of job ready people out there. However, the jobs don’t seem to be ready to pay them.
Aimee Guidera sounds like the perfect bureaucrat for a butt kissing slot under a Putin/Trump style dictatorship where the only decision maker is Putin or Trump, who wants everyone to do what they wants or be purged, murdered, or tossed in prison. If you can’t frame them for a crime, then create a law that fits. How about a law that sends gum chewers to prison for life. If they don’t chew gum find something else. All they have to do is find something the target does on a regular basis, like sleep at the wrong time or eat the wrong food, and make that illegal.
The Republican Party has been in the profitable business of turning out autocratic minions on an assembly line parroting the GOP’s party line as the party that lies and misleads the most moves forward with their apparent goals to shred the US Construction and then have Trump flush it down one of his gold plated toilets. Then they’ll shove anyone that doesn’t comply in a prison or an early grave by cutting off medical care that will only be awarded to those that comply with the kleptocratic autocracy that Russia already has.
I wonder if Guidera has taken the the same class Putin did on how to poising your enemies if nothing else works, or have their entire families executed when poison fails.
In 1990 I participated in the Charlotte seminar called “Workforce 2000.” My role in that conference was to facilitate conversation about what business people needed from high school graduates. Almost 100% of the business participants said that they needed critical and creative thinkers. Nary a word was said about specific job skills or basic literacy. What did the Charlotte Mecklenburg schools focus on? High stakes testing. My experience with business people who support the public schools is that unlike politicians, they know students need to be able to think on their feet, work with others, and include the community to create better product. Policy makers, particularly right leaning policy makers, don’t have a clue about preparing young people for work.
Paul Bonner It’s scary to think the “top dog” as education secretary would be so short sighted. The problem is that “critical and creative thinking” comes from MORE not LESS emphasis on an immersion in study and dialogue about history, social sciences, including POLITICAL SCIENCE, literature and the arts.
Those same fields, that apparently are so difficult to account for to politicians, also inform people in the great experiment of democracy who ultimately will choose to remain in one . . . or not.
If so, then at the very least education in a democracy should offer students a thorough understanding of WHY they would or would not choose either. Adapted for different ages, this should be a part of education from K-12.
In an authoritarian government, however, that all goes away. In today’s environment, with the likes of Trump, Marjorie, and the split-consciousnesses of many of our so-called leaders (e.g., Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, and Kevin McCarthy), it’s not hard to point the finger at the last half-century of all things educational. And NOW many of our oligarchs, like Koch, have taken up fostering public ignorance as their favorite pass time. CBK
ADDENDUM: As we speak, I’m seeing a report on the student debt crisis. (A wife has died and left her debt for the spouse to pay.)
This so-called “crisis” is just another indication of how important PUBLIC education is, and why, besides K-12, even a basic college education should be free . . . . where those who live in a democracy may want to be equipped to keep it that way. CBK
I think it’s an important point that she and Youngkin see schools as business training centers BUT focusing on that misses 2 key items: 1. It’s the same policy that Democrats offer. 2. Youngkin supposedly came to office ready to attack educators as CRT-delivery vectors. His actual policy leaves that behind.
Democrats claim they need to improve their messaging on education. I think they need to come up with a different policy first.
It’s worth re-reading Jennifer Berkshire’s analysis of the VA election. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/mcaufliffe-defeat-public-education/