By Aldo S. Bernardo, PhD

School-To-Work is a vast program with huge financial backing from the federal government devised primarily by Hillary Clinton and other advisors to the current administration. It is a plan to help mobilize "human resources" of the country by training new generations of students to constantly keep career goals in mind as they progress through their school years. This will assure a compliant workforce and a managed economy that will help the U.S. compete in the new world order and global economy. In order to accomplish this our educational system must be "reinvented" so as to allow all schools to participate in this "new paradigm."

Starting with Kindergarten, schools must "infuse" elements of this program into every subject. All elementary students will be required to begin a career plan that would eventually lead to a specific career option. The Regents diploma will require 3 units of work in this area for graduation. The N.Y. State Education Department has issued a series of booklets spelling out standards for the various courses of study. One of these is entitled LEARNING STANDARDS FOR CAREER DEVELOPMENT AND OCCUPATIONAL STUDIES.

The first standard deals with Career Development and reads as follows: "Students will be knowledgeable about the world of work, explore career options, and relate personal skills, aptitudes, and abilities to future career decisions." In other words, all students will be expected throughout their school years to connect whatever they are studying to possible careers that they may want to pursue. Thus, they may early in their English class "retell a story about how a school cafeteria employee uses mathematical and English language arts skills on the job." Or they may "explain why being able to tell time is important to an airline pilot, a football referee, or a teacher." This goes on throughout the intermediate grades until in their senior year they will be expected to "complete an internship which focuses on a particular career of interest (e.g. architect, electrician, or veterinarian) and develop a slide presentation to demonstrate how concepts from mathematics, science, and/or English language arts are applied in a particular career." All this just to complete Standard One.

Standards 2 and 3 continue along the same lines at advanced levels. By the 10th grade, students will have chosen Career Majors in which they must "acquire the career-specific technical knowledge/skills necessary to progress toward gainful employment, career advancement, and success in postsecondary programs." These career majors result from working with "Career Clusters" which are broad career areas of interest. Theses include Business/Information Systems, Health Services, Engineering/Technologies, Human and Public Services, Natural and Agricultural Sciences, Arts/Humanities. These clusters are further broken down into specific careers that fall under such categories as "Specialized" and "Experiential." In this final phase, students "participate effectively with coworkers, supervisors, suppliers, customers, and others in an employment experience related to their occupational cluster of study."

In order to achieve the standards, schools will be expected to form partnerships with local businesses, industries and other community agencies. In Broome and Tioga counties, which could be called rural, 18 school districts, over 10,000 students and more than 450 businesses are involved. This area proclaimed the month of February School-To-Careers Month, and has proudly announced that "The School-To-Careers Partnership of Broome and Tioga Counties offers career preparation as part of school through work site visits, job shadowing, youth apprenticeships, and many more exciting opportunities that ease the transition from school to college and careers.... Local educators, parents, students, employers and labor union representatives collaborate as partners to develop the systems that will best meet their unique community's needs." The partners seem not to realize that, once federal funds cease, they will have to assume all costs.

An elaborate bureaucracy has been developed to oversee this complicated program. To simplify, marching orders and funds derive from both the U.S. Departments of Education and Labor. These are funneled to State Governors, who in turn designate an appointed state agency for authority over the program. This state agency then works with appointed Local Workforce Boards who collaborate with local school-to-work partnerships to define the kind of job training appropriate for specific areas. The National Association of Governors has not only endorsed the program, but has formed a special unit, known as ACHIEVE, to oversee it. The political nature of the bureaucracy is quite clear.

What makes such a program dangerous? First, its elaborate nature unquestionably detracts from the time devoted to cognitive and academic studies. Second, by starting so early it can't help brainwash students along certain career objectives before they are ready. Third, since most of the career possibilities are restricted to the local business scene, students are made to focus on objectives that dangerously limit their horizons. Fourth, it takes a special kind of teacher to conduct a regular class and at the same time give serious consideration to how the subject relates to each student's career interests. Fifth, by the end of the senior year, a student may be dangerously frustrated because his choice of career was not what he really wanted. Sixth, members of the elaborate partnership participate in education decisions for which they are not trained.

The picture is further complicated by the students' need to earn new kinds of credentials essential for employment and for college admission. These include a Certificate of Initial Mastery by the 10th grade, a Certificate of Advanced Mastery by graduation, as well as portfolios detailing work and other experience, and various kinds of skill certificates and a graduation diploma. The ultimate goal of the program is clearly to provide "human resources" for the job market.