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Maple River Education Coalition PAC
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June 5, 2001
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More on Career Tracking

More documentation showing that career tracking is occuring in Minnesota schools.

1. St. Paul's Education Blueprint: A Practical Guide for Redesigning Our Secondary Schools. This document is associated with the St. Paul Small Learning Communities plan.

Excerpts:

“The percentage of students participating in comprehensive, relevant work and community-based learning opportunities will grow to ...100 percent by 2005-06”

“Learning must also be more closely connected to industry standards, a variety of post-secondary options and the careers for which students are preparing.” [NOTE: If 100 percent of the students participate in work-based learning, students will be forced into a career track. Classes will involve students involuntarily who would not have chosen a career track.]

“Students will participate in structured career education starting in elementary school. Saint Paul Public Schools will have successfully implemented school-to-future initiatives when...all students participate in a variety of career exploration opportunities including job shadowing, mentorships, internships and service learning connected with their life plan [and when] students identify a career cluster through which their work on standards is made relevant, challenging and engaging.” [NOTE: All students would be required to choose a career cluster as the basis of their choice of standards.]

“Every student will be engaged in a small learning community by 2005-2006.”

“Additional strategies for making schools ‘feel smaller’ may include ...flexible scheduling to allow extended class periods for in-depth lessons and work-based learning…”

“Based on federal and state research on where job growth is anticipated, Saint Paul secondary schools will consider six career clusters as a focus of their small learning environments…Career clusters will help students focus in their preparation for careers and for life...” [NOTE: Choosing a small learning community requires choosing a career cluster from six pathways determined by state and federal government.]

2. Excerpts from two Caledonia school documents.

a. The Caledonia Argus, January, 2000:

“The system has gone from teacher-centered and time-based to student centered and outcome-based. Students plan their four year high school career beginning with registration in the eighth grade.”

b. A letter sent out by the high school principal to parents dated January 31, 2001 and received by parents the day after the above newsletter arrived:

“…there will be no changes made once the final schedule is in place. This will ensure the achievement of required standards. Each student will be making (or continuing) a four year plan to complete their (sic) standards with an eye to interests and careers.”

3. Excerpts from Together Owatonna Prospers (TOP) Team (Owatonna High School). TOP TEAM operates on STW grant money.

“TOP TEAM’s aim is to prepare students for technological careers through a school site and worksite learning process…TOP TEAM is a collaborative partnership between employers, secondary and post-secondary education, parents, and students which will provide a long term process to match the level of skills of the available workforce and the increased demand for greater skills to complete in a global marketplace.”

“TOP TEAM will implement a comprehensive K-Adult school-to-work transition system including experiences of mentorship, curriculum-embedded workplace learning, shadowing, and internship.”

“Upon completion of eighth grade, students will choose one of many career paths toward which they focus their future educational and work experiences…Eventually all students will be required to participate in at least one substantial experience during their junior and senior years.” [It should be noted that this document was from 1995. The goals stated above never materialized, and as a result a limited number of students actually choose a career path in this program today (it does still exist). Nevertheless, it does clearly indicate what were the intentions of this particular school.]

4. Testimony of a Fairmont, MN mother. Full text:

“It was around the first of the year when my son, Daren, commented that his English teacher, told him that career tests usually don’t mean anything in eighth grade. You can be whatever you want to be, she told him. She then proceeded to tell of a doctor who was told he should be a garbage man as a result of career test. That was the turning point in my 17-year old son’s high school career.

For me, suddenly all the pieces starting falling into place. I had no idea Daren had taken a career test in 8th grade and been told he should be a waiter or a grocery bagger. It was that year that Daren’s grades dropped significantly and we no longer saw A’s on his report card at all. He had been a straight A student until then. In 7th grade Daren was thinking of becoming a doctor and now in 8th grade he was told to bag groceries! He quit trying at school and didn’t care what classes he took.

We saw his grades fall to low B’s, C’s, D’s and he even failed a class that year. In 9th and 10th grades the grades continue to fall. In those years he brought home 5 D’s, 2 F’s and the rest C’s. This year in English class, his teacher told him he could be whatever he wanted to be. Her statement set Daren on the road to getting straight A’s again.

Needless to say I am very angry and very sick at heart about what happened to Daren’s high school years. The career testing played a huge part in destroying his dreams and goals and left him totally unmotivated to achieve anything in school.

As a parent I was left totally in the dark about this testing. If you were a student would you go home and tell your mom and dad you were tested and supposed to be a grocery bagger?

The schools may believe that career tests in 8th grade help them plan their classes over the next four years, but that is not true. The career test we speak of was given during technology class and the results were devastating to my son’s high school year career.

This year my 8th grade daughters were given the same test in the same required technology class! How many other kids are silently giving up on their dreams and quietly slipping into a programmed education so they will fill society’s labor needs? 8th grade is way too young for some inventory to be determining what career a child should or should not pursue. What they need is a good sound academic, liberal arts education -- the kind of education where they will be free to pursue their own dreams.”

Sue Scheppman
Fairmont, Minnesota
June 1, 2001

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