EdAction
Maple River Education Coalition PAC
105 Peavey Rd, St 116 
Chaska, MN  55318 
952-361-4931
http://www.EdAction.org
E-mail

May 9, 2001

Print Version

Decoding St. Paul’s “Education Blueprint”

St. Paul Public Schools recently published a document called, Education Blueprint: A Practical Guide for Redesigning our Secondary Schools,¹ (hereafter called the Blueprint). Here we decode that document.

In 1999, St. Paul got a new superintendent of public schools, Patricia Harvey. She came from the NCEE² (National Center for Education and the Economy) where she worked closely with its president, Marc Tucker.³ This is the same Marc Tucker who authored the infamous "Dear Hillary" Letter, and the same NCEE that figures prominently in all phases of the federal takeover and restructuring of education, employment, and the economy, now underway. With virtually no media coverage or public notice, the key legislation had already been passed at the federal level,⁴ with corresponding legislation quietly passed here in Minnesota. The public was in the dark.

Patricia Harvey was brought in to actualize the radical new system into Minnesota, with St. Paul as its centerpiece. Under her direction, a number of focus groups were held to "gather input" from the public, after which the St. Paul "Education Blueprint" was created and published. It lays out a plan effectively identical to the one given nearly a decade ago by the NCEE and Marc Tucker. The Blueprint displays many of the goals and tactics of the new education radicals. All the following quotes are from that document.

Small learning community:

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

The Blueprint repeatedly emphasizes the importance of creating a "small learning community" for the student. This concept comes (as most everything else about the new system) from the NCEE. (See it on the NCEE website.) They define it as a small group of students (said to be typically from 200 to 400, and not more than 600 students) who share many of the same classes (and perhaps teachers too) for years at a time –  thus forming a "community." But in most schools, the traditional grade level (say, the tenth grade class) already meets that definition! So why does the Blueprint call for a new structure?

Answer:  A "small learning community" is pleasant sounding verbiage used to restructure schools along vocational lines. It is political spin – ambiguous and evasive about its real intentions – used to sell a radical reform agenda.

In practice, a "small learning community" will correspond to a career cluster (or embryonic version of it in the lower grades). A school will be divided into a number of small learning communities, that cut across grade levels – each aligned with a specific career cluster. "Every student" will be in one of these. This division into "small learning communities" is one of the ways the government (through its appointed workforce boards, etc.) will railroad children into specified careers, even before the child consciously makes any decision about it.

Centralized economic planning:

"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"

The new system is centralized economic planning. "Federal and state" workforce committees will make projections of "where job growth is anticipated", then (together with various political considerations) schools and curricula are planned to narrowly educate our children for those jobs! The central planners will determine the "career clusters" offered in schools, and into which our children will be corralled. "Six career clusters" have already been specified for St. Paul. The above statement again hints at the real reason for the small learning communities — each one is to "focus" on a career cluster.

Mandatory work-based learning:

"The Saint Paul Public Schools is committed to ensuring growing percentages of student and teacher participation in work-based learning opportunities directly connected to classroom learning."

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

Work-based and community-based education (at a job-site) is to become mandatory, involving "100 percent" of students! The Blueprint refers to this as "participation" in an "opportunity," which misleadingly suggests that students have the option not to. On the contrary, it is a mandate, pure and simple.

"Senior [girl] got hands-on experience in media arts at an internship in the Walgreens photo department."

The Blueprint proudly displays a photo (see at right) of a schoolgirl at work, holding a roll of film and pushing buttons on an automated film processing machine. The caption boasts, "[She] got hands-on experience in media arts at an internship in the Walgreens photo department." Working at Walgreens instead of being in school! For most students, this is a tragedy in the making. This menial job is not a fit education, (and that film processing machine will be obsolete in a few years anyway).

This illustrates a key point of contention. The shift away from broad, knowledge-based education, makes students dependent on authorities for even the basics. It leaves students ill-prepared for life as free-citizens and voters. We say students ought not be forced into narrow job-training that will leave them (and our nation) susceptible to dependency and government control.

The typical highschool student (even one interested in "media arts") should be in school getting a rigorous, broad-based, knowledge-filled education, suitable for a lifetime of liberty and making one's own choices. Vocational training (especially work-based) should be un-typical, and always and only at the choice of parents and student. Not mandated.

Systematic narrowing of education toward job-skills

The following group of quotations document:

• A shift away from broad, knowledge-based, academic education, and toward a narrow focus on job-skills.
• A student's lifework plan and structured career education are to begin in elementary school (in kindergarten).
• Mandatory work-based "career exploration", including mandatory volunteerism or "service learning".
• The new system invades student/family privacy by requiring each student to supply a "comprehensive life plan", which will then be "considered" (by various bureaucrats and workforce boards) in "planning" that student's education.
• Students are to choose (or be corralled into) one of the government specified career clusters, through which the "standards" of their education will be specified and "made relevant".

"Career clusters will help students focus in their preparation for careers ..."

"Learning must also be more closely connected to industry standards, ... and the careers for which students are preparing."

"Students will participate in structured career education starting in elementary school."

"All students participate in a variety of career exploration opportunities including job shadowing, mentorships, internships and service learning connected with their life plan."

"Each student has a comprehensive life plan, which is considered in planning learning experiences."

"Students identify a career cluster through which their work on standards is made relevant ..."

Block scheduling

"Additional strategies for making schools 'feel smaller' may include: flexible scheduling to allow extended class periods for ... work-based learning"

See the following websites: The Case Against Block Scheduling The Block Scheduling House of Problems

Block scheduling is a national phenomenon driven from the federal level, and whose primary purpose is to allow easier scheduling of longer blocks of time away from school – at work-sites. Its effect is fundamentally anti-academic, pro-job-training. The Blueprint cynically suggests its purpose is to make schools "feel smaller."

Minimum expectations

"Standards will end the practice of holding different expectations for different students."

The only way to "end the practice of holding different expectations for different students" is to have minimum expectations — which is precisely what the new system does, and why it is such a tragedy. It reflects a key goal of the new system: one set of outcomes for all.  It intends to equalize outcomes by focusing on minimum competencies, and defining those as the standard of "success" by which educators will be judged. (See more on outcome-based education and its peculiar measure of success)

That is radically different from the traditional goal of education, which is to provide opportunities for students to become all they can be.

Predetermined consensus - the Delphi Technique

The Delphi Technique is a range of methods for manipulating committees, task forces, or other groups to give the appearance of group decision-making, when the outcome of the group process has been previously established by those who set up the group and orchestrate its activities. It is one of the common strategies of central planners and is used to give the appearance of local decision-making when none exists. (More) 

For example:

1. Hold input-gathering sessions "by invitation only", then invite predominantly only people with the proper leanings.
2. Shape the "responses", by asking only particular types of questions.
3. If a person voices opposition, there are a range of techniques for alienating, ostracizing, and effectively silencing that person. (For teachers and administrators who oppose the new system, this includes subtle threats to their job.)
4. Patiently collect input, then largely leave out (or misrepresent) the opposition's views from the published results.

Those techniques are being used here in Minnesota to sell the new system, and the Blueprint builds upon those illusions:

"On June 5 and 6, 2000, at Superintendent Patricia Harvey's request, Governor Jesse Ventura opened the governor's residence for a two-day conference. In attendance were local CEOs, representatives from higher education, Saint Paul Public Schools, and community leaders. The purpose of this meeting was to gain community perspectives on two fundamental questions:

• 'What knowledge and skills do our students need to be prepared?' and
• 'How should schools change to ensure all students gain needed knowledge and skills?'

Participants expressed many ideas about what today's students need to learn to achieve personal, academic and career goals. In addition, the community offered to help the Saint Paul school district address these issues.

On July 18, and through the summer and fall, this discussion was repeated several times with various community, student, and district employee groups. Each group added its input to our growing database of ideas on what students need to be better prepared for the future, and how schools should adapt to ensure student success."

The above language suggests the new system was designed through abundant, meaningful input from the community. But that is nonsense: (1) The public never gave permission or acceptance of this radical new system. On the contrary, they are still in the dark about its true nature. (2) The so-called "result" of all this community input — the Blueprint — happens to be identical to the system specified by Marc Tucker, the NCEE, (and Patricia Harvey) nearly ten years ago! The various meetings and focus groups are a farce, used for presenting a predetermined outcome as though the public came up with it.

Change the keywords

When people became aware of the radical School-to-Work agenda, they began to oppose it, and it started getting a bad name. In response, its proponents left its legislation entirely intact and simply changed its name!  For example, in year 2000, the Minnesota legislature passed a bill changing all its previous occurrences of the phrase "School-to-Work" to "Career and Technical", thus keeping its purpose and effect, but changing only the name. With this simple mischief, many legislators (mistakenly) proclaimed, "There is no School-to-Work in Minnesota!"

The Blueprint follows that same prescription, for the words "School-to-Work" occur nowhere in it. Instead, the Blueprint uses the words "School-to-Future". But the agenda, purpose, and effect, are identical!

Portfolios

"Students maintain a portfolio that reflects academic and applied skills within the context of their life plan."

"Portfolios  and exit interviews will be a graduation requirement for students in the class of 2005 and beyond."

Performance-based learning is a peculiar (and usually bad) teaching method mandated by the new system. Instead of direct classroom instruction, it relies on tasks and projects, that are often menial and performed in small groups (where group members tend to receive the same score). The "portfolio" is to contain results of these projects, usually in the form of subjective evaluations of the student's behavior. This is different from the traditional academic tests, which objectively measure the student's mastery and knowledge.

The emphasis on portfolios (especially as a "graduation requirement") further signals the shift away from academics and knowledge, and toward vocation and the performance of job-skills.

Mentor/Advocates

"Every student will have a mentor/advocate by the 2005-06 school year."

Students already have a guidance counselor. So why does the new system require "every" student to also have a mentor/advocate?  (1) It will further strain educational resources. (2) It is a further government takeover of the rights and duties of parents. (3) It signals a more complicated – government controlled – education system, where the student has an "advocate" to fight against the arbitrary restrictions of government control and regimented career clusters. (More about mentor/advocates and lifework plans.)

Footnotes

1    See also St. Paul's online version of the document: "St. Paul Public School Education Blueprint - A Practical Guide for Redesigning our Secondary Schools"  It appears to be similar (but not identical) to the printed version of the document likewise published by St. Paul Public Schools and analysed above.

2    For more information about Marc Tucker and the NCEE, see:

Also see the report by Diane Fessler: Origin of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) Original NCEE Board Members Clinton Administration Receives NCEE's Plan NCEE's Agenda NCEE's Family of Programs for Accomplishing the Agenda Overview of NCEE's System of Standards, Assessments and Certificates National Impact of the NCEE Programs and Funding How State Standards Become Linked to NCEE's New Standards

3     Patricia Harvey and Marc Tucker at the NCEE produced their "America's Choice" curriculum book, called "The Portraits of Learning", which (unknown to the Minnesota legislators and the public) was the origins of Minnesota's "Profiles of Learning".  They are effectively identical, right down to the names.

4    The radical new system was begun by the following key federal legislation:  Goals 2000, the School-to-Work (STW) Opportunities Act, and the Workforce Investment Act (WIA). (Note: Goals 2000 and STW have been likened to 'scaffolding', which is essential to setting up a new structure, but which itself is later removed once the new structure is firmly in place – these two federal laws operate the same way. So, do not be put off by claims that those two laws will be sunsetted – the structure they put in place is being continued through other legal means, having various other names.)

EdAction - 105 Peavey Rd, Ste 116, Chaska, MN  55318 
952-361-4931 - edaction@lakes.com - (c) EdAction - All rights reserved.