Washington Parents for Academic Excellence
Mukilteo, Washington

School-to-Work Links

 

(Webmaster's note and warning:  The information and facts found in the links below can be difficult for the average contemporary American to accept.  A glimpse into the real truth about what is actually happening right now in American schools can easily cause eyes to glaze over and denial to set in.  Do not let this to happen to you.  Several links take you to government sites containing the actual laws and documents, which few people have ever read, while others contain factual background information that federal and state government, as well as your local school board and administration, does not want you to know.  This is real, folks.  The truth is out there and readily available.  Ignore it at your peril.)
Very few people are aware of the extent to which the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 , quietly being implemented today across the country, seeks to control our children’s lives from cradle to grave and forever change the America envisioned by the drafters of the Constitution.

This is not merely another program of federal aid.  When STW is fully implemented, all children’s careers can/will be chosen for them by Workforce Development Boards and federal agencies no later than the 8th grade; that is all children, including those in home and private schools.  Gone will be the college prep track and the high school diploma, the latter replaced by a work permit ("Certificate of Mastery").  The school-to-work system will require all students to receive at least three years of vocational training, two in high school and one in a community college in order to qualify for work certificates.  Our schools are already being restructured to focus on changing attitudes and social behavior, at the expense of the teaching of knowledge based learning.

STW is essentially the system that was used in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe.  STW is neither optional, nor voluntary;  compulsory training to meet state workforce quotas is a form of slavery.  STW infringes on the sovereignty of the individual and the family and, as part of a national human resource development system, cuts local school boards and state legislators almost completely out of the decision-making loop.  Communities are being told that these changes are the result of "research" and discussion by local "committees" comprised in part of parents, with the pronouncement that the local district is implementing "progressive" methods of education.

The implication that these "new" concepts originated locally, or even at the state level, is a lie.  Local control of education has been usurped by the federal government, in cooperation with UNESCO and our nation's huge tax exempt foundations, and is being administered through its 50 state proxies, in violation of the U.S. Constitution.  The "No Child Left Behind" legislation signed into law by President Bush in 2002 incorporates all of the provisions of STW and makes "official" the illegitimate federal takeover of American education.  The function of local district school boards is being reduced to little more than that of a messenger boy who has been given instructions to maintain the facade of "local control".   Read on....


The Mukilteo (Washington) School District has joined in and is now on the fast track into the STW/Goals2000 abyss being created by the international and federal agenda, as evidenced in part by the District's recent announcement of the "reinvention" of the middle and secondary schools ( Mukilteo Beacon, 5/9/01 ) and the introduction of "career acadamies", facilitated in part by Gates Foundation money.  The initial implementation is beginning at Mariner High School in Everett, where few, if any, parents realize what is really being planned for their children.  Just as the original STW legislation has been "officially" allowed to "sunset" coincident with its growing visibilty and the increasing public awareness of its ominous implications (while all its provisions were quietly rolled over into NCLB), Washington State state has attempted to sidestep the (slowly) growing spectre of the "Certificate of Mastery" work permit by renaming it the "Certificate of Achievement."  An interview with Charlotte Iserbyt , author of the the seminal compilation of incriminating documentation entitled "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America", is a must read for anyone only now awakening to the true direction of public education in the United States.
 
National School-to-Work information:
 

While the Federal School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 (Public Law 103-229) has technically "sunsetted", all its facets are embedded in Goals 2000 and the 2002 Bush/Kennedy "No Child Left Behind" legislation.  The DOE's  Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE) and Employment and Training Administration (ETA) sites contain workforce and education information.  Watch for a merger of the Departments of Education and Labor under the next administration (2004 elections), regardless of which party controls the legislative and executive branches.

Goals 2000 (Public Law 103-227)

School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 (Public Law 103-239)

Workforce Investment Act (Public Law 105-220)

No Child Left Behind (Public Law 107-110)

Washington State School-to-Work information:

1.  Washington State's Workforce Training and Education Coordination Board

2.  Washington State's "Operations Plan" for the Workforce Investment Act

3.  Washington State's School-to-Work Transition Initiative

4.  Washington State's High Skills, High Wages report

5.  Washington State's Work Based Learning (WBL)
 

  

To request copies of Washington State's STW grant and supporting documents:

Write, fax or email a request for the following:

1.  'High Skills, High Wages' Washington's Comprehensive Plan for Workforce Training and Education.

2.  'Working and Learning Together - Creating Washington's Comprehensive School-to-Work Transition System', Washington State's School-to-Work grant application to the federal government.

3.  A copy of all quarterly reports to the federal government as required by the School-to-Work Opportunity Act of 1994.

...to:

Workforce Training and
Education Coordinating Board
Building 17, Airdustrial Park
P.O. Box 43105
Olympia, WA 98504-3105
Voice:(360)753-5662
Fax: (360)586-5862
Internet: wtecb@wtb.wa.gov
 

Last, but far from irrelevant,  Mathematically Correct's   huge compilation of new-new math links (only peripherally related to STW) is a real eye opener.

 

There are literally thousands of sources on the Web for information on STW and fuzzy math, but you can probably eventually get to most of them through these few portals.


 

- Essential reading -

In addition, these books pretty much tell the story of the insidious government education agenda:

"Angry Parents, Failing Schools" , by Elaine McEwan , Harold Shaw Pub., 1998, ISBN: 0877880190
An easily read expose of public education, with sections on whole language and fuzzy math.

"Cloning of the American Mind: Eradicating Morality Through Education"
by B. K. Eakman , Huntington House, 1998, ISBN 1-56384-147-9
An incredible must-read on how the educational bureaucrats are ruining our kids, by the author of  Educating for the 'New World Order' (1991).  She exposes the behind-the-scenes workings of the “Illiteracy Cartel”, which derives its power from those who stand to benefit financially and politically from ignorance and educational malpractice, and the social engineering and total control over our children that is the primary goal of America’s public education system today.

"The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America - A Chronological Paper Trail"
by Charlotte Iserbyt-Thomson , Conscience Press, 1999, ISBN 0966707109
This stunning book argues that the academic meltdown in our public education system is intentional. It asserts that change agents have been working at the Education Department to change curriculum, not to improve teaching but to promote a socialist agenda. Their role is to create schools which will mold obedient citizens who no longer have the knowledge and skills to improve their lot in life, but are dependent on government/multi-national companies' guidance to survive. The system will create imprisoned citizens that will be managed from cradle to grave to serve the needs of the state's managed economy.  The entire book is immediately downloadable in Adobe PDF format through the author's website.

"The Underground History of American Education"
by John Taylor Gatto, Oxford Village Press, 2000/2001, ISBN 0-945-70004-0
After 30 years of junior high school teaching and extensive research on the origins and development of the common school/public school movement, John Taylor Gatto has framed the big picture for anyone brave enough to look squarely at the truth. Underground History exposes not only where we are, that is, the real state of American schools from a bonafide insider, but how we got here. He exposes the interest groups with a huge stake in continuing the most nefarious experiment in social history--the mass, institutionalized indoctrination of children and the substitution of parents. Says Gatto, "Government schooling kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents."

"The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them" , by E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Doubleday, 1996,
ISBN: 0385484577
The author of Cultural Literacy (1988) offers a powerful, compelling, and unassailable argument for reforming America's schooling methods and ideas.  He reveals how, in disdaining content-based curricula for abstract--and discredited--theories of how a child learns, the ideas uniformly taught by our schools  have done terrible harm to America's students. Instead of preparing our children for the highly competitive, information-based economy in which we now live, our school practices have severely curtailed their ability, and desire, to learn."

"America's Thirty Years War: Who is Winning?" , by Dr. Balint Vazsonyi (1936-2003), Regnery Pub., 1998,
ISBN: 0895263548
"Every day," Balint Vazsonyi cautions, "serious persons tell us that 'communism has lost,' 'socialism
has collapsed,' 'conservatism is taking over America.' Each of these is an inaccurate assumption, or the
product of wishful thinking." Despite the collapse of the Soviet bloc, he argues, democracy's victory is
unclear, because since the 1960s Americans have increasingly abandoned the basic principles--"the
rule of law, individual rights, guaranteed property, and a common American identity"--on which the
United States was founded.  (Webmaster's note: Dr. Vazsonyi died of cancer in 2003)

           These books are usually available in local libraries, or on the Web.
 
 

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                Mukilteo, Washington