Legislative Update -

We are wrapping up the final few months of a biennial session - with a lame duck governor, a dysfunctional legislature, and no apparent leadership at the state level. It's not pretty.

On the legislative front, we have lots of bills that contain CTE language, with no hope that any of them will make it out of either the policy committees or fiscal committees. Sorry for the blunt analysis, but I'm not going to lie to you about the current state of affairs. With the Education Coalition, led by CTA, poised to kill any bill that will even begin to restore CTE in our middle or high schools, our only hope is to work through the budget process to ensure at least some toehold for our programs. There's no shortage of legislators who profess great support for Career Technical Education, but committee leaders - particularly in the Assembly - are simply not willing to buck the powerful interests who have controlled education policy over the past several decades. We continue to work within the system to ensure that some form of budget support remains in effect, but even those protections are increasingly threatened. Hopefully we'll have some good news to share with you later this spring.

They're still at it -

One of the worst bills in existence right now is A.B. 1223, which endorses the concept of "Linked Learning", which is the newly minted version of Multiple Pathways, which was a reincarnation of the old School-to-Career model, which was mercifully knocked in the head by the federal government after several years and several wasted billions of dollars. The Irvine Foundation and ConnectEd continue to market this bologna as if it were prime rib...

In response to several teachers that have asked for rebuttal information about ConnectEd and the folly of Linked Learning, I would suggest you adopt the following strategy:

In the most public of venues possible, ask your administrators, school board members, and others promoting Linked Learning as an educational model the following questions -

1. Would you support an educational program in mathematics that focuses entirely on learning the history of Algebra; the value of knowing how to do Algebra; examples of how Algebra might be used in the real world; and other theoretical aspects of Algebra - without ever asking students to actually do any Algebra?

2. Would you support an educational program in English Language Arts that focuses entirely on the history and development of the English language; the value of knowing how to write coherent sentences and paragraphs, examples of how writing skills might be useful in the real world; examples of well-written work done by others; and other theoretical aspects of English Language Arts - without ever asking students to actually write anything?

3. If the answer to either or both of the questions above is NO, then why in the world would anyone support using that identical approach to teaching Career Technical Education? Learning about math and English is not the same as actually learning how to solve Algebraic problems or how to write well. Those skills are learned by actively doing those things. The same is true for Career Technical Education, and we must ensure that those opportunities remain viable for all students. School-to-Career/Multiple Pathways/Linked Learning advocates would have us completely abandon effective and proven educational practices and programs - replacing actual skill acquisition with vague, theoretical, information-based "stuff" preferred by members of our university Academic Senates.

The posers, frauds, and charlatans promoting the teaching of CTE using the above methodology are interested only in accessing ROP, Partnership Academy, Carl Perkins and other CTE-related funds to further their own liberal arts, full-employment-for-college-professors interests. ConnectEd is a well-funded organization working on behalf of the Irvine Foundation to sell this School-to-Career, Multiple Pathways, Linked Learning modality as a "new" approach to education - when in fact it's simply a con job promoted by elitists interested in their own political and social causes. Do not be fooled!

Prop 1-D Fraud -

We continue to look for any examples of CTE construction funds being used improperly by districts. We have found several examples of Visual and Performing Arts facilities built with CTE funds being used exclusively by academic programs and teachers, and we would love to uncover even more of them! If your district received a Prop 1-D grant to build or modernize CTE programs in any instructional area, please take a few moments to verify that the facility continues to be used for CTE purposes. We have several legislators very interested in stopping this abuse. Let me know what you find!