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These articles reflect the opinion of the author and are not endorsed by the Greater Milwaukee Green Party.

(Published in educationnews.org commentary March 10, 2005)

Vocational cuts defeat manufacturing needs
By Daniel Pryzbyla

With President Bush gutting vocational programs in his 2006 education budget, “Skilled worker shortage feared” blistered the front-page headline in Milwaukee’s daily newspaper this week. Worse yet, promoting only college degrees was also blamed.

For the past 2 years, skilled and unskilled trades people’s cars and trucks have parked on the street and parking spaces inside the fencing of the new Milwaukee public K-8 school being built across the street here in the central city. Heavy equipment operators, semi truck drivers, carpenters, electricians, welders, heating and boiler technicians, brick layers, painters, floor tile specialists, landscapers, steel workers, cement framers and finishers, plumbers, architects, engineers, roofers, sewer and water specialists, welders, pipe fitters, laborers in the respective trades and others have been busy trying to get the school ready for the 2005-06 school year. From architectural blueprints to reality. “Hey, teach,” a worker teased and smiled walking past the house one day. “You going to check the electrical system in the gym today?” Hmm. “Well, maybe. Is the switch marked ‘on’ and ‘off’ like a p! orch light?”

No doubt construction trades face similar problems filling skilled positions as do various manufacturing plants. Besides classroom work, many of the positions are determined by “on the job training” because of more automated or computerized operations. The front page Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper story covered the annual National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) gathering held at McCormick Place in Chicago. Over 1,000 companies were featured at the March 4-6 event, according to reporter Rick Barrett. John Engler, president of NAM and former Republican governor of Michigan, said that in a survey of 976 executives, 75 percent said their exports would remain at current levels or increase this year. “That’s encouraging, given that almost half the executives said that unfair trade practices had adversely affected their businesses,” said Engler. “But there are very few companies looking for l! ow skilled workers. That’s not where the demand is.”

Phyllis Eisen, vice-president of the Manufacturing Institute, the education component of NAM, was concerned “parents and teachers” were part of the blame, only promoting 4-year college degrees as the key to success, “even if those degrees are not well connected with current employment trends.” The association has launched a $2.5 million pilot program in Kansas City, MO, in which companies are promoting technical jobs, said Eisen. Similar programs are scheduled in Houston, TX and Omaha, NE later this year. “Manufacturers should try to get their message out to young people any way they can, and not rely on the schools to do it for them.”

Obviously Eisen is playing “possum” blaming “parents and teachers” for not promoting technical training. Since the inception of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind education act (NCLB), it’s been the corporate boardrooms and their privatization think tanks supported by NAM donors promoting college education goals for all public school students. NAM endorsed Bush for president. Among the 48 education programs he’s proposing to cut from the 2006 education budget is $9,300,000 for none other than the “Occupational and Employment Information” program. To throw more mustard on the face of NAM, Bush plans to also eliminate the $21,600,000 “Projects with Industry” program that “creates and expands job opportunities for individuals with disabilities.” Reasons given by the U.S. Department of Education for these cuts, and the total 48 programs are “for reallocation to more effective, higher priority act! ivities.” Eisen should be demanding instead that Education Secretary Margaret Spellings reinstate the programs and funding. For certain, there wouldn’t be arguments from “parents and teachers” for their efforts either.

If NAM and other industry moguls stopped playing footsies with their turncoats in the political trenches, they’d take on several other far more devastating cuts in their fraudulent hero’s 2006 education budget proposal: Tech-Prep education state grants, $105.8 million; Vocational Education National Programs, $11.8 million; Vocational Education State Grants, $1,194,300,000 and Federal Perkins Loans Cancellations, $66.1 million. In the January 23, 2005 issue of Education Week’s story on vocational cutbacks, reporter Sean Cavanagh paraphrased C. Todd Jones, Education Department associate director for the budget, “The administration has decided that its high school improvement plan would be a more effective strategy to encourage schools to prepare all students for college and the workforce.” Obviously Jones’s “workforce” is outside the NAM parameter of needs. The organization has a choice to voice i! ts objections at 2006 education budget hearings. If it doesn’t, don’t blame “parents and teachers” in public school districts for their politically-driven hypocrisy.

Headlines beamed, “The king of computer software Bill Gates received an honorary knighthood from the Queen of England.” BBC News reported March 2, 2005 that Gates, 48, the world’s wealthiest man, said it was “a great honor” to be recognized for his “business skills” and for his work on “poverty reduction.” The entrepreneur was handed an insignia to make him a “Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.” British Empire? Is Queen Elizabeth II still in denial? Anybody bother to tell her George W. is on a warpath to affirm the U.S. as the new “World Empire”? Gates’s “business skills” included challenging the U.S. Government’s attempt to declare Microsoft a capitalist monopoly. It’s still floating around in appeals after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case. In December 2004, Internetnews.co! m reported that a European court upheld a European Commission ruling that Microsoft must “unbundle” its Media Player from the Windows operating system and allow access to some of its applications programs for software companies. In its March 2004 ruling the Commission had fined Microsoft $613 million for abusing its “virtual monopoly,” uh, “business skills.”

Meantime, back in the states, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been one of the driving forces to get computers (and Microsoft Windows) into public schools. Since 1997 grants for computer technology have been flowing into public school districts like water over a dam. Although the flow of grants has been trickling recently, Bush’s 2006 budget proposal guts the entire $496,000,000 Educational Technology State Grants program. This nefarious cutback proposal will only widen the technology gaps that already exist between wealthier and poorer public school districts. Certainly Gates of Knighthood fame will appear at education hearings to denounce King Bush’s draconian technology funding cutbacks – especially since his award emphasized work on “poverty reduction.”

Bush’s “compassionate conservative” and “moral values” crowd pushing for more “faith-based” funding initiatives come at the expense of gutting many critical public education program funds for students and families living in poverty. “Gaining early awareness and readiness for undergraduate programs” – GEAR UP – is a $306.5 million grant program being cut, “designed to increase the number of low-income students who are prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education.” Two other programs, “TRIO Talent Search ($144.9 million) and TRIO Upward Bound ($312 million) are to “serve and assist low-income, first generation college students, and students with disabilities to progress through the academic pipeline from middle school to post baccalaureate programs.” Both programs are axed. “Even Start,” is the $225.1 million program to “help break the cycle of poverty and illiteracy by improving the e! ducational opportunities of the nation’s low-income families by integrating early childhood education, adult literacy or adult basic education, and parenting education into a unified family literacy program.” No more. Live with it.

Funding the $35.6 million “Arts in Education” program was DOA, “dead on arrival.” Described in a 1995 joint program between the Department of Education and National Endowment for the arts, “research identifies a range of cognitive capacities engaged in and nurtured by learning the arts, including focused perception, elaboration, problem solving, and elements of creative thinking – including fluency, originality and abstractness of thought.” Can’t you just see Bush mulling this over with Spellings? “But Margaret, those things can’t be measured for accountability on our high-stakes tests.”

“The budget focuses on key priorities of this department and of the president and on getting results,” said Spellings at a recent “press call” with reporters. She argued many of the programs the president wants to shut down have been proved ineffective or are too small to make much of a difference, wrote Erik W. Robelen in the February 16, 2005 Education Week. “I will tell you that 15 of those (48 programs) are $5 million or less. It’s hard to get a critical mass for a national program…with small amounts.” Yeah, why bother with the measly $4.9 million “School Dropout Prevention” program, the $3 million “Thurgood Marshall Legal Education Opportunity Program,” the $3 million “Women’s Educational Equity” program, and the 12 other important programs.

No law says current “small programs” funding must remain limited to fall beneath her artificial thresholds either. Of course, it was just an excuse anyway. 

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