What’s with the Foundations?
Last spring, one of our state education officials explained to me in an email that our one-of-a-kind proficiency-based diploma mandate was critical for producing the types of graduates that businesses in Maine are desperate to find.
“My friend at Texas Instruments tells me that he has over 120 openings that they simply cannot fill,” he wrote to me.
This struck me as odd, because when we first moved to Maine, my husband – who has a computer science degree – had a difficult time finding a decent paying job. I had done a bunch of job searching for him, and never once saw that many openings for any company in Maine.
And so I looked it up to confirm. Sure enough, Texas Instruments had only two job openings posted – and one was for an unpaid internship.
“You might want to tell your friend that a good way to fill job openings is to actually advertise them,” I wrote back.
The myth of the useless high school diploma, of course, is the latest story being spun by corporate reformers, as they seek to remake our system into one based on the purported needs of the workforce. Out with grade-level cohorts led by experienced educators, they demand, and in with ill-defined “competencies,” online learning, digital badges, and growth-trajectories with big-red warning systems for students who fall off track.
There are a lot of things that disturb me about all of this, but one of the things that me troubles me the most is how orchestrated it all appears to be.
In response to my snarky reply, our state education official sent me a link to a document from Georgetown University’s Center on What’s with the Foundations? | Save Maine Schools: