JEFF BRYANT: How corporations are forcing their way into America’s public schools | Salon.com

How corporations are forcing their way into America’s public schools | Salon.com

How corporations are forcing their way into America’s public schools
A story unfolding in Virginia reveals how big corporations  want to control schools right down to the curriculum

In the expanding effort to privatize the nation's public education system, an ominous, less-understood strain of the movement is the corporate influence in Career and Technical Education (CTE) that is shaping the K-12 curriculum in local communities.

An apt case study of the growing corporate influence behind CTE is in Virginia, where many parents, teachers and local officials are worried that major corporations including Amazon, Ford and Cisco — rather than educators and local, democratic governance—are deciding what students learn in local schools.

CTE is a rebranding of what has been traditionally called vocational education or voc-ed, the practice of teaching career and workplace skills in an academic setting. While years ago, that may have included courses in woodworking, auto mechanics, or cosmetology, the new, improved version of CTE has greatly expanded course offerings to many more "high-demand" careers, especially in fields that require knowledge of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

Education policy advocates across the political spectrum, from Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to former First Lady Michelle Obama, have praised expansions of CTE programs in schools. Fast-tracking federal funds for CTE programs in schools has become the new bipartisan darling of education policy. CTE lobbyists and advocates have successfully pressed for expanded funding of their programs at federal and state levels. And a 2019 study by the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., found that since 2004, mentions of CTE in U.S. media outlets "have grown over tenfold, and they have doubled since 2012."

According to a September 2019 analysis from Brookings, "more than 7 million secondary school students and nearly 4 million postsecondary students were enrolled in CTE programming." And a CONTINUE READING: How corporations are forcing their way into America’s public schools | Salon.com