Is Education Reform Punk Rock? | EduShyster

Is Education Reform Punk Rock? | EduShyster:



Is Education Reform Punk Rock?





 Do real punk rockers prefer school choice? Not when it’s the major label or the big rock manager offering *choice.*

By Hugo Burnham
Education is the new punk rock. So says the t-shirt sold by my friend, an old punk rock drummer named Martin Atkins who has found, forced and finagled his way into higher education in the USA. As have I. *Higher* for us these days means education beyond K–12.

Martin played with PIL (that’s his Mickey Mouse watch sound on Metal Box’s immense *Four Enclosed Walls*), Ministry, Killing Joke, Pigface, and others. He wasn’t in NIN, but he was in a NIN video. (Just as I wasn’t inPIL…but I was on the Top of the Pops TV show with them.) And he runs a record label that has released a shitload of records. And he owns a studio. And he’s written two books. He is now teaching at the SAE Institute in Chicago. I’m exhausted just writing this—he’s a bloody machine. Oh, and just got his Bachelor’s Degree. At 55, yet! I got my Bachelor’s Degree at the *right* time, you know, when I was young. Martin is onto his Master’s next (ha ha…got mine already!). And we are both fathers. Alright then, so who’s the real punk here?!

Mind the bollocks
Which leads us to the obvious question: what is punk rock? And what does it have to do with public education? Almost everything you’ve read defining punk is bollocks. Mind them. And ignore anyone over the age of 25 pontificating about what is or is not punk rock. (That should reduce your online reading by about 78%…) The only real punk who’s still punk is Joe Strummer. And maybe Charlie Harper.

So what right do we, as post-punk college professors (hilarious, really, isn’t it?! I still cannot believe that I am 14 years deep into what my Mum calls *A proper job—finally*), and bloody foreigners to boot, have to weigh in on the maelstrom that is the public school debate in these United States? Whether clutching Green Cards or US passports, we’ve both lived here for so many years and guided and watched our progeny engage in public schools that, despite lacking representation for our taxationIs Education Reform Punk Rock? | EduShyster:

SXSWedu and Student Voice Join in Collaboration to Celebrate Students at SXSWedu 2015

SXSWedu and Student Voice Join in Collaboration to Celebrate Students at SXSWedu 2015:

 

Partnership announced at annual Student Voice Live! Summit

Sept. 22, 2014, AUSTIN, Texas – SXSWedu and Student Voice are excited to partner on an initiative to celebrate student engagement and participation at the 2015 SXSWedu Conference & Festival in Austin, Texas.

The announcement was made Saturday at the close of the annual Student Voice Live! Summit in New York City, which saw a convergence of students and stakeholders in support of the student voice movement in education. Ron Reed and Greg Rosenbaum of SXSWedu joined Student Voice’s Co-founder and Executive Director Zak Malamed in highlighting the opportunities for students the new partnership will foster.

“This is a great opportunity to connect students to existing conversations on education and open new doors for those itching to be a part of decisions that affect their lives,” Student Voice Director of Public Relations Jessica Schram said. “Partnering with SXSWedu is a radical step forward for the education movement, and is something that can only be accomplished when an event of this magnitude partners with a movement this pressing to give students the spotlight and microphone they deserve.”

Launched in 2011, SXSWedu provides a platform for social change across all facets of the education landscape by convening a dedicated and diverse community of stakeholders to create and collaborate on the future of education. Founded in 2012, Student Voice works to highlight the importance of student engagement in global education reform by fostering student-focused discussion and action on prevalent issues.

“Students are more than an integral part of our community at SXSWedu,” said Ron Reed, SXSWedu Executive Producer. “Learners are the fundamental reason SXSWedu exists. We’re looking forward to working closely with the Student Voice team to champion student action in the education space and to engage even more students at the event, on the local, national and international level.”

More information on the collaboration between SXSWedu and Student Voice will be forthcoming in the lead up to the March event. For more information on attending the SXSWedu Conference & Festival, March 9-12, 2015 in Austin, Texas, please visit http://sxswedu.com/attend.

About SXSWedu

The SXSWedu Conference & Festival fosters innovation in learning by hosting a diverse and energetic community of stakeholders across a variety of backgrounds in education. The four-day event affords registrants open access to engaging sessions, interactive workshops, hands on learning experiences, cinematic portrayals, early stage startups and a host of networking opportunities. By providing a platform for collaboration, SXSWedu works to promote creativity and social change.

SXSWedu is a component of the South by Southwest family of conferences and festivals that includes SXSW Music, Film and Interactive; SXSW Eco and SXSW V2V. Internationally recognized as the convergence gathering for the creative arts, SXSWedu extends SXSW’s support for the art of engagement beyond musicians, filmmakers and new media innovators to include society’s true rock stars: educators.

Join the passionate and innovative community at SXSWedu, March 9-12, 2015 in Austin, Texas. For more information, please visit http://sxswedu.com.

About Student Voice

Student Voice is a completely student-run, non-partisan, not-for-profit organization inspired by the lack of student voices in education. Research shows that only 47 percent of students believe they have a voice in decision making and this dips to as low as 36 percent in the 12th grade. Student Voice strives to enhance the overall effectiveness of the student voice movement by bridging the gap between students and education communities around the world through its services-based approach. For more information about Student Voice, visit http://www.StuVoice.org or follow us on Twitter@Stu_Voice.

 Student Voice instates five education influencers to Board of Directors

News Release FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Sept. 20, 2014 NEW YORK, NY— Today Student Voice announced the appointment of Alexis Glick, Nicholas Ferroni, Ryan Orbuch, Ritankar Das and Nikki Adeli as members of the nonprofit’s new Board of Directors, effective immediately. The announcement came alongside the organization’s reveal of its new partnership with SXSWedu at the finale of the second annual Student

26 by stuvoiceadmin / 1h 

Democracy and the Donor Class by Gara LaMarche | OccupyWallSt.org

Democracy and the Donor Class by Gara LaMarche | OccupyWallSt.org:

Democracy and the Donor Class by Gara LaMarche

Posted 5 hours ago on Sept. 22, 2014, 10:38 a.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
Tags: Philanthropy

This article was originally published at The Democracy Journal

Foundations and philanthropists do much good, but these unelected actors have acquired enormous power to shape policy. Should they be reined in?

Though this is not the way I would usually describe my career, one way of looking at it is that I spent my first 20 working years trying to raise money, and the next 15 trying to give it away. The transition, which took place when I left Human Rights Watch in 1996 to found the United States Programs of George Soros’s Open Society Institute, was a challenging one.

On the one hand, having dealt with foundations over the years as a supplicant, I felt I knew their ways—and in particular, ways of behaving that I was eager to avoid. On the other hand, suddenly becoming the gatekeeper to many millions of philanthropic dollars altered most of my collegial relationships, and many of my personal ones, infecting all but a few of them with a new power dynamic. I found myself—as various wags have observed about philanthropy staff over the years—a great deal smarter, wiser, funnier, and probably handsomer than I had been only months before.

I managed that personal transition as well as I could. I vowed not to internalize the importance others now ascribed to me. What power I held was derivative and temporary, and I tried not to forget that. I think I was mostly successful in remembering, so my recent transition out of philanthropy, with the accompanying loss of certain kinds of power and capital, has been that much easier as a result. For the better part of those 15 years, I oversaw grants made by two of the world’s largest foundations, both with engaged and active donors, probably to the tune of about $3 billion in all. So I’ve had more experience helping to direct the largesse of the living rich than almost anyone, aside from Patty Stonesifer, Jeff Raikes, and Sue Desmond-Hellmann, the former and current CEOs of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Through that experience, I’ve been a vocal and persistent advocate for a certain kind of philanthropy, one that eschews simple charity—worthy but palliative measures like supporting a soup kitchen or personal gestures like providing a scholarship—for attention to policy, to the root causes and structural conditions that result in hunger or lack of access to education in the first place. I’ve preached to my philanthropic brethren the virtues of support for advocacy on the leading social-justice issues of the day, and tried in the positions I’ve held to model that in the hopes that others would follow, or in any case find it safer territory to explore. The grant made by Atlantic Philanthropies during my tenure to Health Care for America Now, the grassroots organizing campaign for universal health coverage—at $27 million, the largest advocacy grant ever made by a foundation—was perhaps the most prominent of many such examples.

And yet it was during that campaign, ironically, that I began to have my first real doubts about the legitimacy of philanthropy in its engagement with the democratic process. You’ll recall that one of the many attacks on President Obama’s health-care bill was that it would bust the budget, and the President was careful to state from the outset that this major social-welfare advance would be revenue-neutral, not adding to the deficit, and indeed saving money over time.

That meant finding a combination of savings and new revenue to finance the bill. One proposal from the Administration would have capped the income tax deduction for charitable contributions at the level it was during the Reagan Administration, 28 percent. Almost without exception, the organizations that purport to speak for foundations and the nonprofits they fund rose up in opposition to the proposal.

There are credible arguments on both sides about how much effect a change in the deduction would have on charitable giving in the United States. I tend to believe the studies—such as those by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University—that assert that there would be a modest effect, if any. But let’s assume for the sake of discussion that the effect would be more than modest—that wealthy Americans in particular would open their checkbooks for causes dear to them a bit less often Democracy and the Donor Class by Gara LaMarche | OccupyWallSt.org:

Choosing Democracy: Providing teachers that reflect the students

Choosing Democracy: Providing teachers that reflect the students:

Providing teachers that reflect the students

The Sacramento Bee published a good story on Saturday  by Lorett Kalb and Phillip Reese  on a group of teachers at McClatchy High working together in a colectivo to recruit students to get a college education and return to McClatchy as teachers.  Here.http://www.sacbee.com/2014/09/20/6712601/mcclatchy-high-wants-students.html

However, the story misses  an important issue. 

Mc Clatchy used to get many minority teachers, both Asian and Latino from the Bilingual Multicultural Education Department at Sac state, before that program  was eliminated in 2012.  The major minority teacher recruitment program in Northern California was quietly shut down.  I was the first Chair of that department.

By 2007, BMED was recruiting and placing minority teachers in the region such that between 30 and 36 % of all new teachers at Sac State were Latino. We did this for over 18 years.  We trained over 600 teachers, most of them minority and most of them local.

Now that has been re- organized out of existence under the disguise of low enrollment.  Current enrollment in teacher preparation at Sac State is about 6-8 % Latino.  This data is available in publicly available sources. 

The story of the creation and destruction of the BMED department is here.

https://sites.google.com/site/chicanodigital/home/the-creation-and-demise-of-bilingual-education-at-csu-sacramento-2

We need an investigative article about this closing of a successful program  and  to investigate  how when a successful program was  created to provide minority teachers for our public schools, the program was  later eliminated by self interest politics.

 Dr. Duane E. Campbell

Democracy and Education Institute

http://www.democracyeducationinstitute.org

http://MexicanAmericanDigitalHistory.org

Auditor releases nonpartisan brief on Common Core - SFGate

Auditor releases nonpartisan brief on Common Core - SFGate:

Auditor releases nonpartisan brief on Common Core

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Questions about the dispute over the Common Core education standards, or still wondering what the standards even are?

Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera's office on Monday released a nonpartisan overview about the English and math standards used in Louisiana's public school classrooms.

The 30-page report describes development of the standards, gives a sample of the changed teaching and outlines other states' use of Common Core. The report also provides an overview of the Common Core lawsuits filed in Louisiana.

More than 40 states, including Louisiana, have adopted Common Core, which describes what students should know after completing each grade.

Gov. Bobby Jindal opposes the standards, saying the Obama administration has manipulated use of Common Core to try to control local education policy and curriculum.

The auditor's report is available at: http://bit.ly/1payvha .

Auditor releases nonpartisan brief on Common Core - SFGate:

Looking Back (Part 6) | Taking Note

Looking Back (Part 6) | Taking Note:

Looking Back (Part 6)

by JOHN MERROW on 22. SEP, 2014 in 2014 BLOGS, LOOKING BACK

The news that ‘only’ 14,700,000 American children are now living in poverty [1] prompted this look back at my reporting for NPR about the emotional development of children, an important but often unrecognized aspect of life for some children growing up in poverty.  Food, healthcare, shelter and education matter, but love and affection are vital if a child is to have a decent chance of becoming a functioning adult [2].

Here, briefly, are the stories of Lisa, Roy and Mary, three young people who, for a host of reasons, were growing up without the emotional supports they needed.

Merrow: “OK, let me give you a spelling test. How do you spell ‘cereal’?
Lisa: S-E-I-A-L-A.

She told me that she had lived in ‘13 or 16’ foster homes.  Lisa was 9 years old when, at the end of a long conversation, I gave her an impromptu spelling test..

Merrow: How do you spell ‘sugar’?
Lisa: Sugar. S-H-U-G-E-R.

At the time, Lisa was living in a Texas mental institution for children.

Merrow: How do you spell ‘couch’?
Lisa: Ooo! Couch. C-  No.  K-A-O-W-C-H.
Merrow: How do you spell ‘soda’?
Lisa: S-O-A-D.

Lisa was a charmer.  At one point she asked me what I was going to do with the recording.  When I told her it was for a radio program, she exclaimed, “Oh, yuk.” She  paused and then added, “Don’t put it on AM. Put it on FM.”

I took the bait. “Why,” I asked?

You can hear the laughter in her voice. “Because we usually don’t even listen to FM. We only listen to AM [3].”

Her doctor said that Lisa had been abandoned at age two by her natural parents. They left her with some relatives, who in turn gave her to other friends, who then left her on someone’s doorstep; those people eventually brought her to the Department of Human Resources.

At the end of the conversation, Lisa asked me if I liked her. I said yes, of course.  Then she asked me if I reallyliked her…and pulled her dress up over her head, an incident I wrote about recently.

Sexual behavior like that was also part of her sad history, a ‘survival’ tactic she had apparently learned Looking Back (Part 6) | Taking Note:

9-22-14 LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD

LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District):

LAUSD Title 1 money in jeopardy over enduring MiSiS glitches

LAUSD Title 1 money in jeopardy over enduring MiSiS glitches The deadline for LA Unified students’ receiving free and reduced priced lunch is tomorrow, leaving anyone who has not renewed an application facing an empty stomach come Wednesday. Making matters worse, school site officials say a bug in the district’s new student data system, MiSiS, has made it difficult to target students who still nee

4 by Vanessa Romo / 2h 

LA Unified sets record with 5 county ‘Teachers of the Year’

LA Unified sets record with 5 county ‘Teachers of the Year’ The five LA Unified teachers named Los Angeles County “Teachers of the Year” are in the front row, (left to right): Maricar J. Fortuno Calatán, Lovelyn Marquez-Prueher, Isabel J. Morales, Michael A. Morgan, and Hector V. Perez-Roman. A record five LA Unified teachers have been named Los Angeles County Teachers of the Year for 2014-15. The

2 by Craig Clough / 7min 

Another challenger to Kayser enters LAUSD school board race

Another challenger to Kayser enters LAUSD school board race Andrew Thomas, challenger to Bennett Kayser for the district 5 seat on the LA Unified school board Andrew Thomas came to the conclusion the LA Unified school board had grown too distant from issues at the school level. He tried one approach at improving things, serving as a member of the Parents Advisory Committee, which was suppose to he

2 by Michael Janofsky / 1h hide  //  save

In State of the Union, Caputo-Pearl hints at strike, targets Deasy

In State of the Union, Caputo-Pearl hints at strike, targets Deasy Alex Caputo-Pearl, President of UTLA In his first State of the Union speech as the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) president, Alex Caputo-Pearl delivered a careful, balanced address at the union’s annual Leadership Conference on Friday night, leaving most of the fiery rhetoric to one of his predecessors, Wayne Johnson, who energ

5 by Craig Clough / 3h 

Morning Read: Teacher dismissal bill may further muddy process

Morning Read: Teacher dismissal bill may further muddy process Teacher dismissal bill may add complexity not simplify Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation in late June with the goal of expediting the process of dismissing teachers for egregious misconduct, but some experts say AB 215 will only further muddy up an already difficult and costly process. S&I Cabinet Report Officials optimistic abo

2 14min 

9-20-14 This Week in LA - School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD

LA School Report - What's Really Going on Inside LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District):Deasy, Garcetti help kick off City Year in 25 LAUSD schoolsDeasy, Garcetti help kick off City Year in 25 LAUSD schools Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, helping kick off City Year in LA Unified schools. LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti were on hand today to help 288 C

1 by mike simpson / 46min 

9-22-14 the becoming radical | A Place for a Pedagogy of Kindness

the becoming radical | A Place for a Pedagogy of Kindness (the public and scholarly writing by P. L. Thomas, Furman University):

Banned in the U.S.A.

When students come to my university office for the first time, they typically utter, “You have a lot of books,” followed by noting the clutter. For those students, they cannot see the lineage I can now recognize: Go, Dog. Go!, Green Eggs and Ham, Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web, 7000 Marvel comic books, Arthur C. Clarke, and then that day in my high school sophomore English teacher’s classroom duri

7 by plthomasedd / 25min 

9-20-14 the becoming radical EMPATHYEDUCATES! | A Place for a Pedagogy of Kindness by P. L. Thomas, EdD

THE BECOMING RADICALEMPATHYEDUCATES!the becoming radical  A Place for a Pedagogy of Kindness by How We Raise Our Children: On “Because” and “In Spite Of”While I am disheartened by the cultural tolerance of all sorts of violence that remains in the U.S.—and then particularly in my home region, the South—I am deeply puzzled by a distinction between the public discussions surrounding the NFL’s twin s

1 by mike simpson / 1h 

Teacher dismissal bill may add complexity not simplify :: SI&A Cabinet Report

Teacher dismissal bill may add complexity not simplify :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

SEPTEMBER 22, 2014

Teacher dismissal bill may add complexity not simplify

by Alisha Kirby

(Calif.) Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation in late June with the goal of expediting the process of dismissing teachers for egregious misconduct, but some experts say AB 215 will only further muddy up an already difficult and costly process.

Under the new law, expedited scheduling for due process hearings is only established when an employee is charged with egregious misconduct, which consists of certain sex and drug offenses, as well as child neglect, endangerment and abuse. Hearings must now begin within 60 days of a teacher's request for one.

“The statutory changes made by AB 215 will not necessarily improve the process for suspension or dismissal of a certificated employee,” Darren Kameya and Desiree Serrano, of education law firm Lozano Smith, said in a statement.

They said the law “will impose additional procedures and restrictive timelines on a process that is already expensive and time-consuming.”

The bill was signed shortly after a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled that California education statutes related to dismissal of both tenured and newer teachers violated equal protection laws under the state Constitution.

The plaintiffs in that case, nine students represented by the nonprofit Students Matter, argued that low-income, predominantly minority schools have more bad teachers than students in high-income, predominantly white schools, and that current policies dictating teacher tenure, dismissal and seniority made it nearly impossible to change this.

The timing of the court decision and passage of the new law were coincidental but the need better, more efficient ways to fire teachers has been a topic of debate for years.

AB 215 was introduced in 2012 after Mark Berndt, a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, was arrested and charged with 23 counts of lewd conduct. The district paid Berndt $40,000 to drop his appeal of his firing, and said it was the difficulties in the dismissal process that lead to the pay-out – which is often less costly than going through the dismissal process.

Under new law, districts will be prohibited from entering an agreement not to report egregious misconduct to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, and will be required to show when the misconduct has been reported to the commission when asked by a school district, county office of Teacher dismissal bill may add complexity not simplify :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Indiana’s fast-track teacher permit not that unusual

(Ind.) A drastically streamlined path to a teaching license approved this month by the Indiana State Board of Education is surprisingly not unique nationally among state regulators, teacher quality experts said last week.

by Tom Chorneau / 40min 

The Long History of Blaming Teachers First | NEA Today

The Long History of Blaming Teachers First | NEA Today:

The Long History of Blaming Teachers First

A high-ranking school official in a major U.S. city feverishly argues that schools should be operated like businesses. Unapologetic about identifying and firing ineffective teachers, the official  pushes for an evaluation system that is rooted in student test scores.

You’re right if you think this sounds like  Michelle Rhee, the former DC schools chancellor, circa 2009. But this description also fits William McAndrew, Chicago schools superintendent. The year? 1924.

The scapegoating of teachers and the championing of misguided “reform” policies has a long and exasperating history, chronicled by journalist Dana Goldstein in her new book, The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession. Anyone who wonders “How did we get here?” -  the divisive and polarizing rhetoric, the  mystifying staying power of discredited reform ideas and the recent raid on teacher’s collective bargaining rights  - will find the answers in Goldstein’s engaging and valuable book.

Goldstein recently spoke to NEA Today about the origins of some of the most contentious education debates, the players in politics and media that have heightened the teachers wars, and how a greater teacher voice can help move the national dialogue in a more constructive direction.

The combination of a feminized teaching profession and unionism in the early 20th century triggered a slew of politicized attacks and what you refer to in the book as “moral panics” across the nation. To what extent  does that fact that the profession is roughly 80 percent women today still make it an inviting political target?

Dana Goldstein: We tend to have more of a public debate over teacher pay, teacher job protection, and the cost of teacher health care plans than we do about policemen or firefighters. Teaching is a larger profession, so it’s more expensive – because there is more of them. But I do think that, because this is a job done by women, it makes it easier to vilify.

When I was working on the book, I went back and watched videos of Chris Christie yelling at teachers, which are really difficult to sit through. It’s always a middle-aged woman that he’s yelling at. The condescension is seething out of him in these confrontations! It’s like this concept of “mansplaining” – I think that happens a lot to teachers. Their expertise as the practitioners in the classroom is often not respected.

Probably the most contentious issue in education right now is teacher due process or “tenure.” What do you think is most important for people to understand about tenure and its origins?

DG: We have to understand why we have tenure in the first place. At the turn of the 20th century, teachers got fired very often for very stupid reasons. They were pregnant or they were black. Or they disagreed about the mayor about something. Seeing how politicized these firings were, good government reformers and teachers unions agreed about tenure. It was the consensus position in 1909 when New Jersey became the first state to pass a comprehensive tenure bill.

Secondly, like we do today, at the turn of the 20th  century we looked to other countries for ideas about how to improve our schools.  People wondered  how to  make teaching a more respected profession and a more attractive job, considering the low pay, and tenure or due process was something that was going to help. The idea came from Prussia, where teachers had more job security.

There’s no evidence that suggests ending tenure will lead to student improvement, so why are we talking about it so much?

DG: Yeah, I agree with your take. There is nothing magical that would happen for kids if we ended teacher tenure. That’s partly because recruiting teachers to work in the neediest schools is so hard. Turnover is just as much a driver in poor student performance than those ineffective teachers who are stuck in those schools. There’s a lot of research on this that I cite in the book.

Why is everyone talking about this so much? I use a term in the book that teaching is seen as a somewhat “peculiar profession.” Only 7 percent of private sector workers are in unions. So when we see that teachers have fought and won for themselves a due process right, people ask ‘Why? I don’t have that. Because teachers are different from other workers, the way they are different is a source of debate.

There have been many eras in which teachers have been targeted, but this particular wave of concern has a The Long History of Blaming Teachers First | NEA Today:

Gene V Glass: Education in Two Worlds: STEM Shortage? Baloney

Gene V Glass: Education in Two Worlds: STEM Shortage? Baloney:

STEM Shortage? Baloney

We said so in 50 Myths & Lies that Threaten America's Public Schools.

Now Hal Salzman joins the chorus of skeptics questioning the myth that the U.S. has a shortage of graduates trained in Science, Technology, Engineering & Math. In his article in U.S. News, Salzman says:

"All credible research finds the same evidence about the STEM workforce: ample supply, stagnant wages and, by industry accounts, thousands of applicants for any advertised job. The real concern should be about the dim employment prospects for our best STEM graduates: The National Institutes of Health, for example, has developed a program to help new biomedical Ph.D.s find alternative careers in the face of “unattractive” job prospects in the field. Opportunities for engineers vary by the field and economic cycle – as oil exploration has increased, so has demand (and salaries) for petroleum engineers, resulting in a near tripling of petroleum engineering graduates. In contrast, average wages in the IT industry are the same as those that prevailed when Bill Clinton was president despite industry cries of a “shortage.” Overall, U.S. colleges produce twice the number of STEM graduates annually as find jobs in those fields."

"Cries that “the STEM sky is falling” are just the latest in a cyclical pattern of shortage predictions over the past half-century, none of which were even remotely accurate. In a desert of evidence, the growth of STEM shortage claims is driven by heavy industry funding for lobbyists and think tanks. Their goal is government intervention in the market under the guise of solving national economic problems. The highly profitable IT industry, for example, is devoting millions to convince Congress and the White House to provide its employers with more low-cost, foreign guestworkers instead of trying to attract and retain Gene V Glass: Education in Two Worlds: STEM Shortage? Baloney: