Federal spending on public education from 1963 to 1993 increased from $900,000 to more than $10,000,000,000 (that’s billion!) During the same period, averages on the Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SATs) have decreased almost 60 points.
It is hard to say if the condition of public education has had an impact on small business; however, big business claims huge losses. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, functional illiteracy costs U.S. business $300 billion annually in lost productivity.
The U.S. Department of Education and the (pro-union) Department of Labor have come to the rescue. Never mind that the decline in SAT scores and the quality of public education coincides with federal funding of education and the ultimate establishment of the Department of Education in 1979. They have a solution! With School-to-Work (STW), employers will obtain an expanded pool of qualified applicants, screen potential employees, evaluate potential employees in work settings prior to hiring, develop a reliable source for a high-skilled workforce, reduce turnover of entry-level employees, influence curriculum development to meet industry requirements, and increase the competitive edge in the international marketplace.
It sounds too good to be true.
In 1990, Hillary Clinton and Ira Magaziner co-chaired the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, which published a report entitled “America’s Choice: high skills or low wages!” This report made several recommendations to the board of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) to improve our position in the global economy by developing a new education and job-training system. Mrs. Clinton and the president of the NCEE, Marc Tucker, deserve an A+ for implementation, because most of the commission’s recommendations were incorporated into the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994, the Goals 2000: Educate America Act of 1994, state legislation throughout the country, and HR1385, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives and is currently pending in the U.S. Senate.
The “America’s Choice” report recommended that “a new [national] educational performance standard should be set for all students, to be met at or around age sixteen. Students who demonstrate readiness for work or specialized skill training through a series of performance-based assessments should be awarded a Certificate of Initial Mastery (CIM). Possession of the certificate would qualify the student to choose among going to work, entering a college preparatory program, or studying for a technological and professional certificate.”
Students will take a series of assessments, nationally if the Clinton Administration has its way, in the 4th grade, 8th grade, and definitely no later than the beginning of the 11th grade—at which time a career major will be chosen for the students, according to the STW Opportunities Act. The career major/job assignment will be based upon the predicted labor market needs of the local workforce development area. This idea is not a new one; indeed, there are many planned and controlled economies in the world. However, no country that has adopted such a system has enjoyed the prosperity and freedom we have in America. Why? Because America was built by people (families and small businesses) in a free market system, not a planned economy.
A national educational performance standard and national testing equals loss of parental and local control. Who then will control the new system? The answer is found in another recommendation in “America’s Choice”—i.e., that “A comprehensive system of technical and professional certificates should be created for students and adult workers. . . . A student could earn the entry-level occupation certificate after completing a two- to four-year program of combined work and study. . . . National committees of business, labor, education, and public representatives should be convened to define certification standards. . . in a broad range of occupations. These programs should combine general education with specific occupational skills and should include a significant work component.”
Picture this: A committee consisting of Boeing, IBM, AT&T, BellSouth Corp., Eastman Kodak Company, Procter & Gamble, the AFL-CIO, and the National Education Association will determine the certificate (CIM) standards. These large corporations are so committed to instituting national skill standards that they have formed an entity to judge states’ progress toward the standards agenda and pledged to stage a hiring boycott of states that do not adopt the national standards. Small business owners and American citizens in general should be concerned about big business pushing its weight around. At one time in American history, this kind of action might have been called blackmail. The benefits to those who control these committees are enormous. If career majors are decided based on labor market needs, the question should be, “Whose labor market needs?”
Small- and medium-sized businesses will be enticed to join the partnerships or consortiums or collaborative—only to later find themselves extinct. How many businesses can afford to provide mentors, continual job shadowing, paid worksite training, or even non-paid worksite training? Can they afford the commission’s recommendations to increase payroll taxes by at least 1 [to 2] percent for the education and training of their workers? Do they want the government to provide technical assistance particularly to small businesses, to assist them in moving to higher-performance work organizations? Do they want their companies to be reorganized into a Total Quality Management system by eliminating management and giving those duties to their front-line workers? Do they want their employees retrained to the standards of the U.S. Department of Labor? Do they want state Employment Commission[s] or Department[s] given more power and control over business and the economy?
Students of history may remember from World War II Benito Mussolini, who—in order to direct the economic life of the nation—organized a state-controlled structure, known as corporatism. This system maintained the facade of free enterprise and private ownership but all of the important decisions were made by the government. Each industry and group of workers was organized in a syndicate, and these were to meet and bargain and plan how the economy should run. Recommendation No. 5 of “America’s Choice” describes what H.R.1385 calls Workforce Development Boards, whose members are not elected but appointed by the governor and whose responsibilities aren’t too different from the fascist syndicates. The businesses in Italy found themselves in a fascist state that controlled the economy, enforced strict control over the populace, and built a strong central government.
The natural reaction from citizens when a comparison of this type is made is: “It could never happen in America.” However, we all should take a closer look at the ideologies of the architects of this new system. Ira Magaziner, Clinton first-term Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, and Marc Tucker are no real fans of the American free-market system. Rather, in their own books they applaud the economic systems of Germany, Japan, and the old Soviet bloc countries. There is no doubt that this new economy will have little room for small business, but the most egregious aspect of it is what it will do to our form of government. Milton Freidman, the Nobel Laureate economist, said it best:
Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised. . . [B]y dispersing power, the free market provides an offset to whatever concentration of political power may arise. The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.