Vouchers have always been a staple of the right-wing agenda. Like previous efforts, this most recent push for vouchers is led by a network of conservative think tanks, PACs, Religious Right groups and wealthy conservative donors. But "school choice," as they euphemistically paint vouchers, is merely a means to an end. Their ultimate goal is the total elimination of our public education system.

The decades-long campaign to end public education is propelled by the super-wealthy, right-wing DeVos family. Betsy Prince DeVos is the sister of Erik Prince, founder of the notorious private military contractor Blackwater USA (now Xe), and wife of Dick DeVos, son of the co-founder of Amway, the multi-tiered home products business.

By now, you've surely heard of the Koch brothers, whose behind-the-scenes financing of right-wing causes has been widely documented in the past year. The DeVoses have remained largely under the radar, despite the fact that their stealth assault on America's schools has the potential to do away with public education as we know it.

[snip]

The DeVoses are top contributors to the Republican Party and have provided the funding for major Religious Right organizations. And they spent millions of their own fortune promoting the failed voucher initiative in Michigan in 2000, dramatically outspending their opposition. Sixty-eight percent of Michigan voters rejected the voucher scheme. Following this defeat, the DeVoses altered their strategy.

Instead of taking the issue directly to voters, they would support bills for vouchers in state legislatures. In 2002 Dick DeVos gave a speech on school choice at the Heritage Foundation. After an introduction by former Reagan Secretary of Education William Bennett, DeVos described a system of “rewards and consequences” to pressure state politicians to support vouchers. “That has got to be the battle. It will not be as visible,” stated DeVos. He described how his wife Betsy was putting these ideas into practice in their home state of Michigan and claimed this effort has reduced the number of anti-school choice Republicans from six to two. The millions raised from the wealthy pro-privatization contributors would be used to finance campaigns of voucher supporters and purchase ads attacking opposing candidates.

Media materials for Betsy DeVos’ group All Children Matter, formed in 2003, claimed the organization spent $7.6 million in its first year, “impacting state legislative elections in 10 targeted states” and a won/loss record of 121/60.

Dick DeVos also explained to his Heritage Foundation audience that they should no http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giflonger use the term public schools, but instead start calling them “government schools.” He noted that the role of wealthy conservatives would have to be obscured. “We need to be cautious about talking too much about these activities,” said DeVos, and pointed to the need to “cut across a lot of historic boundaries, be they partisan, ethnic, or otherwise.”

Labels: Christian Dominionism, education, The Right Wing War on the Middle Class

Adding to a drumbeat of concern about the nation’s dismal college-completion rates, the College Board warned Thursday that the growing gap between the United States and other countries threatens to undermine American economic competitiveness.

The United States used to lead the world in the number of 25- to 34-year-olds with college degrees. Now it ranks 12th among 36 developed nations.

“The growing education deficit is no less a threat to our nation’s long-term well-being than the current fiscal crisis,” Gaston Caperton, the president of the College Board, warned at a meeting on Capitol Hill of education leaders and policy makers, where he released a report detailing the problem and recommending how to fix it. “To improve our college completion rates, we must think ‘P-16’ and improve education from preschool through higher education.”

While access to college has been the major concern in recent decades, over the last year, college completion, too, has become a leading item on the national agenda. Last July, President Obama announced the American Graduation Initiative, calling for five million more college graduates by 2020, to help the United States again lead the world in educational attainment.

Labels: economic death watch, education

“Whether we look to the first charter of Virginia, or the charter of New England…the same objective is present — a Christian land governed by Christian principles.”

“I like to believe we are living today in the spirit of the Christian religion. I like also to believe that as long as we do so, no great harm can come to our country.”

And also for that We have been further given certainly to knowe, that within these late Yeares there hath by God's Visitation reigned a wonderfull Plague, together with many horrible Slaugthers, and Murthers, committed amoungst the Sauages and brutish People there, heertofore inhabiting, in a Manner to the utter Destruction, Deuastacion, and Depopulacion of that whole Territorye, so that there is not left for many Leagues together in a Manner, any that doe claime or challenge any Kind of Interests therein, nor any other Superiour Lord or Souveraigne to make Claime "hereunto, whereby We in our Judgment are persuaded and satisfied that the appointed Time is come in which Almighty God in his great Goodness and Bountie towards Us and our People, hath thought fitt and determined, that those large and goodly Territoryes, deserted as it were by their naturall Inhabitants, should be possessed and enjoyed by such of our Subjects and People as heertofore have and hereafter shall by his Mercie and Favour, and by his Powerfull Arme, be directed and conducted thither. In Contemplacion and serious Consideracion whereof, Wee have thougt it fitt according to our Kingly Duty, soe much as in Us lyeth, to second and followe God's sacred Will, rendering reverend Thanks to his Divine Majestie for his gracious favour in laying open and revealing the same unto us, before any other Christian Prince or State, by which Meanes without Offence, and as We trust to his Glory, Wee may with Boldness goe on to the settling of soe hopefull a Work, which tendeth to the reducing and Conversion of such Sauages as remaine wandering in Desolacion and Distress, to Civil Societie and Christian Religion, to the Inlargement of our own Dominions, and the Aduancement of the Fortunes of such of our good Subjects as shall willingly intresse themselves in the said Imployment, to whom We cannot but give singular Commendations for their soe worthy Intention and Enterprize

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade, education, Religious Intolerance, revisionist history, The Tudors

Stephanie was practicing double dutch, an urban street staple that dates back centuries and, come next spring, will become the newest of 35 varsity sports played in New York City schools. As part of an effort to increase the number of students — particularly girls — participating in competitive athletics, the city will create coed double-dutch teams at 10 high schools, many in predominantly black neighborhoods like Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Harlem where the ropes have long swung on asphalt playgrounds.

Double dutch follows cricket, which was added last year and is now played by more than 400 students at 14 schools, including the elite Stuyvesant High School.

School officials said they were also considering cycling, badminton and netball for varsity sports.

Nearly 33,000 students, about 10 percent of the high school population, play on varsity or junior varsity teams, compared with more than a third in many suburban districts.

“As an urban district, we need to be creative in an urban kind of way, and double dutch does that for us,” said Eric Goldstein, who oversees the Public Schools Athletic League, the governing body for the city’s interscholastic sports. “If you see people doing it, it looks hard and it is hard.”

Kyra D. Gaunt, who wrote “The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop” (N.Y.U. Press, 2006), said that recognizing double dutch as a sport not only taps into something that many children are passionate about, but also gives a nod to the influence of black culture. “They’re helping to regenerate a tradition in the black community and legitimize it in the eyes of a lot of parents,” she said.

Dr. Gaunt, an associate professor of anthropology and black music studies at Baruch College, said that she avoided double dutch as a child because she was so bad at it but that she relearned it while writing her book. She said the appeal of double dutch was that anyone could do it, and that once mastered, it lent itself to individual expression through fancy footwork and dance routines.

Labels: education, fitness

• For each of the last five fiscal years, how many employees have you terminated outside of the United States?
  
• For each of the last five fiscal years, how many employees have you terminated inside of the United States?
  
• How many of these employees were U.S. citizens?
  
• Did H-1B visa holders replace or take over the job responsibilities of any of these terminated employees?
  
• Would you support legislation prohibiting all employers from displacing an American worker with a H-1B visa holder? Please explain.

Why would Senators Durbin and Grassley feel the need to send out these letters?

I'll break my timeline a bit and mention the April 4, 2008 article written by intrepid reporter Jennifer Bjorhus from the TwinCities Pioneer Press. (As of today, I could find the article by typing in "H-1B" in the online paper's internal search engine, but I couldn't find a permanent link. Norman Matloff reprinted the entire article in his H-1B/L-1 Offshoring e-Newsletter #113.) Bjorhus, one of the few newspaper reporters I'm aware of that is doing any real digging into this topic, has been following H-1B/L-1 visa issues since her days at the San Jose Mercury News (the official mouthpiece for Corporate Silicon Valley).

Outside of Ron Hira's 2005 book, Outsourcing America, this is one of the better write-ups I've seen on the difficulties of obtaining the necessary facts, figures and statistics in order to get a true picture of what is going on with the H-1B/L-1 visa programs.

Industry has long argued that the temporary work visas are necessary to stay competitive by attracting the world's best and brightest workers. Many employers, most recently Bill Gates, argue there's a critical shortage of skilled U.S. workers.

snip

Critics charge there's no shortage but too many over-specific job descriptions and overly picky employers. The guest worker program cheats U.S. workers by importing younger workers who are often less well paid, they charge. Laid-off U.S. tech workers have testified on Capitol Hill of being forced to train their H-1B replacements. What's missing from the decade-old debate is solid information about how the program actually functions. Exactly which white-collar jobs go begging for lack of qualified U.S. workers? What are specific workers being paid? How are specific employers in various parts of the country using the program? Are there patterns to their particular hiring?

snip

Companies won't discuss specifics. [Note from Carrie. Vague notices like the recent Chrysler announcement to outsource their Information Technology functions to Indian bodyshop Tata Consulting Services are the norm.] U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will not release detailed information it keeps on the thousands of worker-specific visas it approves each year to be issued by the State Department.

"It's a huge hole," said Ron Hira, assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology and co-author of "Outsourcing America." "Why would you expand a program without knowing what its impacts are? [Emphasis mine.] It's very bizarre to me."

Hira has company. Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, on Tuesday [April 1, 2008] mailed 25 letters to the country's top H-1B employers asking for detailed information on how they use the program.

The Pioneer Press in 2004 filed a Freedom of Information Act request to immigration services for basic information on each H-1B and related L-1 visa it approved for employers since 2000. L-1 visas, which have no cap, are increasingly used by employers to bring their own foreign employees to the U.S. to work.

The newspaper's request remains unfilled. In January, immigration officials mailed a disk that doesn't contain records of any H-1B visas, and with tens of thousands of blank fields where job codes should be, and more than 400,000 blank fields where the worker's education level should be recorded. [Emphasis mine.]

The Pioneer Press filed an appeal with immigration services, which recently informed the newspaper that the appeal is No. 2,771 in a backlog of 2,845 appeals. Chris Rhatigan, an immigration services spokeswoman, said her agency considers the newspaper's request filled, noting the "appeal is still pending a final decision."

snip

As for immigration services, it does publish a yearly report,"Characteristics of Specialty Occupation Workers," showing aggregate totals at the national level — such as that 50 percent of the H-1B visas in fiscal year 2005 were for people from India, half were issued to people in their 20s, 5 percent of the workers held doctorate degrees and about half the jobs were computer-related.The report doesn't provide employer-specific or job-specific information.The agency is also two years behind on its reports.

On April 2, 2008, Michael Chertoff from the Department of Homeland Security signed an interim final rule with a request for comments (that was nice of him) to extend the Optional Practical Training program for F-1 STEM visa holders from 12 months to 29 months. Chertoff's document claims that:

The inability of U.S. employers, in particular in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, to obtain H-1B status for highly skilled foreign students and foreign nonimmigrant workers has adversely affected the ability of U.S. employers to remit and retain skilled workers and creates a competitive disadvantage for U.S. companies.

Again, this was shamefully unpublicized in an obvious ploy to sneak through a de facto increase in the number of foreign worker visa holders without input from the American public.

The rule further stipulates that students must be enrolled in Optional Practical Training programs that relate to their college majors, and that employers must be enrolled in the USCIS E-Verify Employment Verification Progam.

How does the Department of Homeland Security feel they are able to shove through a ruling without prior public comment? Per page 23 of the .pdf file:

To avoid a loss of skilled students through the next round of H-1B filings in April 2008, DHS is implementing this initiative as an interim final rule without first providing notice and the opportunity for public comment under the "good cause" exception found under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) at 5 U.S.C. 553(b)). The APA provides that an agency may dispense with notice and comment rulemaking procedures when an agency, for "good cause," finds that those procedures are "impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest." See 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(B). The exception excuses notice and comment, however, in emergency situations, or where "the delay created by the notice and comment requirements would result in serious damage to important interests. [Emphasis mine.]

In other words, if Bill Gates says this is a national emergency, then this is a national emergency!

One thing that held me up on this blog post was the fact that I really had no idea what was meant by "Optional Practical Training." I had read discussions that the training could occur while the student was in school, after graduation, or a combination of the two. It wasn't until I heard Rob Sanchez' podcast on the George Putnam show that I found out what was really going on.

DOH! (Carrie slaps hand to forehead.)

The Optional Practical Training program means internships! Unlimited numbers of foreign STEM graduates can now take up internships and effectively shut out American-born STEM graduates from future technical careers! Despite the rhetoric from the likes of Microsoft and Oracle, competition for job openings in the tech industry is fierce. Having a high quality internship on your resume is crucial to landing that important first real job. The ability to land an internship means the difference between either starting a career in your chosen technical field or ending up in law school after spending two years of sending out resumes while working at Burger King.

I wrote a post last month about how graduates of the University of Michigan School of Engineering are having a difficult time landing jobs within their career fields, both inside and outside of the state of Michigan. As Bob Oak points out in his No Slaves blog, "Students graduating in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics majors are about three times the total number of new jobs created in the United States for these majors." Studies by Vivek Wadhwa et al from Harvard University, the RAND Corporation, Michael Teitelbaum on behalf of the Sloan Corporation (per his testimony before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation on November 6, 2007), the Urban Institute, and Norman Matloff from UC-Davis, all confirm in varying degrees the myth of the high tech skills shortage.

On April 4, 2008, the world finally found out about the extension of the Optional Practical Training program from 12 months to 29 months from this announcement from the Department of Homeland Security. The interim final rule was entered into the Federal Register on April 8, 2008, which marked the start of the 60-day limit for public comments on this policy.

The No Slaves blog lists a few ways you can officially voice your outrage at this stealth change in policy. Pages 2 and 3 of the DHS interim rules .pdf file also gives details on how you can submit public comments.

Also, on April 4, 2008, Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) and the Republican High Tech Task Force (HTTF) finally admitted that they were the force behind the Department of Homeland Security's decision to extend the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program for F-1 non-immigrant students.

On April 8, 2008, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced ".... that it has received enough H-1B petitions to meet the congressionally mandated cap for fiscal year 2009. "

On April 9, 2008, the Daily Princetonian reported that some foreign students are not happy that the Department of Homeland Security's ruling for the expanded OPT program does not apply to non-STEM majors.

Many current international students are upset with the academic restrictions.

“I don’t think it’s fair that not everyone is eligible for the extension, because we all face the same problems in obtaining work visas upon graduation,” Megan Chiao ’09, former president of the International Students Association, said in an e-mail. Chiao, an ORFE [Operations Research and Financial Engineering] concentrator, is from Singapore.

snip

[Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Students Rachel] Baldwin fears that the selectively granted extension — instituted because of the demand for foreign students in technical fields — will drive international students away from non-STEM majors because of the relative post-graduation disadvantage.

“Some international students may stray away from the Woodrow Wilson School, Romance Languages and other fields that do not qualify for the extension,” Baldwin explained.

“I think it will be frustrating for non-STEM majors, and it is unfair that the decision was not made to support all F-1 students, despite their chosen major,” Baldwin said.

Economics major Cee-Kay Ying ’08, who is from Australia, disagreed with the STEM requirement, noting that humanities concentrators are no less skilled than students in other majors.

“Some majors between engineering and humanities have lots of overlap, such as ORFE and Econ,” she said in an e-mail. ORFE but not economics concentrators qualify for extension.

“Depending on what track you take, you could pretty much have the same coursework [except for] the independent work,” Ying explained. “Does this mean ORFE [concentrators are] more qualified to work in the US than econ majors? This perhaps could be a deciding factor among internationals wanting to maximize their opportunities to work in the US after graduation.”

Earth to Ying! Do you really believe that our economists are going to allow an unlimited number of foreign students to take away their jobs?

Americans are told every day by economists, business leaders and politicians that we need to lose our sense of entitlement to education, health care, job security, Social Security and old age pensions. I would find it quite refreshing if someone would stand up and tell these foreign students that they need to give up their sense of entitlement to college educations funded by American taxpayers and guaranteed job offers from American companies upon graduation!

On April 10, 2008, per an update to an April 8, 2008 article written by Patrick Thibodeau at ComputerWorld, the USCIS announced they received 163,000 requests for H-1B visas, along with 31,200 applications for foreign nationals holding advanced degrees.

Also on April 10, 2008, Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) introduced the "Global Competitiveness Act of 2008". Among other things, the bill (S. 2839) would:

• Recapture 150,000 supposedly unused visas and dole them out over a 3-year period.
• Raise the main numerical cap on visas from 65,000 to 115,000 per fiscal year
• Raise the numerical cap on advanced degree holders (masters degrees and above) from 20,000 to 30,000 per fiscal year.

Rob Sanchez noted in his Job Destruction Newsletter:

Have any of you noticed that so many of the proposed visa increases lately are now being called national emergencies? First, we had the massive defacto H-1B increase that the DHS approved to extend the Optional Practical Training time period. Now we have a bill introduced by Sen. Cornyn that he says is "emergency relief" for employers. Why doesn't Cornyn feel that his constituents need emergency job creation?

As of this writing, the complete text of the bill has yet to be released. However, according to the outline in the press release, the wording includes the obligatory "we'll outlaw all visa abuses" language. Rob Sanchez further pointed out:

The Cornyn bill contains what may appear to be a restriction on how bodyshops use H-1B visas. Don't be fooled -- bodyshops aren't the most important issue -- the number of visas available is far more important. Cornyn was very clever to insert this provision into the bill in order to split the opposition. It won't stop bodyshops from operating in the U.S. but it might inconvenience them a little since they will have to change how they bill their work.

Cornyn's bill also has some verbiage to enforce the law against fraud. As I have explained before, fraud isn't a major problem in the H-1B visa program, so the provisions he is offering will do nothing to help American workers against the huge onslaught of foreigners he wants to import.

USCIS conducted their random selection process on April 14, 2008 for their H-1B lottery, per this update.

April 15, 2008. I'm sure I've missed something. Please feel free to comment if you noticed any glaring omissions.

April 16, 2008. [Fill in the blank. I'm sure something momentous will happen that will make my article obsolete as soon as I hit the "Publish Post" button.]

Anyone can tell that the High and the Mighty are hell-bent on getting their visa limit increases. There seems to be growing consensus that at least one of these measures will be passed this year despite the fact unemployment rates are so high even the figures provided by the Bush administration are showing that the jobless rate is increasing.

I've been learning about these issues for a little over a year now. I've seen the same unoriginal arguments over and over and over again that we need a limitless supply of foreign tech workers because we are not producing enough of the best and brightest to fill all of these mysterious job openings that are supposedly open to everyone. Every once in a while the high tech lobby does something that jolts me awake again. This year, so far, it's the possibly unconstitutional fiat from the Department of Homeland Security to deal with this "national crisis" by increasing the Optional Practical Training program time limit for F-1 STEM student visa holders.

I wonder what the next surprise will be?

(Cross-posted at Carrie's Nation.)

Labels: education, employment, F-1's, H-1Bs, L-1s, skills shortage

Like Mississippi, many states use an inflated graduation rate for federal reporting requirements under the No Child Left Behind law and a different one at home. As a result, researchers say, federal figures obscure a dropout epidemic so severe that only about 70 percent of the one million American students who start ninth grade each year graduate four years later.

California, for example, sends to Washington an official graduation rate of 83 percent but reports an estimated 67 percent on a state Web site. Delaware reported 84 percent to the federal government but publicized four lower rates at home.

The multiple rates have many causes. Some states have long obscured their real numbers to avoid embarrassment. Others have only recently developed data-tracking systems that allow them to follow dropouts accurately.

The No Child law is also at fault. The law set ambitious goals, enforced through sanctions, to make every student proficient in math and reading. But it established no national school completion goals.

“I liken N.C.L.B. to a mile race,” said Bob Wise, a former West Virginia governor who is president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a group that seeks to improve schools. “Under N.C.L.B., students are tested rigorously every tenth of a mile. But nobody keeps track as to whether they cross the finish line.”

Furthermore, although the law requires schools to make only minimal annual improvements in their rates, reporting lower rates to Washington could nevertheless cause more high schools to be labeled failing — a disincentive for accurate reporting. With Congressional efforts to rewrite the law stalled, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has begun using her executive powers to correct the weaknesses in it. Ms. Spellings’s efforts started Tuesday with a measure aimed at focusing resources on the nation’s worst schools. Graduation rates are also on her agenda.

In an interview, Ms. Spellings said she might require states to calculate their graduation rate according to one federal formula.

“I’m considering settling this once and for all,” she said, “by defining a single federal graduation rate and requesting states to report it that way. That would finally put this issue to rest.”

In 2001, the year the law was drafted, one of the first of a string of revisionist studies argued that the nation’s schools were losing more students than previously thought.

Jay P. Greene, a researcher at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research organization, compared eighth-grade enrollments with the number of diplomas bestowed five years later to estimate that the nation’s graduation rate was 71 percent. Federal statistics had put the figure 15 points higher.

Still, Congress did not make dropouts a central focus of the law. And when states negotiated their plans to carry it out, the Bush administration allowed them to use dozens of different ways to report graduation rates.

Labels: education

A widespread shortage of information technology (IT) graduates across North America is forcing Microsoft Corp. and other software companies to look to developing countries such as China to meet their needs, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates says.

“When we want to hire lots of software engineers, there is a shortage in North America—a pretty significant shortage,” Gates said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We have this tough problem: If you can’t get the engineers, then you have to have those other jobs be [relocated to] where the engineers are.”

....younger workers have more energy and are sometimes more creative. But he adds there is a lot they don't know and can't know until they gain experience. So he says his company recruits aggressively for fresh talent on university campuses and for highly experienced engineers from within the industry. One is not at the expense of the other, he insists. For him, it is all about hiring the best and brightest—age and nationality are not important. He acknowledges that the vast majority of Microsoft hires are young, but that is because older workers tend to go into more senior jobs and there are fewer of those positions to begin with.

Labels: Bill Gates, education, H-1Bs, L-1s, Microsoft, offshoring

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade, education