Parents and Politicians Should Listen to Educators and Not Academicians

February 9, 20011

America's primary and secondary educational systems are not preparing students for life after  graduation because academics, not educators, 
have control of curriculum. 

Academics are scholarly. To them, knowledge is of prime importance, especially in their area of expertise where they feel everyone should 
have substantial knowledge. Academics usually begin by teaching, become involved with curriculum development and academic standards, 
and end up in administration. Many go to education conferences, write curriculum article, textbooks and standardized tests.

Educators enjoy students and the classroom environment. Learning is important, especially if the material will help the student enhance their
economic and social well-being. Educators believe intelligence is normally distributed. They get discouraged when teaching a curriculum
designed by academics because said curriculum is often beyond the grasp of academically average students. Textbook content is controlled
by academics who are influenced  by  their prejudice toward intellectual material and publishers who are concerned with profit. Testing is just 
one example of the academic to publishers to profit scenario.

The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) measures the academic success of students graduating from high school. Changing from a two-part 
Scholastic Aptitude Test to a three-part test has made a lot of money for many people. Business Week recently reported that Kaplan, 
a unit of The Washington Post, saw SAT-related revenue increase by 50% in the later half of 2004.  Princeton Review reported a 
revenue increase of 20% to 50%. SAT companies got a similar revenue hike the last  time tests were changed in 1994. New tests mean new 
curriculum which mean new books written by academics for the profit of publishers.

Publishers influence and subject prejudice cause academics to send the wrong message to parents and politicians. They want us to accomplish 
No Child Left Behind.  The logical question is Behind What?  We don't want them left behind in their search for a job. Every Child Employable 
should be the goal.  Our educational system must prepare students to enter the labor force.  What does the labor force of the future look like.

Our first data  source for available jobs for future graduates will be the U.S. Department of Labor.  Occupational Outlook Quarterly Winter of 2009-10. Reading its predictions indicates that 22% of the job openings will requires a college degree or higher . This analysis seems to contradict the politically correct notion that our educational system should prepare most students for college. This belief exists because academics and media often report that 49.9% of the fastest growing newly created jobs will require a bachelor's degree or higher. A the newly created job  is not working for a newly opened Walmart as that type of job has existed for years. When HTML was invented a few years back, people expected to be hired over the next ten years would be in a newly created jobs.   Predictions do not always come true. The Occupational Outlook Quarterly Winter of  2004-05 predicted  that about 75% of  2002-2012 jobs openings (42 million out of 56 million) will be filled by people entering the labor force for the first time and do not have a bachelor's degreeSystems Analyst ranked first in the 1998-2008 projection with an expected increase of 577,000 jobs. By the 2002-2012 report, their rank had dropped to 25th with an increase of only 184,000 jobs. . I doubt they saw the great recession coming.  Historically, the number of people receiving a bachelor's degree is substantially larger than the number of jobs requiring a bachelor's degree. The Department of Labor Fall 2000 Occupational Outlook Quarterly page 9 reports a college graduates oversupply of  1,900,000 for 1988-1998  and  approximately 900,000 for 1998-2008. The two-decade oversupply total is almost three million graduates. And that's just two decades! Economist Richard B. Freeman was one of the first to write about the oversupply of college graduates in his 1976 book The Overeducated American. Since then, the percentage of thirty-year old college graduates has doubled. See Figure one. Supply up, price (wages) down. Not All College Majors Are Created Equal has an analysis by major of the likelihood of a college graduate having a college level job.

The editor/author of this material is Walter Antoniotti.