PA: Career Education Standards for Littles

Coming to Pennsylvania schools this summer is a fine example of how creating academic standards can so easily turn into nonsense.

The state is launching Career Education and Work standards, and they are something else. But why? Well, here's the explanation:

Pennsylvania’s economic future depends on having a well-educated and skilled workforce. Career Education and Work standards reflect the increasing complexity and sophistication that students experience as they progress through school, focusing on the skills and continuous learning and innovation required for students to succeed in a rapidly changing workplace. The standards are written as grade-banded standards built around the concepts of career awareness and exploration, employability skills, growth and advancement, and personal interests and career planning.

Blah blah blah. I guess it sounds better than simply saying "We need more meat widgets for employers." It's not that employability isn't a worthwhile outcome to shoot for, but when the discussion is framed in terms of what serves the needs of employers instead of what serves the needs of humans it's a bad sign.

But hey-- maybe these standards are actually awesome in a way that standards almost never are. Let's take a look.

Oh boy.

There are four main areas-- Career Awareness and Exploration, Employability Skills, Growth and Advancement, and Personal Interests and Career Planning.

Now, if you want to see if a set of standards are bunk, check the K-2 band. You can get really silly standards by starting with the outcome you want at graduation, and then working backwards. So you want a high school senior to run a mile in 6 minutes. You just work backwards-- in 11th grade 7 minutes, 10th grade 8 minutes and so on until your standards say you want Kindergarten kids to run a mile in 18 minutes. This makes perfect sense to someone who is thinking about standards and not about actual human children (If you can't see it yet, just keep working backwards--20 minutes for pre-schoolers, 21 minutes for three year olds, and 25 minutes for newborns).

So what are some of the actual standards for K-2 students,

"Identify that there are different ways to prepare for careers" isn't too bad (go ahead and explain "career" to a five year old), but then we get this one:

Identify entrepreneurial character traits of historical and contemporary entrepreneurs and ways to integrate entrepreneurial traits into schoolwide activities and events (e.g., posters to advertise, create ideas).

Yikes. Some are debatable, like "Demonstrate proper and safe Internet and instructional technology use." I understand the value here, but my preferred internet safety technique for the littles (including the board of directors here at the institute) is for them not to use it at all.

Demonstrate cooperation and positive interactions with classmates, recognizing that people have different backgrounds, experiences, beliefs, and ideas.

That one's okay, but I worry that it will prompt a visit from the federal anti-diversity police.

Build an awareness of the importance of a positive work ethic as a means to learn and grow.

This falls into the classic of problem that this seems like an okay standard, except that it can't be measured objectively.

Explore career choices and identify the knowledge and skills associated with different types of careers.

Again, we're talking K-2 students. Also, "Explain how workers in their careers use what is learned in the classroom." The board of directors could perhaps explain that Daddy's job as a writer involves sitting at the computer and whacking away at the keyboard.

The standards hit some other issues as they move into higher grades. There's some focus on jargon, like learning the 4 P's for entrepreneurial branding (product, price, place and promotion) in 6-8 grade, or setting and achieving SMART goals in 3-5 grade. Grades 3-12 hammer the Entrepreneurial Mindset.

Perhaps most hilarious is the whole K-12 strand on "develop a personal brand," because at the point in life when a young human is trying to grasp their identity and place in the world, what they should focus on how to "identify ways to market yourself as a job candidate" (grades 6-12).

The whole exercise has the vibe of some too-serious grey flannel suit standing over an eight year old and barking, "All right kid-- have you figured out what job you want in life?" Plus the unspoken message that this, kid, is what your life is supposed to be about--your job. You can say, well, isn't it helpful to get students to think about their careers and work life, and I'll say, yes, but is that any more important than getting them to think about their actual lives? Should we have standards for their development of a plan for their lives and families and work-life balance as adults?

Well, those decisions are personal and none-of-the-school's business and nearly impossible to plan out because life doesn't work that way and, seriously, you want to talk to a sixth grader about how to live their adult life? Of course some of this sounds like SEL, and some of it falls under the conservative call for "success sequence" instruction. But if you have all of the above objections to requiring seniors to have a Full Personal Life Plan, then why do those objections not also apply to requiring a career plan?

More to the point, how do you manage any of these as standards? How will teachers assess the student development of a personal brand? What will the criteria be? How will teachers assess the required career plan? Will they have to assess its realism? Its completeness? Its accuracy? Will it become a teacher's job to say, "Pat, I know your self-assessment is that you have a keen mind and a wicked sense of humor, but I'm taking off a ton of points because you are actually kind of dull." Will it become a teacher's job to say, "Your career plan calls for you to graduate from med school, but I've had you in biology class and this isn't happening."

I mean, every teacher has wrestled with these sorts of conversation, with some coming down on the side of "Who am I to try to predict this kid's future?" or on the side of "I am going to be the best possible cheerleader for this kid's future" or, occasionally, on the side of "When this kid is a success some day, I'll be the teacher in the anecdote about how they'd never make it." These conversations about the future are part of the gig. But to make them states standards is to make them a part of the measured program, a part of what schools must assess.

Of course, this may well end up one of those standards that exists as a piece of bureaucratic baloney but is ignored in the classroom. That is probably the best we can hope for. Should we talk to young humans about future plans? Sure. Should career planning be reduced to a set of state standards? No. Actually, hell no.