A hearing was held yesterday on Adult Education and Career Technical Education and for anyone interested in the details, here is a link to the agenda: http://sbud.senate.ca.gov/sites/sbud.senate.ca.gov/files/FullC/2262015SBFRHearingAgenda.pdf

In a nutshell, the testimony was mind numbing and the witnesses all had a vested interest in more government spending and more programs.  Of course there needs to be better “alignment” and “coordination” and even -OMG – “accountability”.  But I have heard all those goals for decades.  What I took away from the hearing is because the K-12 public education system is such a monumental failure and does not prepare its graduates for employment, we now need to create a system of workforce education to provide the necessary knowledge and skills so residents can be contributing and productive members.

My criticism of this approach is that we are starting from the back end.  Why not fix the elementary and secondary schools so they do a better job preparing young adults?  Oh, and maybe the employers can provide some of the training.

And what really struck me – and this is in the agenda linked above – is the data that shows the California Community Colleges offer 8,000 career education certificate programs and 4500 associate degree programs.  However over 51% of the students enrolled at this level of higher education are concentrated in only 10 fields of study!!

But no one of course suggested we look at eliminating some of the redundant, duplicative and apparently useless choices of programs. That would require cutting and it is anathema in the Legislative.  Forget Small is Beautiful.  The siren song I only hear is how can we grow the programs and find more funding.