The United Nations Connection to Washington State

Those of us researching education reform/STW have questioned the origins of a organization called the National School To Work Office. Queries of that office have produced little result. The National School to Work Office's role in education reform/STW is the providing of technical assistance to states that have received an STW implementation grant.

The National School to Work Office is otherwise known as the National School-toWork Learning and Information Center; it is a project of the Academy of Educational Development (AED), centered in Washington, DC. AED was established in 1961 as an

independent, nonprofit service organization committed to addressing human development needs in the United States and throughout the world. Under contracts and grants, AED operates programs in collaboration with policy leaders; nongovernmental and community-based organizations; businesses; governmental agencies; international multilateral and bilateral funders; and schools, colleges, and universities.

He who holds the purse strings controls the agenda. AED sports an interesting array of funders, to include:

Carnegie Corporation of New York, Inc

Annie E Casey Foundation

Charles Stewart Mott Foundation

Danforth Foundation

DeWitt Wallace Readers Digest Fund

Ford Foundation

Pew Charitable Trusts

Johnson & Johnson

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Rockefeller Foundation

W. K. Kellogg Foundation

The US Departments of Commerce, Defence, Education, Health and Human Services, Justice, Labor, and State

US Environmental Protection Agency

US Information Agency

Center for Substance Abuse Prevention

Federal Law Enforcement Training Center

National Institute of Literacy

National Science Foundation

US Agency for International Development

UNDP, United Nations

UNESCO, United Nations

UNICEF, United Nations

United Nations Fund for Population Activities

World Bank

World Health Organization

AED was present and a presenter at the 1991 U.S. Coalition for Education for All conference held in Alexandria, Virginia, as a result of, and to implement the goals of, the World Conference on Education for All held in Jomtien, Thailand in 1990, sponsored by the Interagency Commission on Education for All, consisting of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and World Bank. The "goals" that emanated from the World Conference align with the America 2000 goals that were later incorporated in and expanded on via Goals 2000.

Returning, again, to the connection between AED and Washington State—the National School to Work Office, as a program of AED, is providing the technical assistance to states with STW implementation grants. In our case, the technical assistance provider is Educational Development Center, Inc (EDC) of Newton, Massachusetts. EDC president, Janet Whitla, was/is also the president of the U.S. Coalition for Education for All. As the reader may or may not know, EDC wrote the Washington state STW implementation grant in 1995; the Washington state one-stop career center system grant in 1996; worked with the Washington state Work-related Competencies Committee in 1996; entered into a three-year, $300,000 contract with the Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board on "The Teaching Firm" project in December 1996; and analyzed the Washington state essential "academic" learning requirements for the inclusion of state goal four and for inclusion of the SCANS (Secretaries Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills) competencies from the U.S. Department of Labor in 1996/97. The AED site on the web will take you directly to Washington state.

A great deal of time and effort has been put into trying to convince the public that education reform/STW is bottom-up, local in flavor, grassroots. Once again we have proven that it is anything but. What is being established is a web of non-governmental organizations extending beyond the borders of the individual states and the United States, whose policy, practices and outreach by-passes state legislatures, legislative authority, and Congress. The question is—what is our Legislature going to do about it?

© May 1998; Lynn M Stuter

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