Guest Writer Trevor Campbell from the Pittsburg Job Corps Center, “A Day in the Life”

This is an interesting article I’ve created to give Job Corps students from the past, in other centers, prospective students, or students who are expected to arrive within a few weeks an idea of what goes on at Job Corps. This is the “around the clock typical day” I’ve spent since my arrival week up to now involved in CCAC. This schedule includes weekends and the change of C-Prep/trade to the OCT department. I’m making this as candid as possible, excluding adventures, incidents, or unplanned events. This should get previous or current students interested to also agree and share their “Day in the Life, at” story, giving people another insight to what life is like overall at Job Corps, and for an individual center.

During C-Prep, Vocational Trade, & Education
1. 6:00 AM: “Six O’Clock fellows, time to wake up” – Six is the wake up & MAC sheet time. Everyone is expected to wake up as soon as possible and move along with their morning routines-including hygiene, details (if assigned), & breakfast. You are pretty much forced to be awake by 7:00 AM. Breakfast could be served as early as 6:30, despite the majority of students arriving during the last 20-30 minutes. Morning Details start by 7:00 AM, and you must be off the dorm floors by 7:30.

Filed under: Guest Writer, Job Corps, Job Corps Centers, Pittsburg Job Corps Center, Reader's Comments, Tell Us Your Story, Guest Writer, Job Corps, Pittsburg Job Corps Center, schedule, Student, training day routine, typical day

Read a Student’s Ripoff Report About His Experience at Joliet Job Corps

The student is very articulate and describes his experience at Joliet Job Corps as a “nightmare, discrimination and abuse”.    This student’s observations remind me of some of the things I saw as a a staff person at Shriver Job Corps managed by Adams and Associates…

Some of the high points of this student’s observations:

“As a punishment in the building/trades department, students (including minors) were made to carry lumber from one side of the football field to the other for 6 hours of classroom time”.
“At one point, I caught the records manager on center over a weekend (two days before a major review). He was toting out boxloads of documents to the garbage dumpster…. So much for protecting privacy”!

” During the month of April, my dormitory had no toilet paper, handsoap, or paper towels to which we could dry our hands. My dormitory had no drinking water… which means on weekends, no drinks before 11am and no drinks after 10pm!  Most of the toilets were constantly backed up and overflowing. On one occasion, a fight occurred in the lower (academic) hallways and a student bled all over the wall.  11 days later, the blood was STILL all over the wall – Neither the medical staff nor safety staff wanted to take responsibility for cleaning it and students were forced to do it. It was only washed off – The area was not sanitized”.
“Despite regulations against those with felonies attending the program, MANY were being sentenced there by family judges.  Several students urinated in an empty drink bottle and then poured it on the face/down the throat of a student as he was asleep. Those guilty were punished, but not removed from the center”.

“Some electrical outlets hung from the walls by the wiring in the dormitories”.

Make sure to read the Ripoff Report here:

Filed under: Adams and Associates, Contractors, Job Corps, Joliet Job Corps, Reader's Comments, abuse, Adams and Associates, discrimination, Job Corps Ripoff Report, Joliet Job Corps, nightmare, Ripoff Report

Congress Spends Billions on Ineffective Job Training Programs

The following are excerpts from a Policy Analysis report from the Heritage Foundation (2002)

Read the full report here:

THE NATIONAL JOB CORPS STUDY

• The estimated average increase in weekly incomes of Job Corps participants was never more than $25.20.

• The Job Corps did not increase the incomes of 18 and 19-year-olds, who represent 32 percent of the population served by the program.

• The Job Corps did not increase the incomes of Hispanics, who represent 18 percent of all youths served by the program.

• The wages of participants increased by only $0.24 per hour and then dropped to $0.22 per hour.

• During the course of the study, the average time participants spent working each week never rose above 28.1 hours. Participants never averaged working more than two hours per week more than the control group.

• Despite costing the taxpayer $16,500 per participant over an average of eight months, the program failed to move a significant number of participants into full-time employment

 

 

Filed under: congress, Job Corps, Legislative and Congressional Reports, outcome study, Research Studies, Hispanic, Job Corps study, Scientific Studies, The Heritage Foundation, The National Job Corps Study

Training or Crime? Job Corps Students Linked to Burglary Ring (March 2010)

Wilmington Job Corps Center is operated by Management and Training Corporation

Make sure to watch this video about burglaries in Wilmington, DE…

Job Corps refuses to cooperate with the police…

Filed under: Contractors, crime, Job Corps, Management and Training Corporation, Newspaper Reports, Wilmington Job Corps Center, burglary, crime, Job Corps, Manangement and Training Corporation, Wilmington

Reader’s Comments on Job Corps and the American Dream

-from Trevor

I have an idea:

Start teaching really young kids to stay in school, stay out of trouble, learn how to find resources to get a JOB they’d WANT. Do this with some kind of private educational institutions and/or Awareness Campaign to make sure kids don’t end up getting themselves in something that could hurt them and them not know. If there was another alternate for kids other than Job Corps, and if we had a non-gov’t program telling kids to better themselves before they end up like Job Corps kids. If kids don’t have a reason to make a last resort to Job Corps, the program will suffer and the plug will be pulled.

This would take years to do so, but with the right people starting this, it all has possibilities to work. I plan on seeing this some day.

-from Howard

Why does this need to be privatized? Why can’t this be part of the public school curriculum?

-from Howard

While there is redundancy in the Job Corps program, for instance, one can earn a GED through BOCES, a community college, public school systems, as well as do work on-line and by watching TV programs, the selling point of Job Corps is that it provides room, board and health services free and the student also earns a stipend when enrolled as a trainee. For homeless youth or those in other negative life situations, this program can be life-saving.

-from Shirley

Bob Confer is a total joke. And this article is a bunch of bull. The government has been bought and paid for by the wealthy, and the big corporations. They and the government are one in the same. I can name on one hand the government representatives who appear to be honest and fighting for their constituents. “The government that has created poverty” is in fact the wealthy classes who want the masses to be poor – how else can they exploit them so they, the rich, can become more wealthy?

Confer and his ilk just don’t want to pay their fair share of taxes, so they attack Job Corps and health programs by saying that these programs are ruining the country and using jingoism to scare people. Sound familiar? Sound like Fascism, well it is. Why doesn’t he talk about his cronies who run the system and have become millionaires by playing the game?

Does this Bob Confer, a writer for the New American, a right wing John Birch Society publication, think we are all so stupid as he would hope? Does he think at least some of us don’t see through his distortions and lies? Using Job Corps, Medicare and Medicaid as examples of government waste in his right wing diatribe is despicable, as the right wing is the recipient of most tax handouts. Check the statistics – see which states receive the most tax dollars back from Washington as compared to the tax dollars they contribute to Washington.

The people in this country are fed a bunch of lies just to keep them stupid and exploitable and they actually believe those lies.

New American is a magazine published by the John Birch Society and the information on Job Corps Fraud is taken from a larger article that also criticizes Medicare and Medicaid.

The companies who abuse and make the profit from the “entitlements” this author mentions are the very same right wing nut jobs who read his magazine.

Read the whole article. These programs and the government are not ruining our country – it’s the right wing contractors who are stealing our tax payer dollars and who have to be monitored every step of the way because they are a bunch of thieves who can’t be trusted.

I wouldn’t cite anything from a John Birch Society rag publication as having any credibility because while they claim to be fighting for freedom, the only freedom they are concerned with is their own and to hell with the middle and lower classes. Read about the Koch brothers whose father co-founded the John Birch Society. Do you think they care about anyone but themselves and their own pockets?

Filed under: Job Corps, Newspaper Reports, politics, Reader's Comments, Bob Confer, Job Corps, John Birch Society, New American, redundant

Job Corps and the American Dream

Bob Confer’s post in the New American talks about how the US Government has created poverty instead of alleviating its presence.   He briefly mentions Job Corps as one of the wasteful programs that deserves a discerning look.  Confer mentions the “redundancy” of Job Corps and the fact that its programs are duplicated elsewhere  in the private sector and schools.  Redundancy is apparently another rationale for saying that Job Corps is expensive and should be eliminated.

I think why Job Corps has survived the “redundancy” accusation is because it’s highly touted as being the program of last resort for those who have been kicked out of high school, for the juvenile delinquents and misfits and for those who can’t read.  It’s a place to gather all “these” kids together and present Job Corps as a “one of a kind” program that isn’t duplicated anywhere else. It’s not the program Job Corps is selling, it’s the attendees.  And the message is: “Look how we take these inner city delinquents and cure them of their gang affiliations”, or, “Everyone else has given up on certain students, just give us six months and we’ll turn them around and give them a new attitude, a high school diploma and a trade on top of it all”.  Unfortunately, if it sounds too good to be true, most of the time it’s a lie.

Job Corps also has other kinds of attendees, the student who, for some reason or another wasn’t able to complete high school, or, the student from a broken family who is looking for an education and some stability.  Sometimes, kids without any behavioral problems at all enroll because they think it’s a place where they’ll get a quality, free, education and they believe what the glossy brochures and smooth talking recruiters tell them. I’ve spoken to those “other” kinds of students and heard the stories about the gangs, beat downs and blanket parties.  I’ve heard about the prevalence of drugs in the dorms and on campus. As a staff, I’ve also seen known drug-dealer students kept on the attendance rolls because we needed “the numbers”. Last, I’ve seen the stars slowly fade from student’s eyes when they suspect that they aren’t getting the dream of the education they deserve or when they notice that the overworked and underpaid teachers or staff don’t have the time to spend with them.

Sure, there are a few Job Corps students who do a complete turn-around, but unfortunately, they are the minority.  The vast majority are proved, through corrected statistics and scientific evidence that they are no better off than before they enrolled.  What gives? Why are we paying for this program? I believe that we too have stars in our eyes and want to believe that there is a magic bullet “out there” that will, once and for all, cure the troubled youth of our century and for now, Job Corps fulfills the fairly tale. We need the “dream” as much as the kids do…

Filed under: Job Corps, Kittrell Job Corps Center, Newspaper Reports, number manipulation, politics, Shriver Job Corps Center, Bob Confer, Job Corps, New American, poverty, redundant, The American Dream

September 14, 2010 Kentucky State Police Arrest Three Earle C. Clements Job Corps Students for Robbery and Choking a Victim

According to WFIE Channel 14, Kentucky State Police arrested three Earle C. Cements Job Corps students for choking a student from behind and robbing him of his money and cell phone.  The three accused students are: Brian Hardin, Domenic Tabron and Ashton Blake.  The three men are being charged with second degree robbery and were sent to the Union County Jail.

Read the story here:

Earle C. Clements Job Corps is operated by Management and Training Corporation.

Filed under: Arrests, Contractors, crime, Earle C. Clements Job Corps, Job Corps, Job Corps Centers, Management and Training Corporation, Newspaper Reports, arrest, Ashton Blake, Brian Hardin, Domenic Tabron, Earle C. Clements Job Corps, Manangement and Training Corporation, robbery, Union County Jail, WFIE Channel 14

Turner Job Corps Student Arrested September 13, 2010

Travis Wynn of the Turner Job Corps Center in Albany, Georgia was arrested on September 13, 2010 for throwing a rock off the Nottingham Bridge and smashing the windshield of an SUV,  according to WALB Channel 10 news.

No one was hurt and Travis was charged with terroristic acts and threats.

Read the story here:

Turner Job Corps Center is managed by Education and Training Resources, INC  (ETR)

Filed under: Arrests, Contractors, crime, Education and Training Resources (ETR), Job Corps, Newspaper Reports, Turner Job Corps Center, arrest, Education and Training Resources, terroristic acts and threats, Travis Wynn, Turner Job Corps Center, WALB Channel 10 news

Kentucky State Police Arrest Five Earle C. Clements Job Corps Students September 15, 2010

According to WEHT News 25 State Police arrested five Earle C. Clements Job Corps students for allegedly breaking into a dorm room and stealing a laptop, an Ipod, and IPhone.  All five suspects were booked into the Union County Jail and face burglary charges.

The students are: Micah Scott, Aaron Griffin, Robert Russell, Jarrod Blackman and Patrick Sandidge.

Read the story here:

Earle C. Clements Job Corps is managed by Management and Training Corporation (MTC)

Filed under: Arrests, Contractors, Earle C. Clements Job Corps, Job Corps, Job Corps Centers, Management and Training Corporation, Newspaper Reports, Aaron Griffin, arrest, Earle C. Clements, Jarrod Blackman, Manangement and Training Corporation, Micah Scott, Patrick Sandidge, Robert Russell, Union County Jail, WEHT News 25