Get Government Out of Education

Government has taken education and built it into a multi-functional mouse trap.  If you think you can escape the trap by choosing one path over another, you are wrong.  Private schools and parochial schools are an option, but are likely to be co-opted.  The only other option for now is home schooling and it is in danger of being gobbled up by other government hurdles. Americans must go “off the grid” in education or get government out of the education business entirely. A good start would be to abolish the US Department of Education.   See below:

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

COMMON CORE, CHOICE, AND CHARTER SCHOOLS Posted on September 20, 2014 Written by Anita Hoge

While every­one is out there debat­ing Com­mon Core, there is a sys­tem of stan­dard­iza­tion being put in place. And, if you are unaware of this sys­tem, what you don’t know about Com­mon Core, Choice, and Char­ter Schools CAN hurt you.

This story tells a dif­fer­ent Com­mon Core tale with a much dif­fer­ent end­ing than those who sup­port choice might want. What most peo­ple are NOT think­ing about is why edu­ca­tion is one of the most impor­tant func­tions of our Repub­lic. The answer to this ques­tion is impor­tant for all of us. Not only are we edu­cat­ing our future cit­i­zens, but through the local elec­tions of our school board mem­bers they have the ulti­mate author­ity over our tax­ing sys­tem through prop­erty taxes. How do these “edu­ca­tion reforms” impact our rep­re­sen­ta­tive government?

When you con­sider that there is a move­ment to destroy our rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment, “com­mon core, choice and char­ter school ini­tia­tives” become the per­fect impe­tus to change our Amer­i­can sys­tem by (1) mov­ing away from teach­ing con­tent to a “con­di­tion­ing” process, and (2) chang­ing how elected local school board mem­bers will no longer be mind­ing our local trea­sury, prop­erty taxes. This overview tells a dif­fer­ent story about where we are in this process than what you will find in most other debates about Com­mon Core and Choice. Lets focus on the facts and think about how Char­ter Schools will impact the future of America.

Think about this. If we no longer have pub­lic schools with locally elected school board mem­bers, what will hap­pen to your taxes? What hap­pens to your vote and your voice in gov­ern­ment? If our pub­lic school sys­tem is changed to a pri­va­tized “choice” sys­tem that uses our hard earned taxes with no elected boards, who con­trols what is taught? The par­ents? The cit­i­zen vot­ers? Char­ter Schools are the ulti­mate goal for the takeover of pub­lic edu­ca­tion. Char­ter schools are pri­vately owned, usu­ally for profit, with no elected local school board mem­bers, and they use pub­lic tax money. Plus, par­ents have no say in how they are run or what is taught.

Think about this. There were three major actions under the Obama admin­is­tra­tion, with­out leg­isla­tive approval, to change two hun­dred years of tra­di­tional pub­lic edu­ca­tion in the United States. (1) The Com­mon Core copy­right, which cre­ated a national cur­ricu­lum and national test­ing man­dat­ing that indi­vid­ual stu­dents meet indi­vid­ual stan­dards (sim­i­lar to the Oba­macare indi­vid­ual man­date). (2) Unlock­ing data ‘to flow’ through the Fam­ily Edu­ca­tion Rights in Pri­vacy Act, FERPA, which allows per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion on our chil­dren to flow to out­side 3rd party con­trac­tors for research and cur­ricu­lum devel­op­ment to match Com­mon Core. And, (3) No Child Left Behind Flex­i­bil­ity Waiver, (ESEA, Ele­men­tary and Sec­ondary Edu­ca­tion Act), that is re-training teach­ers to teach to Com­mon Core. This also allowed ALL chil­dren in pub­lic school to be funded under Title I by chang­ing the def­i­n­i­tion of who is poor or edu­ca­tion­ally deprived to any­one not meet­ing Com­mon Core. (Free and reduced lunch guide­lines of 40% school­-wide were dropped to 0%.) These three impor­tant points con­trol stan­dards and test­ing, cur­ricu­lum, and teach­ers with all pub­lic school chil­dren being funded under Title I.

So the ques­tion that must be asked is what else must be changed to move toward this direc­tion – this plan to destroy pub­lic edu­ca­tion and col­lapse our old sys­tem of rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment? A key ele­ment is fed­eral “choice” which is vehe­mently sup­ported by Repub­li­cans. The stage has already been set with char­ter schools. Caps have been removed on estab­lish­ing char­ter schools in many states because of promises made to Obama when accept­ing Race to the Top grants. Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion Dun­can dealt out ille­gal No Child Left Behind Flex­i­bil­ity Waivers (ESEA) that changed Title I fund­ing to blan­ket an entire pub­lic school. Every child becomes Title I where money ‘fol­lows the child’ and this tar­gets EVERY child in pub­lic school to change toward Com­mon Core with­out a law being passed.

Now con­sider this! How can Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats, with the help of Pres­i­dent Obama and Sec­re­tary Dun­can, be sure that ALL chil­dren in the United States—ALL CHILDREN, even in every pri­vate and reli­gious school—come under the fed­eral thumb of Com­mon Core? They are going to GIVE those Title I funds to EVERY child in pri­vate and reli­gious schools with FEDERAL CHOICE. With fed­eral choice ALL schools become gov­ern­ment schools and all schools must teach Com­mon Core. This is what fed­eral choice is all about—getting con­trol of all Catholic, Chris­t­ian, and pri­vate schools.

Add to this fed­eral over-reach, the sys­tem for com­pli­ance, Total Qual­ity Man­age­ment [TQM], a busi­ness model for account­abil­ity, is the sys­tem for con­trol. Data col­lec­tion is the key to TQM by mon­i­tor­ing and assess­ing indi­vid­u­als con­tin­u­ously. By link­ing and cross-referencing all data in the fol­low­ing com­po­nents, this will allow each area to be an easy tar­get for gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion for equity in edu­ca­tion. This is a sys­tem where indi­vid­u­als are mon­i­tored for gov­ern­ment com­pli­ance and where char­ter schools become the model for a gov­ern­ment takeover. Nation­al­iz­ing edu­ca­tion in the United States and remov­ing locally elected offi­cials ARE the pri­mary tar­gets of the Obama administration.

This model is some­times very dif­fi­cult for Amer­i­cans to under­stand because there are so many mov­ing parts and name changes, espe­cially under Demo­c­ra­tic and Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tions who both want the same thing. The fol­low­ing expla­na­tion of our present con­di­tion in edu­ca­tion, and how it relates to dimin­ish­ing our rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment, tells what is needed to col­lapse our sys­tem of local gov­ern­ment. This will give you an idea of how close we are to los­ing Amer­ica as we know it.

The fol­low­ing list is what is needed to accom­plish the goals of ‘Obama’s Equity in Edu­ca­tion Plan’ for our entire country:

• char­ter schools replace pub­lic schools:
• every­one has fed­eral Title I choice funds to go to any school (char­ter, pri­vate or reli­gious schools):
• every child is taught the same stan­dards:
• every teacher must teach the same stan­dards:
• every test must be aligned to these stan­dards:
• cur­ricu­lum and soft­ware is aligned to stan­dards:
• every­thing listed here is aligned to gov­ern­ment data col­lec­tion compliance.

Here are the details of this plan and its implementation:

The Goal: Align huge amounts of fed­eral money toward stan­dards, test­ing, teacher eval­u­a­tions, data col­lec­tion, and inter­ven­tions to con­trol what stu­dents know and what they can do.

The Answer: Race to the Top ($4.35 bil­lion), No Child Left Behind (ESEA Flex­i­bil­ity Waivers and Title I), the pro­posed ESEA Re-Authorization (No Child Left Behind, Ele­men­tary and Sec­ondary Edu­ca­tion Act), Amer­ica Com­petes Act, and all chil­dren will be screened using Spe­cial Edu­ca­tion fund­ing, IDEA, Indi­vid­u­als with Dis­abil­i­ties in Edu­ca­tion Act.

The Goal: Make sure all stu­dents are taught the same by flat­ten­ing the bell curve (every stu­dent meets the same stan­dards) and destroy­ing com­pe­ti­tion (no ABCDF’s). Change the edu­ca­tional sys­tem away from aca­d­e­mic con­tent to con­trol over what is taught through an indi­vid­ual career path­way. Expand stan­dards to the affec­tive domain (con­di­tion­ing) which means teach­ing and test­ing to reme­di­ate a child’s val­ues, atti­tudes and beliefs to a gov­ern­ment desired outcome.

The Answer: Com­mon Core cre­ates a national cur­ricu­lum and a national test nation­al­iz­ing edu­ca­tion in the US stan­dard­iz­ing and con­trol­ling the stan­dards in each state through a copy­right which removed local con­trol of the cur­ricu­lum. The Col­lege Career Cit­i­zen­ship Stan­dards adds “readi­ness” to the stan­dards expand­ing to dis­po­si­tions, atti­tudes, val­ues, social and emo­tional learn­ing or grit for easy con­di­tion­ing (brain­wash­ing, men­tal health cleans­ing, and social engi­neer­ing). Since con­trol has been removed from the local level, now the fed­eral gov­ern­ment con­trols what the stan­dards are and what will be taught in every school.

The Goal: Make sure all cur­ricu­lum and soft­ware is val­i­dated and matched to exact same Com­mon Core standards.

The Answer: Allow per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion to be released on stu­dents with­out parental knowl­edge or con­sent for research to val­i­date cur­ricu­lum matched to stan­dards. Obama issues an Exec­u­tive Order that “unlocks” FERPA, Fam­ily Edu­ca­tional Rights in Pri­vacy Act, that allows third-party ven­dors access to a child’s per­sonal data, includ­ing DNA sequences. Mas­sive research is being done in the non-cognitive and affec­tive domain. Men­tal health and mas­tery learn­ing (func­tional lit­er­acy) for work­force train­ing replaces con­tent based on aca­d­e­mics. Per­son­al­ity change and behav­ioral soft skills are decep­tively named grit, deeper learn­ing, school cli­mate, safe envi­ron­ments, code of con­duct, social and emo­tional learn­ing, emo­tional intel­li­gence, and inter­per­sonal skills. Research and data traf­fick­ing of per­son­ally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion on your child is rampant.

The Goal: Use ille­gal tac­tics to change fed­eral law by using ESEA Flex­i­bil­ity Waivers to change the cri­te­ria so that ALL STUDENTS in pub­lic schools are iden­ti­fied under Title I.

The Answer: Pres­i­dent Obama and Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion Dun­can removed poverty guide­line lev­els, thus mak­ing ALL chil­dren Title I, so ALL chil­dren in the pub­lic schools can be funded to meet the same Com­mon Core gov­ern­ment stan­dards bypass­ing Con­gres­sional authority.

The Goal: Make sure EVERY stu­dent is achiev­ing Com­mon Core standards.

The Answer: Make sure the national test mea­sures Com­mon Core (func­tional lit­er­acy and behav­ioral out­comes) for account­abil­ity. Test, then reme­di­ate. Every child will have a ‘career path­way’ sim­i­lar to an IEP in Spe­cial Ed. (Every child has a dis­abil­ity if they are not meet­ing Com­mon Core stan­dards.) Cre­ate inter­ven­tions forc­ing com­pli­ance to Com­mon Core (includ­ing men­tal health stan­dards) for each stu­dent through IDEA, Indi­vid­u­als with Dis­abil­i­ties in Edu­ca­tion Act. ALL chil­dren must be screened and reme­di­ated to meet gov­ern­ment Com­mon Core stan­dards with inter­ven­tions in the reg­u­lar class­room, paid for through Spe­cial Ed funding—called Response to Inter­ven­tions or Multi-tiered Sys­tem of Sup­port. Both aca­d­e­mics and per­son­al­ity change are the tar­gets for each child under a career path­way. Brain­wash­ing com­mences to gov­ern­ment con­trolled behav­ioral standards.

The Goal: Make sure all teach­ers are teach­ing the same stan­dards and make sure all test­ing mea­sures teacher per­for­mance for accountability.

The Answer: Teach to the test by cre­at­ing teacher value added mod­els (VAM). All teach­ers must be forced to teach Com­mon Core. This is done by eval­u­at­ing teach­ers on how their stu­dents score on tests, thus forc­ing them into com­pli­ance. ALL teach­ers must com­ply to teach gov­ern­ment Com­mon Core Stan­dards and teach to the test. Train­ing for teach­ers is a MUST, because if teach­ers are not teach­ing Com­mon Core exactly per the gov­ern­ment cri­te­ria, chil­dren will not meet the stan­dards. Teach­ers are penal­ized for vari­ables out of their con­trol. (Exten­sive teacher train­ing in the ESEA Flex­i­bil­ity Waiver: train­ing includes: Char­lotte Daniel­son Teacher Eval­u­a­tions, Robert Marzano, Pelligrino’s 21st Cen­tury Skills, and Webb’s Deeper Learning.)

The Goal: Make ALL stu­dents in the United States funded as Title I via ‘fol­low the child’ vouch­ers in Obama’s Equity in Edu­ca­tion Plan:

The Answer: Fed­eral “choice” is not yet achieved, but, this is how it will be done. The Obama Equity Agenda is in the Re-Authorization of No Child Left Behind, ESEA, (out of com­mit­tee and ready to be leg­is­lated into law) for fund­ing that will “fol­low the child” under Title I, where ALL indi­vid­ual chil­dren must be iden­ti­fied and funded for meet­ing gov­ern­ment Com­mon Core Stan­dards. The waivers have already changed Title I in pub­lic schools. So, the Repub­li­cans have attached amend­ments onto ESEA allow­ing a “CHOICE” voucher that equal­izes the fund­ing for EVERY child. This voucher will have a student’s name on it and is in every back­pack of EVERY child. These amend­ments to ESEA call for fed­eral “choice” vouch­ers to go to any child to go to any school they choose, includ­ing pri­vate and reli­gious schools. Think about the impact.

There will be an exo­dus out of the pub­lic school sys­tem into char­ter and pri­vate schools. This wipes out zip codes being des­ti­na­tions for a “bet­ter” education—no more wealthy school dis­tricts. Pub­lic schools will col­lapse. This wipes out locally elected school boards. Any pri­vate or reli­gious school accept­ing a “choice” child must teach Com­mon Core. Obama calls this “fis­cal smooth­ing” when every child is funded the same way. All schools—private, char­ter and reli­gious schools—become gov­ern­ment schools that must teach Com­mon Core. Also keep in mind the states fil­ing law­suits against the leg­is­la­tures for the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ity of fund­ing schools, where judges are rul­ing inequities in rich and poor school districts.

The Goal: Make sure elected school boards are destroyed.

The Answer: Cre­ate no caps on char­ter schools on the state level to replace pub­lic schools. Removal of locally elected school boards is a must for the private/public pri­va­ti­za­tion scheme to work. Char­ter school investors, like Reed Hast­ings of Net­flix, want to get rid of locally elected school boards (He has openly stated this, watch him HERE). Obama wants bold fed­eral action to dis­trib­ute funds based on stu­dent need, not zip code, and estab­lish a process for replac­ing chron­i­cally inef­fec­tive locally elected school boards. This is the set-up to destroy our rep­re­sen­ta­tive form of gov­ern­ment at the local level.

The Goal: Make it very prof­itable for pri­vate enter­prises and busi­ness to invest in Char­ter Schools.

The Answer: The U.S. Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion can award grants for the “Credit Enhance­ment for Char­ter School Facil­i­ties” pro­gram which sub­si­dizes and awards pri­vate enti­ties with fed­eral fund­ing. Char­ter schools are pri­vately run but receive pub­lic money and, as already noted, an increas­ing pro­por­tion of them are being run on a for-profit basis. Char­ter schools can access pri­vate sec­tor and other non-Federal cap­i­tal in order to acquire, con­struct, and ren­o­vate facil­i­ties at a rea­son­able cost. The tax code makes char­ter schools very lucrative.

Sta­tis­tics have proven that where char­ter schools have pro­lif­er­ated, it is more likely that the pub­lic schools will expe­ri­ence finan­cial stress. This is espe­cially dif­fi­cult for local school boards with the trans­fer of pub­lic assets and insti­tu­tions into the hands of pri­vate cor­po­ra­tions. The “New Mar­kets Tax Credit” pro­gram that became law toward the end of the Clin­ton pres­i­dency, allows firms to invest in char­ters and other projects located in “under­served” areas. They can col­lect a gen­er­ous tax credit up to 39% to off­set their costs. No won­der pri­vate investors are flock­ing to char­ter schools! There is a huge risk fac­tor for any local school dis­trict in a state that passed laws pro­mot­ing “choice” along with an easy approval process for new char­ters, espe­cially with no caps on expan­sion. Race to the Top grants accen­tu­ated this process with states promis­ing to drop their caps on char­ter schools when they took the money. This is the plan for con­fis­cat­ing our tax money. Your hard-earned money will come out of your pocket and go into the pock­ets of corporations.

The Goal: Elim­i­nate pub­lic schools that aren’t meet­ing Com­mon Core.

The Answer: Gov­ern­ment takeover of schools not meet­ing Com­mon Core gov­ern­ment stan­dards is called aca­d­e­mic bank­ruptcy, pri­or­ity or focus schools, and turn-around schools under ESEA Flex­i­bil­ity Waivers. These fail­ing schools are a tar­get for takeover if they do not improve their scores on Com­mon Core national tests which ulti­mately points the fin­ger at teach­ers. These schools will be turned into char­ter schools. Par­ent Trig­ger Laws also cre­ate a char­ter school. This con­tin­ues the elim­i­na­tion of locally elected school board mem­bers and con­tin­ues expand­ing char­ter schools that have no elected boards account­able to par­ents, cit­i­zens and taxpayers.

The Goal: Col­lapse the tax­ing struc­ture in your neighborhood.

The Answer: When pub­lic schools col­lapse because of char­ter school expan­sion and fed­eral “choice,” this will elim­i­nate taxes based on prop­erty. This will seem to equal­ize rich and poor school dis­tricts by fund­ing all chil­dren the same. Obama doesn’t think it is “fair” that there are rich school dis­tricts and poor school dis­tricts. Region­al­iz­ing where your tax money goes, and pulling the tax­ing author­ity away from the local level toward regional indus­try clus­ters, is the plan. Obama’s Equity in Edu­ca­tion Plan or “fis­cal smooth­ing” and the Work­force Inno­va­tion and Oppor­tu­nity Act align the skill needs of indus­tries in each state econ­omy or regional econ­omy and places decision-making author­ity in the hands of unelected work­force devel­op­ment boards.

The Goal: Cre­ate a lon­gi­tu­di­nal data­base to mon­i­tor EVERY indi­vid­ual in the sys­tem funded from the Amer­ica Com­petes Act.

The Answer: The state lon­gi­tu­di­nal data sys­tem, SLDS, with cross-referencing capa­bil­i­ties to mon­i­tor stu­dents, teach­ers, test­ing, cur­ricu­lum, prin­ci­pals, super­in­ten­dents, schools, school dis­tricts, and states, with an over­all fis­cal respon­si­bil­ity, will pin­point each aspect and every per­son in the sys­tem above for account­abil­ity and com­pli­ance. Updat­ing tech­nol­ogy in every school a must. This is the oner­ous enforce­ment mechanism.

The Goal: Elim­i­nate states’ rights con­trol of funding.

The Answer: Fed­eral “choice” will elim­i­nate state-level author­ity because of flow-through Title I funds when fund­ing directly ‘fol­lows the child’ from the fed­eral level, thus elim­i­nat­ing states’ rights. Vouch­ers are now directed to the indi­vid­ual child. Thus the removal of states rights’ when fed­eral Title I funds pass-through directly to the child.

No voice. No vote. Gov­ern­ment con­trols every­thing in edu­ca­tion.
An equi­table gov­ern­ment con­trolled sys­tem, with only pri­va­tized con­tract schools, that teaches only a gov­ern­ment con­trolled cur­ricu­lum, and forces every­one to com­ply to gov­ern­ment con­trolled stan­dards through account­abil­ity. I think this is called communism.

If Amer­i­can par­ents really thought about this, there would be another Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion. Shouldn’t we all be think­ing about this? The impli­ca­tions of this true story are real. From my van­tage point, I would say we are mostly toward the end of the true Amer­i­can story. This isn’t just about the chil­dren. It affects us all.

Source: http://agenda21news.com/2014/09/common-core-choice-charter-schools/#more-2761