Posted on 08/26/2010 10:32:54 AM PDT by Nachum
H/T Cubachi This is a great example of why videos of NJ Governor Chris Christie speaking are described as porn for conservatives, this guy says what the "common folk" are thinking. This time he goes after the Obama administration and federal bureaucracy.
After making a bid for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal education reform money, New Jersey fell three points short of receiving "Race to the Top" funding. The reason for falling shored was an error in one page the Christie administration's almost 2,000 page application. A question on the application asked for budget information comparing the 2008 and 2009 school years. However, the state submitted information comparing the current year to 2011.That mistake cost the state 4.8 points and the federal funding.
(Excerpt) Read more at yidwithlid.blogspot.com ...
HBO has a reality series about The Bunny Ranch brothel in Nevada. This reminded me of that show.
Whenever a guy comes in with his pile of money, the whores all have to parade in front of him and flirt so he can determine which he deigns to give some money and a good #$*ing to.
At least in the whorehouse, the guy is using his own money. Obama stole the money from the hookers in the first place.
Yeah. If we won the one time 400 million or so payment, can you guess where the money would come from next year?
Yes
You don't just sit there and pout on principle.
You realize that they already are, right?
Just because you can be bought doesn’t change the fact that a real conservative doesn’t need the feds in education.
The feds are already in education and have been for decades.
So the choices are: endure the federal education bureaucracy and give the federal government a free present of $400mm or endure the federal education bureaucracy and not give away $400mm in taxpayer money.
A "real conservative" doesn't take $400mm from his constituents and give it to the federal government.
The reasoning on this thread from Christie's opponents is akin to those who claim that the Bush tax cuts are a government expenditure that need to be ended so the federal government can save money.
“He was elected governor of New Jersey, not King of New Jersey.”
Can't he declare some sort of state of emergency in education? Can't he be creative?
“He has a majority Democrat legislature to deal with for the time being. He can't rule by decree.”
True.
“I send all my kids to parochial schools and am still paying through the nose in property taxes to send other people's kids to school.”
We are doing the same. It irks me to no end to have to pay for this crap and dole out private school tuition money. The reason I speak up, is because others WNAT to do this buy property taxes prevents them from sending their kids elsewhere. They can't afford it.
“There needs to be a voucher program in NJ, but there is no fully-implemented voucher program in any US state no matter how much more conservative than NJ.”
There is a “voucher system” in NJ but it is reserved for certain school districts. It works like this.
1. Have the student spend one year in the crappy school district.
2. Go to your District BOE and ask to send your child to another district. If the receiving school is on this list it MIGHT happen. your local BOE will determine if you can.
3. If more than 2% of the sending district applies then it becomes a lottery.
4. The receiving district can reject you.
“And whenever one is implemented, it comes up against well-funded court challenges.”
I don't know about that. We did vote in Christie. If it is a ballot issue that may make a HUGE difference.
“Vouchers will not magically appear.”
Of course not.
What I am concerned about is other kids not having a decent education. It takes more than you or mine to be productive citizens. It's not what they don't teach, it is all about what they teach. They teach socialism, liberalism and other godless garbage.
The individual is being ERASED with this collaborative method. It is a twisted step child of cooperative learning. It's unhealthy and destroys the students self confidence. Knowledge is not being taught. It's all about knowing WHERE to get the knowledge.
They are now mandating this in prek public schools. Need I mention Every Day Math and it's optional use of CALCULATORS to reach kids who “learn differently”? It's terrible what is going on.
We are graduating dumbed down kids with no self confidence and HUGE EGOS. Liberals know what they are doing in education. When you have no knowledge, then you rely on arbitrary EMOTIONS. It's no wonder that the majority of new college students and graduates voted for Obama. They are TAUGHT his ways are RIGHT.
I’m not pouting, I’m happy we didn’t get the money.
Are you seriously implying that the only way to “get back” money from the feds is to let them take over your education system?
Please.
I like Christie and I know that he can’t go around claiming we need these reforms because we just don’t have the money and then NOT apply to get the one time freebie from the feds. Politically he would come off as a hypocrite or liar.
I am still very happy we lost out.
NJ already has a substantial budget shortfall of $1.3B in 2010.
We will have a $10.5B budget shortfall in 2011.
The Governor is well aware of this and is on the warpath over it. There are no plans from the governor to raise taxes next year, but to continue cutting the budget.
This $400mm will go to pay debts the Democrat legislature already ran up - the Governor has no plans to allocate extra funds in the future but to cut future expenditures.
Clearly, it was a rhetorical question.
I strongly disagree.
As a stauch conservative I don’t want OBAMA standards in my school district even though we don’t allow our kids there. We private and clsoet home school them.
New Jersey is VERY liberal but Obama’s Secreatry of Education is FAR MORE LIBERAL THAN NEW JERSEY!
Wednesday December 17, 2008
Obama’s Secretary of Education Pick Proposed Homosexual High School
By Kathleen Gilbert
WASHINGTON, D.C., December 17, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Two more Obama Cabinet appointees, one a proponent of homosexual schools and another an open homosexual, serve as further indication that the President-elect will eagerly espouse homosexual-friendly policies.
On Tuesday, Obama announced that Chicago Public Schools CEO and Chicago Annenberg Challenge collaborator Arne Duncan was his choice for Secretary of Education. Obama praised Duncan as a hands-on leader not “beholden to any one ideology.”
As head of the Chicago public school system, Duncan proposed and approved controversial plans for a special public high school for homosexuals. The Social Justice Solidarity High School (formerly the Social Justice High School, Pride Campus) was designed ostensibly to protect homosexual teenagers from harassment, and as such pitched as especially homosexual-friendly in its policies and curriculum.
“We want to create great new options for communities that have been traditionally underserved,” Duncan said in an Oct 9 Chicago Tribune article. “If you look at national studies, you can see gay and lesbian students with high dropout rates ... I think there is a niche there we need to fill.”
In November, the backers of the proposed school halted the project in order to further tone down Duncan’s original idea in response to mounting criticism from social conservatives and gay lobbyists alike, who reacted unfavorably to segregating homosexuals.
Cindy Crane, executive director of the Gay-Straight-Alliance for Safe Schools, told the Catholic News Service (CNS) she was “pleased that someone who established himself as understanding the special challenges of LGBTs (Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgendered) ... within his own state is now in a federal position and will be able to influence legislation and budgets on a federal level.”
Others worried that Duncan’s appointment at the helm of American education would pave the way for dogmatic homosexualist indoctrination of even the youngest Americans.
“One wonders if Duncan will bring this proposal with him to Washington D.C. and attempt to force school systems all across the country to start up their own gay, lesbian and transgender schools?” said Chicago pundit Warner Todd Hudson on the Publius’ Forum blog.
Laurie Higgins of the conservative Illinois Family Institute, also expressed concern to CNS that Duncan would undoubtedly bring “arguable, unproven theories about homosexuality and how public schools should treat it” to bear on nationwide policies. “He necessarily has taken a position on what homosexuality is — the nature of it, and its morality,” she said, noting that Duncan never expressed “anything other than approval” for the homosexual school and curriculum.
Another Cabinet announcement - Nancy Sutley as head of the Council on Environmental Quality - earned Obama praise from the homosexual lobby, as Sutley is the Cabinet’s first female homosexual member.
“President-elect Obama’s nomination of Nancy Sutley is another step toward full equality for gay Americans,” said Chuck Wolfe, president of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund. “It sends a signal to young people that they can participate in their government at its highest levels, regardless of their sexual orientation, gender or ethnicity.”
Mary Beth Maxwell, another open homosexual, is considered a likely favorite for the Labour Secretary opening in the Cabinet.
Obama has in recent days made clear his agenda to dismantle legal protection for marriage and open federal law to homosexualist prerogatives. The President-elect’s website last month laid out a “civil rights” agenda that includes repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, enforcing homosexual “affirmative action” in workplaces, and opening adoption and military service to open homosexuals.
In January, the homosexual community will be officially represented for the first time in a presidential inauguration ceremony. Obama’s parade is scheduled to include the Blazing River Freedom Band, part of the larger Lesbian and Gay Band Association.
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Obama Selecting the Most Anti-Life, Anti-Family Radicals He Can Find for Administration
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/nov/08112009.html
Obama’s “Race to the Top” is like a game show lottery.
How much you suck up to their over the top LIBERAL agenda awards you points. The more you suck up to them, and surrender to them, the better your odds are at winning some of YOUR tax dollars back.
What utter nonsense.
We cannot get real reform in education by having the feds prop up the bureaucracy. You sound like the various school boards across the state that bristled at Christie’s cuts.
“We lost our state aid so now we have to raise property taxes or cut out sports or art or heaven forbid increase class size”
School boards were using state aid to hire more teachers, pay them more and fatten up their pensions. Fed aid would be used for the same.
And next year when the fed money is gone? We are left paying for all those new employees and bennies. NO thanks.
I am a Christie supporter, he needs time to get things done.
I am glad he didn’t get this though.
I know. I believe he will be able to cut spending just like he said he would.
One way would be to reform the pension system, reduce public payrolls, privatize some functions and end many wasteful programs.
He’s trying to do all these things, give him a chance :)
Common sense tells anyone receptive to it that Obama is going to protect teachers and unions. Obama wants another stimulus package to bail out teachers so it's not as though Arne or Obama want lousy teachers removed or public schools shut down. No! It's all about the Federal government completely controlling the curriculum and standards. Obama and his Secretary want ALL states to have the same curriculum and standards as other states. So if you move to Kansas City, Kansas, you will have the same standards and curriculum as a public school in Princeton, New Jersey.
This would completely remove STATE RIGHTS by the people of New Jersey to have ANY saw in the standards of curriculum. Why do you think STATES scrambling for money are busily amending their STATE CONSTITUTIONS so the can compete for the Race to the Bottom? It s because education was to remain in control of the STATE.
No. I don't know where the hell you read that.
The application, as I understand it, involved documenting what you were already doing in regard to the education system in your state. It didn't involve turning over additional control of anything. They already control plenty.
If you have some evidence that the application to recover a portion of the stolen taxpayer loot included "letting the feds take over your education system", please share the links.
I'd rather that money have stayed in NJ in the first place, but I'm even less satisfied that my tax dollars are now on their way to NYC and Massachussetts. Pardon me if I don't share your enthusiasm for funding those leftwing beheamoths.
I agree with you.
This was God send that Christie didn’t get this.
On other issues he is doing well.
He needs to hold firm on those other issues and withdrawl from this Race to the Bottom.
What planet are you living on?
Obama wants a centralized economy and that includes a centralized education system where decisions are made in D.C. - not at the STATE LEVEL!
Haven't you seen enough of this?
Car manufactures, Banks, Mortgages, Student Loans ... Obam a will not be content and nor will his cohorts till they have CONTROL - complete control. Name a communist or a marxist dictator that didn't control education. Name one or do you think Obama is not of that variety? Do you really think Obama is conservative? LOL!
Please explain the link between this money and the feds taking additional control of the state's education system.
You really think Obama's going to leave NJ alone now that he gets to ship more of our money to NYC? You think he would have left NJ alone if Christie hadn't tried to recover some of these stolen funds. That's laughable! You obviously have no idea how these people work.
Do you really think Obama is conservative?
That was the most idiotic non sequitur I've read today. What would possibly inspire you to post such stupidity?
It’s a con job!
...
Front for Federal Control?
Others feared the Race to the Top was really a government buy-off scheme to surreptitiously impose draconian federal regulations on the nation’s educational system.
“The Obama Administration is being pretty successful at getting its educational agenda pushed through outside of having to reauthorize No Child Left Behind. Race to the Top is achieving a lot of what the administration wanted to do—getting states to sign on to ‘common standards.’ National standards is huge and they are doing that through Race to the Top,” Lindsey Burke, the Heritage Foundation’s chief educational analyst, told HUMAN EVENTS.
When the administration announced its Race to the Top program last year, officials said one of its chief purposes was to reward states that called for the creation or expansion of charter schools. But when Duncan announced the winners in March, it was “disappointing that charters weren’t even mentioned in Mr. Duncan’s prepared statement and that the two winning states have some of the country’s weaker charter laws,” the Journal noted at the time.
Throughout this competition, the Obama Administration hoped that the state plans would have the support of the teachers union. But critics pointed out that many legislatures were unlikely to take on the unions and school boards who have been among the biggest obstacles to reform, making the implementation of real and substantive innovations more remote.
Two of the applicant states who lost were Florida and Louisiana, where the reforms sought more teacher accountability and school-choice voucher plans to allow parents to pull their kids from failing schools.
In a number of states, where teacher unions had withheld their support from plans in the first round, many threw their support to the second-round applications last month as a result of concessions that watered down or dropped provisions they opposed.
Looking to 2012
The strong scent of politics permeated this year’s first round in the competition. A number of analysts have pointed out that the two winners were states where two leading elected figures—Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware and Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee—were being targeted by the White House for support in the upcoming legislative battle to pass President Obama’s revised No Child Left Behind bill.
Many on the list of 16 finalists in the first round, out of the 40 states that submitted applications, looked like they were chosen from an electoral wish list for the 2012 presidential election, including Colorado, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
Union Influence
Union opposition has been a key factor in shaping these plans, and therein lies one of its critical architectural flaws. In Indiana, for example, state school superintendent Tony Bennett said teacher unions’ opposition led to his decision to drop out of the application process.
In Minnesota, Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty attacked the state teachers union as obstructionist after it had rejected the state’s application.
“The job of the teachers’ union is to protect the union members, but the main role they are playing now is the primary obstacle to passing any sort of reform,” said a top adviser to the governor.
The second round of applications will be judged in September and already 35 states and the District of Columbia have submitted new plans, but nine states who entered the contest’s first round and lost had not reapplied by the June 1 deadline.
Some, like Minnesota, said poor teacher union support had made a compromise plan impossible to achieve. A number of other states dropped out of the running because they feared the initiative was a rearguard federal scheme to enact common nationwide standards.
After officially beginning the second round judging last week for the remaining $3.4 billion, Duncan said the competition, despite little to show for it so far, was a success. “Every state that applied now has a blueprint for raising educational quality across America,” he said.
But the results of Duncan’s giveaway competition so far haven’t yielded much. That only two out of 16 merited approval suggests that either there was more reform-killing consensus than he wanted, or far more in the way of conservative reforms than the Obama Administration could stomach.
Once again, Washington is trying to engineer better educational outcomes by throwing more federal money at our public schools. But if $800 billion isn’t leading to improvements, it’s hard to see how another $4 billion is going to produce improved student test scores that remain as elusive as ever in the face of intransigent labor union opposition to school choice and teacher accountability.
As for the chances of Obama’s big-spending revision of No Child Left Behind being enacted, Heritage’s Lindsey Burke says “getting NCLB reauthorized or even considered will be a heavy lift this year.”
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=37401
STOP BEING FOOLED!
Look at the RESULTS!
For crying our loud, OBAMA IS A LIAR!
WAKE UP!
What does it take to get through to people?
I’m with you free me, I am GLAD New Jersey didn’t get this.
Obama is taking control of everything.
“Please explain the link between this money and the feds taking additional control of the state’s education system.”
See reply #38
“You really think Obama’s going to leave NJ alone now that he gets to ship more of our money to NYC? You think he would have left NJ alone if Christie hadn’t tried to recover some of these stolen funds. That’s laughable! You obviously have no idea how these people work.”
New Jersey isn’t going to get ANY money. Christie claims to be a Republican. YOU have no idea how partisan Obama and his administration is. Truly CLUELESS!
Do you really think Obama is conservative?
“That was the most idiotic non sequitur I’ve read today. What would possibly inspire you to post such stupidity? “
People like you, amaze me. You WANT to believe. You truly WANT to believe what Obama’s people say. Good grief! They are ALL power hungry LIARS. How many examples of this does it take to get through to you?
HOW MANY??????????????????????????????????????????????
Okay, here, READ THIS:
Dangerous Projects in Public Schools
Recruiting Kids for Obama’s Agenda
President Barack Obama’s budget has added more than $100 billion of federal taxpayers’ money to what is called “education,” so that means it will be spent by alumni of the Saul Alinsky school of radical community organizing and/or the Chicago Democratic machine.
Obama is using the public schools to recruit a private army of high-schoolers to “build on the movement that elected President Obama by empowering students across the country to help us bring about our agenda.” We now know that Obama’s “agenda” is to move the United States into European-style Socialism.
Obama’s internet outreach during his campaign, Obama for America, has been renamed Organizing for America (OFA) in order to recruit students to join a cult of Obama and become activists for his goals. The teacher of an 11th-grade government class in Massillon, Ohio, passed out the sign-up sheet, headed with Obama’s “O” logo, asking students to become interns for Organizing for America. We’re indebted to Pamela Geller of AtlasShrugs.com for putting the curriculum on the internet.
These interns will be given an intensive nine-week training course using comprehensive lesson plans. Assigned readings include Saul Alinsky’s notorious Rules for Radicals, Stir It Up: Lessons from Community Organizing and Advocacy by the left-wing activist Rinku Sen, and particular sections of Dreams From My Father dealing with Obama’s days as a community organizer in Chicago.
Republican students will be filtered out of the intern program by requiring applicants to answer questions that reveal their politics. One example is, “What one issue facing our country is important to you and why?”
Geller said the purpose of this training to become Alinsky-style community organizers, is “of course, to elect more Democrats.” The internship program is specifically geared to get the kids working in the 2010 elections.
The sign-up sheet for Organizing for America starts with this instruction: “Organizing for America, the successor organization to Obama for America, is building on the movement that elected President Obama by empowering students across the country to help us bring about our agenda of change.” The application explains that this national internship program is “working to make the change we fought so hard for in 2008 a reality in 2010 and beyond.”
This is not the first time Obama has tried to enlist schoolchildren into an Obama cult. Last fall, the instructions mailed to every school by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan added a very political dimension to Obama’s speech that was broadcast to public school children on September 8.
Geller explained the extensive political dimension of the new intern program. The OFA student interns will be trained in the goals and language of the left: “anti-war agitation, anti-capitalism, Marx, Lenin, [Bill] Ayers, LGBT agenda promotion, global warming, soft-on-jihad, and illegal immigration.”
Another item on OFA’s reading list is The New Organizers by Zack Exley. It brags about “an insurgent generation of organizers” inside the Obama campaign that has “almost without anyone noticing . . . built the Progressive movement a brand new and potentially durable people’s organization, in a dozen states, rooted at the neighborhood level.”
The ten-page “National Intern Organizer Curriculum” is very specific in describing the tactics that interns will be taught. It includes these components: “Using Story as an Organizing Tool, Building Relationships and Building Teams, Mobilizing to Win On the Issues (issue advocacy), Health Care Service Project.”
Passage of Obamacare is one of this intern project’s major goals. The curriculum promises to provide “insight on the strategy and plan behind the health care campaign” and “further motivate them to work on the issue.”
The sign-up sheet states that the “purpose” of training these students is “to build community” among the interns and teach them “to be leaders in OFA’s organizing work.” After all, Barack Obama knows a great deal about being a community organizer; that was his only job before he got into politics.
Job prospects may be bleak for many Americans, but they will be rosy for alumni of Obama’s intern program. After the students have been fully trained as Alinsky-style community organizers, they will be eligible for jobs in Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, or Learn and Serve America.
Those three so-called “service” organizations, which annually dole out millions of dollars to left-wing groups, are overseen by the Corporation for National and Community Service. The U.S. Senate just confirmed this Corporation’s new chief executive, Patrick Corvington, who was a senior official of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which has given over a million and a half dollars to the ACORN network of organizations.
Storing Information on Students
The Fordham Law School Center on Law and Information Policy investigated education records from all 50 states and discovered that states are collecting far more information than necessary and failing to take appropriate measures to safeguard student privacy and protect them from data misuse. The study also found that this collection of information is often not compliant with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
Furthermore, 80% of states do not have a system to delete student records, and therefore are likely to maintain them indefinitely. The only punishment for a FERPA violation is for the Department of Education to withhold federal education funding, but the Department has never done that.
Some states collect a lot of data that has nothing to do with student test scores, including Social Security numbers, disciplinary records, family wealth indicators, student pregnancies, student mental health, illness, and jail sentences. A few states record health information about students such as the date of a students’ last medical exam and the students’ weight.
The collection of student databases that track students from pre-school through entry into the workforce began with the emphasis in the 1990s on testing and standards, expanded under “No Child Left Behind” mandates, and has been significantly boosted by the Obama Administration because of the promise of federal grants awarded through the Race to the Top competition and other parts of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Fordham law professor Joel R. Reidenberg, who oversaw this study, said that states are “trampling the privacy interests of those students,” and that years later, when these kids are adults, information from their elementary, middle and high school years will easily be misused by hackers and others.
The Fordham report made numerous recommendations to beef up student privacy such as collecting only information relevant to articulated purposes, purging unjustified data, enacting time limits for data retention, and hiring a Chief Privacy Officer for each state.
There is no indication that these suggestions will be implemented because the Obama Department of Education officials believe that collecting personally identifiable data is “at the heart of improving schools and school districts.” One of the four reform mandates of the Race to the Top competition is to establish pre-kindergarten to college-and-career data systems that “track progress and foster continuous improvement.” Federal stimulus funds provide at least $250 million to help states build these student data collections.
The advocates of this massive data collection project, in which individual students are clearly identifiable, claim that this is necessary to enable policymakers and educators to evaluate student and teacher performance. They assert that the ability to track individual students enables educators to predict which students are in danger of dropping out, determine which are the better teachers and curricula, and track trends in academic progress by ethnicity and income level.
Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan has an important ally for promoting student data systems in the Data Quality Campaign (DQC), an organization founded in 2005, largely with money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The organization’s January 2010 publication, The Next Step, praises the “enormous progress” states have made in developing these data systems, but complains that the states have not yet moved to “alter policies, programs and practices to spur continuous improvement at every level.”
In other words, teachers, school districts and state policymakers have thus far not used the data they already have in order to make educational decisions, even as an increasing number of personal details about each student are stored.
The advocates of this massive data collection seem to have little or no concern for privacy protection. The DQC asserts that “Data are only useful if people are able to access, understand and use them.” The DQC website explicitly supports linking education data with “workforce, social services and other critical state agency data systems.”
DQC executive director Aimee Guidera admitted that unnecessary data has “probably” been collected in some cases, but said the larger concern is that most states lack a “strategic, thoughtful way of connecting information and using it to answer questions.”
A recent Education Week article noted that privacy laws have made it challenging to link K-12 and postsecondary data in states that prohibit schools from storing students’ Social Security numbers; however, the Fordham Center found that 32% of states already record each child’s SSN. It is also possible that some states might opt to change their statutes concerning SSN data to pave the way for receiving more federal money to implement longitudinal student databases. The changing of such laws may be what the DQC has in mind with their current focus of “helping states identify and put in place the necessary policies and practices” necessary to implement “robust” student-level longitudinal data systems.
All 50 states now have in place at least five of the DQC’s ten “essential elements” for a statewide longitudinal data system. Within the next three years, 47 states plan to have eight or more elements in place. “It’s happened at a really breakneck pace over the past year,” said Ben Passmore, director of policy research for the University System of Maryland.
Why Kids Don’t Do Well in School
Let me share with you an interesting article from the Washington Post about the teacher of an all-black class in a high school in Alexandria, Virginia, who expressed his frustration at how poorly the students were performing. The class included both native-born African-Americans and kids who had immigrated from Africa.
In a moment of exasperation, the teacher blurted out this question to the native-born students: “Why don’t you guys study like the kids from Africa?” One of them shot back the answer. The kid replied, “It’s because they have fathers who kick their butts and make them study.” Another student called out: “Ask the class, just ask how many of us have our fathers living with us.”
The teacher did ask the class, and not one hand went up. The students have figured out, even if school teachers and administrators are still in the dark, that the essential difference between kids who make it in school, and those who don’t, is whether they have their father in the home.
It isn’t a matter of race; the African-Americans and the Africans are the same race. It isn’t because the school doesn’t have enough money; this school has so much money that it gives every student a laptop of his own.
The basic problem is the lack of fathers in the home. And why didn’t these kids have fathers in the home? For the majority of them, the reason is the liberal welfare system which transformed the people who were given “free” money called “welfare” into a society of single moms. In this matriarchy, fathers were made unnecessary, even an impediment to the flow of taxpayer handouts.
Now we see the terrible consequences of what Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously predicted in 1965 when Lyndon Johnson started his Great Society spending. Welfare reform was passed in 1996 and even signed by President Bill Clinton, but President Obama had those reforms repealed in his Stimulus bill last year.
The anti-marriage feminists are unwilling to fault the matriarchal society, and so the academic feminists keep looking for other causes of poor grades by minority students. An outfit called the Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group is trying to get the University of Minnesota to make race, class and gender the “overarching framework” of all teacher education coursework.
This busybody Task Group is part of the University’s Teacher Education Redesign Initiative, which is premised on the notion that Minnesota teachers’ lack of “cultural competence” contributes to the poor academic performance of minority students. The plan would require teachers to be re-educated so they will teach Minnesota minority kids that America is an oppressive, racist, sexist, homophobic country.
According to the final report of the Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group last year, in order to effectively teach a diverse class of students, teachers must understand how “white privilege, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and internalized oppression” have impacted their thinking.
The report demands that teachers be trained to instruct students on the U.S. “myth of meritocracy,” the “history of white racism,” and “demands for assimilation to white, middle-class, Christian meanings and values.” This Task Force even has plans to browbeat into submission those who don’t accept these new liberal dictates. The Task Force calls on the University to develop “a remediation plan” for non-performing students and teachers.
Such outlandish proposals have not gone unnoticed. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) accuses these re-education plans of violating “the freedom of conscience of the university’s students,” and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) charges that these plans “ignore academic goals and lead to a politicized determination of who is qualified to be a teacher.”
The University of Minnesota is pretending to back off from the more outrageous of these proposals, but they are totally in sync with William Ayers’ “social justice” teaching and the more recent buzz word “cultural competence.” The bottom line is to teach the younger generation that they are victims of an oppressive and unjust America, and that they should organize and demonstrate (a la Saul Alinsky) to take power and money away from those who have those things.
Another ominous straw in the wind is Obama’s appointment of six way-out radicals to the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI), whose mission is to evaluate whether accrediting agencies are properly assessing the quality of colleges and universities. The appointees are the sort of Obama extremists who will be likely to try to enforce diversity mandates and social engineering on institutions seeking accreditation.
The most important thing schools should do for minority (and other) schoolchildren is to teach them how to read by phonics in the first grade. They could do this inexpensively with my First Reader, and if the schools refuse, this book is the perfect tool for parents to teach their own children.
Instead of phonics, most public schools teach 1st- and 2nd-graders to memorize a few dozen commonly used words and guess at the other words from the pictures on the page. The failure to teach phonics means that kids don’t learn how to sound out and read bigger words.
UNESCO Gets Off the Track Again
Would you belong and pay dues to a foreign organization that is anti-morality and anti-marriage? If not, why do we allow the United States to use our taxpayers’ money to pay dues for membership in UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization)?
One of President Ronald Reagan’s many excellent decisions was his 1984 termination of U.S. membership in this United Nations affiliate because it was corrupt, anti-Western, and a vehicle for far-left propaganda. We enjoyed a nearly 20-year splendid absence from UNESCO’s expensive gatherings in Paris of foreign bureaucrats promoting globalist mischief.
President George W. Bush put us back in UNESCO in 2003 as part of his steady retreat from Reaganism, and devotion to an undefined New World Order. President Obama hasn’t yet said anything about UNESCO, but, he is a self-proclaimed “citizen of the world” who is favorable to all global organizations.
Riding on the word “educational” in its name, UNESCO has adopted the pretense that it is in charge of prescribing curriculum for schoolchildren all over the world. UNESCO has even been trying to position itself to influence U.S. school curriculum.
In 2004 in Paris, UNESCO signed a 26-page “Cooperation Agreement” with Microsoft Corporation to develop a “master curriculum (Syllabus)” for teacher training in information technologies based on standards, guidelines, benchmarks, and assessment techniques. This agreement states that the Syllabus will “form the basis for deriving training content to be delivered to teachers,” and “UNESCO will explore how to facilitate content development.”
UNESCO’s Director General boasted that one of the goals is to foster “worldwide curricula reflecting UNESCO values.” This fall, UNESCO has been busy writing guidelines for the teaching of sex education, supposedly in order to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
In these guidelines, UNESCO tells teachers in all countries to present abstinence until marriage as “only one of a range of choices available to young people” to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Other choices would surely be more fun.
The working draft of the guidelines calls for children aged five to eight to be taught in school about masturbation (age five means starting in kindergarten). Five- to eight-year old children would also be taught about same-sex couples and tolerance of different sexual orientations.
Schoolchildren aged 9 to 15 are to be given more detailed discussions about masturbation. New topics on the list for nine-year-olds include orgasm and abortion.
It’s no surprise that the guidelines feature enthusiastic support of abortion. UNESCO’s guidelines assert that teachers should discuss “advocacy to promote the right to and access to safe” abortion for students starting at age 15.
According to UNESCO, students should be taught that “legal abortion performed under sterile conditions by medically trained personnel is safe.” Teachers should also discuss “emergency contraception” and how to get “access to safe abortion and post-abortion care.”
After the news broke about what was actually in the guidelines, one of the key agencies that funded UNESCO’s guidelines, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), asked that its name be removed. It’s unclear whether UNFPA is critical of the guidelines, or of their explicit wording, or merely of the bad publicity generated by release of the working draft.
UNFPA’s announced goal is “universal access to reproductive health services by 2015.” UNFPA supports countries in using population data for policies and programs “to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV/AIDS.”
The week after UNFPA pulled its name from the UNESCO guidelines, UNFPA held a conference in Berlin to train 400 activists to advocate for abortion around the world. At the end of the conference, UNFPA issued a statement urging all nations to provide taxpayer-financed abortions, to “eliminate parental . . . and age restrictions” for young people to access “the full range of sexual and reproductive health information and services,” and to increase funds for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) advocating abortion and other “reproductive health care services.”
Public reaction to the UNESCO sex-ed guidelines caused UNESCO to make several changes before presenting them at the UNESCO meeting in Birmingham, England, in September 2009. However, there was no apology for the explicitness of the sex-ed curriculum; UNESCO asserted that its guidelines are “evidence-informed and rights-based.”
Criticism was not universal. Time Magazine went on the attack against what it called “the knee-jerk outrage of conservative pundits,” and reminded Time’s readers that the UNESCO guidelines will “undergo sober and thoughtful examination in more open-minded places . . . like Ethiopia.”
http://www.eagleforum.org/psr/2010/mar10/psrmar10.html
Maybe YOU want that but I DO NOT WANT THAT!
So we will NEVER agree on this issue.
You make Obama proud.
(2) This money is not about new hires, increased benefits or any such nonsense. It's about paying debts that the state already incurred - the state education bureaucracy has already spent more than $600mm this year that it didn't have. Instead of borrowing $400mm at interest, we were supposed to get $400mm back.
(3) All the governor did was try to get $400mm back of the billions the federal government owes us. People other than he had already put the bureaucracy in place, people other than he had already spent the money and left the taxpapers of NJ holding the bag.
All he did was try to get their money back. He did not increase federal presence in NJ by so doing.
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