Posted on 07/16/2010 4:57:31 AM PDT by IbJensen
'Instead of petitioning their local school boards, parents would have to trek to Washington to lobby D.C. bureaucrats on their children's education.'
What has been promoted as a state-driven, voluntary, educational standardization initiative is now being strongly pushed by the Obama administration – and raising the concerns of states-rights advocates and parents.
At issue: The administration's strong-arm tactics being used on states to rush and adopt so-called voluntary "common core" math and English standards by Aug. 2 – without congressional review or public debate.
Critics decry the government's zeal, as being a back-door attempt at forcing states and local governments to forfeit their control over key education policymaking decisions. The move could also open the door for more controversial mandates.
The Heritage Foundation criticizes the initiative as "standardizing mediocrity" and ultimately beneficial to bureaucrats, not parents.
"Instead of petitioning their local school boards, parents would have to trek to Washington to lobby D.C. bureaucrats on their children's education," reported the think tank.
To date, at least 24 states have decided to adopt the standards, motivated in large part by federal funding incentives. Minnesota, Virginia, Alaska and Texas have opted out. Many more states, including Colorado, Alabama, and Massachusetts, will be making final decisions about whether to adopt in the next few weeks.
Even though the Obama administration has promoted these standards as "state-led" and "voluntary," recent actions reveal several "strings" attached:
* The administration's "Race to the Top" grant competition gives preference to states that plan to adopt the standards, which has led many to criticize the administration for essentially "bribing" states to join the standards movement. * The administration has even proposed plans to make Title I funding, which assists low-income districts, contingent on adherence to "common" standards. * According to an Education Week article, organizers announced in May that states that adopt the standards must use the document word for word.
"What I find disconcerting is not so much the standards themselves, but the prospect of yet another federal overreach into an area that should remain a state and local issue," said Candi Cushman, education analyst for CitizenLink. "Curriculum standards have traditionally been voted upon by state elected officials who are accountable to parents and taxpayers."
Cushman points to a recent Texas school board decision as a prime example of the importance of local control. The state board voted to retain references to Christmas in the social studies standards, as well as acknowledging the Founding Fathers' respect for religious freedoms.
"That victory happened because board members responded to constituent e-mails and calls," she said. "If a state adheres to national standards, parents will lose influence over their children's education."
FOR MORE INFORMATION Read "'Voluntary' Standards Not Looking So Voluntary Anymore."
Read The Heritage Foundation's Fact Sheet, "Education Standards: The Next Federal Takeover."
Read Education Weekly's "State School Boards Raise Questions About Standards."
They don't have my kids. Hell will freeze over before I will force my fellow citizens to pay for my kids education. As Josh Thompson's song says:
We won't take a dime if we ain't earned it
When it comes to weight brother we pull our own
If it's our backwoods way of livin' you're concerned with
You can leave us alone
Thanks!
If not, we can always move back to Oklahoma, the best of states.
ping
Thanks for the ping. Unfortunately, I have a sneaking suspicion that the Neborg will be one that goes with the standards. You know how they feel about home schooling.
My state adopted the federal standards. We have one wealthy town in the state that is thinking of converting their public schools to private schools because they don’t receive state aid, and the parents complain they pay for everything anyway. I imagine they don’t receive any federal aid either. Perhaps more towns will try to do the same. Maybe that’s the answer.
zero is merely building on Bush's NCLB Act, which brought standardized testing (and, institutionalized mediocrity) to our public schools. As we all know, the public schools are so bad today that Johnny can graduate after 12 years without being able to read a 1st grade primer, but he can put a condom on a cucumber in under 2 seconds.
No wonder the dropout rate is as high as it is - these kids know that they are NOT getting the knowledge and skills they will need to carry them through life.
The same government that brought us the Katrina FEMA response, bankrupted SS, bankrupted America, violated federal law by usurping the rights of private citizens when they nationalized two automobile companies and the financial industry, wants to nationalize healthcare and now, wants to usurp the parents rights to be involved in their kids' education by creating a modern day version of the Hitler Youth (with their brown-shirts).
Zero needs to be told not only "no" to this, but "H*LL NO!!!".
Y’all are welcome dahn hee-ya. :-)
They are doing their best to eliminate the state's constitutional rights.
Yes, but NOT through the legislative process. Even if the 'Pubbies gain control of one or both houses of Congress in November, they will not do anything to roll back the majority of zero's programs but will, instead, sweep them under the carpet so that they are neatly out of sight. His programs will continue to roll merrily along.
Our political system is now so broken and corrupt that the only way to end the damage that zero, the Dems AND 'Pubbies have done to America is for the people to adjourn the Congress, adjourn the SCOTUS and fire the POTUS while re-implementing the government envisioned and memorialized by the Founders in the Constitution!! THAT, IMO, is our ONLY recourse at this point!! We simply have to re-enforce the Constitution (with a few tweaks to prevent a recurrence of the corruption of our political system) and start over.
I’ve posted a thread http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2553687/posts requesting a Socialized Medicine Forum topic so we can put all this stuff under 1 topic to make it easier to find and use. Please chime in.
For the most part I agree with that assessment.
I think it will take more than that though. I think we need to undo the “red-education” (that’s a typo but I’m going to leave it because it’s better than the re-education I meant to type. lol) that’s been going on in our educational system for the last 50 years or so. A representative form of government requires an informed and mentally competent citizenry. Right now we don’t have that. And until we find out how to wake up the unwashed masses this country is neither worthy nor capable of maintaining its own freedom.
I think the German person who commented had it right - that the biggest danger to America isn’t Barack Obama but a populace that would even consider electing Barack Obama. It’s not just felons, illegals, and dead people who are voting for these communists - and funding their campaigns. It’s real people who have real kids who will keep functioning in a total brainless way.
My hometown is going to run the farmers out of business by building a brand-new school for their declining population. I think it’s a $3 million school not including any interest, insurance, etc. In about 10 years it will have maybe 50 kids total - and that’s if the farmers don’t all decide to send their kids elsewhere because they’re mad at the crooks who put this through.
And I say “crooks” because the whole thing was based on a lie. They got some contractor who had been caught scamming the voters before to come say there was a “sagging beam” that meant the old school was structurally unsound. My brother took a look at the “sagging beam”; it was a heating duct. The whole thing was based on very public lies. And my sister documented 17 instances where open meetings laws were broken in order to illegally cram this thing through. My brother and cousin filed a lawsuit seeking justice because there was no valid decision to even put the bond issue on the ballot, since the meetings to do that were all in violation of the open meetings laws and other laws. The Supreme Court ruled that they couldn’t overturn an election. Sigh. They didn’t even look at the part about the open meetings laws or what the actual complaint and sought-after remedy was. Unbelievable.
But the local school board still has no idea why anybody is upset about it at all. The businesses in town (it’s a very small town) are suffering because the farmers are boycotting them. And they can’t even absorb the reality that their school administrator has counseled them to break just about every law in the books. They are dumb as rocks. As long as the people there are so stupid and the judges so corrupt it’s a hopeless battle trying to work with a democratic form of government.
And that’s sadly a microcosm of the entire USA. People who are dumb as posts are electing post turtles.
Yep. I'm going to be flamed by someone here for turning back the clock, but I'm going to say it anyway. AFTER we take control of the government and re-introduce the Constitution, some of the "tweaks" that need to be made are these:
1) Strict, mandatory term limits. One term in the Senate, 2 in the House.
2) Congressional pay will be set by the voters in each state. The Congress will no longer set their own pay.
3) Federal judges/SCOTUS justices may only be appointed for a term of 10 years. At the end of that period and, at the pleasure of the president, they may be re-appointed for one additional term of 10 years. After that, they go home.
4) Bills in Congress will be required to be linked to a provision in the Constitution to prevent the federal government from becoming the bloated, over-regulating pig that it is today. No pork and no special provisions. In addition, Congress will have a limit on the number of active laws they have on the books. If they want to enact new legislation, they have to repeal something else.
5) Congress will no longer be in session ~10 months every year. Like many state legislatures, they will meet in session for only a couple of months every other year to approve a budget and any other business the president requires. After that, they go home and live with the mess they made. If the president needs them back in session, he can call them into special session.
6) Congress may not allocate its authority to unelected agencies with regulatory authority not allowed by the Constitution.
Those are just a few of the "tweaks" I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure that others here have ideas as well. One additional thing we might want to consider comes from the Parliament in which a government can be dissolved by the people if the people successfully pass a "No Confidence" vote on the national level.
Also, "None of the Above" should be added to ALL ballots so that the voters have better options than a choice between the "lesser of the two evils". Anytime "None of the Above" wins an election, the election must be re-held in 6 weeks with all new candidates. None of those on the previous ballot can run again for the repeat election.
Those are great ideas! And those are the things that people need to be discussing. We need to be asking how we got in this mess and how we can prevent it the next time around. Because this sure can’t last. This level of corruption is unsustainable.
I think we have to have a way to address the “standing” problem that has allowed the eligibility debacle to be unresolved, and the idea that the people cannot hold the bureaucrats responsible to obey the law.
When I was in first grade at a country school we had a teacher who couldn’t keep the kids under control. Crazy stuff was going on. I remember thinking it was a game, to try to trick the teacher. So when I was given an assignment to do pages 3-5 in a workbook (for instance) I tore off just the part of the page that had the number, and then when the teacher asked if I had my work done I said I couldn’t tell what pages I was supposed to do because the numbers were gone.
I’ve grown up since then. People in government haven’t. A SOS who was required to verify the Constitutional eligibility of presidential candidates before putting the names on the ballot can’t have any charges against her as long as she can claim that gazing at her own bellybutton lint could tell her whether the candidates were eligible - because the law never SAID HOW she had to verify eligibility.
It’s the equivalent of saying you can’t do the assignment because the page numbers have all been neatly torn away, for just the pages that were due that day. And the judges all bought it! Inconceivable!
Now we’ve got the federal government saying that not only can they NOT be held accountable to enforce the law - they can have a monopoly on law enforcement so that if they refuse to enforce the law, nobody else CAN. Inconceivable!
The jurisprudence that has gotten us into this mess needs to be pitched out the window. Any premises that got us to this point have to be flawed. And we do need to learn what lessons we can from what has happened so we can know how to avoid those things next time around - which needs to be very, very soon.
I can dream can't I?
Only if you can do something about the humidity!
“This is a trojan horse. Once States sign on how long before the Fed demands that state schools begin teaching mandatory pro-gay sex ed and pro gay marriage propaganda under the guise of diversity. Once the states are hooked on the money they have little choice but to comply. All part of the liberal humanist socialization plan for our children.”
Bingo. That’s what the Fedzilla has done for years, and Palin has spoken of Federal ‘gifts’ with ‘strings’ attached.
Some states have been too stupid or stupidly spent themselves into becoming Federal boot lickers.
Might be time to cross the river to Virginia.
You are absolutely correct. There are multiple levels to this issue and I believe that we first have to go back to a founding principle that America is a nation of laws and not men. I interpret that to mean that EVERY American, including our president, representatives in Congress and the SCOTUS Justices are equally accountable to the law.
IMO, the eligibility requirement should be addressed this way -
1) the chairman of each party must first verify the vault copy of the Birth Certificate and sign documentation attesting to its authenticity.
2) The certification AND the Birth Certificate must be verified again by the Chief Justice of the SCOTUS.
3) Finally, the Birth Certificate MUST be available for ANYONE to examine it on the web.
4) In the event that the candidate is an Independednt and there is no party chairman to verify the authenticity of the Birth Certificate, it shall fall to the Secretary of State to validate it before it is passed to the Chief Justice.
Naively hoping that we will once again be able to restore honor and integrity to our government, these steps should provide a formal means to ensure that the candidate is truly eligible. However, for the sake of fairness and bipartisanship, it may also be valuable to allow the chairmen of BOTH political parties to verify the authenticity (and, therefore, the candidate's eligibility) of each candidate's Birth Certificate before passing it to the Chief Justice.
When will patriots stop this madness?
____________
My guess... never. Most Cubans had no clue Castro was a Communist and what his intentions were. They thought he would just nationalize big industries, the next thing they knew he took over small businesses, homes and every aspect of their lives. Many never saw it coming. Then they risked their lives to get out after they realized everything they earned was in the hands of the government. Sound familiar?
All that’s left here is to grab the guns. They already have control of nearly everything else. As each 2000+ page bill passes, our rights are being taken away one by one.
Pssst.... It’s not socialism. It’s Communism and Black Nationalism.
PERFECT!
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