Thank you for your letter. It all comes down to a judgment call and it looks like we disagree.CODelaine Eastin's memo was written after the California Department of Education staff memo dated August 27 from one of her minions, which many of us rightly regarded this as an indication of things to come. There is no way such a memo would have been released without Ms. Eastin's say so. Your letter effectively said, 'Sit tight, it's no indication of a change.' It was to that letter that my comment was directed because it missed the political import for the legal.
I have been a FReeper for about three years. We didn't get Clinton impeached by working in channels and had we waited for the courts without public protest, Al Gore would be President today. I belong to the Lynn Nofzinger school of politics: 'Never let them know you are satisfied; the left never does.'
Accordingly, my intent is to make our constituency look as large as possible; if nothing else to preclude those who are considering home-education as an option from fearing to seek the advantages for lack of numbers and clout as well as to maintain the appearance of a nascent groundswell. It is therefore my intent to make the staffers of the various education committees in Sacramento wish they had never heard of Delaine Eastin, who is the real cause of their impending deluge, and I fully intend to make them acutely aware of that.
You assert that, "They simply don't have time to get a bill passed that would eliminate home schooling and yet not affect every other private school in the state." Correct; but what makes you think that they don't seek such an end? It is the intent of the Federal Department of Education and the purpose for offering vouchers as bait. The NEA wailings about vouchers are crocodile tears.
I personally know a number of Assembly staffers as a consequence of my primary focus issue: transforming environmental regulation to free markets using an architecture perfectly adaptable to privatizing education. You are right, Assembly staff don't want the harassment now. You are also right that the quiet approach with the threat of numbers is better under normal circumstances, especially when all you are dealing with is the personal leanings of the individual.
That set of boundary conditions just evaporated.
Home education is feared by the unions no matter what we do from now on. Home education deserves the visibility it's getting academically, but that visibility is also a result of its legislative and political successes. The battle has hardly started because, up until recently, we were under the radar. That is no longer the case. If the CTA and the NEA come after us, it won't matter what kind of relationships home education lobbyists have with Legislative staff. We don't have the money to buy continued access. Our only long term option is to grow fast enough to overcome that resistance or we will get the bill we fear no matter how nice we are.
If, however, we respond predictably by inundating the staff, they have only Ms. Eastin to blame. We are better off making absolutely certain that they CAN'T add such an amendment rather than trusting their good graces in the future. We are better off making certain that they fear the very idea of broaching such a bill than we are fearing that the staff might seek retribution later. Until the entire composition of the Legislative branch in Sacramento changes drastically, we should expect to get such a bill eventually if we don't.
Mobilizing forces gives them the energy to help them grow, creates networks, builds lists of contacts, and enlists continuing financial support. It also arouses the interest of political candidates. I am enclosing a set of speeches I sent to one of Bill Simon's chief political strategists: (names withheld C_O). One of them highlights home education as an R&D capability for those public school districts willing to restructure. Please consider the possibilities.
Thank you for your time and your thoughtful response,
Education
Education is the most critical issue in California, more serious than even the budget crisis. When Gray Davis first ran for Governor, he promised that Education was to be his highest three priorities, but instead Mr. Davis has shown us what they really were all along: Re-Election, Re-Election, and Re-Election. What were the results? Education spending per student has increased nearly 30%, while classroom performance remains relatively unimproved and at the bottom of a nation producing a third rate primary and secondary education product. The system is broken and the State is nearly bankrupt. So what can we do?
One answer is to free California’s teachers from the overwhelming power of national unions. Teachers should have a choice whether or not to support an often radical political agenda. Unlike Gray Davis, if you elect me Governor of California, I will enforce the law that prohibits unions from requiring campaign contributions in dues payments without teacher’s permission (Beck (487 US 735), 1988).
Second, we must reverse the trend toward large unified school districts that has effectively excluded parents from affecting public school decisions. The purpose of consolidation was supposedly to reduce the cost of overhead through economies of scale and to strengthen the districts’ collective bargaining power, but that isn’t how it has turned out. Instead, district bureaucracies have become enormous and the resulting issues are so complex that parents are pushed aside by an organizational machine controlled by union lawyers.
I plan to assist formation of corporate service associations for school districts so that they can divest operations into smaller, more personalized institutions while retaining the organizational muscle to deal with the unions. Smaller school districts will give parents a stronger voice on district boards over the issues that matter to them. The principle need to make this possible is to develop programs for children with special needs. Here is where can turn to parents for solutions.
Some would argue that parents on local School Boards aren’t qualified to make administrative decisions about public education, especially over programs for children with developmental challenges. So, I’d like to talk about an education success-story that not only proves that argument wrong, it points toward a total transformation in public education.
Home education is enjoying a renaissance in America, and religious freedom isn’t the principle reason. Parents are choosing to home school to assure educational excellence for their children, whose learning habits they know best. A family bond of patience and discipline is a critical factor in student success, especially in a challenging situation. What many people don't know about home-schools is that they have a high percentage of students with genetic, behavioral, and developmental disabilities that had often been poorly served by public institutions. Even with that statistical disadvantage, SAT, ACT, and STAR test scores strongly indicate that home education is producing superior results across the entire spectrum of individual ability.
So parents ARE competent to make choices about their children’s education, and home schools successfully manage nearly every type of specialized educational problem. So what are they doing right that we can apply to public institutions?
As home-educators have grown in number, they have been organizing into loosely knit education cooperatives that point to a new form of public education: a decentralized, customer-oriented network for lifelong learning, using products customized to meet individual interests and abilities. That promises what 21st Century public education could really become: a multi-disciplinary market of customized learning products and services.
We are already starting to see the effects of this change. Software and curriculum companies are finding a growing market of customers committed to gaining competitive advantage. Colleges and universities are offering online degrees because they need superior students to assure productive alumnae. Superior teachers could get rich transmitting their ideas and methods to a mass-market. Where better to develop those products and sell them to the world than California?
We can use private and home education as if they were R&D laboratories developing and testing proven learning tools and services. Public school parents on school boards could then select those products that the State would fund for use in public schools. It is a gradual transformation, from experimenting on our children with untested academic theories, to contracting for innovative tools and methods that have been proven in the marketplace.
All we have to do is let it happen and keep government from regulating new educational methods out of existence. If you elect me Governor, that is what I will do. Federal education dollars aren’t worth the price of Federal control and bureaucratic requirements. Private and home education both leave the State with more money to spend per-child and provide a competitive incentive for public schools to keep their customers.
Together, let’s help California rise from the ashes of a broken system and lead the way once again, into a world of exciting possibilities for our children.
Education Policy Components
- Enforce the U.S. Supreme Court decision re Communications Workers v. Beck (487 US 735, 1988).
- Assist formation of corporate service associations. Offer State funding for local school districts to divest into smaller, more personalized institutions.
- Use the private and home education market to develop and test learning tools and services. Private validation services could assess product performance against product claims. School boards would be free to select guaranteed products for use in public schools.
- Insurance on the guarantee would cover the cost of remedial education if the product fails to meet warranted performance.
- Veto any bill requiring home and private educators to conform to State teacher certification standards.
- Veto any bill requiring State supervision of home schools.
- Analyze any Federal program for insufficient funds and unintended consequences suspecting unfunded mandates. Cite New York v. United States (505 US 144, 1992).
- Publicly excoriate Bill Lockyer at every opportunity.