Sibby Online

NEA unhinged

Remember when one of Pat Powers’ political allies last year was the National Education Association. Here we learn just what kind of people they are:

The retiring general counsel for the National Education Association has complained that conservative "ba----ds" are picking on his powerful union, which boasts more than 3 million members who contributed "hundreds of millions" of dollars annually to its causes.

The comments came from Bob Chanin, who gave a speech at last week's convention on the occasion of his retirement.

The comments have been posted on YouTube: (Some of the language in the video will be objectionable)

According to Linda Harvey of Mission America, "His prepared remarks were peppered with profanity and reflected an arrogant, in-your-face attitude about NEA's well-known political involvement. Just listen to the You Tube. Advance to 16:00 and begin listening there."

Among Chanin's observations: "Why are these conservative and right-wing ba----ds picking on NEA and its affiliates?"

He explains it is because NEA is "the most effective union in the United States" and boasts of its "power."

Chanin said the organization was attacked under the Bush administration by the IRS and others. That will stop now under President Obama's tenure, he noted.

But, he said, "attacks by conservatives and right-wing troops will continue."

That's because the NEA has fashioned itself into "the nation's leading advocates for public education and the type of liberal social and economic agenda that these groups find unacceptable."

The speech was made at the same event at which the NEA decided to go on the record in support of laws legalizing civil unions and homosexual marriage.

According to a Baptist Press report, the union also seeks to repeal legislation that "discriminates" against same-sex couples, which presumably could target the Defense or Marriage Amendment.

The proposal states: "NEA will support its affiliates seeking to enact state legislation that guarantees to same-sex couples the right to enter into a legally recognized relationship pursuant to which they have the same rights and benefits as similarly-situated heterosexual couples, including, without limitation, rights and benefits with regard to medical decisions, taxes, inheritance, adoption and immigration."

Vouchers should be a civil right

Star Parker argues that school choice should be a top civil rights issue:

We’ve got all kinds of flowery rhetoric from our president about the education crisis and the need to do everything to educate our kids. But, as is unfortunately often the case, Mr Obama’s deeds are less inspiring than his words.

Most recently, and flagrantly, was the announcement that Obama would sit by and allow Congress to pull the plug on the five-year old voucher program enabling 1700 kids in Washington, DC to attend private schools. This despite a new study from Obama’s own Department of Education saying that these kids outperformed their peers in DC public schools in reading. And that the vouchers, valued up to $7500 per scholarship, cost less than half the $17,000 per student that DC spends to maintain one of the worst public school systems in the country.

It’s no secret that President Obama is very much the politician, and in this case one beholden to unions. So perhaps educating children is important to our president. But not quite as important as the perks of elected office.

…

And, a few days ago, the Obama administration announced the appointment of homosexual activist Kevin Jennings as assistant deputy secretary in the Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Drug-free Schools.

Included in the mission of this office, according to the Education Department website, is "Administer the Department’s programs relating to character and civics education."

Jennings founded and was executive director of GLSEN — Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network — whose mission is to strive "to assure that each member of every school community is valued and respected regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression."

So what exactly is Sullivan upset about? This administration is assuring that children in America’s public schools will be properly educated to see all forms of sexual behavior as acceptable.

But parents who don’t want this have plenty to be upset about. Today’s real minority group is low to middle income parents who want their children educated with traditional values.

Needless to say, sexual moral relativism is the last thing that black kids need to hear in school. Most important for these kids, who come overwhelmingly from single parent homes, and half in our urban public schools that don’t graduate, is to be taught traditional values.

Of the 1700 kids in DC’s soon to be defunct voucher program, 879 have been attending Catholic elementary or high schools.

Liberating our kids from the cesspools in our urban areas that we call public schools is the great "civil rights challenge" of our time.

Munsterman’s education policy, the wrong approach

Cory Heidelberger likes an element of Munsterman’s education policy:

I know I'm playing right into Scott Munsterman's hands, trumpeting an announcement e-mailed to the South Dakota blogosphere by his gubernatorial campaign manager Pat Powers and giving the underdog (?) campaign free press. I'm also making hay out of election news a full year (hey! exactly 52 weeks from this Tuesday) before anyone votes.

But Mayor Munsterman just hit on an issue where he can distinguish himself from at least two of his challengers, Lt. Gov. Dennis Daugaard and State Sen. David Knudson: school consolidation. Throwing a genuine Republican chip on the table, Munsterman promises to leave school consolidation in the hands of local districts:

"Nothing affects the viability, and survivability of a town more than the consolidation of their school. It means one town is chosen to live, and one or more towns are destined to a slow demise through the continued attrition of business and residents. This is not a small decision, and is best left up to the residents of the town – not state government. I believe South Dakota is only as strong as it’s smallest community, and it is time that we focus on building our state from the bottom up. As your next Governor, repealing forced consolidation will be one of my first priorities" [Scott Munsterman, press release, 2009.06.01].

Not bad. Daugaard has served the Rounds administration that pushed and signed and presided over the Senate that passed the current law forcing schools with enrollment under 100 to close. Knudson has argued that small schools deliver inferior education. In the 2007 Legislative session, Knudson co-sponsored legislation that, in its original form, would have consolidated all school districts with enrollment under 200 (goodbye Montrose, Rutland, Oldham-Ramona, Woonsocket...).

Funny, I didn’t get the Pat Powers email referenced by Cory. Perhaps it is because the Munsterman campaign is afraid of dissent. While I am in agreement with Cory and Munsterman on this issue, I have a better way to fix it.

Pat Powers has promoted Munseterman as one who does not believe in top down, but instead promotes grass roots. But a governor passing a law (a process that is suppose to be reserved to the legislature) to repeal forced consolidation is top down. A grass roots solution would be vouchers. If the parents of a small community have the money in their hands, they decide the consolidation point. It is that simple.

But reforming education is not that simple. Cory and I are also in agreement on national standards. Again, with vouchers, quality is determined by competition within a free-market environment, not by a government monopoly. So the first step is to not reauthorize NCLB, but instead dissolve the federal DOE. No way will Obama and his Progressive allies allow this. Unless we have a strong grass roots movement that demands it.

The next step is to dissolve the state DOE. With the feds off of our backs, we no longer need the state implementing federal standards as state standards.

The third step is to dissolve the education departments at the universities. With teacher quality determined by the free-markets, we no longer need teacher certification standards. If a school wants a math teacher, they hire a math major, not an education major. Bad teachers are not rehired, and good ones get more pay.

Any idea how much money that would be saved by eliminating the education bureaucracies at the federal, state, and universities? It has to be a huge amount. Clearly a voucher system working within the Natural Law environment of free-markets would provide a higher quality of education, at lower cost to the taxpayers, teachers are paid more, and gives parents the freedom to chose what type of education is appropriate for their children.

Why is common sense so difficult to understand these days? Answer: too many citizens drunk on the Progressives Kool Aid served up by the government education monopoly. And even though teachers would get paid more, the teachers unions are dead set against vouchers. Yes, the teachers are also citizens drunk on the Progressive's Kool AId.

America’s Christian-based public education

Chuck Norris shows what America’s public education was about before the Progressives took control:

On Dec. 26, 1820, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Destutt Tracy about his vision for the University of Virginia (chartered in 1819), "This institution of my native state, the hobby of my old age, will be based upon the illimitable freedom of the human mind, to explore and expose every subject susceptible of its contemplation." One day later he wrote to William Roscoe a similar but expanded thought, "This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it."

The founders' educational philosophy even included teaching on the Bible. As Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote "To the citizens of Philadelphia: A Plan for Free Schools," on March 28, 1787: "Let the children who are sent to those schools be taught to read and write and above all, let both sexes be carefully instructed in the principles and obligations of the Christian religion. This is the most essential part of education."

Noah Webster, the "Father of American Scholarship and Education," stated, "In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed. … No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people."

In 1789, during the same time when the First Amendment was written, then President George Washington signed into law the Northwest Ordinance, which states, "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."

That is why my wife, Gena, and I are on the board of "The National Council of Bible Curriculum in Public Schools," which is about teaching the Bible as history and literature and also morals. It has been implemented in 478 public school districts and 1,975 high schools in 37 states. Approximately 320,000 students have already been taught from it. You too can learn more about the curriculum, why its teaching is constitutional, and how it can be implemented in your public school by contacting:

National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools
Post Office Box 9743
Greensboro, N.C. 27429
(877) OnBible
(336) 272-3799
(336) 272-7199 (fax)
BibleInSchools.net

Our founders' educational philosophy seems to me to be the charter of a true American system of education. But as we know, our nation's public schools, and especially our nation's colleges and universities, are the seedbeds of politically correct and leftist indoctrination. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. It's a travesty that we have even come to this point that we have to protect our children from the public school systems by looking to alternative methods.

Federal control and educational indoctrination

So why did Congress refuse to fund the DC school voucher program. Chuck Norris has the answer:

There's something the U.S. government doesn't want you to know. And it's come out again in the new Heritage Foundation report on education. It conveys that the general public is increasingly dissatisfied with public schools, with a rising number opting for private education.

The report explains that during the 2007 and 2008 legislative sessions, 44 states introduced school-choice legislation. And in 2008, choices for private school were enacted into law or expanded in Arizona, Utah, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana and Pennsylvania. And as of 2009, 14 states and Washington, D.C., offer voucher or education tax-credit programs that aid parents to send their children to private schools. But that may be short lived.

Despite the growing public preference for private education, Congress recently canceled the Washington D.C.'s Opportunity Scholarship Program, created in 2004 to offer students from low-income families in the nation's capital an opportunity to join the voucher educational community. The law provided $14 million in scholarships to help pay tuition at a private school of their choosing. But no longer.

And why did they nix the program, especially when recent studies showed that students receiving vouchers since the program's inception were academically 18.9 months ahead of their peers? (I read the other day that 100 percent of Thurgood Marshall Academy's charter graduates are accepted to colleges). And why would Congress phase out a program that costs $7,500 per student annually, compared to the $15,000 it cost in Washington's public schools to educate a child?

So its cancellation is not a result of costing too much, since it's half the price of public school. And it's not because of inferior quality, since the kids enrolled in the program were scoring higher than students in regular schools. There's only one reason Congress canceled it, and it comes down to this: federal control and educational indoctrination.

This explains the Lincoln anti-Patriot reaction

What happened in the aftermath of the Covell Lake Tea Party is a textbook example of how the public education is destroying America’s founding principles. This exchange between Rush Limbaugh and a former teacher demonstrates what is going on in the classrooms in not only Sioux Falls Lincoln, but all public schools. And it is poetic that I start the copy and paste with reference to Lincoln:

CALLER: -- with Lincoln's statement, and that is, as you know, "The philosophy of the classroom in one generation becomes the philosophy of the government in the next." Now, what we see in the government is a disease, is a cancer. But we see more and more of the electorate that's also got the cancer. Now, we commonly complain about our public education system -- which I am now officially renaming our "public mis-education system" -- and if we don't put more of our focus, refocus more of our energy on time and effort to completely refurbish that public education system -- starting, of course, it's the curriculum which is mush. But the administrators have minds of mush, and what do we expect our kids are going to have? They're going to have the minds of mush that you're talking about all the time. We almost think that it's hopeless to do this, but it's not, because we are paying the bill for it. We are paying 100 percent of the bill for it! So if we don't refocus our energies off the symptoms of the disease and back on to the root cause of it and to prevent it for the future generations, it ain't going to happen, Rush. We're not going to cure this disease.

RUSH: There's no question our society is in the process of being dumbed down and has for many generations. The hideous thing is that it's done purposely.

CALLER: Of course it is. We know that. It started way back in the early last century, and we know who did it. Most people don't want to take the time to hear about it, but it's real. I was even part of the conspiracy myself as an educator and as a former staunch atheist, humanist and evolutionary biologist. I was part of it. I know what's going on behind the scenes. Nobody wants to hear about it.

RUSH: Okay. Well, wait a second. What saved you?

CALLER: (chuckling) Who can save anybody?

RUSH: Well, no, but --

CALLER: You know who saved me. There's only one person and that's the ultimate truth. The person that saved me got my head and straightened it out, was when I started reading the scripture and realized how brilliant it was. But that's way before I came to God.

RUSH: But, wait. The people you're talking about say the scripture is a recipe of socialism.

CALLER: Of course they're going to say that. That's what I said all those years. That's part of the battle! The point is: What is truth? If we say we're truth-seekers we can't use misinformation to bring people to some so-called truth because that's not a genuine truth-seeker. And here's the deal. We have to refocus all of our time, and effort and resources on completely refurbishing the entire public mis-education system. If we do not, we are wasting our time for the future. That's it! You've talked about it a lot, but if we don't refocus and take care of it, because every single administrator in all the curricula are all with mush.

RUSH: I know. I hear about it

CALLER: And we cannot expect to cure the disease without taking care of that. We cannot do it. It won't work.

RUSH: I'll give you a story, tell you a little story. I know someone who has high school-aged children in the school district. This person tells me some of the most outrageous things. I'm going to tell you one story.

CALLER: Before you do that --

RUSH: Yeah?

CALLER: I was involved in the conspiracy. If your producer wants to get back to me.... Look it, my life has been threatened just to bring this stuff out. If you want to get back to me I can at least feed you some more information as we go forward.

RUSH: We'll get your number before you go, but I want you to listen to this.

CALLER: Fine, fine. Go ahead.

RUSH: This teacher was teaching ostensibly a history class, and used the class each and every day to proselytize extreme liberal politics.

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: What she said in this class was no different than what you would see on MSNBC or CNN or read the New York Times. It contained every cliche, mischaracterization and character assassination of conservatives. This woman, this teacher was giving tests to students after she had given them the answers. There was no history taught in this class. It was pure current event, current-day, present-day politics.

CALLER: That's how it's done.

RUSH: She gave them the tests so that the administrator would think her history class was going well and that her class was learning history -- and if you're a kid and you're a junior in high school, who wouldn't want that? I mean, the kids are not going to stand up and oppose this. Now, a couple kids tell their parents about it. That's how I found out about it. But the parents didn't want this mentioned publicly because they were afraid of maybe some bad things happening to their kids in the school.

CALLER: That's right.

RUSH: So they want to try to deal with it at the PTA level or talking to the principal. But that's often ineffective.

CALLER: Part of the whole strategy is intimidation. That's part of it.

RUSH: Exactly right.

CALLER: But it starts with misinformation and you need to know some stuff. What's going on, it's been going on for a couple of decades most people don't know about it. You need to know it.

RUSH: We hear about it. We hear about it. I've got students. In fact, we've had a ration of students calling here in the last month or so at the high school and college level describing things, for example, about me in their textbooks. We know what's going on out there, and it is a problem. It's not only mis-education, it is un-education. A lot of kids are simply being dumbed down and they certainly aren't being taught the facts and the truth of the founding of this country, and they're not taught about American exceptionalism. They're taught to think Obama's brilliant when he runs around apologizing for the country. Seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds thinking their country needs to be apologized for? For what reason? Not that they're old enough to know. They just haven't lived long enough.

Education is a responsibility, not a right

It is about time that we accept the truth about education. It is a responsibility of the parents, not a constitutional right:

South Dakota students aren't guaranteed a quality education, a circuit judge ruled Wednesday, finding that the way the state pays for education does not violate the state constitution.

Circuit Judge Lori Wilbur's decision follows a trial that saw six superintendents complain that a lack of money was hurting South Dakota's students. An appeal to the state Supreme Court now is likely, according to the lawyer representing students and their families.

The state's funding system has room for improvement, Wilbur acknowledged, but she also found that education is not a fundamental right; the state need not prepare students for college or "meaningful employment"; and the testimony of the superintendents was unreliable.

Educrats wasted money

Governor Rounds points out the waste of money the school lawsuit created:

Gov. Mike Rounds says it's no surprise the state won on all counts in a legal challenge to South Dakota's school funding system.

Circuit Judge Lori Wilbur of Pierre has issued a proposed decision that finds the education funding is constitutional. The decision will become final after lawyers have a chance to suggest changes in the 307-page document.

Some parents and students are the official plaintiffs in the lawsuit, but more than two-thirds of the state's school districts supported the legal challenge.

Rounds says the lawsuit was a huge waste of state funds and school district money. He says the state spent nearly $1 million from a special litigation fund to defend against the lawsuit, and the attorney general's office spent a lot of time and money on the case.

The governor says South Dakota has a constitutional school funding formula. He says decisions about school funding should be made by the Legislature.

It is unfortunate that the radical left, who has control over public education, think it is a waste of money for the taxpayers to pay to defend a ban on abortion, but it is OK for taxpayers to spend money on legal fees to force the taxpayers to fund an education system that is monopolistic in structure that includes among its ideology the promotion of killing unborn babies.

Porkulus education spending based on Marxism

This is no doubt a Marxist approach to Obama’s education funding policy:

The federal stimulus plan is sending millions of dollars to South Dakota school districts where many students live in poverty, but some districts around Sioux Falls are receiving no money at all.

The federal government has earmarked $34.65 million for districts in South Dakota, but a handful of more affluent districts surrounding Sioux Falls are receiving none of that money, despite already having some of the lowest per-pupil spending rates in the state.

While recognizing it costs more to educate poor students in larger districts, suburban superintendents say the spending disparity is becoming too great. And some education specialists say spending more doesn't mean a better education, anyway.

And this is no small thing:

Federal, state and local taxpayers spent $4,487 per Tea Area School District student last year, the lowest rate in South Dakota. Meanwhile, Eagle Butte spent the second-most at $18,521 per student.

But while Tea receives no Title I stimulus money, Eagle Butte is poised to get an extra $1.06 million - or almost $4,000 per student.

And the extra money is not stimulus, but instead a complete waste:

A researcher who studied South Dakota test scores said the unexpected money is unlikely to improve student achievement.

David Armor, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, testified for the state in defense of the latest school funding lawsuit. He said even huge increases in money don't improve test scores in academically struggling areas such as South Dakota's Indian reservations.

"The test scores are largely influenced by family backgrounds. ... Those differences are taking place before kids are even getting to school," Armor said.

Promoting government dependence only creates an environment that encourages irresponsible parents. And the agenda of the "Progressives", who have complete control over public education, have an anti-family component.

Judge attacks parental rights

This is very disturbing:

A North Carolina judge has ordered three children to attend public schools this fall because the homeschooling their mother has provided over the last four years needs to be "challenged."

The children, however, have tested above their grade levels – by as much as two years.

The decision is raising eyebrows among homeschooling families, and one friend of the mother has launched a website to publicize the issue.

The ruling was made by Judge Ned Mangum of Wake County, who was handling a divorce proceeding for Thomas and Venessa Mills.

A statement released by a publicist working for the mother, whose children now are 10, 11 and 12, said Mangum stripped her of her right to decide what is best for her children's education.

The judge, when contacted by WND, explained his goal in ordering the children to register and attend a public school was to make sure they have a "more well-rounded education."