Florida: Seminole County School District requires students to recite Islamic prayer

The text above has been identified as p. 121 in the Florida edition of Pearson/Prentice Hall’s World History textbook.

WFTV’s 9 Investigates reports the following:

A history book used in school districts across the state is sparking controversy in Seminole County.

A parent called 9 Investigates after finding out his son was learning too much about the Islamic religion in a public classroom.

Ron Wagner read from part of his son’s world history book, “There is no god, but God. Muhamad is the messenger of God.”

Wagner is not reading the Five Pillars of Islam from the Quran, but rather his son’s 10th-grade world history book from Lyman High School.

“Students were instructed to recite this prayer as the first Pillar of Islam, off of the board at the teacher’s instruction,” Wagner claims.

Wagner, who is not religious, said he had no idea the public school was teaching so extensively about religion until he spotted a text on his son’s phone from a teacher reminding him to complete a prayer rug assignment and study an Islam packet.

“For it to be mandatory and part of the curriculum and in the textbooks, didn’t seem right,” Wagner said.

Inside of the book is a chapter dedicated to the “Rise of Islam,” including prayers and scriptures from the Quran. What’s more disturbing for Wagner is that the first 100 pages discussing Judaism and Christianity are missing. The district blames a manufacturer defect in 68 books that are only a year old.

According to Wagner, Dr. Michael Blasewitz, who oversees the high school curriculum, said, “The Pillars of Islam are benchmarks in the state curriculum.”

Wagner’s concerns prompted a district investigation that found the teacher never tried to indoctrinate or convert students.

Some other students interviewed by administrators said they were not required to recite the prayer aloud. They did discuss a video played during class about the religion, but Blasewitz got frustrated and stormed out when 9 Investigates asked whether the district is considering changes to the curriculum.

“You’re just going to walk away from our interview when we’re trying to get information,” said investigative reporter Daralene Jones.

Before Blasewitz walked out, he further justified the curriculum, saying students learn specific Judaism doctrine, the Bible and its scriptures, in earlier school years.

“If anything, it’s a little imbalanced toward Christianity and Judaism,” Blasewitz said.

Federal law allows schools to teach about religion, because it’s part of history. But public schools may not teach religion.

“There’s a difference between teaching of the significance or the impact of a religion and teaching the specific tenets of a religion,” Wagner said.

9 Investigates was told the district will reconsider this book when the contract is up in three years. Some districts in South Florida have requested the publisher rewrite portions because of the controversy. The Florida Family Association (FFA) states, “Public schools funded by tax dollars should not be instructing students to participate in the religious practices of Islam including but not limited to reciting prayers. Such activities go beyond education. How is it possible that school officials and teachers did not notice that 100 pages related to Judaism and Christianity were missing from textbooks?”

FFA notes:

Mr. Blasewitz’s numerous statements to WFTV’s 9 Investigates appears to justify the recitation of Islamic prayer and omission of the 100 pages.  Blasewitz said “The Pillars of Islam are benchmarks in the state curriculum.”  Blasewitz “further justified the curriculum, saying students learn specific Judaism doctrine, the Bible and its scriptures, in earlier school years.  “If anything, it’s a little imbalanced toward Christianity and Judaism,” Blasewitz said.  His arrogantly walking out of the interview after giving this position is incriminating.

EDITORS NOTE: The Florida Family Association has prepared an email for those who wish to send that urges Seminole County School District Board Members to rectify this situation. Readers may click here to send an email to Seminole County School District officials.

RELATED VIDEO: Florida Parent: School Teaching Students Islamic Prayer

PROGRESSIVE ABSURDITY #26 – “Without Government Schools, Most People Wouldn’t Get an Education” by Max Borders

Sometimes the best defense is a good offense, the old saying goes. This is one of those cases.

The fact is, people go without education despite a well-funded system of government schools. One might go as far as to say that people go without education because of government schools.

According to the U.S. Department of education, during the 2009-10 school year, 78.2 percent of high school students nationwide graduated on time—a notable increase from the 73.4 percent recorded in 2005–06. One might see this increase as cause for celebration. But, as The Denver Post admits, “Too many students are graduating from high school without the skills or knowledge to succeed in college or vocational training without significant remedial education.” Indeed, the Colorado Department of Higher Education finds that “They graduate, but are unprepared for the next level.”

In other words, a 22 percent dropout rate is only good news if graduates are getting value from their K-12 education. And, of course, all of this assumes that traditional government schooling is valuable for everyone.

Today’s schools have become standardized, homogenized and regimented. The unhealthy obsession with testing (coming from remote politicians and bureaucrats) drives the incentives of teachers and administrators alike. The result is a perverse factory model governed by one-size-fits-all curricula and five-year plans reminiscent of the failed central planning of now-defunct socialist regimes. Of course, such plans are at odds with local experimentation and innovation. No one has pointed this out with more passion than John Taylor Gatto (former New York State Teacher of the Year) who, in Weapons of Mass Instruction, writes:

The frequent ceremonies of useless testing—preparation, administration, recovery—convert forced schooling into a travesty of what education should be; they drain hundreds of millions of days yearly from what might otherwise be productive pursuits; they divert tens of billions of cash resources into private pockets. The next effect of standardized testing is to reduce our national wealth in future generations, by suffocating imagination and intellect, while enhancing wealth for a few in the present. This occurs as a byproduct of “scientifically” ranking the tested so they can be, supposedly, classified efficiently as human resources.

All this standardization—from the Common Core to the CAT—benefits special interests at the expense of young people. The result is a “tail wagging the entire monster of forced institutional schooling.”

Progressives have always dreamed of forcing students into government education. During the 1920s, for instance, Oregon Progressives passed a law that would have required every student to attend a government school. The Supreme Court in Pierce v. Society of Sisters struck that law down. But what might education look like today had they succeeded?

Early Progressives give us shockingly clear and frightening glimpses into what they envisioned. Government education, they argued, is meant to serve the government far more than it’s intended to serve the students. Consider this extended passage from George H. Smith’s article, “The Roots of State Education”:

Systems of public education, declared an Illinois superintendent of schools, should be “conceived, designed, and carried out with direct and persistent reference to the maintenance and stability of the existing political order of the government.” A New Hampshire superintendent of public instruction argued that it is proper for government to provide education “when the instinct of self-preservation shall demand it.” A U.S. commissioner of education maintained that the individual “owes all that is distinctly human to the state” and that government education is “a means of preservation of the state.” The government should provide education, echoed a California superintendent, “as an act of self-preservation”; children “belong not to the parents but to the State, to society, to the country.”

Similar reasoning carried into the twentieth century. According to a 1914 bulletin of the U.S Bureau of Education, “The public schools exist primarily for the benefit of the State rather than for the benefit of the individual.” This is the logic that justified compulsory attendance laws. As the New Hampshire Supreme Court put it in 1902:

“Free schooling…is not so much a right granted to pupils as a duty imposed upon them for the public good. If they do not voluntarily attend the schools provided for them for the public good, they may be compelled to do so. While most people regard the public schools as the means of great advantage to the pupils, the fact is too often overlooked that they are governmental means of protecting the state from consequences of an ignorant and incompetent citizenship.”

Perhaps the most chilling description of the role of state education came from the influential progressive sociologist Edward Ross (1866-1951):

“To collect little plastic lumps of human dough from private households and shape them on the social kneading board, exhibits a faith in the power of suggestion which few people ever attain to. And so it happens that the role of the schoolmaster is just beginning.”

Today such efforts take other less overt forms and less candid rhetoric, including tax and regulatory policies that hamstring private efforts and claims that “it takes a village” to raise or educate a child. And the college admissions complex routinely colludes with government schools to make college dependent on standardization and testing. Progressives flock to standards boards, of course, in order to be architects of a great inculcation.

There is nothing wrong with testing per se. Some schools use it as a means to determine whether students are learning. But testing is increasingly being used as an instrument of control. Government-school functionaries—while enforcing certain views on environmental policy, multiculturalism and “tolerance” issues—are often hostile to various forms of religious expression—which is explicitly protected in the Bill of Rights. Even if one agrees that religious indoctrination has no place in the public classroom, schools increasingly mute such expression, and tamp down certain kinds of discourse in favor of other types (such as the illiberal bromides of “social justice”).

By contrast, in a robust system of private education, schools try different methods and modes. Some will “follow the child” as Maria Montessori did, in order to reinforce children’s strengths and passions. Others will try gamification and interactive learning; still others will try apprenticeships, project-based learning, or self-guided learning (autodidacticism). All of this experimentation gives rise to innovations that eventually become best practices. And none of these best practices need to be determined by school boards or central committees. Great methods and modes in education are emergent phenomena. And these methods and modes will work better with some kids than others.

In the absence of experimentation, however, many schools are little better than daycare facilities. As educators are paid to teach to the test, they become part of a system in which everyone is rewarded to push the lever and get the pellet. Real learning—the kind which comes from aligning a child’s natural curiosity with the wonders of the world—gets lost as children spend hours sitting still, paying attention and regurgitating curriculum. If kids aren’t learning at schools, then they are merely being warehoused so that parents can work and the State can track their whereabouts. In such a system the State comes to think of itself as a child’s parent for many hours of the day. As MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry famously said: “We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”

Like many public school advocates, Harris-Perry conflates community with the State. Community is not something that can be fashioned by elites or simply coerced into being. It is the product of intertwining commitments, built by free people and held together by invisible bonds—bonds of love, charity, and trust. So, yes, communities can certainly participate in the development of children, but it’s not clear that government institutions pass any meaningful test of community.

Finally, some forms of education are best gotten outside the schools. Not every person is a good fit for college. Likewise, not every student needs to have a formal, academic K–12 education. I realize this will be a controversial claim for many. But when considering different tracks for different students, we have constantly to ask: “What are the available alternatives?” Sadly, the answer for many is too narrow. By default children are placed in environments in which they cannot flourish—to be supervised by people who find no passion in reading from a script. Teachers act as managers on a factory floor, with children turned out on a conveyor belt.

When teachers are free to act as guides on quests—as opposed to proctors of tests—teachers and parents can see whether a student is missing certain educational milestones, or is demonstrating passion and aptitude in non-academic areas, such as art, design, building, business or even information technology. Knowing how to help children flourish isn’t easy. But one thing’s clear: there is a difference between education designed to get children to serve some ideal and education that helps children to become captains of their own lives.

Some students do okay in the status quo and the finest test takers form a cognitive elite that stands to inherit the few spots in those great, bloated guilds we call universities. Others not cut out for formal academics are stifled in cultivating any of a thousand talents. At least they’re not out committing crimes,we’re told.

Leaving aside debates about the best means of evaluation, suffice it to say each individual is unique. He or she will come with unique gifts. And yet the entire premise of government schools—at least as they are currently offered—is to treat people as statistical abstractions. Their interests and aspirations are viewed as secondary to their ability to tolerate and navigate an increasingly byzantine system. Their dynamic minds are treated as buckets into which the thin gruel of State curricula must be poured.

It’s time we embraced a new educational paradigm, one marked not so much by standardization and centralization, but by experimentation and innovation. Academic high-performers will gravitate to what ignites their minds. Non-academic students will discover activities that get them out of bed every day. Even the most disadvantaged children among us would benefit more from creative arrangements such as work-study, apprenticeships, and other alternative forms of education that allow them actually to participate in community.

The next time you hear someone say that the government schools are necessary for everyone to get an education, ask them how much longer we’ll have to wait.

Summary
  • This oft-stated cliché assumes from the start that some students will fall through the cracks if education isn’t provided by the state but even more importantly, it assumes incorrectly that students won’t fall through the cracks if the State is in charge. Statistics and experience show otherwise, which is why public education is in chronic crisis these days.
  • A one-size-fits-all approach to education is the last thing needed when what you’re attempting to educate are millions of unique individuals, each with his own traits, learning speed, etc.
  • Education is sorely in need of the very things that prompt other activities in a free environment to excel: choice, competition, accountability, experimentation, diversity, and options!
  • For further information, see:

“The High Cost of Government Schooling” by Lawrence W. Reed

“Dissatisfaction Guaranteed and No Money Back” by Lawrence W. Reed

“The Origins of the Public School” by Robert P. Murphy

“Can the Free Market Provide Public Education?” by Sheldon Richman

“Market Education: The Unknown History” by George C. Leef

“The Global Education Industry: Lessons from Private Education in Developing Countries” by Anthony Flew

ABOUT MAX BORDERS

Max Borders is the editor of The Freeman and director of content for FEE. He is also co-founder of the event experience Voice & Exit and author of Superwealth: Why we should stop worrying about the gap between rich and poor.

EDITORS NOTE: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is proud to partner with Young America’s Foundation (YAF) to produce “Clichés of Progressivism,” a series of insightful commentaries covering topics of free enterprise, income inequality, and limited government. See the index of the published chapters here. The featured image is courtesy of FEE and Shutterstock.

Florida: Bill introduced to reduce Common Core mandated testing — But does it?

Florida State Senator John Legg has presented a new bill February 2, 2015 with much fanfare, Education Accountability – SB 616.

Like most other efforts by those who created the problem, this one creates more questions than answers.  His bill attempts to solve the problem of too much testing by simply demanding that schools should limit testing to 5% of the school year while it doesn’t reduce testing requirements by the State.

If schools can only use standardized tests 5% of class time, (9 of 180 days) does that mean just the time they are sitting and filling in the blanks?  Who measures this and tracks it? What about the time they are sitting in their classroom with no teacher while she proctors the makeup tests or retests?  This is what creates most of the 40% estimated lost class time.  We don’t have a computer for every student and the “musical chairs” problem is a huge and expensive complexity!

Who will notify parents when the 5% threshold is reached?  Is that 5% collectively by school, by class, or individually?  If only “permission” is required over 5%, why would parents deny this and under what penalty?  I just saw a “permission” slip in Lee County which penalized parents $15 for a standardized test or $55 for refusing an alternate exam and asked for the student’s phone number as well as parent info and IDs.

This “edict” is no better than just raising the bar and demanding better performance, a strategy they are using for testing overall.  And by the way, most have agreed the tests used to measure success are unreliable at best.

Schools must test because they are mandated to do so in statutes Senator John Legg helped create.  The existing mandated tests fit nicely into the 9 day window if you don’t account for the lack of testing computers, space and proctors, retests and makeup tests, and this would not provide any relief for students, teachers and schools.

Here’s a link to the bill and article about it on Sunshine State News.

This bill prescribes how teachers and schools must be evaluated in detail, removing all local control from local districts and providing unworkable and formulaic measures with no evidence of successful use.  What makes 40% test score weight in teacher evaluation the right number?  Why not 70% or 10% or 50% as it was?  No one has explained or scientifically justified these arbitrary numbers which have high stakes consequences for students and teachers.  The same goes for the 5% number on the amount of time for testing.   Why not 1%, or 10%?

This bill does not mention the main issue for many, and that is the content that is being “taught” to our children does not measure up, and is NOT rigorous, but crippling our children’s future.  Common sense and empirical data shows the children of Florida are being short changed.  We have recently dropped to number 28th in the Nation as shown by the ACT scores.  Our scores were better in 1995 than they are today, yet we are constantly being fed misleading statistics on “student growth” showing otherwise.  The tortured use of made up measures is just unseemly to disguise the fact that Florida’s vaunted education system is a massive failure.

The underlying question is why the Legislature micromanages the education process at all when nearly all of them have no teaching expertise?  We can use “off the shelf” Nationally Normed tests to measure how our students compare and save billions in the process.   Using pencil and paper tests equalizes the districts and eliminates the musical chair complexity, costs and fears of computer failures.   No explanation has ever been provided as to why pencil and paper tests should be replaced by computer only testing.  Why not let certified teachers teach and accredited schools monitor the teachers?

The answer is simple, POWER AND MONEY.

Billions must be spent to purchase, maintain and upgrade computers, software and networks to prepare for computer testing.  No estimate has been provided to the taxpayers and voters of Florida, but judging by the pilot project in Orange County reported Feb 18, 2104 at the State Board of Education meeting, this cost was estimated at over $2 Billion by Chair, Gary Chartran.

We do know, however, that the companies promoting this, Pearson, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, GE and others are the selfsame companies which receive this money.  They are also making large donations to the politicians who push for computerized testing and Common Core.  The Superintendents Association and State School Boards Association both list the same group of supporting corporate cronies who are benefactors in this incestuous scheme.  Here are links:  Gary Chartran and the KIPP Schools, Florida School Boards Association,  and the Florida Superintendents Association.

Food Fight in Sarasota County Public Schools

The Sarasota County School Board some time ago voted to have Meatless Mondays, much to the chagrin of parents and students. At the February 3rd, 2015 school board meeting one school board member, after listening to parents and students, offered the board the opportunity to rethink its decision to dictate what students should and should not eat, making a motion to end Meatless Mondays (see video below). Three members of the school board rejected that motion. Why?

Wendy McElroy in her column “Eating Right: Your freedom to choose your food is sacred” writes:

Political correctness now drives the civics of food with bountiful nations attempting to dictate what people can eat and how much. Why? For their own good.

The public debate revolves around whether a particular food choice is healthy or not. The real debate is, “Who should choose: you or someone else?” The defense of food freedom needs to turn on the right of people to express themselves through dietary choices that reflect not only their preferences but also their judgment. Food is self-expression as much as music or literature is. If the government can control the flavors of life you choose to swallow, then it can control everything else.

The three school board members who believe that “government can control the flavors of life you choose to swallow” are Caroline Zucker, Jane Goodwin and Shirley Brown. Because of this food freedom died in Sarasota County’s public schools.

VIDEO: Sarasota County School Board Votes Against Student (Lunch) Choice:

But why is food freedom important to our children and parents? Because food is much more than a health matter.

McElroy notes, “The State uses two basic arguments to justify the micromanagement of what people eat. First, laws are necessary to force people to make healthy choices. This argument assumes that politically motivated bureaucrats know what is best for people better than they do themselves. Second, people’s unhealthy choices make them tax burdens on the socialized medical system. Having “relieved” or deprived people of the responsibility for their own medical maintenance, the State uses their dependence as an excuse to impose social control. It is important to counter both arguments, but doing so often ignores an equally essential point.”

“Food is not merely a matter of health or sustaining life. It is one of the main ways people express themselves in terms of culture, ethnicity, religion, psychology, family history, and pure preference. Food choices are personal; they define our identity as surely as choices in attire or music do,” writes McElroy.

The government’s increasing interference in food choice is often viewed as benevolent, because it is discussed in terms of health benefits. Food regulation is anything but benevolent. The government is not only trying to define who and what you are; it is, at the same time, trying to convince you that the denial of freedom is “for your own good.”

If you are what you eat, then food laws are an attempt to control your identity.

Meatless Monday is “local control of your child’s identity” courtesy of Sarasota County School Board members Zucker, Goodwin and Brown, nothing more and nothing less.

ABOUT WENDY MCELROY

Wendy McElroy (wendy@wendymcelroy.com) is an author, editor of iFeminists.com, and Research Fellow at The Independent Institute (Independent.org)

My Position on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act Reauthorization

I just sent the following email to Senator Lamar Alexander of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee regarding the re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the most recent version of which is No Child Left Behind (NCLB):

Senator Alexander, why the rush? This ESEA reauth is following the same fast-track as Common Core, and that is a wreck that can only benefit education business.

NCLB was also a wreck– an unattainable, punitive international embarrassment.

Test-driven “reform” only begs to be exploited even as it bankrupts schools of both money and time. 

Are you trying to cement Common Core into ESEA? You should consider that the language “college and career ready” sounds good but that even the testing consortia, Smarter Balanced, cannot manage to operationalize the term without turning it back in on Common Core.

I wrote about it here.

There is too much of a federal hand intruding on state autonomy. For that reason, I ask that you sunset ESEA. When Johnson began ESEA in 1965, he tried to be careful that the federal government would not overburden states with federal requirements in assisting states with the burden of poverty on the American classroom. It looks like your 400 rushed pages will only burden states and erase state control over education as you write in that money follows the student.

Time to curb the federal role.

ESEA is 15 years off track and has been punishing American public education since it became NCLB.

ESEA is no longer helping us.

Please sunset ESEA and NCLB.  Instead, consider block grants without federal puppetry via federal rules that cripple state functioning.   

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

–Mercedes Schneider

  Louisiana public school teacher, author, and        blogger  https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/about/

The deadline to submit your views to the Committee is February 2, 2015. You may write to the following email: FixingNCLB_@help.senate.gov

RELATED ARTICLE: Support Mia Love’s H.R. 524 “Stop Common Core” Bill

Obama’s ‘Free’ Community Colleges Power Grab: Imposing Common Core on Higher Education?

Quite obviously, the plan is a political move, one more attempt to gain Democratic voters through “free” programs. It is also a power grab, a way to get the public used to the idea of another federal program to which states answer, and as a way to further impose Common Core on college.  If someone wanted to make all college courses Common Core-compliant he would start at the introductory and community college level, where the most “help” is needed.  It is in the most vulnerable populations that the federal government, through the Department of Education, works its way.

In his State of the Union address President Obama promised to send Congress “a bold new plan” for community college students so they could have a “chance to graduate ready for the new economy, without a load of debt.” He said, “I want to spread that idea all across America so that two years of college becomes as free and universal in America as high school is today.”

His plan, America’s College Promise, is based on programs in Tennessee and Chicago, which presumably demonstrated “that free community college is possible.”

Little is known about the “Chicago” program, but the much ballyhooed “Tennessee Promise” has not yet enrolled one student.  At this point, students are still applying for the fall semester 2015.

Critics of Obama’s proposal note that community college is already either free to low-income students or a bargain for middle-class students, thanks to the federal Pell grant and other forms of financial aid.

Yet, the federal program would expand on what the Tennessee Promise promises: “last-dollar” scholarships to cover tuition and fees not covered by state and federal aid.  It would provide “first-dollar,” or zero-cost tuition, and would apply to adult students, not just recent high school graduates, as well as students attending at least half time.

The Tennessee program requires a 2.0 grade point average, along with eight hours of community service each term.  The federal program calls for a slightly higher 2.5 gpa.

Such low standards along with free tuition are sure to swell up college enrollments.

The entire grandiose plan is estimated to cost $60 billion over 10 years.

It’s unlikely that this proposal will succeed this year, as even its champions admit.

Quite obviously, the plan is a political move, one more attempt to gain Democratic voters through “free” programs.

It is also a power grab, a way to get the public used to the idea of another federal program to which states answer, and as a way to further impose Common Core on college.

College Classes “Synching Up” with Common Core

Common Core standards are already being imposed on colleges. Common Core assessments, devised under the direction of progressive educators such as Linda Darling-Hammond, are now being used as criteria to determine “college readiness,” while college teaching is being tailored to Common Core guidelines.  These assessments, which are intended to end the “achievement gap,” are replacing tests like the ACT, which showed by their measurements that only about a quarter of high school students demonstrated readiness for college.  Few are noticing this or how faculty members teaching introductory courses have spent last summer in workshops on teaching the Common Core way.

One of the states most aggressively pushing the higher education Common Core alignment is Obama’s model state, Tennessee.  A June Hechinger Report article, “Higher education scrambles to get ready for the Common Core,” noted that summer workshops in Tennessee were devised to train university faculty to teach entry-level English and math courses “redesigned to account for what students now will be expected to learn in the 11th and 12th grades — and to sync up with the Common Core. . . .”

If someone wanted to make all college courses Common Core-compliant he would start at the introductory and community college level, where the most “help” is needed.

It is in the most vulnerable populations that the federal government, through the Department of Education, works its way.  One method, in this case, was by funding the 2013 working paper, “The Common Core State Standards: Implications for Community Colleges and Student Preparedness for College,” authored by the National Center for Post-secondary Research at Teachers College, Columbia University.  It describes the programs under which states have been learning how to comply with the new dictates.  One of these, “Core to College,” has ten participating states, and is funded by the Lumina, the William and Flora Hewlett, and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundations.

The familiar Common Core buzzwords, such as “critical thinking,” pepper this working paper.  Eliminating the achievement gap is disguised as preparation for college-level work:

The writers of the CCSS were concerned that depth and critical analysis in education are often sacrificed because of the need to cover large amounts of material.  They worked on the assumption that college readiness is best addressed by offering students multiple opportunities to engage with challenging texts and solve problems in different ways, that is, to practice the kinds of skills typically expected of college students.

“Multiple opportunities to engage with challenging texts” and “solving problems in different ways” disguise methods that allow lagging students to catch up with their more advanced peers.  It’s the opposite of what a college has demanded traditionally, including retaining “large amounts of material,” solving problems correctly, and reading on one’s own.

Common Core is all about eliminating the “achievement gap” and therefore obviating the meaning of “higher education.”

Significantly, the authors admit that the term “college readiness” is meaningless.  They write, “The CCSS writers followed the lead of ACT, Inc. (2006), Achieve, Inc. (n.d.) and others who argue that there is no substantive difference between college readiness and career readiness.  They are taken to be the same.”

Does one assume that a high school graduate who seeks a job (“career”) is on the same academic level as someone aspiring to attend college?  Students preparing for college traditionally took more academically rigorous courses and even earned different kinds of diplomas.  But with Common Core there is a one-size-fits-all diploma.

The fact that many students are not ready for college-level work, and need to take remedial classes, is taken as a sign that Common Core needs to be instituted, as an Inside Higher Ed’s April 2012 report, “Remediation: Higher Education’s Broken Bridge to Nowhere,” concluded.  This report contains mostly material from Complete College America, a nonprofit organization established “to work with states to significantly increase the number of Americans with quality career certificates or college degrees and to close attainment gaps for traditionally underrepresented populations.”  It has received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest donor to Common Core efforts, since 2009, the year of its establishment: in June of that year, they received almost $950,000, and in November were awarded over $8 million. In January 2014 they received $3.5 million.

Would “America’s College Promise” Ramp Up College Common Core Compliance?

Community College officials welcomed Obama’s proposal immediately and in spite of the fact that “critical features” are “not yet known (and in truth may not yet be known by the Administration),” as the American Association of Community Colleges information page noted. AACC has also benefited from the largesse of the Gates Foundation, receiving $500,000 in September 2009.  Bill Gates appeared at their meeting in Seattle in April 2010, and announced $110 million to “Transform Remedial Education,” according to a press release.

What would be “critical” about the free community college plan, AACC states, is “elaboration of these conditions through potential legislation.”

“Potential legislation” could mean just about anything—including Common Core requirements.

AACC has no problems with federal strings, such as states having to “provide matching funding, engage in certain specific policies including performance-based state funding, and commit to some type of maintenance of effort.”

But such requirements sound much like how the states got trapped into Common Core.

America’s College Promise would provide the final nail in the coffin of a federal agency that has already by subterfuge imposed unconstitutional federal Common Core standards on K-12 schools and has imposed itself on all aspects of college life from sexual harassment to micromanaging the number of athletes playing particular sports.

There is no end to what kind of new controls would come with the complete federal takeover of “free community colleges”—from the requirements to employ Common Core to engage in “community” or national service.

This is a scary scenario for most of us, except for bureaucrats and government yes-men like those at the AACC.

Although we do have a Republican Congress, we should heed the words on the AACC website: “It is possible that aspects of the proposal will be incorporated into the Higher Education Act.”

Florida Association of District School Superintendents and FL School Boards Association partner with Pearson and other Corporate Cronies

Today I received the newest policy release from the Florida Association of District School Superintendents.  To say that I was disappointed is an understatement.  It pledges full support for Common Core by name.  The new report advocates convoluted minor reforms to adjust to changes and declining student performance which they do not understand, or will not address.

Joy Frank is the General Counsel and writes their bills and opinions.  We were directed to her by Senator Montford after Deirdre Clemons and I testified at the January 7th hearings in the Capitol.  After two very short meetings, it became apparent that we were not on the same page on Common Core.  After we presented our views and expert reports, Joy said her experts are telling her something else and dismissed it.  We need another meeting, but I doubt that will help.

I went to their web site and discovered the likely reason for her intransigence.

When you partner with Pearson and the other corporate cronies who pay your way, it’s tough to embrace the truth, that Common Core FAILS.

We must expose this connection to our legislators to show their views and testimony are tainted and they must listen to real stakeholders, the parents, students and tax paying citizens of Florida.   We should also address it in our districts with our elected school boards who must be largely unaware of this conflict of interest.

Then I went to the Florida School Boards Association web site to look at their “sponsors”  and found pretty much the same benefactors, with Pearsonhigh on the list.  Both these organization have expensive lobbyists, staff in the Capitol and access to our legislators through massive donations.  They are the ones creating reports and testifying before legislative committees with an air of legitimacy, while empirical results from education experts, parents and lower student exam results have no merit in their narrative.  By the way, we, as taxpayers, are paying for lobbyists for this association as well.  It’s part of your school district’s budget.

Both these organizations are presenting a united front urging legislators not to “rock the boat” on Common Core.   This is, indeed, a real story of David and Goliath.  Our grassroots organizations must inform and energize the public or accept enslavement of our children by corporate elites who reap the benefit at the bank from High Stakes Testing and Common Core.

March 5th, we have an opportunity to March for the Children in Tallahassee and lock arms across the state and across political lines.  Here are 4 interesting, short videos for your use:

March 5 event info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1-notNA_hY&feature=youtu.be

High Stakes Testing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wGxTWTm9F8&feature=youtu.be

History: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcyy1kJtwZo&feature=youtu.be

And English:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnLoK9St4XQ&feature=youtu.be

West Virginia: ClimateDepot’s Marc Morano loses effort to stop brainwashing of children on Climate Change

student supporters of climate debate

Supporters of allowing climate debate in West VA schools.

This column has audio from a January 14, 2015 Board of Education meeting in Charleston, West Virginia. The meeting was being held to discuss providing balance to the district’s K-12 climate science curriculum.

According to JunkScience.com, “Unfortunately, warmists won this skirmish as the Board of Education voted to remove balance from the K-12 climate science curriculum.”

What has happened to the free-flow of ideas in our public school classrooms? Are school boards more interested in political correctness than they are about science?

Click here for more background on this failed effort.


Submitted Written Testimony of Marc Morano, Publisher of Climate Depot & former staff of U.S. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Presented to West Virginia Board of Education Meeting Charleston West VA on January 14, 2015 – West Virginia’s changes to the National Next Generation Science Standards

Charleston West VA, – January 14, 2014 – Morano: I want to thank the school board for hosting this public hearing on the changes to the climate curriculum in West Virginia schools. (Media coverage of Climate Depot herehereherehere here.)

These changes are accurate, factual and should not be controversial. I will proceed point by point on each revision. (National Journal Features Climate Depot’s Morano warning of ‘indoctrination’ in testimony to W.VA Board Of Education Meeting – Board Votes To Reconsider Standards That ‘Cast Doubt’ On ‘Climate Change’)

First, I am here to applaud the West Virginia (skeptical) changes to the curriculum. Even if you are not a global warming skeptic, these changes are basically fostering an open debate and they are against indoctrination. We must not tell kids there is no debate and no dissent is allowed. So even if you believe the UN and Al Gore, these changes made by the West Virginia board are accurate and scientifically valid. The proposed (climate skeptical) changes by this board were perfectly reasonable.

With regards to the alleged ‘97% consensus’ – a lead UN author Dr. Richard Tol testified to the U.S. Congress that the 97% figure was “pulled out of thin air.”That is a nonsense figure meant to intimidate when we have thousands of scientists out there openly dissenting – including Nobel Prize winners like Dr. Ivar Giaever, who actually endorsed President Obama, but he is a major global warming skeptic now. Every day more and more scientists are speaking out…scientists who used to believe that are changing their view.

The science on virtually A-Z at this point is failing and in many instances the claims are moving in the opposite direction. The global warming movement is suffering the scientific death of a thousand cuts.

We are going on 18 plus years with no global warming according to satellite data. You may hear about 2014 being the ‘hottest year’, but it is based surface data and hundredths of a degree difference between years.

There were three basic changes that West Virginia made to the curriculum,

1) Changing it to read ‘rise AND Fall of temperatures. That is perfectly valid revision made by West Virginia. We have actually had a rise in temperatures since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850, but temperatures fell from 1940-through the 1970s then we increased from the late 1970s to late 1990s. Now we are in a standstill. Temperature go up and down. Studies show the Earth has probably dropped seen a temperature drop the Medieval Warm Period.

2) In terms of the West Virginia changes adding the language to the curriculum about the accuracy of climate models, A study in Nature. (See: Study in journal Nature Climate Change: 114 out of 117 climate model predictions from 1990′s wildly overestimated global warming)

So the West Virginia revisions on models questioning their accuracy are valid.

3) In terms of natural factors the revisions were accurate as well. All three of West Virginia’s revisions should be embraced even by those who agree with the UN and Al Gore. Even if you are not a global warming skeptic, the proposed changes by this board were perfectly reasonable and scientifically valid.

There is nothing controversial here except the idea that we should allow open debate and not tell kids that they have to think a certain way. The original standards teach no debate. I urge you to keep the revisions, let science win out here in the end and do not suppress dissent.

VIDEO: Florida Education Stakeholders Empowerment Act Explained

Chris Quackenbush from the Florida Citizens’ Alliance explains the Florida Education Stakeholders Empowerment Act:

Readers may download the Florida Education Stakeholders Empowerment Act by clicking here.

RELATED ARTICLES: 

Michelle Malkin: Parents, Refuse Common Core Tests

For Louisiana Parents Considering Opting Out

Why Is Day Care Scarce and Unaffordable?

It’s time to call off the child care regulators by JEFFREY A. TUCKER:

Social democrats want to nationalize childhood by having government fund and manage universal day care. Social conservatives want the family to be the day care, which is a lovely idea when it’s affordable. Libertarians don’t seem much interested in the subject at all. That leaves virtually no one to tell the truth about the only solution to the shortage and high price of day care: complete deregulation.

Let’s start the discussion right now.

The Obama administration has the idea to model a new program for national day care on a policy from World War II that lasted from 1944 to 1946 in which a mere 130,000 children had their day care covered by the federal government. Here’s what’s strange: right now, the feds (really, taxpayers) pay for 1.3 million kids to be in day care, which means that there are 10 times as many children in such programs now as then. The equivalent of the wartime program is already in place now, and then some. The shortages for those who need the service continue to worsen.

How did this wartime program come about? The federal government had drafted men to march off to foreign lands to kill and be killed. On the home front, wives and moms were drafted into service in factories to cover the country’s productive needs while the men were gone. That left the problem of children. Back in the day, most people lived in close proximity to extended family, and that helped. But for a few working parents, that wasn’t enough.

Tax-funded day care

Tax-funded day care became part of the Community Facilities Act of 1941 (popularly known as the Lanham Act). The Federal Works Agency built centers that became daytime housing for the kids while their moms served the war effort. Regulation was also part of the mix. The federal Office of Education’s Children’s Bureau had a plan: children under the age of 3 were to remain at home; children from 2 to 5 years of age would be in centers with a ratio of 1 adult to 10 children. The standards were never enforced — there was a war on, after all — and the Lanham Act was a dead letter after 1946.

The program was a reproduction of another program that had begun in the New Deal as a job creation measure (part of the Works Project Administration and the Federal Economic Recovery Act, both passed in 1933). It was later suspended when the New Deal fell apart. Neither effort was about children. The rhetoric surrounding these programs was about adults and their jobs: the need to make jobs for nurses, cooks, clerical workers, and teachers.

Obama’s day care solution

Obama wants not only to resurrect this old policy but to make it universal, because day care is way too expensive for families with two working parents. This proposal is piling intervention on intervention; it is not a solution. Do parents really want kids cared for in institutions run the same way as the US Postal Service, the TSA, and the DMV? Parents know how little control they have over local public schools. Do we really want that model expanded to preschoolers?

Still, for all the problems with the Obama proposal, its crafters acknowledge a very real problem: two parents are working in most households today. This reality emerged some 30 years ago after the late 1970s inflation wrecked household income and high taxes robbed wage earners. Two incomes became necessary to maintain living standards, which created a problem with respect to children. Demand for daytime child care skyrocketed.

The shortage of providers is most often described as “acute.” Child care is indeed expensive, if you can find it at all. It averages $1,000 per month in the United States, and in many cities, it’s far pricier. That’s an annual salary on the minimum wage, which is why many people in larger cities find that nearly the whole of the second paycheck is consumed in day care costs — and that’s for just one child. Your net gains are marginal at best. If you have two children, you can forget about it.

Perhaps this is why Pew Research also reports a recent rise in the number of stay-at-home moms. It’s not a cultural change. It’s a matter of economics. And the trends are happening because the options are thinning. Parents are being forced to pick their poison: lower standard of living with only one working spouse, or a lower standard of living with two working spouses. This is a terrible bind for any family with kids.

The reason behind the day care shortage

The real question is one few seem to ask. Why is there a shortage? Why is day care so expensive? We get tennis shoes, carrots, gasoline, dry cleaning, haircuts, manicures, and most other things with no problem. There are infinite options at a range of prices, and they are all affordable. There is no national crisis, for example, about a shortage of gyms. If we are going to find a solution, surely there is a point to understanding the source of the problem.

Here is a principle to use in all aspects of economic policy:

When you find a good or service that is in huge demand, but the supply is so limited to the point that the price goes up and up, look for the regulation that is causing the high price.

This principle applies regardless of the sector, whether transportation, gas, education, food, beer, or day care.

Child care is one of the most regulated industries in the country. The regulatory structures began in 1962 with legislation that required child care facilities to be state-licensed in order to get federal funding grants. As one might expect, 40 percent of the money allocated toward this purpose was spent on establishing licensing procedures rather than funding the actual care, with the result that child care services actually declined after the legislation.

This was an early but obvious case study in how regulation actually reduces access. But the lesson wasn’t learned and regulation intensified as the welfare state grew. Today it is difficult to get over the regulatory barriers to become a provider in the first place. You can’t do it from your home unless you are willing to enter into the gray/black market and accept only cash for your business. Zoning laws prevent residential areas from serving as business locations. Babysitting one or two kids, sure, you can do that and not get caught. But expanding into a public business puts your own life and liberty in danger.

Too many regulations

Beyond that, the piles of regulations extend from the central government to state governments to local governments, coast to coast. It’s a wonder any day cares stay in business at all. As a matter of fact, these regulations have cartelized the industry in ways that would be otherwise unattainable through purely market means. In effect, the child care industry is not competitive; it increasingly tends toward monopoly due to the low numbers of entrants who can scale the regulatory barriers.

There is a book-length set of regulations at the federal level. All workers are required to receive health and safety training in specific areas. The feds mandate adherence to all building, fire, and health codes. All workers have to get comprehensive background checks, including fingerprinting. There are strict and complex rules about the ratio of workers per child, in effect preventing economies of scale from driving down the price. Child labor laws limit the labor pool. And everyone has to agree to constant and random monitoring by bureaucrats from many agencies. Finally, there are all the rules concerning immigration, tax withholding, minimum wages, maximum working hours, health benefits, and vacation times.

All of these regulations have become far worse under the Obama administration — all in the name of helping children. The newest proposal would require college degrees from every day care provider.

And that’s at the federal level. States impose a slew of other regulations that govern the size of playgrounds, the kind of equipment they can have, the depth of the mulch underneath the play equipment, the kinds of medical services for emergencies that have to be on hand, insurance mandates that go way beyond what insurers themselves require, and so much more. The regulations grow more intense as the number of children in the program expands, so that all providers are essentially punished for being successful.

Just as a sample, check out Pennsylvania’s day care regulations. Ask yourself if you would ever become a provider under these conditions.

A couple of years ago, I saw some workers digging around a playground at a local day care and I made an inquiry. It turned out that the day care, just to stay in business, was forced by state regulations to completely reformat its drains, dig new ones, reshape the yard, change the kind of mulch it used, spread out the climbing toys, and add some more foam here and there. I can’t even imagine how much the contractors were paid to do all this, and how much the changes cost overall.

And this was for a well-established, large day care in a commercial district that was already in compliance. Imagine how daunting it would be for anyone who had a perfectly reasonable idea of providing a quality day care service from home or renting out some space to make a happy place to care for kids during the day. It’s nearly unattainable. You set out to serve kids and families but you quickly find that you are serving bureaucrats and law-enforcement agencies.

The economic solution to the day care shortage

Providing day care on a profitable basis is a profession that countless people could do, if only the regulations weren’t so absurdly strict. This whole industry, if deregulated, would be a wonderful enterprise. There really is no excuse for why child care opportunities wouldn’t exist within a few minutes’ drive of every house in the United States. It’s hard to imagine a better at-home business model.

What this industry needs is not subsidies but massive, dramatic, and immediate deregulation at all levels. Prices would fall dramatically. New options would be available for everyone. What is now a problem would vanish in a matter of weeks. It’s a guaranteed solution to a very real problem.

The current system is a problem for everyone, but it disproportionately affects women. It is truly an issue for genuine feminists who care about real freedom. The regulatory state as it stands is attacking the right to produce and consume a service that is important to women and absolutely affects their lives in every way. In the 19th century, these kinds of rules were considered to be a form of subjugation of women. Now we call it the welfare state.

From my reading of the literature on this subject, I’m startled at how small is the recognition of the causal relationship between the regulatory structure and the shortage of providers. It’s almost as if it had never occurred to the many specialists in this area that there might be some cost to forever increasing the mandates, intensifying the inspections, tightening the strictures, and so on.

A rare exception is a 2004 child care study  by the Rand Corp. Researchers Randal Heeb and M. Rebecca Kilburn found what should be obvious to anyone who understands economics. “Relatively modest changes in regulations would have large and economically important consequences,” they argue, and “the overall effect of increased regulation might be counter to their advocates’ intentions. Our evidence indicates that state regulations influence parents’ child care decisions primarily through a price effect, which lowers use of regulated child care and discourages labor force participation. We find no evidence for a quality assurance effect.”

This is a mild statement that reinforces what all economic logic suggests. Every regulatory action diminishes market participation. It puts barriers to entry in front of producers and imposes unseen costs on consumers. Providers turn their attention away from pleasing customers and toward compliance. Regulations reduce competition and raise prices. They do not serve the stated objectives of policy makers, though they might serve the deeper interests of the industry’s larger players.

Creating a free market for child care

And so the politicians and activists look at the situation and say: we must do something. It’s true, we must. But we must do the right thing, which is not to create Orwellian, state-funded child care factories that parents cannot control. We must not turn child care into a labyrinthian confusion of thousands of pages of regulations.

We need to make a market for child care as with any other service. Open up, permit free entry and exit, and we’ll see the supposed problem vanish as millions of new providers and parents discover a glorious new opportunity for enterprise and mutual benefit.

But isn’t this laissez-faire solution dangerous for the children?

Reputation and market-based quality control govern so much of our lives today. A restaurant that serves one bad meal can face the crucible at the hands of Yelp reviewers, and one late shipment from an Amazon merchant can ruin a business model. Markets enable other active markets for accountability and intense focus on consumer satisfaction.

It’s even more true of child care. Even now, markets are absolutely scrupulous about accessing quality, as these Yelp reviews of day care in Atlanta, Georgia, show. As for safety, insurers are similarly scrupulous, just as they are with homes and office buildings. As with any market good, a range of quality is the norm, and people pick based on whatever standards they choose. Some parents might think that providers with undergraduate degrees essential, while others might find that qualification irrelevant.

In any case, markets and parents are the best sources for monitoring and judging quality; certainly they have a greater interest in quality assurance than politicians and bureaucrats. If any industry is an obvious case in which self-regulation is wholly viable, child care is it. Indeed, the first modern day care centers of the late 19th century were created by private philanthropists and market entrepreneurs as a better alternative to institutionalizing the children of the destitute and poor new immigrants.

The shortages in this industry are tragic and affect tens of millions of people. They have a cause (regulation) and a solution (deregulation). Before we plunge wholesale into nationalized babysitting, we ought to at least consider a better way.

ABOUT JEFFREY A. TUCKER

Jeffrey Tucker is a distinguished fellow at FEE, CLO of the startup Liberty.me, and editor at Laissez Faire Books. Author of five books, he speaks at FEE summer seminars and other events.  His latest book is Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World.

Florida Common Core: 2015 Legislative Session Update

education tallahassee

Photo from the top of the Florida Capitol: L-R Kathy Doan, Yvonne Isecki, Chris Quackenbush, Mitzi Hahn

BREAKING NEWS! There is a bill in bill drafting to solve Florida’s education issues. Here are the details.

Issue 1: Standards – What they are learning. The Commissioner will select several of the best standards from pre 2009 for the local districts to select. The Commissioner will select these standards for English and math are free and not copyrighted, well vetted and highly rated (higher than our existing standards). Districts will have local control to choose from this list based on their varied needs. Florida’s school districts are diverse and one size does not fit all. Rural, urban, and minority needs should allow for local flexibility to address their needs.

Issue 2: Accountability – Yes, we need to measure, but there are already nationally normed tests that will do a better job comparing us to the rest of the nation and the world. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel or force our kids to be guinea pigs. We propose the districts should have local control to choose from a list of the best of these, such as the Iowa Basics and Stanford Achievement Tests. They would administer ONE test at the end of the year between 3rd and 10th grade. These tests are less expensive and pre-common core versions are available. Teachers will not be teaching to the test if it is a nationally normed test and it is NOT used to determine graduation or promotion, but simply to inform us on our students’ progress.

Issue 3: Testing – These tests can be administered on paper and taken at the student’s own desk, eliminating the “musical chairs” now needed to address the lack of computers for testing. This has, by some reports, absorbed as much as 40% of class time for learning. By going to paper tests, we can reduce costs by BILLIONS of scarce education dollars, AND increase time for learning. It will also allow schools more control of the data to prevent data mining. Student data can be aggregated with individual identifiers removed to prevent data companies from collecting and using individual data.

There is much to do and supporters are invited to help to get this bill passed. There is something for everyone to love in this bill. It saves money, provides more time for learning, provides high standards and accountability. Supporters are having a “March for the Children” event in the Capitol March 5, 2015. Busses are being organized from several cities. If readers want to help organize this event they may contact Debbie Gunnoe or Karen Schoen. Interested parties may register at www.eventbtite/c/march-for-the-children-tickets-15317379695.

Supporters of the bill are asking Floridians to contact their legislators and let them know parents want local control and needed solutions, not posturing in Tallahassee. Credit goes to Senator Alan Hayes and Representative John Tobia for putting this bill into bill drafting. Once it emerges from Bill Drafting in about two weeks, it will have a number. Supporters still must identify who will be best to carry this bill and who is willing to do that job. Neither Rep. Tobia nor Sen. Hayes have firmly committed to carrying this bill.

Readers may Go Here to find their legislators and send a letter to support ACTION on this bill.

Many important steps remain, and supporters are counting on concerned Floridians and Common Core groups to help make a change NOW. There is no DO OVER for our kids.

RELATED VIDEOS:

U.S. History curriculum Collier County, Florida:

English Language Arts Collier County. Florida:

Florida: Superintendents Fake Readiness for 2015 Computerized Testing

Standardized testing has been driving American education for over a decade, and even as the discussion and debate over the continued role of standardized testing in the long-overdue re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) is in full swing, states nationwide are facing yet another round of the time, money, and manpower drain incurred by testing, testing, testing.

And even as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush *casually* decides he will go for that 2016 Oval Office position after all, the state in which he supposedly performed miracles of public education transformation is facing its 2014-15 go-around of testing, testing, testing.

That brings us to a very interesting video on the January 21, 2015, hearings of Florida’s Senate Education PreK-12 Committee regarding Florida’s technological readiness for their state assessments. At minute 31:22, Senator Bill Monford states that the state’s passing a law regarding technology does not mean districts can meet the demands of the law. At minute 33:41, Monford asks Deputy Commissioner of Innovation Ron Nieto whether districts are currently technologically ready for state assessments; Nieto says that he will know have that information in mid-February, but that “based on information that they certified, it appears that they should be ready.”

Monford replies, “If the answer is no, what’s our plan?”

Nieto is silent for seven seconds. He then replies, “We’ll determine that when we get that answer. I don’t have an answer to that, sir.”

At minute 34:10, Senator Don Gaetz begins asking questions. Here is the bomb he drops at minute 35:26:

I represent some rural districts as well as some medium-sized districts, and I asked a couple of superintendents if they would close the door, pull down the blinds, and tell me whether they’re really ready, and they said they weren’t. And I said, “Well, how did you handle that certification you had to sign?” And they said, “Well, we crossed our fingers because we were basically told if we didn’t sign it, we would be held up to ridicule and probably punishment. But we’re really not ready, and we expect there to be problems in the administration of the statewide assessment.”

So, let me return to a question that Senator Monford asked: Do we have any backup, paper-and-pencil backup, or any other kind of backup that we can use if we have a problem that is either systemic in nature or is district-specific in nature, or is specific even to a school? What do we do if we do have a problem of that nature? [Emphasis added.]

Nieto responds that the only pencil-and-paper tests are for special needs students; that technical glitches happen and that that is what the IT folks are for.

At minute 38:34, Gaetz responds:

But you testified a few minutes ago that in some districts, the IT officer is a bus driver. And I like bus drivers, but that was your characterization. So, are you prepared to stick with your contention that then we have people in the districts capable, prepared, skilled, prepared in all ways to deal with problems I described? (Problems included needing to reboot a computer that froze up.) [Emphasis added.]

Nieto replied that he has worked with those rural school districts Gaetz described, and that “people really rally around everybody in the district when it come to this kind of support, and they have never failed to this point” and that he “can’t imagine them backing down now.”

So. The rural districts in which some Florida superintendents admitted signing a paper stating “technological readiness” while knowing that their districts are not ready will somehow “rally around” and produce the “support” necessary to pull off computerized state testing in Florida that begins full force in early March 2015 for grades 8 through 11 in English language arts (ELA) (writing component) and continues in April and May 2015  for grades 5 through 11 in ELA and grades 5 though 8 in math.

Just a reminder that Florida was once the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), but it gave up that role in November 2013 at the urging of Florida Governor Rick Scott, who communicated to the Florida State Board of Education in September 2013 that he wanted Florida out of PARCC.

It’s 2015. Florida is out of PARCC (which continues to dwindle), but that does not mean Florida is out of assessments.

I suspect that Florida is not alone in either having officials bend to top-down bullying to falsify technological readiness for testing or in having questionable assistance with trying to pull off its role in the America-As-Global-Competitive testing farce.

It is beyond time to kill the federally-mandated testing beast

Gerald Bailey: Sour Grapes and Political Payback?

Last month, Gov. Rick Scott accepted the resignation of Gerald Bailey, the eight year Commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, from his post.

Now a month later, former Commissioner Bailey accuses Gov. Scott and his aides of political meddling and claims his resignation was forced.

Given the timing, it seems less than credible and a political hatchet job as failed gubernatorial and congressional candidate Alex Sink and other Democratic voices have come out of the woodwork to criticize Scott.

When one reads his resignation letter, there is no mention of these new allegations against Gov. Scott and his current and former aides.

Various allegations from Bailey go back to March 2013.

If they are true, why did he not speak up then?

Why did Bailey not become a whistle blower like myself and file a complaint with Leon County State Attorney Willie Meggs or Attorney General Pam Bondi?

Either the allegations are not true or he did not want to walk in my shoes.

Are we to believe that aides to Gov. Scott bullied and badgered an FDLE Commissioner with 35 years of police experience?

As former Commissioner Bailey looked the other way in his response to Adobegate at Miami Norland Senior High School in March 2014, I for one am glad he has left the FDLE.

Perhaps Florida will gain an FDLE Commissioner that will investigate and take actions on serious test cheating akin to Adobegate concerning Miami-Dade County Public Schools and/or other Florida school districts like state police officials in Georgia, Texas, and Pennsylvania as opposed to doing absolutely nothing.

EDITORS UPDATE: On January 24, 2015 Governor Scott’s office issued the following on the Gerald Bailey resignation:

Governor Scott’s Press Office: FAQ on FDLE

Q: Is it true that Gerald Bailey was forced to resign?

  • Prior to December 16, 2014, the Governor’s staff notified cabinet staff (including the offices of the Attorney General, the Chief Financial Officer, and the Commissioner of Agriculture) that the Governor wanted new leadership at FDLE. Cabinet staff raised no objection.
  • On Tuesday, December 16, 2014, cabinet staff were notified that Gerald Bailey would be met with that day about the Governor’s desire for new leadership at FDLE. Peter Antonacci, then general counsel, met with Bailey and said the Governor wanted new leadership at FDLE and requested his resignation.
  • Bailey sent a letter to the Governor saying he was “stepping down” that same day, December 16th.

Q: Is it true that you or your aides instructed FDLE to identify Alan Williams in a daily media report about the Dream Defender protest at the capitol?

  • The Governor’s office, FDLE and DMS worked to produce daily media reports in response to a high volume of media requests for information (including the costs of the protest, activities of protestors and incidents in the capitol during the protest).
  • Representative Williams was first identified by name in an incident report memo from Gerald Bailey emailed to the Governor’s office on Tuesday, July 23, 2013 at 4:40 pm and then included in a memo to press at 4:57PM that same day.
  • During the protest, it was standard practice to provide as much information to the media as possible without compromising the security concerns of the capitol building.

Q: Did Governor’s staff direct Bailey to target Interim Orange County Clerk Colleen Reilly as part of the investigation of two escaped inmates?

  • No, Frank Collins met with FDLE communications personnel to help coordinate an FDLE press conference. Bailey asked to speak with Collins and FDLE communications staff before the press conference.
  • The discussions with Bailey were about how to provide the most complete account of who could have been involved in the high-profile escape of two inmates, which included both the Clerk’s Office and the Department of Corrections.
  • The discussion was not about targeting any individual.

Q: Did you ask FDLE to get involved in a federal money laundering case so a donor could be appointed to a position?

  • No, the Governor did not ask Bailey to get involved in any type of investigation in any way.
  • While there is no record of an appointment application in the Governor’s office, it is likely he was considered for an appointment at some point because there was a request for a background check. However, there was no request to FDLE to influence any kind of investigation.

Q: Is it true that FDLE was forced to transport staffers from your re-election campaign in state vehicles?

  • The campaign paid an invoice from FDLE for the estimated cost of staff to travel with the Governor and the First Lady.
  • FDLE would not transport Meghan Collins on one occasion, which created some confusion because the campaign was already working to reimburse any cost to the state for staff travel.

Q: Is it true your campaign solicited donations from FDLE on their state emails?

  • Any emails used for campaign donations would have been obtained through lists operated by organizations that included individuals who opted in for communication. Unfortunately, those lists were not regularly cleaned to ensure they did not have any government email addresses on them.
  • The law requires mass emails to include an unsubscribe link that would have allowed any recipient to automatically be removed from a list at any time.

Q: Is it true that Pete Antonacci requested FDLE to delete public records?

  • No.

Q: Is it true that campaign aides asked for FDLE to help develop campaign policy by getting on a phone call?

  • FDLE did the right thing by ignoring a campaign staffer’s inappropriate request for assistance.

Q: What about the allegation from Bailey that your administration forces agencies to make certain hiring decisions?

  • Our office frequently makes suggestions on qualified candidates, but we do not require agencies to hire anyone.

Q: What about the allegation from Bailey that the Governor’s office stopped FDLE from briefing the cabinet on their plan to increase pay for crime lab employees?

  • In October, the Governor’s Office of Policy and Budget advised FDLE to not include any pay increases in their Legislative Budget Requests because pay increases for all state agencies were to be considered as a whole at a later date. The Governor’s full budget proposal will be released next week.

ACTION ALERT: Common Core and High Stakes Testing Smoking Gun Information

Here’s important information I heard in the Florida State Senate Pre K-12 Education Committee hearing I attended in Tallahassee January 7, 2015.  At hour 1:15, after Commissioner Pam Stewart’s presentation, Senator Gaetz said this: “Here’s what I’ve learned today”

  1. “We don’t know how much time is consumed by Statewide Assessments.”
  2. “We don’t know how much money it costs to perform state mandated tests.”
  3. “We don’t know whether tests that are performed by state mandate are valid and reliable.”
  4. “We’ve learned today that we have no contingency plan if there are problems with statewide assessments.”
  5. “We have not beta tested statewide assessments.”

I ask, is this responsible leadership?  Is this acceptable for our children?  We have a solution and we want them to pass our bill.  We’ll need a huge grassroots effort to make this happen because we are being blocked in the legislature by Jeb Bush interests, specifically, Marlene O’Toole, Chair of the House PreK-12 Education Committee, and Speaker Crisafulli in the House.  Remarkably, Senator Gaetz, himself, blocked last year’s efforts.  Parents and concerned citizens will be going to the next committee hearings January 20-22 and will be doing a rally, March for the Children, the first week of session in March.

We need you and your local organizations involved.  We need busses with thousands of people to come and wear red.  We need to lock arms with Superintendents, School Boards, teachers, unions, opt out groups, parent groups, 912 groups, TEA Party, Stop Common Core groups and concerned citizens everywhere.  There is something for everyone to love in the bill we have crafted.

Highlights of what the bill does:

  1. Returns to paper tests; Reduces costs by Billions; Provides prompt feedback to inform students and teachers; Stops data mining potential as only aggregated and de-identified information is used; and Increases class time available for instruction
  2. Restores local control to school districts to select high standards from a list of pre 2009, best of breed, proven standards to select ONE nationally normed test from a list to be administered once a year students will be graded and promoted based on portfolio of work, not a single test provides that parents can opt out of testing provides that parents must opt IN for sex education.

Sophia Foe, a 7th grade student said it all in her testimony before the House K-12 Education Committee, when she said she thought it was wrong to experiment on her generation and the consequences would be grave.  To watch Sophia Foe go here and fast forward to 1:05 minutes into the meeting.  We must act now to protect Sophia, all our students, the future of Florida and the Nation.

Share this column far and wide. Come to the “March for the Children” and see your school board and legislators now. Get them to sign on to our legislator letter and commit to stopping high stakes testing and Common Core.

Major corporations funding “gay” indoctrination in elementary schools across America [+ Video]

It’s every parent’s nightmare, but true: Major U.S. corporations are funding a campaign of sophisticated, psychologically intrusive “gay” indoctrination programs targeting very young children in elementary schools across America. It’s part of a very well-planned and well-funded effort to reach children as young as possible without their parents’ intervention.

From the “Welcoming Schools” website.

The national program, called “Welcoming Schools”, skillfully works on the minds of young children in three ways:

(1) Introducing the concept of homosexuality to children.

(2) Telling them that homosexuality is normal and natural.

(3) Telling them that their parents or friends who portray homosexuality in a less than positive way are bad people – intolerant, bigoted, etc.

The “Welcoming schools” website has even posted a video that describes their program and shows how effective these psychological techniques are in molding young children’s minds:

As MassResistance has reported, major US corporations are enabling this through large donations to the radical national LGBT group Human Rights Campaign (HRC). HRC created and runs the Welcoming Schools program and has representatives in regions around the country pushing it in elementary schools.

Of particular concern and outrage was the recent arrest of HRC’s founder and current Board member, Terry Bean, for “third degree sodomy” of a 15-year-old boy. HRC has had no comment on that incident, but it continues a vicious campaign of harassment against pro-family leaders with whom it disagrees. But this has not deterred corporate donations to HRC in any way that we can determine.

Bringing it into the schools

Among the vehicles they use to bring this into the schools are the “anti-bullying” laws which the national LGBT movement lobbied heavily for in states across the country over the last several years. As MassResistance warned at the time these laws, which were largely written and/or influenced by LGBT groups, invariably have little to do with legitimate anti-bullying behavioral science. Instead they require schools to provide LGBT “diversity training” and mete out punishment for “anti-gay” opinions or discussion.

Not surprisingly, nothing is said told to kids about the extensive medical and psychological dangers of homosexual behavior, including a range of diseases, addictions, domestic violence, and other social pathologies.

Confronting the corporations that fund this

The companies pouring money into HRC read like a who’s who of corporate America. You can see some of the names HERE.

But MassResistance is fighting back. As we’ve reported, we have been helping people to contact these companies – by phone, email, and letter – and tell their corporate staffs in no uncertain terms what we think of their actions – and demand that they stop it.

It’s quite shocking. Companies that many of you patronize at one time or another are using your money to subvert your own young children’s minds to accept and support a dangerous perversion.

When people manage to actually speak with corporate representatives, the companies don’t deny what they’re doing. They talk about how proud they are to be fighting for “tolerance” and “diversity.” They seem to have no misgivings at all when outraged parents contact them.




We contacted these four companies — to start with.

What that tells us is that we need to step up this fight. Most of these companies have never heard from pro-family people before. They only hear from radical homosexual activists. With your help, that will change!

$10,000 matching challenge for MassResistance!

Help us meet $10,000 matching challenge by midnight Dec. 31!

A generous donor has offered to donate $10,000 if we can raise an equal amount by midnight Wednesday, Dec. 31. You can really make your money work for you — and get a year-end tax donation also. (See our 77-second video on what MassResistance is doing.)

But it needs to be done by midnight Wednesday, Dec. 31.

Here are two ways you can do it:

1. Non-tax-deductible gift. To MassResistance:  You donate by credit card online HERE or mail a check to MassResistance, PO Box 1612, Waltham, MA 02454.

2. Tax-deductible gift. To Parents’ Education Foundation, which funds our research and education work.  You can mail a check to: Parents’ Education Foundation, PO Box 1612, Waltham, MA  02454. Or to give by credit card, call our office at 781-890-6001.

All donations sent by Dec. 31 will receive TWO of our “not equal” stickers, suitable for your car … or, be creative!

Let’s ring in the New Year with a big push!

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