FLORIDA: Define ‘Free Public Schools’ and Limit School Board ‘Home Rule’ Authority

/in , , , , /by

Every 20 years, Florida convenes a Constitutional Review Commission to consider possible changes to Florida’s Constitution, and to then place those proposed revisions on the ballot.  The Constitutional Review Commission convened this year, in anticipation of the November 2018 ballot.

Preamble to the Florida Constitution of 1865.

Many of us have observed first-hand the overreach of our local school boards beyond classroom “reading, writing and arithmetic” into collectivist “collaborative partnerships” with various non-government community organizations. This is classic “mission drift” that surely goes beyond our state’s constitutional framers when they drafted Art. IX, Section 4(b) which provides that the School Boards shall operate the “free public schools.”

The problem is, “free public schools” has never been defined, and to this day the Florida Attorney General and Florida courts struggle to understand the outer limits of that term.

Adding to this problem, in 1983 the Florida Legislature gave school boards “home rule power,” telling them in essence that they can do whatever they want — without any check from other branches of government — unless the Legislature has “expressly prohibited” the school board from acting on that subject.  Here is an excerpt from an  Florida Attorney General advisory opinion drafted shortly after the 1983 legislative change:

Section 230.03(2), F.S. [now 1001.32(2), F.S.], currently provides: “SCHOOL BOARD.–In accordance with the provisions of s. 4(b) of Art. IX of the State Constitution, district school boards shall operate, control, and supervise all free public schools in their respective districts and may exercise any power except as expressly prohibited by the State Constitution or general law.” (e.s.) Section 7 of Ch. 83-324, Laws of Florida, deleted the language contained in s. 230.03(2), F.S. 1981, which stated that district school boards may exercise any power “for educational purposes except as otherwise provided by the State Constitution or law” and added the language “except as expressly prohibited by the State Constitution or general law.” (e.s.) Since the issuance of AGO 83-72, it has been the position of this office that the 1983 amendment conferred on school boards a variant of “home-rule power,” and that a district school board may exercise any power for school purposes in the operation, control, and supervision of the free public schools in its district except as expressly prohibited by the State Constitution or general law. See also AGO’s 84-95, 84-58.

Most people will agree that local control of schools is a good thing, and thus the concept of “home rule power” is also a good thing.  But most people would also agree that our public school system should focus on education in the classroom, plus traditional extracurricular activities such as athletics, music, academic clubs, etc.  Schools go beyond their mission when they delve into (i) instructing parents on how to be better parents; (ii) providing welfare to students; (iii) providing affordable housing; and (iv) “collectively collaborating” with local non-profits on pet projects such as “Future Ready Collier” and NCH’s self-serving special interest “Blue Zones Project.”  These all take the eye off of the ball of teaching in the classroom; they are expensive; and they create a bloated school district administration that becomes an out-of-control behemoth.

As Joe Whitehead analogized on his 8/19/2017 radio show, the behemoth bureaucratic administration becomes like “Hal 9000,” the computer in 2001: a Space Odyssey, which takes on a life of its own and serves itself rather than the people it was originally designed to serve.

So here’s a simple proposed solution to this mission drift:

1. Constitutionally define “free public schools” under Art. IX, Section 4(b) of the Florida Constitution.  Limit it to teaching students within the four corners of the school district campus, with focus on reading, writing, arithmetic, science, fact-based American history, and traditional extracurriculars.

2. Legislatively amend Fla. Stat. Section 1001.32(2) to allow school board home rule authority only within the constitutional definition of “free public schools.”  The amended statute might read as:

(2) DISTRICT SCHOOL BOARD.—In accordance with the provisions of s. 4(b) of Art. IX of the State Constitution, district school boards shall operate, control, and supervise all free public schools, as constitutionally defined, in their respective districts and may exercise any power except as expressly prohibited by the State Constitution or general law.  For actions or matters beyond the scope of free public schools, district school boards may not exercise any power except as expressly authorized by the Legislature.

(changes in bold).

3.  Legislatively define the statutory terms “educational purposes” and “school purposes” in alignment with the new definition of “free public schools.”

4.  Constitutionally (or at least legislatively) prohibit school boards from engaging in “for profit” activities such as after-school child care, or affordable housing.  All school board programs should be “revenue neutral,” with the school board required to provide studies containing sufficient data to demonstrate fiscal neutrality.

ADDITIONAL ITEMS FOR FURTHER CONSIDERATION BASED ON THE PREMISE THAT SCHOOL DISTRICTS HAVE BECOME TOO BIG, BUDGETS TOO LARGE AND DIFFICULT TO TRACK, AND SUPERINTENDENTS HAVE TOO MUCH ABILITY TO CONSOLIDATE POWER, NOT JUST WITHIN THE SCHOOL SYSTEM, BUT IN THE COMMUNITY:

5.  Amend Fla. Const. Art. IX, Sect. 4(a) to define a “school district” as something smaller than the region of each county.  That may have been appropriate a century ago when Florida’s population was smaller and more spread out, but it now consolidates too much power in a centralized school district administration.  (Take, for instance Collier’s  annual budget which now for the first time exceeds $1 billion).  Alternatively, keep the “county” geographical limits for a school district, but break it into elementary, middle and high school subdistricts, each with a separate superintendent and budget.  Some may counter that this will lead to fiscal inefficiencies in areas such as busing, athletic fields, etc., but this can be resolved legislatively by allowing inter-district sharing of such resources and services.

6.  Change F.S. 1010.33 to state that each School Board “shall” (not just “are authorized to”) have its own independent certified public accountant to perform its own annual financial and performance audit.  In other words, take this out of the control of the superintendents, who may otherwise too easily control these audits. 

6.  Provide term limits for superintendents.  They have too much ability to “roll up” individual power by their connections within the community, serving themselves more than the students.  Also provide a prohibition on superintendents lobbying school boards once they depart.

7.  Recognize that individual school board members were elected by the people as their policy-making representatives.  Enact legislation authorizing any school board member to add a policy item to the school board agenda, so that the rights of the “minority” board group may be heard and not subverted by all-powerful superintendents and the “majority” board members they all-too-often control.

Constitutional Review Commission member / Collier School Board member Erika Donalds.

We in Collier County are fortunate to have one of our school board members, Erika Donalds, serving on the Constitutional Review Commission.  In fact, Ms. Donalds chairs the “local government” panel and serves on the “education” panel , which includes Article IX of the Constitution which needs amending as mentioned herein.  Ms. Donalds would do well to consider the foregoing constitutional proposals, with local state representatives Byron Donalds and Bob Rommel leading on the legislative issues.**

** (Particularly Mr. Donalds, who now serves on various k-12 legislative subcommittees.)

Florida Atlantic University Professor Dr. Alhalabi Fears Defending Islamic Law

/in , , , , /by

Bassem Alhalabi, Ph.D.
FAU Associate Professor
Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

On August 17, 2017 Florida Atlantic University (FAU) Professor and President of the Islamic Society of Boca Raton, FL, Bassem Alhalabi,  agreed to publicly defend the Shariah Islamiyya (Islamic Law) but ran away in shame from the venue minutes before the programs starting time.

The title of the meeting was, “Interfaith Cafe: Sharia Law and U.S. Law Nothing To Fear.” Dr. Alhalabi was to defend Islamic law, making the case that we non-Muslims have nothing to fear from Shariah.

Deep down Dr. Alhalabi knows the facts are not on his side. I suspect what Dr. Alhalabi fears most are Americans who are educated on Islamic Law and use Islamic sources with consensus/Ijma to distinguish his lies from truth.

When those knowledgeable people from The United West showed up to film, Dr. Alhalabi   ran out of the venue faster than you can say chop chop adios.  Dr. Alhalabi left his audience and event organizers dumbfounded.  I suspect this video might  be the reason why.

Dr. Alhalabi remembers on May 23,  2016 he was a participant on a Muslim Student Association panel discussion on Islamophobia, at FAU, that haunts him to this day.  Dr. Alhalabi made the case that chopping off the hands of thieves is good for society, as per the Shariah.

Professor ‘Chop Chop’ Alhalabi, as he’s affectionately known in South Florida, didn’t realize members of The United West caught  the  entire exchange on tape. Yes, this story is quite fantastic so, click on this link, watch the video here and you will be outraged if you are not a follower of Islam.  I say that because on the panel was Wilfredo Ruiz, legal counsel for, The Council On American Islamic Relations CAIR Florida,  who said nothing.

Except for Rabbi Barry Silver, nobody on that Islamophobia panel was outraged.  There was no outrage from the followers of Islam on the panel because Dr. Bassem ‘Chop Chop’ Alhalabi said nothing that contradicted Islamic Law/Sharia.

Sadly for the Delray Beach Interfaith Cafe Community, their other speaker in the discussion, Dr. Mark Schneider, Professor Emeritus from Southern Illinois University said, “Non-Muslims have nothing to worry about, since Mohammed, and/or the Qur’an, never commanded Muslims to Kill.”  Audience member, Roger Gangitano informed Dr. Schneider that Qur’an Verse 4:89 states, “Those who reject Islam seize them and slay them wherever you find them.”   Dr. Schneider replied, “That is a lie” and ended that uncomfortable moment without any personal reflection or honesty.

In the Islamic culture Dr. Dumitrescu states,

“The most cherished cultural value is honor. No effort and care is spared in order to avoid shame. For a Muslim, life consists of the intricate dynamics that take place between honor and shame.”

Dr. Bassem Alhalabi has lost face in the South Florida Islamic and interfaith communities.  I suspect the cumulative effect of Dr. Alhalabi’s running away from a scheduled speaking engagement for no good reason, defending the chopping off of thieves hands, his arrest for assault, and illegally selling thermal imaging equipment to Syria should render him toxic in American lexicon and without honor in the Islamic culture.

Ladies and Gentleman Florida Atlantic University Professor Dr. Bassem Alhalabi has left the building in shame and dishonor.

Homeschoolers: The Enemy of Forced Schooling by Kerry McDonald

/in , , /by

I was born in 1977, the year John Holt launched the first-ever newsletter for homeschooling families, Growing Without Schooling. At that time, Holt became the unofficial leader of the nascent homeschooling movement, supporting parents in the process of removing their children from school even before the practice was fully legalized in all states by 1993. Today, his writing remains an inspiration for many of us who homeschool our children.

Mass schooling is, by its nature, compulsory and coercive.

Holt believed strongly in the self-educative capacity of all people, including young people. As a classroom teacher in private schools in both Colorado and Massachusetts, he witnessed first-hand the ways in which institutional schooling inhibits the natural process of learning.

Holt was especially concerned about the myriad of ways that schooling suppresses a child’s natural learning instincts by forcing the child to learn what the teacher wants him to know. Holt believed that parents and educators should support a child’s natural learning, not control it. He wrote in his 1976 book, Instead of Education:

“My concern is not to improve ‘education’ but to do away with it, to end the ugly and anti-human business of people-shaping and to allow and help people to shape themselves.”

Self-Determined Learning

Holt observed through his years of teaching, and recorded in his many books, that the deepest, most meaningful, most enduring learning is the kind of learning that is self-determined.

As “the enemy,” we homeschoolers reject the increasing grip of mass schooling.

One of his most influential books, originally published in 1967, is How Children Learn. This month, it was re-published in honor of its 50th anniversary, with a new Foreword by progressive educator and author, Deborah Meier. In her early days as an educator, Meier says, she was influenced by Holt’s work and was particularly drawn to his revelation that even supposedly “good schools” failed children through their coercive tactics. Meier writes in the Foreword:

“While following Holt’s deep exploration of how children learn I therefore wasn’t surprised to discover Holt had joined ‘the enemy’—homeschoolers. His little magazine, Growing Without Schooling, was the most useful guide a teacher could ever read. As time passed I began to change my views of homeschooling. I’m still first and foremost working to preserve public education but homeschoolers can be our allies in devising what truly powerful schooling could be like. If we saw the child as an insatiable nonstop learner, we would create schools that made it as easy and natural to do so as it was for most of us before we first entered the schoolroom.”

Compulsory Education is Always Coercive

The trouble with Meier’s line of reasoning is that it presumes this is something schools can do. Mass schooling is, by its nature, compulsory and coercive. Supporting “an insatiable nonstop learner” within such a vast system of social control is nearly impossible.

Holt said so himself. In his later books, as he moved away from observations of conventional classrooms and toward “the enemy” of homeschoolers, Holt acknowledged that the compulsory nature of schooling prevented the type of natural learning he advocated. He writes in his popular 1981 book, Teach Your Own:

“At first I did not question the compulsory nature of schooling. But by 1968 or so I had come to feel strongly that the kinds of changes I wanted to see in schools, above all in the ways teachers related to students, could not happen as long as schools were compulsory

Holt continues:

“From many such experiences I began to see, in the early ‘70s, slowly and reluctantly, but ever more surely, that the movement for school reform was mostly a fad and an illusion. Very few people, inside the schools or out, were willing to support or even tolerate giving more freedom, choice, and self-direction to children….In short, it was becoming clear to me that the great majority of boring, regimented schools were doing exactly what they had always done and what most people wanted them to do. Teach children about Reality. Teach them that Life Is No Picnic. Teach them to Shut Up and Do What You’re Told.”

While progressive educators like Meier may have the best intentions and believe strongly that compulsory schools can be less coercive, the reality is quite different. Over the past half-century, mass schooling has become more restrictive and more consuming of a child’s day and year, beginning at ever-earlier ages. High-stakes testing and zero tolerance discipline policies heighten coercion, and taxpayer-funded after-school programming and universal pre-k classes often mean that children spend much of their childhood at school.

Compulsory schooling cannot nurture non-coercive, self-directed learning.

As “the enemy,” we homeschoolers reject the increasing grip of mass schooling and acknowledge what Holt came to realize: compulsory schooling cannot nurture non-coercive, self-directed learning. Holt writes in Teach Your Own: “Why do people take or keep their children out of school? Mostly for three reasons: they think that raising their children is their business not the government’s; they enjoy being with their children and watching and helping them learn, and don’t want to give that up to others; they want to keep them from being hurt, mentally, physically, and spiritually.” Today, those same reasons ring true for many homeschoolers.

It’s worth grabbing the anniversary copy of John Holt’s How Children Learn. His observations on the ways children naturally learn, and the ways most schools impede this learning, are timeless and insightful. But it is also worth remembering that Holt’s legacy is tied to the homeschooling movement and to supporting parents in moving away from a coercive model of schooling toward a self-directed model of learning. After all, Holt reminds us in Teach Your Own:

“What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children’s growth in the world is not that it is a better school than the schools but that it isn’t a school at all.”

Kerry McDonald

Kerry McDonald

Kerry McDonald has a B.A. in Economics from Bowdoin and an M.Ed. in education policy from Harvard. She lives in Cambridge, Mass. with her husband and four never-been-schooled children. Follow her writing at Whole Family Learning.

The Illusion of School Choice by Antony Davies and R. Harrigan

/in , , , /by

In private schools, as in private enterprise in general, poor performance drives funding away by driving paying customers away. Yet in public schools, poor performance is used as an excuse for increased funding. With incentives like these, is it any wonder that public schools are failing our children so badly? Isn’t it time to inject some competition into the system?

Education for all is a worthy wish. So is food for all. But we don’t force poor people to eat state-produced food. Even food stamp recipients get to choose where to shop. Why shouldn’t beneficiaries of public education spending get to choose where to send their kids?

Two economically inquiring minds want to know…

Words and Numbers is now available as a podcast! Subscribe via iTunes.

Articles

White, wealthy communities are forming their own school districts | www.pbs.org

Public High Schools Are Not Doing Their Jobs

Just the teacher facts | triblive.com

Data

Education Spending Per Student by State | www.governing.com

NAEP – 2015 Mathematics & Reading Assessments | www.nationsreportcard.gov

Average Private School Tuition Cost (2016-2017) | PrivateSchoolReview.com

Fast Facts | nces.ed.gov

Antony Davies

Antony Davies

Antony Davies is associate professor of economics at Duquesne University and Chief Academic Officer at FreedomTrust.

He is a member of the FEE Faculty Network.

James R. Harrigan

James R. Harrigan

James R. Harrigan is CEO of FreedomTrust.

RELATED VIDEO: Are Charter Schools Better Than Public Schools?

How Politicians use Journalists to ‘Target’ their Enemies

/in , , , , , /by

There has been much written about fake news, the fakestream media and what some have called the “Enemedia.” There have been hundreds if not thousands of articles exposing false news stories designed to target political figures by other political figures using the media as the preferred “weapon of choice.”

Fake news kills. It kills careers. It kills peoples lives. It can ultimately kill our Constitutional Republic.

Sometimes journalists unwittingly become part of a conspiracy to take down public figures. Such was the case of Jilda Unruh, former investigative reporter for WPLG ABC Channel 10 News in Miami. The “target” was Herbert Cousins the former Inspector General for Miami-Dade Public Schools.

Francisco Alvarado in an August 2007 Miami New Times article wrote:

For more than two decades, Herbert Cousins headed field offices and trained undercover FBI agents. In 1990 he led a group that arrested Miami cult leader Yahweh ben Yahweh and 15 disciples of his sect on racketeering and capital murder charges. “I risked my life on a number of occasions to get the job done,” Cousins explains.

So in 2003, he was an easy choice for a group of lawmen tasked to recommend a candidate to become the Miami-Dade school board’s first inspector general. In May of that year the board unanimously awarded Cousins, who is also a former teacher and principal, a $140,000 annual salary and the power to weed out waste and fraud.

Unfortunately Cousins no longer holds the title, thanks in part to Rudy Crew.

[ … ]

In a civil lawsuit filed March 6, Cousins alleges Crew conspired with several others to plant unflattering stories in the press that eventually forced him out. He is among four former high-ranking school district employees who have sued the Miami-Dade superintendent in the past two years.

Crew wanted Cousins out, Cousins claims, because “I refused to allow him to interfere or control my office’s investigations.” [Emphasis added]

So how did Jilda Unruh, an Emmy Award winning investigative journalist, get involved in the Herbert Cousins case?

In the March 21, 2006 Sworn Statement of Michael Hoover Lawson is the following conversation concerning Ms. Unruh and Mr. Cousins:

Q. What did she [Unruh] have to say?

A. She said that Joe Garcia from the school board had called her while she was on vacation with her nieces and nephews. She was shocked over that. He wanted her back immediately to run a story on Herbert Cousins, and from what I can remember, the story involved Herbert Cousins, supposedly a business he was running while working for the school board. She felt Joe Garcia felt something needed to be done to the point of Herbert Cousins and that everyone needed to be aware of it.

Q. So Garcia was asking her to come back from vacation to run this story attacking Herbert Cousins?

A.That’s correct.

Q. And that’s what she told you?

A. That is what she told me. He [Garcia] wanted her to come back in town and get this thing done. [Emphasis added]

The following is the Sworn Statement of Ana Rivas Logan, former Miami-Dade School Board member, concerning Ms. Unruh and Mr. Cousins:

Q. Now, shortly before the issue of renewing his [Cousins] contract came up for a vote by the Board, in early August of 2005, were you approached by Jilda Unduh, of Channel 10?

A. Absolutely.

Q. And did she [Unruh] tell you certain things regarding Mr. Cousins’ effectiveness, and make accusations of corruption, related to Mr. Cousins?

A. Yes, she did.

Q. Could you describe those for us?

A. We were at a meeting, Board Members have to meet in the Sunshine. We were having a meeting to discuss — I don’t remember the exact matter of the meeting. But she [Unruh] walked into the meeting, which the media — the media — it’s open to the public. She walked into the meeting and came right for me, with a binder in her hand. The binder had tabs. And she asked me, you know, was I aware that Mr. Cousins was basically — in effect she was stating the number of cases he had closed, which was a very normal number. And then she also asked me if I knew that he had, had a company, and was using School Board employees to run this company, the School Board time. So the implication there was he was not doing his job, as refers to working for the Board, he was using resources to carry on his private business that he had at the time. And so she kept pointing to the binders, as a source of information, or corroborating paperwork. And I asked her, “Can I please see that?” And she immediately turned around and went on to ask another Board member information. But, you know, it was suspicious, she wouldn’t give me the binder, if it was fact.

Q. And she did this right before the vote on the extension of the [Cousins] contract: correct?

A. Yes, absolutely.

Q. Now, would it be fair to summarize her discussion against Mr. Cousins as being he was highly ineffective and he was engaged in corruption, by using School Board employees for a personal business?

A. Yes.

Q. And were those discussions — did you — presented to you in that fashion — did you change your vote, regarding the extension of his contract?

A. I absolutely changed my decision regarding Mr. Cousin’s contract. I found her accusations and what I thought was, you know, was research: was investigative reporting.

Q. And have you come to be — have you become aware subsequently that certain of the accusations that she made were completely false?

A. I have since become aware of that. And I became aware that while I was a Board Member, that the accusations were totally inaccurate.

Q. Now, we’re talking about the accusations made by Jilda Unruh?

A. Yes, the accusations make by Jilda Unruh. [Emphasis added]

Politically motivated character assassination is nothing to be shrugged off as not real. It happens at every level. Whether politicians on the Miami-Dade School Board, to members of Congress against the President of the United States. Fake news kills careers, destroys lives and can lead to even worse.

Fake news is real, it is dangerous and it discredits the media and undermines our political system. 

Texas Professor Trades Geography for Drama to Protest Campus Carry in the Lone Star State

/in , , , , /by

According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, more than 1 in 3 Americans believe that colleges and universities exert a negative effect on the country. When respondents are grouped by political party, that response is as high as 58%.  While the poll doesn’t explain the basis for these feelings, we suspect that many view academia as the haven of ideologically-driven zealots, rather than sober-minded professionals. Take, for example, Professor Charles K. Smith from San Antonio College, who recently managed to get his name in the newspapers for teaching his geography class in protective combat gear to protest the lawful carrying of concealed handguns by students.

An article on mySanAntonio.com indicates that Smith was hoping to make a point about Texas’s 2015 campus carry law. The law took effect on community colleges, including the institution where Smith teaches, on Aug. 1. “I was just saying I don’t feel safe,” Smith told a reporter. He continued, “My assumption is that you will have more people carrying guns, that well [sic] lead to problems. It always has.”

One would hope that a man of letters like Prof. Smith would base his views on the evidence, rather than on irrational fears or personal prejudices. Yet Texas data consistently show that concealed carry licensees are far more law-abiding than the general population.

Meanwhile, four-year institutions in Texas were a year ahead of community colleges in implementing the 2015 law and did so without the parade of horribles Smith and likeminded academics feared. The Texas Tribune noted that “administrators overwhelmingly say the change to the campus climate has been minimal,” with exactly zero reported incidents of academic debate or disappointment over grades escalating into armed conflict. Academic officials interviewed by the Tribune said the law’s rollout was handled “very smoothly and without incident,” had “[v]irtually no impact at all,” and was “[a]mazingly quiet.”

Meanwhile, the Dallas News reported that the actual cost to public colleges and universities of implementing the law was more than 15 times less than estimates these institutions had provided to the state legislature.

Economist John Lott also makes the point that with well over one million concealed carry licensees throughout Texas, it’s highly probable that the professors who are so resistant to allowing concealed handguns on campus are already unwittingly encountering them in a host of other places.

Yet these facts, if even known to Prof. Smith, apparently haven’t influenced his thinking. Rather, his statements to mySanAntonio.com seem to indicate a belief that students have been gunning for him his entire career but simply have never had the tools at hand to carry out their lethal desires. “Used to, when they got mad at me, they had to go home to get the gun and had time to cool off,” he stated, “now they will have it with them.”

For what it’s worth, publicly available reviews of Prof. Smith by his students don’t indicate any murderous impulses, rather a consistent view of his classes as “boring” but “easy.” One student’s assessment was particularly pointed:

He makes mildly boring subject matter into a painful classroom experience. His sleep inducing political rants and disagreeable classroom demeanor and behavior make his lectures unbearable. He should make some effort and inject some enthusiasm into teaching geography rather than wasting students’ time with political commentary about current events.

Another faulted him for excessive talks “about his vacations,” while still another noted that Smith “inputted his very Liberal political views into just about every lecture.”

Smith did tell the reporter that he warned police and administrators about the plan for his stunt, which after all could have reasonably caused concern among students and bystanders about his intentions or plans. “Some of them were okay and some of them weren’t, but it’s freedom of speech,” Smith insisted.

That may be, but the message Smith actually conveyed may have simply raised questions about his own ability to interact respectfully with people whose opinions and ideology diverge from his own. Whether or not Prof. Smith succeeded in making himself bulletproof, it’s pretty clear that no facts or contrary opinions can penetrate his ironclad anti-gun ideology.

Supreme Court asked to Overturn State Agreements Adopting Common Core

/in , , , , , , /by

ANN ARBOR, MI – Continuing its legal battle to stop the federal government from taking control over our nation’s elementary and secondary public schools, the Thomas More Law Center (“TMLC”), a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, last week, filed a petition in the U.S. Supreme Court asking the Court to review a South Dakota Supreme Court decision which upheld South Dakota’s participation in a consortium of states that advance the Common Core curriculum.

The petition for review involves a lawsuit by 2 South Dakota mothers, Shelli Grinager and Amber Mauricio, who filed the lawsuit in state court challenging the constitutionality of their state’s implementation of Common Core through its participation in the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.  TMLC and local counsel, Robert J. Rohl, filed the lawsuit on their behalf on November 10, 2015, alleging a violation of the Compact Clause of the United States Constitution art. I, § 3, which provides that, “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, . . . enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State . . .”

Kate Oliveri, the TMLC staff attorney who argued the case before the South Dakota Supreme Court and the principle author of the Petition, commented, “This case could have a significant impact in curtailing our behemoth executive branch and diverting the power back where it belongs—to the States and to the people. South Dakota has lost control over the education of its children. We want to give that control back.”

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were developed under the supervision of the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to ensure that education and educational outcomes were consistent across the United States. The CCSS provides a set of standards they claim are “essential, rigorous, clear and specific, coherent, and internationally benchmarked.”

Most state governments, enticed by millions of dollars in federal grants, voluntarily acquiesced to federal control of their public schools, imposing untested educational standards and the curriculum designed to meet those standards on children and their parents.  However, the CCSS have been under heavy fire since the beginning for a variety of grievances including: incomprehensible, political and inappropriate assignments; costly ties to big corporations; in-test advertising; the elimination of locally tailored and appropriate standards; and the emphasis placed on standardized testing.

TMLC’s Petition makes the argument that Common Core undermines the sovereignty of member states and nonmember states, and undermines the authority of Congress.

For a good understanding of TMLC’s positon, you can read the 23-page Petition here.

Richard Thompson, TMLC’s President and Chief Counsel: “The Federal government employs an insidious bureaucratic system, through which it directs what and how American students learn, and effectively eliminates the fundamental rights of parents to control the education of their children.”

Religious and private school educators have also criticized Common Core. In a statement, the Cardinal Newman Society, an organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of faithful Catholic education, said, “This school reform effort is nothing short of a revolution in how education is provided, relying on a technocratic, top-down approach to setting national standards that, despite claims to the contrary, will drive curricula, teaching texts, and the content of standardized tests.  At its heart, the Common Core is a woefully inadequate set of standards in that it limits the understanding of education to a utilitarian ‘readiness for work’ mentality.”

Political Commentators Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin repeatedly reported on the dangers of Common Core, with Malkin saying, “It’s about control, control and more control.”

Moreover, with the implementation of the Common Core State Standards, whose educational value has not been demonstrated, also comes an alarming explosion of data mining within the classroom.  Student data are stored in databases designed to follow students from their entry into schools in pre-Kindergarten up through their entry into the workforce. These databases, through a complicated network of contracts and agreements, can then be shared with the federal government, contractors, researchers and other outside agencies. Testing corporations can analyze the test data, produce recommendations for how to “remediate” student weaknesses, and then sell that information back to states and school districts.

Are Miami-Dade Schools a Hunting Ground and Refuge for Sexual Predators?

/in , , , , , /by

As Florida’s public school students are heading back to school, parents should be aware that Miami-Dade County Public Schools have been plagued by numerous sexual assault cases by teachers and administrators over the past five years, the most recent being the “Jason’s Girls” episode.

According to a legal complaint filed in federal court in Miami, Jason Meyers had molested numerous girls since 2004. When his principal at the time was told of a particular offense in 2008, the complaint alleges, he was transferred to another school. The complaint reads in part:

This action concerns the repeated sexual abuse and harassment of Plaintiff by her English and Creative Writing teacher, Jason Edward Meyers (“Meyers”), during Plaintiff’s junior and senior years at Miami Palmetto Senior High School (“Palmetto High School”), while she was 16 and 17 years old. Plaintiff is one of many underage female students that Meyers recruited, groomed, and exploited in a systematic fashion during his near decade-long tenure as a known sexual predator employed by Defendant. [Emphasis added]

A look at other recent related incidents is alarming:

  • Juan Cecchinelli, a school police officer at Miami Jackson Senior High School, resigned after sexually harassing a 15-year-old girl in early 2013; he was never charged. The victim sued Miami-Dade County Public Schools and a local news station for allegedly releasing internal documents that led to her identity being known.
  • Javier Cuenca, a former basketball coach at Hialeah Gardens Senior High School, was arrested in November 2014 on multiple sexual abuse charges; the article details offenses on school grounds.
  • Bresnniel Jansen Mones, a former teacher at South Dade Senior High School, was arrested for sexual battery, statutory rape and other related charges in January 2014. Per the article, Mones took the student’s virginity on his desk in his classroom. A resulting civil suit alleged that M-DCPS knew of a similar incident five years prior at the same school but took no action.
  • Don Clippenger, an assistant principal at Fienberg-Fisher K-8 Center in Miami Beach, was arrested in late January for downloading child pornography.
  • Bernardo Osorio, a teacher at Cutler Bay Senior High School, was arrested last February for engaging in sexual acts with a teenage boy between November 2015 through April 2016. Two of the offenses took place at school, the other in his car.
  • Napoleon Joseph, a former teacher and head football coach at Miami Edison High School, was arrested in March for having inappropriate relations with a 17-year-old girl. Per the article, the girl performed oral sex on him during two different occasions in his classroom in late 2016.
  • Darryl Ward, a security guard and athletic coach at Coral Reef Senior High School, and Alex Osuna, a marine science teacher and athletic coach at Palmetto Senior High School, were both fired in May for inappropriate relationships with students. As the students were legal adults, no criminal charges were filed.
  • Claudia Leary, who had been working with Miami-Dade County Public Schools for 23 years as an Education Support Specialist, attempted suicide in a vehicle with her ex-husband Dale Leary; she lived, he died. It is not clear what her role was. Dale Leary’s second wife, Marta San Jose, was an exchange student from Spain that both Dale and Claudia Leary sponsored when she was 16; upon becoming 18, Mr. Leary divorced Claudia and married Marta San Jose. The couple were charged with various sex offenses pertaining to San Jose’s 14-year-old sister- also a foreign exchange student.

Similar stories have happened across the country such as a case The New York Post reported on of “teacher of the year” Jared Anderson, a former Texas high school teacher, who hosted sex parties for teenage boys, including a “bros night” that featured a front-door sign urging them to get naked. Anderson has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

But there appears to be an unusual concentration in South Florida, particularly Miami-Dade County. Is this a by-product of an underlying culture within Miami-Dade County Public Schools?

Three years ago, I published a story about Christine Kirchner who was a language arts teacher and union steward at Coral Reef Senior High School, the same school that Darryl Ward worked at.  To note, though her actions were disturbing, they were not criminal as were those of the aforementioned people.

According to the April 4, 2014, Education Practices Commission of the State of Florida report:

  1. During the 2012-2013 school year, Respondent [Kirchner] discussed inappropriate topics, such as sex, virginity and masturbation, with her language arts class. The conversations made several students feel uncomfortable or embarrassed.
  2. During the 2012-2013 school year, during a lesson with her language arts class, Respondent [Kirchner] simulated having an orgasm. The simulation made several students feel uncomfortable or embarrassed.
  3. During the 2012-2013 school year, Respondent [Kirchner] gave massages to students of her language arts class. The massages made several students feel uncomfortable or embarrassed.

Kirchner was found guilty of “gross immorality or an act involving moral turpitude” and that she violated “the Principles of Professional Conduct for the Education Profession.” Kirchner was found to have violated Florida State Statute 1012.795, paragraphs (1)(d) and (1)(j), respectively.

What was the punishment given Kirchner?

The Florida Department of Education accepted a “Settlement Agreement”. The settlement agreement consisted of a letter of reprimand and placed Kirchner on two years’ probation. Kirchner accepted the Settlement Agreement.

Kirchner was returned to her classroom at Coral Reef Senior High School and retained her position on the Executive Board of the UTD.

What is Miami-Dade County Public Schools and the Florida Department of Education doing to prevent these incidents and to keep students safe?

Will it be business as usual at M-DCPS or will there be real change, such as foster working conditions and providing adequate compensation to attract high quality teachers as opposed to bad working conditions with low morale among teachers that attract sexual deviants?

When schools reward evil behaviors it only encourages others to commit evil acts against the most innocent, our public school children.

Which begs the question: Why are Florida’s public schools a hunting ground and refuge for sexual predators?

The Re-Education of America

/in , , /by

I would like to expand upon Ruth King’s brilliant article My Say: Re-Education Campus posted on her website on 8.3.17.

In China The Cultural Revolution, that took place from 1966 until 1976 had a stated goal: to purge capitalism and traditional culture from Chinese society. They instituted brutal labor re-education camps. In America anxious seniors are now worried about SAT scores, interviews and essays that have to demonstrate their passions for justice and human rights and a green planet and diversity. The chief question they ask is not about the price of tuition and room and board or the required courses. They want to know if they will be happy. In late summer of 2018 they will take their trunks with their Che Guevara T shirts, torn designer jeans and grungy sneakers and ingrained ignorance off to campus. And once settled into their cushy dorms, their re-education will commence. Unless they major only in science, they will learn to despise capitalism, national cultural norms, shed all gender pronouns and identity, atone for their privileges by joining all the inviting “anti” groups that rail, riot and demand recognition, avoid reading old white authors, approach every aggression and barbarism with moral relativity, read alt-history, especially about the Middle East and Palestine. They will learn that Mao Zedong of the aforementioned re-education labor camps was a progressive. – Ruth A. King

There is a Cultural Revolution taking place in America today. The stated goal: to purge capitalism and traditional American culture from society. Leftist educational curricula in schools and anti-establishment messaging via television programming (all streaming devices) deliver the dogmatic ideology of the revolution.

The Leftist re-education programming begins long before college. Pre-school educational programs with fanciful characters and talking animals are not benign. Sesame Street creatures are not advocating individual growth, independence, critical thinking skills, excellence, and the merit system which support capitalism and democracy. They are advocating group-think, dependence, passivity, mediocrity, and collectivism which prepare your children for socialism. Students already indoctrinated toward collectivism enter the university re-education programs passive, unaware, and compliant. The re-education curriculum at the university reinforces their passivity and students graduate uninformed, disinformed, and misinformed with degrees in the orthodoxy of liberalism that is tyrannical in its demand for conformity.

The graduates are now credentialed “authorities” in the social sciences who become zealous members of the Leftist echo chamber that reinforces collectivism and dominates television. The left-wing liberal narrative of political correctness, moral relativism, and historical revisionism is reflected in the programming and commercials being streamed into your household and mobile devices twenty-four hours a day. Television programming and television advertising are in the business of social engineering. They are purging capitalism and traditional culture from American society. They are selling socialism.

Their sales strategy pits subjective reality against objective reality. This is how it works.

The Leftist re-education programming presents subjective reality in televised commercials. In the real world of objective reality most families are not intermarried and every play group, luncheon, dinner table, and family picnic does not have one Asian, one white person, one black person, and one Hispanic in attendance. In the real world most couples are not homosexual, white men and women are not all idiots, and black men and women are not all judges, doctors, and lawyers. Why does television programming and commercials portray contrived fabricated scenes and plots of subjective reality instead of factual scenes and plots of objective reality to sell their products? Because they are not selling products they are re-educating America.

The radical left-wing agenda is selling socialism. They are re-educating America on television just like the schools are re-educating America in the classroom. The unreal subjective reality of the programming is intentionally confusing and creates cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the destabilizing state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially relating to behavioral decisions and attitude changes. Cognitive dissonance creates extreme stress because people seek psychological stability and consistency. The contradictory images being televised do not comport with objective reality so they threaten and destabilize the viewer’s sense of what is real. Cognitive dissonance is the psychological equivalent of physical pain – people will do anything to stop it.

Democracy lives in the adult world of objective reality and facts. It embraces diversity that includes differences of opinion, protects freedom of speech, and insists upon individual personal responsibility. Socialism lives in the childish world of make-believe, subjective reality, diversity that excludes differences of opinion, restricts freedom speech, and rejects personal responsibility. The Left seeks to destroy objective reality and create social chaos. WHY?

Social chaos is the prerequisite for seismic social change and the Leftists seek to destroy American democracy and replace it with socialism. How does it work?

The medium is the message. In 1964 Marshall McLuhan explained that the medium is separate from the message and has a separate social effect upon the recipient. Television is the greatest vehicle for social engineering and mass psychological indoctrination ever invented. The images on the screen become familiar and familiarity brings acceptance. The separate social effect of television (including any screening device) is that the images are accepted as reality. For children talking animals and cartoon characters acquire authority. For older kids, adolescents, and adults the characters in the plots become reality and their fictitious lives no matter how anti-establishment become normative and acceptable. The breakdown of rules, restrictions, and cultural norms appears progressive to an adolescent but is in fact extremely regressive to an adult.

The anti-establishment strategy is to present television commercials and programming that attack established cultural norms of American family, religion, and government with destabilizing images and messages creating cognitive dissonance. By destroying the three pillars of society the Left hopes to advance its agenda of socialism. The Left advertises socialism as the structure that will provide social justice, income equality, and escape from cognitive dissonance. Socialism is advertised as the stabilizing equalizing answer to your problems. Anyone who watches television commercials knows that there is little truth in advertising. Wiping a rag across the shower door does not remove the soap scum.

The truth about Leftist diversity is that it only includes people who LOOK different not people who THINK differently. There are no conservatives invited to the luncheon or sitting at the picnic table. There is no diversity of thought. American democracy is founded on principles of equality, freedom of speech (thought), and individual rights. Socialism is collectivism and values the group over the individual. There is no social justice or income equality in socialism. In the long run socialism never works because as Margaret Thatcher said, “Eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

The re-educated students and television “authorities” indoctrinating America toward collectivism should go back to school and take an actual history lesson. They should read about Che Guevara and how he helped free Cubans from the Batista regime but then enslaved them under the Castro regime. Maybe they will think twice about wearing their Che t-shirts. There is no income equality in socialism – the Castro brothers lived in splendor and the Cuban people still live in poverty. The self-righteous re-educated students should read that socialism is a stepping stone toward globalized one-world government. One-world government is the goal and underlying motive of the elite globalists who are financing the Cultural Revolution in America and fomenting the anti-establishment campaign to re-educate America.

The enthusiastic left-wing liberal lemmings committed to the re-education campaign are too arrogant to understand that they are being used as useful idiots by the globalist elite who have a different end game of their own.

Socialism with its complete government control is the prerequisite social structure for the globalist elite to internationalize sovereign countries, globalize the police force, and impose one-world government upon the world population. One-world government is the new world order that the globalist elite intend to rule themselves. It is unapologetically described in chilling detail by aristocrat Lord Bertrand Russell in his book “The Impact of Science on Society” written 65 years ago. One-world government is a binary socio-political system of masters and slaves. There is no social justice in one-world government, there is no income equality in one-world government, there are no Leftists, environmentalists, humanitarian hucksters, bullying prevention, diversity, contrived television commercials, or political agitators of any kind in one-world government – only a passive, compliant population of slaves ruled by their globalist elite masters.

President Donald Trump was elected because he believes in America first, American democracy, American sovereignty, rejects socialism, rejects globalism, and demands to live in the adult world of objective reality. President Trump’s insistence upon objective reality has made him the existential enemy of the regressive Left who require subjective reality to sell socialism. President Trump’s insistence upon American sovereignty has also made him the existential enemy of the corrupt establishment politicians and greedy never-Trumpers who require subjective reality to sell globalism. Re-education is the strategy that replaces objective reality with subjective reality to sell socialism and globalism to America. Re-education is the medium for the Cultural Revolution.

RELATED ARTICLE: White Males Barred From College’s Social Justice Journalism Grant

These College Students Lost Access to Legal Pot – And Started Getting Better Grades

/in , , , , , , /by

The most rigorous study to date shows that college students in the Netherlands who are denied access to “cannabis cafes,” do better academically than their peers who are allowed to frequent them.

The Dutch have permitted marijuana to be sold and consumed in cafes that are strictly regulated, may not sell other drugs or advertise, and are swiftly shut down if they fail to comply with regulations.

The Dutch town of Maastricht, which is close to the borders of Germany, Belgium, France, and Luxembourg, experienced a problem with drug tourism. People from those countries came to Maastrict to buy marijuana legally; those from Luxembourg and France created most of the problems. So Maastrict authorities denied citizens from Luxembourg and France access to the cafes.

But students from all five nations attend Maastrict University. The town’s policy change gave researchers a natural experiment to determine whether legalization vs. prohibition in the same student body makes a difference in their academic performance.

In fact, it does. Students banned from the cafes, who were less likely to use marijuana and suffer cognitive deficits from its use, experienced a 5 percent increase in their odds of passing their courses. The beneficial effect was even more pronounced for students at risk of dropping out.

The authors conclude:

We have investigated how restricting cannabis access affects student achievements, finding that the performance of students who lose legal access to cannabis substantially improves. Our analysis of underlying channels suggests that the effects are specifically driven by an improvement in numerical skills, which existing literature has found to be particularly impaired by cannabis consumption. This article provides the first causal evidence that restricting legal access to cannabis affects college students’ short-term study performance. We believe that our findings also imply that individuals change their consumption behavior when the legal status of a drug changes.

Read Washington Post article here. Read research paper here.

American Society of Addiction Medicine Faults Study Purporting to Show Marijuana is an Effective Substitute for Pain-Relieving Opioids

As the assertion continues that marijuana is a safe and effective alternate to opioids for pain relief, the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) takes issue with the scientific validity of a new study that intensifies the claim.

“Cannabis as a Substitute for Opioid-Based Pain Relief,” a new study, “demonstrates several distortions that can and do arise with the current enthusiasm for cannabis as a panacea,” says William Haning, MD, editor-in-chief of ASAM Weekly.

Dr. Haning notes that Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research “is an online open access periodical published by an enterprise that captures specialty niches.”

He continues, “The article and the accompanying polemical editorial which asserts ‘that cannabis is a safe, non-addictive product,’ suffer from the illusion of balanced scientific inquiry.”

He goes on from there. Read his ASAM Weekly editorial here. Read Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research study here.

Economy Needs Workers, but Drug Tests Take a Toll

In an oddly titled article, which appears to blame drug testing rather than drug use, the New York Times reports that the middle-class factory jobs President Trump promised to bring back from overseas are going begging because applicants can’t pass drug tests.

“Indeed, the opioid epidemic and, to some extent, wider marijuana use are hitting businesses and the economy in ways that are beginning to be acknowledged by policy makers and other experts,” notes the article.

One expert says the drug issue keeps workers who are trapped in low-paying jobs from securing better-paying, blue-collar positions and a toehold in the middle class.

The Times, whose editorial board called for full marijuana legalization a few years ago, observes that “workplace considerations – not social conservatism or imposition of traditional mores – make employee drug use an issue.”

The owner of a boiler-making factory in Youngstown, Ohio, explains why. “The lightest product we make is 1,500 pounds, and they go up to 250,000 pounds. If something goes wrong, it won’t hurt our workers. It’ll kill them.”

Maybe traditional mores like safety concerns have value after all.

Read New York Times article here.

How the Legalization of Marijuana Affects Employee Drug Testing

Medical marijuana laws vary greatly from state to state. A few require employers to accommodate workers’ medical marijuana use when possible. Most don’t.

This map demonstrates the current status of the differing requirements of state marijuana laws.

Read blog entry here (second story).

Pattern of Marijuana Use During Adolescence May Impact Psychosocial Outcomes in Adulthood

Escalating marijuana use in adolescence may lead to higher rates of depression and lower educational achievement in adulthood, a new study published in Addictionfinds.

Researchers interviewed 159 boys and young men who were part of a longitudinal study of males at high risk for antisocial behaviors and other problems based on low income, family size, and gender.

At age 20, each participant reported whether and how much marijuana they used each year since they started. Their brains were also scanned.

The “boys who started occasionally using marijuana around 15 or 16 years old and had a dramatic increase in use by the time they were 19 had the greatest dysfunction in brain reward circuitry, the highest rates of depression, and the lowest educational achievements,” say the researchers.

“Though the results do not show a direct causal link,” they say, “it’s important to note that even though most people think marijuana isn’t harmful, it may have severe consequences for some people’s functioning, education, and mood.”

Read Science Daily article here. Read Addiction abstract here.

Marijuana and Vulnerability to Psychosis

Researchers at the University of Montreal, pictured above, find that going from occasional to weekly or daily marijuana use increases an adolescent’s risk of having recurrent, psychotic-like experiences by 159 percent.

Although marijuana causes many kinds of cognitive problems, “the development of inhibitory control was the only cognitive function negatively affected by an increase in marijuana use,” say the researchers.

“Our results show that while marijuana use is associated with a number of cognitive and mental health symptoms, only an increase in symptoms of depression — such as negative thoughts and low mood — could explain the relationship between marijuana use and increasing psychotic-like experiences in youth,” the lead researcher said.

Read Science Daily article here. Read Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatryabstract here.

Depression Among Young Teens Linked to Cannabis Use at 18

Young people (ages 12-15) with chronic or severe depression are at elevated risk of developing a marijuana-use disorder in later adolescence.

Researchers at the University of Washington, pictured above, collected data from 521 students recruited from four Seattle middle schools and conducted annual assessments of the students at ages 12-15 and then again at age 18.

The scientists found that a “one standard deviation increase” in cumulative depression during early adolescence produced a 50 percent higher likelihood of marijuana-use disorder at age 18.

They were surprised to see that the prevalence of both alcohol-use disorder and marijuana-use disorder were higher among their students than national averages. What effect marijuana legalization in Washington may have had on these outcomes is not clear.

They point out that a similar study in another state that has not legalized the drug would clarify the issue.

Read Science Daily article here. Read Addiction abstract here.

Note:

After publishing our story about Georgia Representative Allen Peake last week, we came across a video on Haleigh’s Hope Facebook page in which Rep. Peake explains how he is violating federal law by distributing a Schedule I drug throughout the state. We posted the video on The Marijuana Report’s Facebook page. You can see it here.

The Marijuana Report is a weekly e-newsletter published by National Families in Action in partnership with SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana). Visit our website, The Marijuana Report.Org, to learn more about the marijuana story unfolding across the nation.

SUBSCRIBE to The Marijuana Report.

SUBSCRIBE to Spanish edition of The Marijuana Report.

How Mass Schooling Perpetuates Inequality by Kerry McDonald

/in , , , , /by

While visiting a public park out-of-state recently, we met a young boy who shares many interests with my 8-year-old son and is also homeschooled. They hit it off immediately and we met up with Matt, along with his mom and younger brother, several times.Schooling can bring out the worst behaviors.

We learned that life is tough for this family. Matt’s father isn’t around, and his mother struggles as a single mom supporting two young children on her own. She pulled Matt out of public school a couple of years ago feeling that it wasn’t working for him. He was labeled as hyperactive, a troublemaker, a slow reader, a kid with a temper.

As I interacted with this engaging, polite, energetic boy, it became obvious to me how mass schooling would be a terrible fit for him – a square peg in a round hole. Mass schooling was designed to crush a child’s natural exuberance and make him conform to a static set of norms and expectations.

Being Labeled a Deviant

For kids like Matt, schooling can bring out the worst behaviors. Like a trapped tiger – angry and afraid –  they rebel.

Unable to conform properly to mass schooling’s mores, they get a label: troubled, slow-learner, poor, at-risk. They will carry these scarlet letters with them throughout their 15,000 hours of mandatory mass schooling, emerging not with real skills and limitless opportunity, but further entrenched in their born disadvantage. A tiny few may succeed at overcoming these labels – a dangling carrot that sustains the opportunity myth of mass schooling – but the vast majority do not.

Monique Morris writes in her book, Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools: “Literature on the structure of dominance and the socially reproductive function of school tells us that schools may reinforce and reproduce social hierarchies that undermine the development of people who occupy lower societal status.”

In reference to the black girls she writes about in her book, Morris concludes that “these socially reproductive structures constitute educational experiences that guide them to, rather than direct them away from, destitution and escalating conflict with the criminal justice system.”[1]

That is why I was heartbroken to hear that Matt is going back to school in the fall.

What Do You Do With No Real Alternatives?

I understand why his mother feels she has no other choice but to send him there. She’s struggling to support her family on her own, to build a better life for her kids. It’s hard to be a single mom and to homeschool. In fact, a new homeschooling report issued last week by Boston’s Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research shows that 90 percent of homeschoolers live in two-parent families, and they are three times more likely to have one be a stay-at-home parent. Homeschooling as a single mom is beyond hard.

But it doesn’t have to be. If Matt’s mom could enroll him in a self-directed learning center, like those scattered across the country, she could support her family and continue to homeschool Matt with a complementary learning environment that encourages freedom and autonomy and pursuit of his passions and gifts. These learning centers, where tuition is typically only a fraction of a standard private school, often rely on donations to offer sliding scale fees or scholarships.

Of course, if Matt’s mom had a voucher that could help too, not only in defraying some education costs but also in encouraging the innovation and entrepreneurship necessary to launch more of these self-directed learning centers – and other school alternatives – across the country.

Imagine if some of the over $600 billion that American taxpayers are charged each year to pay for U.S. public schools were re-allocated to create alternatives to the mass schooling monopoly. Imagine what that might do to help families like Matt’s.

Generating a Resistance to Learning

I can see the reel playing before me of Matt’s remaining years in school: the endless discipline, the daily detentions, the force-fed academics, the testing that masquerades as learning, the sadness and despair that will only be amplified now that Matt has had a taste of education freedom and autonomy. He knows how learning can be, should be, but for most children is not.

As Schooling the World documentary filmmaker, Carol Black, writes in her powerful essay:

Children’s resistance takes many forms; inattention, irritability, disruption, withdrawal, restlessness, forgetting; in fact, all of the ‘symptoms’ of ADHD are the behaviors of a child who is actively or passively resisting adult control. Once you start to generate this resistance to learning, if you don’t back away quickly, it can solidify into something very disabling.”

I hope I’m wrong. I hope school will be ok for Matt this time around. But I am not optimistic. And I am angry: angry that mass schooling is the only other option for Matt, angry because this was how the system was designed to be. Remember: Horace Mann, the proclaimed “father of American public education” who created the nation’s first compulsory schooling law in Massachusetts in 1852, homeschooled his own three children with no intention of sending them to the common schools he mandated for others.

The Pioneer Institute homeschooling report says of Mann:

This hypocrisy of maintaining parental choice for himself while advocating a system of public education for others seems eerily similar to the mindset that is so common today: Many people of means who can choose to live in districts with better schools or opt for private schools resist giving educational choices to those less fortunate.”

Matt is an important reminder for me of why I advocate so strongly for education choice and parental empowerment. He should be a reminder for all of us that mass schooling was created as a system of social control for those without privilege. If we truly care about equity we should care about choice.

[1] Morris, Monique. Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools. New York: The New Press, 2016, p. 188.

Reprinted from Whole Family Learning.

Kerry McDonald

Kerry McDonald

Kerry McDonald has a B.A. in Economics from Bowdoin and an M.Ed. in education policy from Harvard. She lives in Cambridge, Mass. with her husband and four never-been-schooled children. Follow her writing at Whole Family Learning.

RELATED ARTICLE: K-12 School Agrees to Gender Inclusion Policy With No Notice or ‘Opt Out’ for Parents

EXPOSED: Students for Justice in Palestine’s Hidden Tactics at University of Maryland

/in , , , , /by

Last year Canary Mission released a damning exposé on anti-Israel activists at the University of Maryland (UMD).

Now the school has caught our attention again. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) activists innovated a devious new strategy to bolster support for BDS on campus.

In February 2017 SJP activists Sarah Eshera and Saarah Javed created the UMD Muslim Political Alliance (MPA). Ostentibly a Muslim political and cultural interest group, from the outset MPA functioned hand-in-glove with SJP.

In the short time since it’s creation, MPA has co-sponsored a host of events together with SJP, including:

SJP thought they could hide – they thought they could get away with it, but we caught them! MPA was founded by SJP activists and shares multiple members with SJP. Their cynical attempt to bolster BDS on campus by creating a new “political” organization is now exposed!

Watch our Twitter feed for NEW profiles from UMD coming soon! Check out the bottom of this column for the latest examples.

Exciting Bazian Updates!

The world finally knows about “the Most Dangerous Professor in America,” Hatem Bazian. There’s been a whirlwind of interest about him from national and international media outlets, and the campaign is only just getting started! Our videos have garnered over 100,000 views across different platforms – the world is starting to wake up to this truly menacing professor. Make sure to watch our videos, share them with your friends and keep an eye out for new developments in the coming days. There is so much more to this story- stay involved and help us get the word out!

Join The Mission!

You’ve seen our emails and checked out our site, but have you gotten a chance to check out our social media channels? Follow us on Twitter and “Like” us on Facebook to get real-time updates and exclusive content we don’t put on our site. And connect with us! We’d love to hear from you- what’s working, what needs work and what are the issues you want to hear more about. We value your voice and your support, so join us in our Mission!

The Canary Mission team are in an on-going effort to expose individuals and organizations that engage in hate-speech and anti-Semitism. But we need your assistance. You can help by donating and encouraging others to subscribe.
Sarah Eshera has vilified pro-Israel Jews on social media, disrupted pro-Israel activity on campus and campaigned for the BDS movement at UMD. An SJP activist, she is the founder and president of the Muslim Political Alliance (MPA) at UMD, which campaigns for the BDS movement alongside SJP at UMD. Ironically, she is also one of two undergraduate members of the UMD University Senate’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee! The committee is tasked with advising the Office of Diversity and Inclusion “in the prevention and eradication of all forms of discrimination on the campus.”
Saarah Javed , an SJP activist, co-founded the MPA with Sarah Eshera (above). She was also an active participant in a 2016 Israel Fest disruption.
Mariame Moumena, an undergraduate research assistant at the UMD Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, has spread hatred of Jews and Israel on social media. She tweeted “The amount of yahood [Jews] at my uni is disgustingly high 😷😷😷.” and “Yan3al al yahood wa abu Al yahood [Damn the Jews and the Father of the Jews] 😡😡😡.”

Steve Jobs Wanted to Break Up the Education Monopoly by Joe Kent

/in , , , , /by

Steve Jobs said in a 1995 interview, “The unions are the worst thing that ever happened in education.”

Jobs spoke with Computerworld’s Daniel Morrow in a 1995 interview, which covered a wide range of topics, but frequently delved into Jobs’s views on the American education system. As he said, “I’d like the people teaching my kids to be good enough that they could get a job at the company I work for making $100,000 a year.”

“Schools are not a meritocracy. They’re a bureaucracy.”

But Jobs blamed teachers unions for getting in the way of good teachers getting better pay. “It’s not a meritocracy,” said Jobs. “It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what’s happened. And teachers can’t teach, and administrators run the place, and nobody can be fired. It’s terrible.”He noted that one solution is school choice: “I’ve been a very strong believer that what we need to do in education is go to the full voucher system.” Jobs explained that education in America had been taken over by a government monopoly, which was providing a poor quality education for children.

He referenced the government-created phone monopoly, broken up in 1982: “I remember seeing a bumper sticker with the Bell logo on it and it said, ‘We don’t care, we don’t have to.’ That’s certainly what the public school system is. They don’t have to care.”

Jobs said that one way to open up a free market in education would be to offer a voucher to families. He gave an example of the California public school system, which in 1995 spent $4,400 per pupil: “I believe strongly that if the country gave each parent a voucher – a check for $4,400 that they could only spend at any accredited school – that several things would happen.”

First, “Schools would start marketing themselves like crazy to parents, to get students.”

Second, many new schools would begin popping up. “You could have 25-year-old kids out of college – very idealistic, full of energy – instead of starting a Silicon Valley company, they would start a school, and I believe they would do far better than many of our public school teachers do.”

“A lot of competition forces providers to get better and better.”

Finally, the quality of education would rise in a competitive market: “A lot of schools would go broke, there’s no question about it. It would be rather painful for the first several years, but I think far less painful than the kids going through the system as it is right now.”Jobs said that the main complaint against school choice is that schools would cater only to rich kids, and the poor kids would be “left to wallow together.”

However, he said, “that’s like saying, well, all the car manufacturers are going to make BMWs and Mercedes and nobody’s going to make a $10,000 car. Well, I think the most hotly competitive market right now is the $10,000 car.”

In other words, Jobs said, all students would benefit from more school choice, as the monopoly in education was broken up.

“The market competition model seems to indicate that where there is a need, there is a lot of providers willing to tailor their products to fit that need, and a lot of competition which keeps forcing them to get better and better.”

Joe Kent

Joe Kent

Joe Kent is the Vice President of Research at the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, a free market think tank. Joe previously worked as a public school teacher for eight years, both in Hawaii and in Minnesota.

Muslim professor at University of California calls for ‘intifada’ in America

/in , , , , , /by

University of California’s Hatem Bazian, co-founder of the anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine, has been calling for intifada in the United States.

It was a matter of time before jihad-minded Muslim leaders in the U.S. started calling for “intifada” (violent uprising) on American soil. It is the result of too much kowtowing by non-Muslim authorities to Islamic supremacists. This brazenness is bound to get much worse, given that there is far too much acceptance today of Palestinian propaganda against Israel, and Palestinian victimology narratives. Even at violence-inciting al-Quds Day rallies, chants of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” ring out, with no fear of legal consequences.

An example of this brazenness came earlier this week when a California mosque defended an imam “who prayed that Allah would “annihilate” Jews.”

More on this story. “US Professor: ‘How come we don’t have intifada in this country?’”, by Mordechai Sones, Arutz Sheva, July 27, 2017:

University of California’s Hatem Bazian, co-founder of the anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine, has been calling for intifada in the United States, as documented in a video by Canary Mission.

In it, Prof. Bazian is seen in various venues calling for intifada in the United States.

Bazian is not the only US Muslim in a leadership position who has been calling for violent uprising. Last week, Arutz Sheva reported on MEMRI’s video of Egyptian-born American Imam Ammar Shahin delivering a Friday sermon at the Islamic Center of Davis, northern California, where he called for the slaughter of all Jews…..

RELATED ARTICLES:

Conservative Professor: Democrats Continue to Revive Narrative that Republicans are Racist

Robert Spencer: Colleges Treat Conservatives as Enemies, But Would Welcome a Guantanamo Inmate Yelling Death to America

Michigan: Lawyers for Muslim doctors charged with performing FGM to use religious freedom as defense

Conservative Professor: Democrats Continue to Revive Narrative that Republicans are Racist

Professor: Lack of Evidence to Prove Sexism Creates Gender Gap in STEM

Maryland College’s ‘Critical Social Justice’ Week Pushes Anti-Trump ‘Resistance’

Marxist Student Group at Swarthmore Possibly Disbanded due to Members Being Rich, White

The Merit of the Meritocracy

/in , , , /by

In a stunning display of reverse discrimination Columbia University’s Teachers College organized a conference exploring the “problem of whiteness” and how to combat whiteness.

300 participants mostly K-12 teachers and principals were “reeducated” in ways to frame being white as the primary social problem to be addressed in elementary schools. Workshops and presentations titled “Whiteness in Schools,” “Three Ways to Face White Privilege in the Classroom,” “Teaching for Social Justice” are representative of the blatant prejudice and reverse discrimination intrinsic in the conference designed to “Reimagine Education.”

Black history exposes how black children were made to feel ashamed of being black. How does making white children feel ashamed of being white remedy the situation? It can’t.

Similarly, at a diversity conference for employees at Jesuit colleges Dr. Kris Sealey, associate professor of philosophy at Fairfield University, spoke about race in the university classroom. She has taught race based courses such as “Black Lives Matter” and “Critical Race Theory.”

“So more and more, the courses that I teach on race have become courses in which I expect my students to engage in the hegemonic power of whiteness.” Really?

Let’s discuss hegemonic theory. Early 19th century Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci was made famous by his theory of cultural hegemony which posits that the state and ruling class (the bourgeoisie in Italy) use cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies. Hegemony is just another word for dominance. The ruling class uses ideology rather than military force to achieve compliance to its cultural norms. The idea is that the lessons of accepted normative behavior are repeated and reinforced at home, at school, and at worship. The cultural norms become codified into laws which further enforce the cultural norms and thus cultural hegemony rather than force is used to maintain power.

Dr. Sealey and the presenters at Teachers College are criticizing cultural hegemony as the evil method used for maintaining white power while they are hypocritically attempting to reformat American cultural institutions with reverse discrimination to establish cultural hegemony and establish black power. Reverse discrimination is still discrimination and cannot remedy the problem of discrimination it can only exacerbate it.

Reverse racism taken to its extreme will necessarily end in a race war – the white population will not submit without a fight. The social chaos of a race war will not end well for America. The police force will be nationalized and the federal government will declare martial law and all individual freedoms will be suspended.

There is an alternative.

America’s judicial system was created with the dream of blind justice. This meant that the judicial system would focus exclusively on the WHAT of behavior and ignore the WHO. To realize the dream of fairness requires a commitment to the ideal of the meritocracy not a campaign to institutionalize reverse racism. Racism and reverse racism are the opposite of fairness because they focus on the WHO of behavior not on the WHAT of behavior.

Consider the blind auditions for orchestras. They are the fairest system and yield the most talented artists for positions in the orchestra. Musicians sitting behind a screen play for judges – there is only the music – it does not matter if the musician is white, black, hispanic, Asian, old, young, Jewish, Christian, or Muslim. Only the music matters. The competence and achievement of the musician is measured – not the color of his/her skin.

The meritocracy is the structure of fairness that supports the American dream of upward mobility. The meritocracy focuses exclusively on the WHAT of behavior and ignores the WHO.

Fairness is a stabilizing principle. People will stand in line quietly and peacefully for hours until someone cuts the line. The unfairness of someone cutting the line provokes anger that can quickly escalate into violence. Fairness is a principle we need to recommit ourselves to.

So, why is there a movement to completely dismantle the meritocracy rather than a commitment to abide by it to make America truly egalitarian? Why are elementary schools, universities, and black race hucksters attempting to destroy the meritocracy of our educational system and replace it with an institutionalized curriculum that indoctrinates American youth toward reverse racism in schools?

The answer can be found in Shelby Steele’s extraordinary book titled “White Guilt” that explores the emotional power of white guilt being exploited by black political race hustlers in the United States hoping to transform America into socialism. Steel argues that the primary focus of the civil rights movement was the legitimate undertaking to remove racial barriers and achieve equality through equal opportunity. Without racial barriers the black community would become equal and active participants in the American meritocracy and Martin Luther King’s dreams for racial equality would come true. America would finally be color-blind and function like the blind auditions for orchestras.

That was not to be the case. Instead, the counterculture movement of the 60s merged with the civil rights movement and instead of empowering the black community through the avenues of personal responsibility and the meritocracy the black power movement embraced an angry narrative of blame insuring perpetual victimhood for the black community. Rather than creating a climate of equality among races based on equal rights, equal opportunity, and equal protections under the law white guilt was exploited to reverse racial discrimination and blame white privilege for the black community’s condition and an industry for race hustlers was created.

Shelby Steele understands that being a victim is the position of powerlessness – the net effect of the intersectionality of race hustlers, the black power movement, and the counterculture selling permanent victim status has been 50 more years of hardship for the black community. Shelby Steele argues that the black community has exchanged free stuff for their freedom – a very bad trade. A commitment to the meritocracy is the pathway for survival and upward mobility. Competence elevates the black community. An education fostering competence, skills, and achievement is necessary for success not an indoctrination in blame, permanent victimhood, and powerlessness.

Racial harmony requires a commitment to equal opportunity and the meritocracy where all behavior and achievement are judged on competence not who is competing. The meritocracy is the system that can make Martin Luther King’s dreams come true. So, why are radical educators, race hustlers, and their left-wing liberal supporters trying to dismantle it?

The radical educators, race hustlers and Leftist believe that socialism will provide social justice and income equality. The problem with socialism as Margaret Thatcher explained is that “Eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

Socialism is the opposite of the meritocracy. Socialism steals individual freedom. Socialism is the fiction that you can have freedom without responsibility. That is why socialism inevitably fails.