Friday, February 27, 2015

D-DAY on H.R. 5

No Way, ESEA!
David vs. the Goliath ESEA bills in Congress

YOU America's Grassroots Parents,
Teachers, Voters, Citizens
stood up against the ESEA!
 

Yes, YOU truly grassroots American citizens BLEW THE WHISTLE! Guess who caused this uproar over HR 5? The Grassroots! YOU, YOU, YOU!

Don't let anybody else take the credit for it! YOU readers of this little unfunded blog, who were totally ignored by the major news media, were the first to go up against Senator Lamar Alexander's companion bill and now H.R. 5.

WE ALL BLEW THE WHISTLE on these bills over a MONTH AGO on this blog!  Has it worked? See the following story in Politico "House leadership wrestles with No Child Left Behind votes," 2/26/15, and notice who is being now credited for opposition:
(Source)
"A nearly identical bill passed the House in 2013, but this time around, NCLB faces significantly more pushback from the right: Groups including The Club For Growth and Heritage Action are pushing lawmakers to vote the bill down, and grassroots opposition to federal control in education has boomed among constituents."



Yet, we've been pumping out alerts about the Reauthorization of the ESEA since January. Meanwhile other neoconservatives groups, especially Heritage, put off taking a position on this bill until the original day of the vote, last Tuesday! Has YOUR grassroots activism force Heritage out of its pro-H.R. 5 hole and into an anti-H.R. 5 position?

YOU are the ones who truly care about YOUR children and grandchildren! This crisis has given YOU grassroots Americans an unprecedented opportunity to learn the disastrous facts about education reform and its ugly consequences on YOUR children, YOUR local school districts, YOUR teachers, and YOUR community. YOU got informed with the facts. YOU stayed up-to-day with well-documented information that equipped YOU to stand. YOU knew what you were talking about. YOU stood your ground! YOU stood up against Goliath!  


PRAY! Pray! Pray!

KEEP CALLING, KEEP CALLING, KEEP CALLING, ALL DAY LONG.


THANKS ALL!

Read more:
The Elephant in the Room
The Silence on ESEA is Deafening!
How the Mighty Have Fallen
ESEA contact with your Legislators


Thursday, February 26, 2015

Good News... Bad News

A Missouri Citizens Grassroots Report

A 3D Research Report by Betsy Kraus

Those who pull the educational strings are usually two or three steps ahead of those who would do battle with them… and these educational “planners” usually have back-up plans for any setbacks they might encounter in achieving their goals. The good that parents and concerned citizens accomplish must be protected so that it may not be over-ridden or undermined.Constant vigilance is required to save our children from government control. 

The good news is that a group of Missourians filed suit against The Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and won their case. It was announced from Jefferson City, Missouri on February 24, 2015, that the Circuit Court for Cole County, Missouri ruled in favor of Missouri taxpayer plaintiffs. Membership fees to the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium in the amount of $4.3 million were blocked, as the Court ruled that the SBAC agreement with Missouri was in violation of the Compact Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Article I, § 10, cl. 3, and other federal statutes. http://www.fredsauermatrix.com/fred-sauer-prevails-in-common-core-suit-against-gov-nixon/ 

The second seemingly good news for Missouri was, that in May, 2014, Governor Jay Nixon signed a Compromise Common Core Bill.  

As long as the Total Quality Management System (TQM) of Skinnerian mind-control, Outcome Based Education (OBE) reigns supreme in our schools, there must and will be constant formative and summative testing and assessments. SBAC and PARCC have set the standard. The assessments must be written to the curriculum, and, with backward mapping, the assessments direct the curriculum. Even if SBAC or PARCC is removed from state testing and assessments, there will be clones waiting in the wing.


The constant testing and assessments will simply continue under a different venue. One way or another, either through Federal or State action, our children are slated for educational, emotional, and psychological testing and assessment unless it can be stopped at the Federal and State level.
If the Reauthorization of the ESEA Act is passed in the House it will go a long way in ensuring that America’s youth will become absorbed into a one-world, socialistic, global agenda through curriculum, testing, and assessment.

There are a number of ordinary citizens in America who have been trying for several years to expose The Reauthorization of the ESEA Act and HR-5, which aids and abets the TQM System. Some of these individuals have fought valiantly, so it is baffling that they have been ignored, receiving no moral support, no financial aid, or assistance from any of the well-known conservative organizations who are so active in the field of education. Have these organizations even spoken out against HR-5 until perhaps this very day?  HOW COULD THAT BE, AND WHY?   If ever there was an “elephant in the room”, ESEA/HR-5 is it. 


Although assessments are already mandated in The ESEA Act of 1965 and the later update, No Child Left Behind, there are more proposed amendments to the Reauthorization of ESEA Act/HR-5 to assure the testing and assessment will continue unabated. The bill is to be voted on this Friday, February 27th.  If this legislation passes the goose in pretty well cooked for public schools, and, in addition, for any private schools who accept government funding. 

The following are Amendments to insure the testing and assessments will continue despite any state elimination of PARCC OR SBAC: 

 “54. Advances assessments of student achievement and instructional practices, effective teacher preparation and continuing professional development, education administration, and international comparisons. The amendment supports development of a national research strategy to ensure that students, particularly at risk students, have effective teachers and are being prepared for the future.
56. Requires school districts to be transparent in providing information to parents at the beginning of the school year on mandated assessments the student will have to take during the school year and any school district policy on assessment participation
73. Would require that the annual, statewide assessments measure student growth and require that student growth be component of achievement within the accountability system established by a given state.
104. Allows State educational agencies and eligible entities to use Local Academic Flexible Grant funds to audit and streamline assessment systems, eliminates unnecessary assessments, and improves the use of assessments.(1)
How many other states are writing their own testing and assessments? There is a group of Educators is Kansas in the process of writing their own tests for which will surely be accompanied with assessments. Do we honestly think that their Common Core agenda will deviate from the TQM, OBE model?  

“Kansas, which is also implementing Common Core in its Kansas College and Career Ready Standards, is piloting its own tests through the University of Kansas Center for Educational Testing & Evaluation.”(2) 

Is the Common Core legislation in Missouri, passed in May of 2014, good news or is it a “SMOKESCREEN”?

Consider this comment: “Ryan Silvey, a Kansas City, North, Republican, was one of the Common Core opponents who voted against the compromise. He told The Star that lawmakers who want new standards should have kept the bill as a strict prohibition against a return to Common Core. “This bill does nothing to stop Common Core,” he said. “It’s a smokescreen. We left a loophole.”’(Emphasis added)(3) 

Does the process for re-doing the Common Core standards in Missouri, described below, fill anyone with confidence or will it be more of the same?

According to the Common Core Compromise legislation, here is how Missouri’s “new” standards are to be formulated:
“…eight advisory groups will create standards for both elementary and high school students in the state for English, math, science and history. The State Board of Education will hold public hearings on the proposed standards that are slated to be in place by 2016…The advisory groups will be composed of appointees by state education associations and leaders, legislators, Nixon, and Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder. In addition, four members will be parents of children currently enrolled in Missouri public schools. (4)
Who do you think will actually control the formulation of Missouri’s standards? What standards do you think this type of “committee governance” will produce? Do you think there will not be continued testing and assessment? Will the consensus on the standards, agreed upon by the Committees, be submitted to Congress for a vote so that parents and concerned citizens might have their voice constitutionally heard? 

Several years ago, Indiana voted Common Core out of their state. They then formulated new standards that wound up to be very much like the old ones. Despite all the efforts of those trying to protect students, the results were not very productive. Then, Republican Governor Pence turned Indiana into a “Voucher” state. Vouchers, Choice, and Charters are capable of undermining public schools through loss of pupils and funding, and putting private schools at risk for state control and Common Core or similar standards, testing, and assessments. It’s a lose-lose scenario.  


Footnotes:
3. Ibid


Related readings:
Common Core Charter School Craziness!
ALERT: HR 5, the Student Success Act of 2015 
Nation's Top Teacher Resigns 
DRILL ‘EM AND KILL ‘EM 

A Teacher's Courageous Speech

No Way, ESEA!
An Example of True Grassroots Teacher Activism! 


A 3D Research Report by teacher Dawn Hoagland

I gave half of the speech (before I was cut off for time allotment) in a public forum which was the Greenburgh Town Hall. A panel of 7 Democrat and Republican legislators convened to listen to public comments on New York Governor Cuomo's budget and education proposal's. They collected written comments at the end from anyone who didn't get to speak or didn't get to read their full speech.

Below is an excerpt from the speech which I gave to the Westchester lawmakers on Monday.
(Source)

Westchester lawmakers listened attentively to public comments on Cuomo's budget and education reform proposals for four hours. In attendance and speaking was a packed crowd of parents, superintendents, board of education members, NYSUT reps, teachers and political activists at the Greenburgh Town Hall. This was one of the most useful actions I have ever been part of. It felt good to participate in a well articulated response to Cuomo's budget and ridiculous education proposals. At the end, each of the legislators thanked us for giving them specific information (ammunition) to take to the fight in Albany. 

Excerpt from my speech:
Lawmakers should not support Governor Cuomo’s bullying tactics. He’s holding the budget hostage. He is usurping legislative power and infringing on the authority of locally elected school boards. His budget should contain enough money to educate all of our students in New York State. Period. And the school aid runs should be published in a timely fashion to make them useful for superintendents to be able to plan for the following year.

In New York, education policy belongs to the Board of Regents. Cuomo is using his budget to manipulate policy changes. He is only offering a 4.8 percent increase in education aid if you concede to his teacher bashing and privatization plans which call for more charter schools. Congress is discussing the re-authorization of ESEA right now. There are over 60 pages in the bill proposed by Lamar Alexander that provide incentives and directives for new charter schools. There must be some powerful hedge fund managers investing in charter schools that D.C. and Albany are catering to.

How can Cuomo get parents to put their kids in charter schools? He needs to convince them that their children are failing and their teachers are ineffective in their neighborhood public schools. If he can accomplish that, parents will be anxious to pull students out to try a charter, even though charter schools have not delivered the improved outcomes they love to promise. Convincing parents that the teachers are to blame is a matter of propaganda—not reality.

If Cuomo can get enough teachers labeled “ineffective,” and the media spreads enough lies, parents may begin to question the quality of their public schools. Merryl Tisch will approve more charter schools and the charter investors will flourish. Tisch’s brother in law, Andrew sits on the Board of K12, Inc., the biggest online learning company in the U.S. Andrew sells educational products to charter schools. Merryl approves a new charter; Andrew gets a new account.

So if Cuomo needs students to fail to prove that charter schools are the answer, then the tests need to be very inappropriate so that even top students will have a hard time passing them. I would like to invite Governor Cuomo, and every NYS legislator, to take a sample PARCC test, any grade level, and publish the results. My point is that these tests are invalid. Therefore raising the student test score percentage of every teacher’s evaluation to 50% turns these tests into weapons of mass destruction aimed at our public schools.

Read more:
Charters Kill True Choice
CHARTERS in the ESEA Re-authorization Bill!!!
The Roots & Fruits of Ed Reform

Parents are Treated Like Children

No Way, ESEA!
Some background and history to this outrageous incident in Collier County, Florida
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/02/24/video-of-the-day-watch-as-
florida-parents-are-treated-like-children-for-questioning-school-curriculum/

Everyone keeps forwarding this video to me.  I ignored it initially but am so tired of receiving it in my email I decided to write a post for my blog. Read the article "Video of the Day – Watch as Florida Parents are Treated Like Children for Questioning School Curriculum," and watch the video. Here is a brief summary of its contents:
David Bolduc... who is a resident of Naples, Florida recently sent me a note highlighting a video in which he, and several other concerned parents, were reprimanded and treated like little children in a School Board Workshop as a result of them expressing concerns about school curriculum.

To these outstanding and courageous Florida parents, I say, "Welcome to the club!"

IT IS VITAL FOR GOOD PARENTS, NEW TO THE BATTLE, TO UNDERSTAND A BIT OF HISTORY REGARDING THIS BATTLE AND WHO FOUGHT IT, HOW, AND WHO DID NOTHING TO HELP FIGHT IT.  


As an elected school board member in 1978 I visited my son's third grade classroom, simply to see how he was doing. I didn't interrupt anything going on. Just sat in the corner and was able to observe that my son was not doing all that well.

That very day I, an elected official, was called into the Superintendent's Office, during which the Chairperson of the School Board and the head of the teachers' union berated me for having visited the classroom without permission! The accusations regarding my visit were so "off the wall" I was reduced to tears. Part of our job as board members was to occasionally visit classrooms.

What a horrible experience when the incident was reported to the controlled press, which hated me, and the Leftists/Communists in our small town came down on me with horrendous letters to the editor, etc. (This wasn't the only time I was called into a small room to be interrogated about something I had done as a legitimate part of my job as a school board member.) This, by the way, is a Communist tactic, in case there are people out there who have not studied the Alinskyan "how" of controlling the community, and been subjected to it.

In regard to incidents young parents are now experiencing that areas horrendous as what we tired soldiers experienced from 1975 to the present.

In 1979 Maine introduced its  K-12 State Health Education Program, which required 12th graders  to understand the three types of sexual intercourse, including with animals. It was called "The Berkeley (CA) Model" ... of course. This particularly obnoxious "standard" caused Bettina Dobbs and me to form Guardians of Education for Maine (GEM), which did great things from 1979 to 2000, mostly due to Bettina I must add.

Even the Commissioner of Education at the time couldn't look us in the eye. He just put his head on his desk for at least one minute when we showed him the  page out of the curriculum regarding the above standard. He  did take action by getting a memo out to all Superintendents in Maine Districts urging them not to ever include such an outrageous  standard in the curriculum. That was shortly before we parents and some public school teachers worked to get regulations approved for the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment. By the way, we did this with no help from any conservative tax-exempt foundation!!!!

And the young'uns involved in fighting Common Core and all the things going on right now think the situation is somehow new! No, sadly it isn't new.

Back then we hung in, persevered, and went in their faces, ran for office again and again, often won, occasionally changed things, wrote booklets, pamphlets. No one landed in jail, as far as I can recall, but we sure put holes in our family budgets. Some activist board members' tires were deliberately slit by the enemy, hoping to cause car accidents. Anita Hoge, whose name is carefully omitted from neoconservative lists of education experts (especially "their" recent Johnny-Come-Lately alerts to stop HR 5), won a case against the Pennsylvania Dept of Education, under the federal law The Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment. An historic event for which she has received nearly zero acclamation.      
  

I remember a conversation with Anita Hoge in the 1990s when she informed me her phone bills were running $1000 a month, and I was able to almost match her by saying mine were running $950 a month! In other words, neither one of us genuine grassroots activists were receiving a dime from the "controlled" Right. In fact, much credit must go to those sweet grandmothers who quietly handed us $20 bills after we spoke, just to help us out, telling us, "You are in my prayers." 

All the major neoconservative groups who have been heavily funding the concerned parents fighting Common Core, while studiously avoiding the Trojan Horse (charter schools with unelected boards),  knew about all the atrocities in the schools from 1965-2000, and of efforts by persons and groups like GEM, but did nothing to help us. Unless their  assistance was geared  to getting control of those good parents. The reader can figure out which groups I am referring to.

The following grassroots persons from all across the United States were important writers on the subject of education, worked to kill the U.S.-USSR Education agreements, founded and operated  education organizations from the 1960s through the past century: Peggy and Dennis Cuddy, Barbara Morris, Joan Masters, Beth Trotto,  Jackie and Malcolm Lawrence, Peggy Grimes, Joe Baldaccino, Lawrence Grayson, Billie Lyon, Anita Hoge,  GenYvette Sutton, Nancy Staible, Luanne Robson,   Georgiana Warner,  Kathie Finnegan, Jil Wilson and Virginia Meves, Mary Thompson, Berit Kjos, Rose Stewart, Cynthia Weatherly, Geri Wenta,  Carol Maddox,  Cherilyn Eagar, Sarah Leslie, Cris Shardelman, Lynn Stuter, Chey Simonton,  Wolfgang Von Eitzen (Germany 2015),Ann Herzer and Gene Birkeland, Betsy Kraus, Jeannie Georges, Ann Hanley, Joan Gubbins, Andrea Neal, Charlotte Iserbyt, Bettina Dobbs, Steve Schran, Donna Mullin, Joe Esposito, Joanne Lisac, Robert Goldsborough, Virginia Birt Baker, Rosalind Haley, Ann Frazier, Bettye and Kirk Lewis, Betty Russinoff, Marilyn Boyer, Jeannie Georges and Jean Patton, Dr. Shirley Correll, Don Bell, Erica Carle, Ruth Feld and Gene Malone, Jan Iserbyt and  Sydney Dobbs, Judy McLemore, Mary Jo Heiland and  Sylvester Cain, Wilma Leftwich, Frances Riley, Jeannie Jenkins, Jeb Brown and Maureen Heaton, Mary Larkin, Norman Dodd, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, Judge Robert Morris. The above list is limited to persons I, Charlotte,  personally know/ knew and with whom I worked. It is therefore incomplete. There are many other Americans, not included on this list who I did not personally know, who did extraordinary work to preserve academic education and to halt the destruction of our children's attitudes, values, and beliefs.



The above remarkable Americans (persons and groups) were responsible for the call to abolish the U.S. Dept. of Education in 1980, and in getting regulations to enforce The Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA) in 1985, and in trying to expose President Reagan's signing of the United States-Soviet Education Agreement in 1985, which merged the two countries' education  systems. These individuals, many of them "Moms," raised $5000 (out of their grocery budgets) to put a one-page ad in The Washington Times which covered not only what President Reagan had done but the Carnegie Corporation-Soviet Academy of Science Agreement, which dealt with joint development of  computer course ware in Marxist critical thinking for early elementary school children.

Isn't it interesting that none of  the above individuals and small rag-tag groups was offered or  received one single penny from any one person or any national group? Of course, we wouldn't have accepted their financial help anyhow since it was "tax exempt" and we knew the dangers of taking that money.

The so-called national "conservative" groups and people, still active today, couldn't have cared less about attacking the very unconstitutional, treasonoous, nation-destroying programs back then. Not one of them, not even the American Legion, opposed the Reagan-Gorbachev Education Agreement of 1985 which merged the United States and Soviet Education systems... until long "after-the-fact" in order to cover their tracks, and assure continued funding from innocent Americans who believed in their tear-jerking, patriotic fund-raising  letters! Of interest is the fact that the Maine branch of the American Legion did vote unanimously to have the agreements cancelled! I have a file drawer full of responses from these so-called conservative groups (pathetic excuses for doing nothing) to my plea for them to help us cancel the Reagan-Gorbachev/Carnegie-Soviet Academy of Science Agreement (in effect TODAY), to be fully implemented under HR 5 and Senator Alexander's Companion bill.

Here, in a capsule, is the origin of legislation being presented in Congress today, such as Rep. John Kline's HR 5 and Senator Alexander's companion bill. On July 18, 1961, Congressman John Ashbrook delivered a speech before Congress, “The Myth of Federal Aid to Education without Control,” (Congressional Record: pp. 11868–11880). His very important speech documented and exposed the plans for the internationalization and transformation of American education, and a good section of it is reproduced on my blog in the post "The ESEA Power Grab":

I had bolded the above words due to the neoconservative efforts in 2015 to do away with local control through tax-funded school choice/ charter schools with unelected boards. (See HR 5 and Senator Alexander's companion bill). The neoconservative leaders obviously are carrying out the goals of the internationalists in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and up to 2015! Shame on them!

Attached to the 1961 Congressional Committee’s report were appendices from which the following quotation is taken. Do Americans not see that in order to return to sanity and focus on academics in education, the excellent system we had pre-1965, we MUST abolish the U.S. Department of Education! Nothing less will cure the problem... nothing!

WHY HAVE WE NOT HEARD ONE MURMUR  FROM THESE PHONY CONSERVATIVE GROUPS IN REGARD TO ABOLISHING THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION? Is it because they need it to accomplish their nefarious objectives outlined below, outlined in the 1961 Committee's report?
Appendix B
The Mission of the Office of Education in the 1960s
The schools of tomorrow must prepare their students for living in a world of continuous and rapid change, presenting them with unprecedented social, economic, and political problems. We must, in fact, give to education a character that will initiate and support a process of lifelong learning if Americans are to keep abreast of the accelerating advent of new knowledge and of the increasing complexity of modern life. These prospective conditions are already suggested in part by the rapidly increasing demand for highly specialized and professional skills. During the coming decade, new means must be developed for identifying and releasing student potential; curriculums will have to undergo continual reshaping and upgrading; and new techniques and tools of instruction will have to be developed.…
• Education is basic to effort to bring about an enduringly peaceful world.
• Next decade will bring closer and multiple relationships with Ministries of Education abroad and international organizations, such as UNESCO, the Organization of American States, International Bureau of Education.
• Variations among States and school districts in standards of instruction, facilities, staff, and services expose serious inadequacies. Our progress toward the ideal of equality of educational opportunity is tragically uneven.
• In the area of international educational cooperation, in particular, it must play the major role, since only the Federal Government can enter into agreements with other governments. Along with these responsibilities should be included that of stimulating and participating activity in the process of formulation, examination, and reformulation of the goals of our national society in terms of educational objectives.
• The development of uniform, consistent and compatible statistical data in all States and in all institutions of higher education will call for both technical and financial assistance to these sources from the Office of Education….
• Economists, sociologists, and other social scientists will be needed on the staff to assist in dealing with educational problems in their total context.
I do believe that if John Ashbrook were alive today he would be shaking his head in disbelief over the fact NOT ONE SINGLE ONE OF THESE TAX-EXEMPT GROUPS  has launched an effort as well-funded as their effort to kill Common Core. Not one of these groups return education to the local level, hiring only teachers educated in academics and basic skills. But, all of you new citizen activists please remember: NOTHING ELSE but true local control, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE, WILL CURE THE EDUCATION CANCER.
 

Read more about these issues:
The Elephant in the Room
The Silence on ESEA is Deafening!
The REAL Agenda Behind Abolishing the U.S. Dept. of Education
Common Core Trotskyites 

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

The Elephant in the Room

No Way, ESEA!
What the Conservatives Won't Tell You About the ESEA... AND THEIR SNOW JOB ON AMERICANS! (As if we need more snow!)  

The Reauthorization of the ESEA
Neoconservative opposition to Rep. John Kline's H.R. 5 (Student Success Act) and Senator Lamar Alexander's companion bill, is popping up all over, interestingly enough the very day H.R. 5 was originally scheduled for a vote, Tuesday, February  24! (It is now re-scheduled for Friday, February 27.) See the article published Tuesday in the New American, a publication of the John Birch Society.  
(Source)
Here is a key question, taking notice of the late date of this article's publication:
  • Why weren't these conservative groups taking a strong position against this bill before? Why are they only now coming to the table late, too close to the day of the vote?

Those of us who have exposed these dangerous pieces of legislation and who have been working day and night to kill these bad bills should be pleased indeed that this blog has apparently caused such a ruckus across the country. We have been publishing constant alerts exposing the horrible language in the Reauthorization of the ESEA bills. Perhaps burgeoning true grassroots citizen awareness in America has FORCED these traitors to come out of their holes and pretend to expose HR 5 and take some sort of a position against it. Ask yourself again:
  • Why did most of these conservative groups wait to get their alerts out until the day of the vote, yesterday, February 24?
Those groups finally coming out of their well-funded neoconservative holes, who not once took a stand against Rep. Kline's HR 5 and Senator Alexander's companion bills (which are Constitution-busting legislation), are not friends of America, and are not to be trusted ever again. Ask the following important questions:
  • When have you seen these groups send out the comprehensive, documented facts about these bills? 
  • When have you ever heard them tell the complete truth, the full story about the undeniably bad language in these bills? 
  • Why do we always see them send out selective "spin," nitpicking certain language in the bill while ignoring the WHOLE BILL, the elephant in the room, the humongous federal power grab?
It is just like the story of the blind men and the elephant. Each different conservative group finds a little spot they don't like on the bill and then claims that their language will "fix" the problem. They notify their sycophants that their little tweak on the bill will patch it up and make it a good bill that everyone can support... so please send them money right away so that they can fight this little smidgeon of a spot of badness on the bill. All the while they fail to tell their followers about the WHOLE BAD BILL still standing in the room, with its comprehensive irreparable problems!


If there is one important result to come out of their deception, it will be that Americans, never again will put their trust in these phony groups, whose goal is simply to line their pockets with Americans' hard-earned contributions to advance their agenda which, if you study it, conforms precisely to the Democrats leftist/globalist agenda! (Phony "choice," charter schools, workforce training, etc.) Read my blog post about Reed Hastings of Netflix remarks "Charters Kill True Choice." Have these groups even listened to his speech and grasped its horrifying ramifications? How can they continue to support this agenda?

When this blog found out about the bills we started calling for Americans to contact their Congressmen and Senators to vote NO. Sadly, opposition from these phony conservative groups was missing early on when it could have made an enormous difference to stop this bill. Their participation very likely could have killed it due to the hundreds of millions of tax-exempt dollars in their war chests. Which raises another disturbing question:
  • Just where do these organizations get their funding? Who pours cash into their war chests? 

Their silence is so astonishing and mind-boggling that there can be no other rational reason for their truncated opposition to the bill, their complicity, compromises, stalling, telling partial truths, obfuscating, ignorance of the facts, deceptions, etc. We suspect that their coffers are loaded up with cash by the charter "choice" empire burgeoning across America. After all, it is this "choice" agenda that is the common denominator of all of the conservative groups that are compromising away our freedoms.

We are disappointed that this New American article did not mention my blog nor Anita Hoge's excellent alerts the past few months that have been repeatedly posted over and over again warning about these bills. Sadly Anita Hoge's brilliant research has been ignored for over 25 years by these "controlled" conservatives.


In fact, the John Birch Society has studiously avoided the efforts of the researchers I work with. And they have avoided my warnings to them personally about the dangers of tax-funded school choice/charters with unelected school boards, and more recently about the dangers of HR 5. I have been in touch with leaders of the JBS many times over the past two years, pleading for JBS support in exposing the neoconservatives in their anti-American agenda. They have studiously avoided giving me an answer to any of my questions. Why is this? Again, the question must be raised:
  • Who is funding these organizations listed below in the New American article (and the many other clone organizations like them)? How is the funding controlling them? Are they getting funds from charter school corporate empires and their many profiteering companions? Is this what is silencing them? 

Are good Americans going to continue to support the following Johnny-Come-Lately bleeding heart conservative persons and groups, some listed in the excerpts below, who have suddenly come to the table too late, the day of the vote? Please read the following excerpts taken from the New American article to understand the depths of this MISINFORMATION and PARTIAL INFORMATION about the actual factual details contained in this bill:
The Student Success Act, which passed out of House committee without any Democrat support on February 11, is expected to be voted on soon by the full House of Representatives. If approved, it will cost taxpayers over $23 billion per year.

However, analysts say the worst amendments to the bill were successfully defeated, and that there may be some positive elements to the legislation. For example, according to an analysis of the bill by Dr. Karen Effrem, president of Education Liberty Watch, which opposes it, the legislation prohibits the secretary of education from “incentivizing” or “coercing” states into adopting standards or tests. “It is important for preventing future disasters like Common Core,” Effrem said.

Another provision of the bill would reportedly prevent D.C. from vacuuming up private data on students if it is “personally identifiable” — something that was already illegal but which the Obama administration did anyway by lawlessly re-writing privacy protection laws and bribing states....  
The outcry against the bill is growing across the political spectrum. A coalition of prominent education experts including Lindsey Burke, Williamson Evers, Theodor Rebarber, Sandra Stotsky, and Ze’ev Wurman, for example, released a recent statement arguing that the bill did not return control over education policy to where it belongs....

In an analysis of the legislation dubbed “No Program Left Behind,” Lindsey Burke, an education policy fellow at the Heritage Foundation, blasted the fact that virtually every federal education scheme remains alive in the bill....
Read more about the facts of this bill:
The Silence on ESEA is Deafening!
How the Mighty Have Fallen
ESEA contact with your Legislators

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

The Silence on ESEA is Deafening!

No Way, ESEA!
Conservative Traitors and How They Deceive

From Breitbart.com today, 02/24/15: "CONSERVATIVE GROUP URGES CONGRESS TO OPPOSE ‘SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL’ STUDENT DATA COLLECTION BILL" by Dr. Susan Berry we discover that
The conservative Washington, D.C.-based American Principles in Action (APIA) is urging Congress to oppose the Strengthening Education Through Research Act (SETRA), which the group states would extend federal psychological profiling of children through increased research on “social and emotional learning.”

MY HEAD IS SPINNING! According to this Breitbart article, Jane Robbins and Emmett McGroarty of the American Principles Project put out an alert:
“SETRA is dangerous legislation that would expand federal psychological profiling of children through expanding research on ‘social and emotional learning,’” asserts Jane Robbins, senior fellow at American Principles in Action. “It would facilitate sharing of education statistics across states and agencies. It would continue to rely on the now-gutted FERPA statute to protect student data. SETRA must be defeated to protect student privacy rights.”
The article continues:
Emmett McGroarty, Director of Education at American Principles in Action, said, “Leadership is betraying the Constitution and the American people by rushing this bill through. Having so blithely disrespected the American people, it is difficult to see how they will ever regain their trust.”
Emmett McGroarty and the whole American Principles Project group should be added to my conservative traitor list! This blog will continue to add these traitors as they come on (at the last moment) to oppose two bills the blog has been exposing for months. Not because I or my blog, which receive no financial support whatsoever, feels personally offended, but because these people, had they lived during the American Revolution, would have been called turncoats!
Jane Robbins

On the one hand they support killing the Constitution (by not opposing HR 5, the House version of the ESEA) which will be voted on February 27. And with the other hand they pretend to oppose HR 4366 and S 227, designed to kill the Constitution.

Where have Emmett McGroarty, Jane Robbins, et al been while my blog, containing all of Anita Hoge's brilliant research going back 25 years, opposed the Reauthorization of ESEA (HR 5) and Sen. Lamar Alexander's version of the ESEA bill? Where have they been while the numerous grassroots researchers tried to explain to the nation the unconstitutional nature of the Alexander and Kline bills?

How dare they pretend now to oppose HR 4366, and get publicity for it, a bill which contains many of the controversial elements of HR 5 and Sen. Alexander's bill? 

How dare they come on board at this time? Are they REALLY on board? They cannot be trusted!

When will the good parents and taxpayers understand how they have been used by these so-called conservative groups? When will people stop sending huge checks to these groups to "preserve" the Constitution, the very Constitution these groups have are allowing to be gutted by HR 5 and Alexander's bill?

Show me American Principles Project's alerts opposing HR 5, Rep.  John Kline's bill, or opposing Senator Lamar Alexander's Reauthorization of the ESEA. Both bills contain much, if not all, of what Robbins and McGroarty  are complaining about in S. 227.

https://americanprinciplesproject.org

This is a very clever and deceptive strategy. Look for other conservative traitors to latch onto the same trick. It makes them appear that they are fighting something, when in fact they are ignoring the Reauthorization of the ESEA.

Read more:
How the Mighty Have Fallen
Unresponsive Elected Officials?
While We Were Sleeping
WE ARE AT WAR!
EVEN BEFORE ESEA HAS BEEN REAUTHORIZED—
Facts regarding Tax-funded School "Choice"

Grassroots Activism on H.R. 5 - Student Success Act

No Way, ESEA!



How to Lobby your elected officials


From the House Rules Committee, here is data about the progress of the bill and its many amendments. Click on: http://rules.house.gov/bill/114/hr-5

http://rules.house.gov/bill/114/hr-5
Here is a list of U.S. Senators and their contact information. Click on: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm 
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Here is how you can contact your U.S. Representatives. Click on: http://www.house.gov/representatives/
http://www.house.gov/representatives/

Read more about HR 5:
ESEA contact with your Legislators
HR-5 DENIES PARENTS THEIR RIGHT OVER THEIR OWN CHILDREN
ALERT: HR 5, the Student Success Act of 2015
KLINE: The Man Behind HR 5