SOCIALIST-EUGENICIST-CHRISTIAN HATING PUBLIC EDUCATION SACROSANCT
DOING IT "FOR THE GREATER GOOD"; OR JUST FOR VOTES
FROM THE TEACHERS' UNION?
STEALING WHAT THE PEOPLE OWN & GIVING IT TO THE FEDS
NOTHING IS TOO EXPENSIVE WHEN IT COMES TO OUR CHILDREN;
EVEN IF IT ADDS TO THE NATIONAL DEBT, TAKES AWAY STATES'
AND PARENTS' RIGHTS, WHAT DOES IT MATTER?
A LOT!
GOP Passes $23-Billion
Federal Education Bill
On July 8, the House of Representatives passed a new federal education bill, and the speaker of the House couldn’t be happier. Echoing similar statements made earlier by Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said, “Education ought to be the civil right of the 21st century, and it will be so as long as we make sure our students have the freedom to fulfill their potential.”
In a strictly party line vote, the House sent the Student Success Act to the Senate, where a companion bill is working its way to a vote.
The bill is being branded as a “rewrite” of No Child Left Behind. Boehner described it as replacing “top-down mandates with conservative reforms that empower the parents, teachers, and administrators at the heart of our education system.”
What this $23-billion behemoth really is is a just another example of unconstitutional federal meddling in education.
The New American’s Alex Newman, an authority on the federal government’s usurpation of jurisdiction over the education of the nation’s children, exposes the Student Success Act for what it is:
Rather than abolishing harmful and unconstitutional federal involvement in education, Congress is considering passage of the “Student Success Act” that would, among other provisions, re-authorize much of the No Child Left Behind and Elementary and Secondary Education boondoggles until 2021. While some conservative organizations have highlighted portions of the legislation that would supposedly diminish the giant Washington, D.C., boot print on government schools, critics are warning that other elements of the bill essentially represent a further takeover of education by the federal government.
Boehner paints a different picture:
If we make this bill law, Washington will have fewer programs, less power, and no authority to coerce states into adopting Common Core. If we make this bill law, there will be real local control, more high-quality charter schools, and more flexibility for Title I funds to follow low-income children to the school of their family’s choosing.
Evidence that the bill isn’t exactly the return to local control of education that Boehner boasts is found in the Washington Post:
The House GOP bill, which also would change how federal funds are dispensed to educate poor students, sets up the far-right boundary for negotiations with the Senate, which is working its way through its own bill, one written with bipartisan support.
And:
Conservative groups including Heritage Action, Freedom Works and the American Principles Project were opposed to the House bill because it would not reduce the federal role in education enough.
They supported an amendment that would have allowed states to opt out of almost all federal requirements, except for civil rights laws, without losing federal funding. That amendment was defeated.
Activists anxious to remove the federal government from the classroom completely, explain just how little local control is returned by the measure. Again, from Alex Newman:
Among other concerns, critics say the bill continues to unconstitutionally mandate that states use dubious “cookie cutter standards” and assessments that bypass the authority of local officials elected by parents and communities. The legislation also purports to continue ordering states to test students every year as part of what is almost universally acknowledged to be a failed federal accountability scheme — in reality, a scheme to usurp control over education by dictating what is on tests, and thereby what is taught.
Beyond the Republicans perpetuation of Washington’s control over curriculum, there is something more sinister buried in the bill that could pull even private schools into the sphere of federal mandates.
One of the most alarming new developments in the bill is the “portability” provision. That provision is one that on the surface would seem to provide parents with the ability to send their children to high-performing schools by providing school choice.
"Portability" refers to the portability of federal funding. Under the Republicans' system, federal funding would “follow” individual students and could be used to put students in “charter schools” or other government schools. (The money could not be used to send children to private schools — yet.) While there are plenty of well-meaning conservatives and libertarians who support the “school choice” mantra, experts warn that there are numerous severe dangers associated with it. Among the chief concerns: The federal government eventually could expand the “portability” scheme to include private schools and then foist Common Core or something similar on private and religious schools by tying the money to adherence to government programs. As well, when it comes to charter schools, education experts warn that they lack accountability to the voters who fund them through their taxes.
So while Republicans crow about “this first step into real momentum and meaningful progress for the country,” those who understand their oath of office would never vote for legislation that lengthens Washington’s shadow over the country’s schools.
And, the question remains: Is there a “civil right” to receive a free education?
While it seems certain that parents possess a natural right to educate their children, there is just as certainly no right to take money from other parents to make sure that education is “free.” As I recently wrote:
For proponents of individual liberty, the goal would be for parents to keep the fruits of their labor and then be free to spend that money in any way they see fit, including on the education of their children. That goal is far from being reached, however. For now, government keeps creating programs that take the property of parents and shift it to others.
Taking money from a person against that person’s will — even if that money is used for an arguably good cause — is theft. And, if it is illegal for an individual to do something, it is equally illegal for government to do that thing, as the government is nothing more than collective organization of the rights of individual members of the society.
This process of government-sponsored thievery is known as “legal plunder.”
As French political economist Frederic Bastiat explained in his 1850 pamphlet, The Law:
Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is the origin of property.
But it is also true that a man may live and satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others. This process is the origin of plunder.
Speaking specifically of the use of plunder in the propping up of public education, Bastiat said:
You say: "There are persons who lack education," and you turn to the law. But the law is not, in itself, a torch of learning which shines its light abroad. The law extends over a society where some persons have knowledge and others do not; where some citizens need to learn, and others can teach. In this matter of education, the law has only two alternatives: It can permit this transaction of teaching-and-learning to operate freely and without the use of force, or it can force human wills in this matter by taking from some of them enough to pay the teachers who are appointed by government to instruct others, without charge. But in this second case, the law commits legal plunder by violating liberty and property.
Were Speaker Boehner and the House Republicans committed to the Constitution and relinquishing federal control over education, they would begin by scrapping the Student Success Act and all other bills purporting to assert authority over the nation’s schools.
Next, they would spend their substantial political capital on a bill that really improves education: one abolishing the federal Department of Education.
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Educrats: For the Sake of the Children, Take Away State Power Over Education
Education activists are warning Congress that unless they take the Supreme Court’s recent same-sex "marriage" ruling as a model for taking away power over education from the states, the children will suffer irreparable harm.
In a note to the U.S. Congress, Chicago-based organization Education Post points to a paragraph in the majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges as a guide for federal lawmakers in their efforts to renew the Every Child Achieves Act (formerly known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act).
Basically, the group believes that what would be best for American families would be the “equal protection of all students, regardless of state of residence.”
The letter goes on to point to the parallels between the “struggle” of schoolchildren and that of homosexuals and just how Congress should consider those similarities in its construction of the new version of the education bill:
Consider the parallels. Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, notes that same-sex couples have been “consigned to an instability many opposite-sex couples would find intolerable.” Just like children in chronically underperforming schools, particularly those from impoverished families, are consigned to an instability that many wealthier families would find intolerable.
Same-sex couples and their children, posits Justice Kennedy, have been “denied the constellation of benefits that the States have linked to marriage.” Just like children, mostly minority ones, are denied the constellation of benefits that many non-minority children have access to through high-performing schools.
The inequality and lack of access to the institution of marriage, says Justice Kennedy, has subjected the LGBTQ community to “a grave and continuing harm.” Just like the grave and continuing harm endured by students consigned to failing schools.
Then, the missive goes on to echo the “we can’t wait” tune hummed by the president while he uses his infamous phone and pen to pass new “laws” while simultaneously praising and pillorying the “democracy” established in the Constitution:
And, while the Constitution contemplates that "democracy is the appropriate process for change," individuals who are harmed need not await legislative action before asserting a fundamental right.
Education, then, is now a “fundamental right.” Assuming that such is a fundamental right, it does not follow that the federal government has any authority to regulate that right.
As any child who studied government before the Common Core era could explain, the federal government has no powers beyond those explicitly enumerated in the Constitution. Not only may it not act in those areas, but the 10th Amendment specifically restates that those powers not delegated to the government of the United States “are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
Notwithstanding this very clear prohibition on passing any education bill, Education Post pushes Congress to act to lest “States and districts would be free to ignore achievement gaps and low graduation rates while still receiving federal funds.”
Basically, the federal government must, the group insists, step in to protect this “fundamental” and “civil right” of kids from the states who have shown, as in the case of homosexuals, that they will obstinately deny “access to the institution of marriage, even when certain state laws rendered to them grave and continuing harm.”
Just how heartless are the states when it comes to caring for the children living within their borders? The letter states,
It’s no accident that some of the primary advocates for a stronger federal role in education are civil rights leaders. Under the current draft of ESEA, states have to identify subgroups of children underserved by schools but they don’t actually have to do anything about it. Here they are, a state could confess: low-income children in this school district or this school demonstrate unequivocable achievement gaps. Lah di dah.
Lah di dah? LOL!
The letter goes on to insist that if in order to protect the right of children to be educated, the Congress must effect a “denial of states’ rights to proscribe specific forms of remediation,” and, in fact, the kids should not have to “wait for state legislative action before the federal government steps in.”
Do the right thing, Education Post says, and follow the Supreme Court’s example and ignore the Constitution, create fundamental rights out of thin air, ignore “federal overreach,” and expand the power of the federal government into another formerly protected precinct. If Congress doesn't do this, the kids will never recover.
And to all those who will oppose these proposals to perpetuate federal control over education, Education Post has a message for them, as well:
To some — the Rand Pauls of the world — the federal government and the secretary should have no role at all, beyond dispensing funds. This makes a great sound bite for Tea Party aficionados and, oddly, some teachers union leaders.
But parents of special needs kids (full disclosure: I’m one) know that it’s just too easy for state departments of education and individual school districts to profess love, ask for trust and then blithely go straight ahead and do wrong.
It is because of the lack of “trustworthiness” of state legislatures that the organization maintains that the new education bill “must contain some degree of federal oversight.”
If, on the other hand, Congress passes a bill that moves “towards state autonomy,” it “will do great harm to children.”
Parents, the group declares, “don’t need D.C.’s help to love our kids,” but they do need “federal oversight authority” over the educational standards in schools in every state in the union and every district in those states.
However, Education Post's assertions that federal oversight, control, and money will mean better education results for underperforming, often minority, students is patently false, as Kurt Williamsen explained for The New Americanin his article "Do Progressive Polices Hurt Black Americans?":
Though a couple of progressive notions about education have shown signs of success — i.e., smaller class sizes in elementary school — most have been dismal failures. Not one of 114 tests administered to first graders showed a statistically significant positive effect of child enrollment in Head Start. All told, 35 percent of U.S. adults either cannot read or read below a fifth-grade level. College affirmative action programs have led to high college dropout rates for blacks in many colleges (see "Affirmative Action Assumptions"). Homeschooled kids and private-school kids do better than public-school kids on SATs, meaning the argument that more public-school spending is the solution to education problems is nonsense, as both groups generally spend far less on education than public schools. (Also, Detroit’s public schools — the land of “progressive” policies for over 50 years — have some of the highest paid teachers and worst-performing students, along with those in Washington, D.C.) And so on.
In all of its recommendations, Education Post has mistaken the creature for the creator.
The states created the federal government and reserve the right to resist the exercise by Congress of any powers not specifically granted to it by the states in the Constitution. For too long, Congresses, presidents, judges, and bureaucrats have “worshipped and served the creature [the government] more than the creator [the states and the people].” (Romans 1:25)
Presidents, courts, congressmen, and education activists must remember that the Constitution is a creature of the states and that the federal government was given very few and very limited powers over objects of national importance. Any act of Congress, the courts, or the president that exceeds that small scope is null, void, and of no legal effect. No exceptions.
Therefore, despite the emotional appeals of Education Post to argue for an enlarged “role of the federal government in state public education systems,” no such role exists and none can be asserted without setting on its ear the principle of federalism and accelerating the agenda that would see the federal government usurp absolute control over how, when, and what our children learn.
