DOWNSIDE LEGACY AT TWO DEGREES OF PRESIDENT CLINTON
SECTION: BREACH OF TRUST
SUBSECTION: EDUCATION
Revised 8/20/99

 

EDUCATION

 

7/24/98 World Net Daily Joseph Farah "Do you wonder about the public opinion polls? Do you doubt they are an accurate gauge of the way people think -- or, more aptly, feel? I don't anymore. America is changing in fundamental ways. America's moral foundation is crumbling as fast as its government educational system. And the Clinton presidency has given our already troubled culture a swift kick in the rear as it plummets down the slippery slope of moral relativism.."

Nevada Appeal 1/21/99 Dale McFeatters - Scripps Howard News Service ".An even greater break with American tradition is Clinton's plan for "account-ability" in the public schools. His briefing paper correctly called his education proposal "a sea change in national education policy," and indeed it is: a massive step toward federalization of the public schools, traditionally a local responsibility. The government, with $20 billion in federal aid as a club, would set the standards for teacher qualifications, classroom behavior, student promotion and by extension, curriculum. The states would be required to issue "report cards" on their schools and also track, in a bit of multicultural mischief, the "academic achievement of ethnic and racial sub-groups" ."

New York Post 2/16/99 Marc Berley ".The ethnicity-minded Bilingual Ed crowd is wrong. A report based on the survey, ''A Lot to Be Thankful For: What Parents Want Children to Learn About America,'' confirms that minority parents want precisely what schools have increasingly failed to provide: the ''heroes and traditions of America,'' and ''the common values of American society.'' This means American History 101 and, most important, the teaching of English. Parents ''express fears about taking the country for granted.'' They also worry that ''there's too much emphasis on 'the things that divide us.'''. The Clinton administration, most notably, strongly supports faulty bilingual-education and diversity programs that undermine the teaching of English and traditional American values. Clinton's 1999 budget proposes $387 million for bilingual education, up from $261 million in 1997. Last year, Clinton opposed Proposition 227, a successful ballot measure to end bilingual education in California. Proposition 227 chair Fernando Vega called Clinton ''the most misinformed citizen in the United States.'' Vega, like the parents interviewed for the Public Agenda survey, understands the problem: ''We are losing generations and generations of Latino kids to this program called bilingual education.''."

Wired News 3/10/99 Declan McCullagh "…The US Senate on Friday took the first step toward derailing a controversial government regulation that will require banks to monitor every transaction their customers make. By an 88 to 0 vote, the Senate approved a change to an education bill being debated. The amendment blocks banking regulators from proceeding with the so-called Know Your Customer plan. "If you ever wondered whatever happened to the people in the former Soviet Union who used to run things there and now are permanently out of work, the answer is they're all in the Clinton administration, and they're running the banking authorities of this country," said Phil Gramm, a Texas Republican who chairs the Banking Committee, in a speech on the Senate floor. Senate Democrats first blocked Gramm's standalone bill that would have repealed Know Your Customer, but then joined their GOP counterparts in a unanimous vote to add the amendment to the education bill. Under Know Your Customer, banks will be required to tell the Feds about transactions that aren't "normal and expected" for a particular customer, based on a profile of that person. Over 140,000 irate Americans have complained about the proposal in a comment period that ends Monday…."

Eagleforum 3/10/99 Phyllis Schlafly Freeper DonMorgan "…Are the American people willing to allow government agents to come into their homes to "advise" them how to care for their babies? What if the announced purpose of these home visits is to look for child abuse under the assumption that all parents are suspects? The plan to place "home visitors" into the homes of all first-time parents is one more example of the pervasive liberal push to monitor law-abiding citizens under the pretext of catching criminals. The model for universal home visitation is Healthy Families America (HFA), a program developed by the National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse (NCPCA), now known as Prevent Child Abuse America. The HFA program calls for 50+ in-home visits annually per family for those considered most "at risk." The home visitors are paraprofessionals and volunteers who are called "trained," but may have only a high school education. These recruits are supposed to educate parents on "proper parenting practices" and to monitor child development…"

Rueters 5/10/99 AP Freeper helms "...As the White House targeted violence in public entertainment, the WB television network said Monday it would show a two-part ``Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' that depicts students arming themselves...."

Augusta Chronicle 5/12/99 Editorial Freeper newsman "...After public schools, as well as parents and students, became gravely concerned about discipline following the Littleton, Colo., murder spree, it wasn't long before the American Civil Liberties Union jumped into the fray. . . . One key reason for slippage in school discipline since the 1960s is the rise of ``students' rights'' as promulgated by the permissive ACLU. This is the doctrine which sharply curtails schools' authority to deal with troublemaking children...."

Ayn Rand Institute 11/98 Dr. Gary Hull, PhD ".To accommodate the slowest learners, the entire K-12 curriculum has been "dumbed down." And high schools on both coasts are dispensing with awards honoring top seniors. They don't select "the most likely to succeed" or the "most talented." These schools no longer offer class rankings, nor do they select a class valedictorian. In today's age of achievement-hatred, it is okay to spend millions on playground psychopaths. But it is considered morally low to honor a bright student.."

Washington Times 10/20/98 Cheryl Wetzstein ".Many of the nation's schoolchildren admit to shoplifting, cheating and lying, according to a survey taken by a group that works to promote good character in schools. "People who develop the habit of cheating or stealing are going to continue to cheat and steal later in life," said Michael Josephson, president of the Josephson Institute of Ethics in Marina Del Ray, Calif. And many of these same students who admit to unethical behavior say they are "satisfied" with their ethics and character, he said. Mr. Josephson founded the institute in 1985 in honor of his parents, Joseph and Edna Josephson, with the goal of improving the ethical quality of American society.."

Wall St Journal 10/27/98 Kay Hymowitz "."The 12- to 14-year-olds of yesterday are the 10- to 12-'s of today," says Bruce Friend, a vice president of the kids' cable channel Nickelodeon. The Nickelodeon-Yankelovich Youth Monitor found that by the time they are 12, children describe themselves as "flirtatious, sexy, trendy, athletic, cool." Among the products targeted at this age group is the Sweet Georgia Brown line from AM Cosmetics. It includes body paints and scented body oils with names like Vanilla Vibe and Follow Me Boy. Soon, thanks to the Cincinnati design firm Libby Peszyk Kattiman, your little darling will be able to slip into some tween-sized bikini panties.The tweening of childhood is more than just a matter of fashion. Tweens are demonstrating many of the deviant behaviors we usually associate with adolescence. "Ninth and 10th grade used to be the starting point for a lot of what we call risk behaviors," says Henry Trevor, who heads a middle school in Brooklyn, N.Y. "Fifteen years ago they moved into the eighth grade. Now it's seventh grade."."

OP NEWS & VIEWS 5/16/99 Charles Muth Freeper GrandmaC "...About That High School Proficiency Test... I haven't taken anything more than a blood test in over 20 years - and never spent a day in college - so I was a bit nervous about taking the Nevada high school math proficiency test that 1,501 high school seniors have been unable to pass - in FOUR tries! I admit that I DID rush through the test in just over 30 minutes, did NOT use the formula page and did NOT bother to double-check my answers. Still, I got 47 of the 58 questions correct (81%). The simplicity of this multiple-guess test should be a no-brainer for students who are still in school, studying for the test, taking their time and checking their answers. Any student who can't scratch out at least 61% on this test hasn't earned a high school education - regardless of who's fault it is. Democrat Assembly Education Committee Chairman Wendell Williams and the seven Democrat committee members who voted to further LOWER the passing grade to 57% (heck, why grade them at all, huh?) should be ashamed of themselves for cheating our kids out of their futures...."

Associated Press 12/9/98 ". An elementary school teacher gave children altered lyrics to ``Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer'' in which Santa asks a gunman to shoot his wife. The lyrics were included in a packet of Christmas songs given out by an unidentified teacher at Devens Elementary School last week. The song, renamed ``Deadeye the Two-Gun Slinger,'' included the lyric: ``Then one foggy Christmas Eve, Santa came to say, ``Deadeye with your gun so bright, won't you shoot my wife tonight?'' Theresa Schuesler complained to school officials after her husband heard their 8-year-old son singing the song last week, and was shocked to find out the boy got it in class. ``This song is wrong,'' she said. ``This song is so bad it should never have gone out.'' School Superintendent Frederick Foresteire said the teacher would be ``written up'' by the principal, but he did not think an apology or explanation to the children was necessary.."

GOP NEWS & VIEWS 5/16/99 Charles Muth Freeper GrandmaC "...About That High School Proficiency Test... I haven't taken anything more than a blood test in over 20 years - and never spent a day in college - so I was a bit nervous about taking the Nevada high school math proficiency test that 1,501 high school seniors have been unable to pass - in FOUR tries! I admit that I DID rush through the test in just over 30 minutes, did NOT use the formula page and did NOT bother to double-check my answers. Still, I got 47 of the 58 questions correct (81%). The simplicity of this multiple-guess test should be a no-brainer for students who are still in school, studying for the test, taking their time and checking their answers. Any student who can't scratch out at least 61% on this test hasn't earned a high school education - regardless of who's fault it is. Democrat Assembly Education Committee Chairman Wendell Williams and the seven Democrat committee members who voted to further LOWER the passing grade to 57% (heck, why grade them at all, huh?) should be ashamed of themselves for cheating our kids out of their futures...."

New York Post 5/24/99 ANDREA PEYSER Freeper laz "...ANOTHER possible reason why so many schoolkids can't read and their teachers can't write: the abysmal quality of teacher education in this city. Two weeks ago, this column presented the illiterate writings of Queens middle-school students - teens of 13 and 14 who can barely construct a simple sentence as they prepare to enter high school. Last week, in a rare and alarming peek into who's in charge of instructing public schoolkids in the basics, this column published barely intelligible notes penned by teachers at a Brooklyn elementary school. "Why is he not learning or learning so but so little with my help?" wrote one teacher, unintentionally answering the question..."

 

New York Post 5/26/99 MARIA ALVAREZ, GREGG BIRNBAUM and SUSAN EDELMAN Freeper laz "...Two out of three city fourth-graders failed to meet strict new reading and writing standards, startling new test results show. Sixty-seven percent of the city's 75,400 kids who took the state's new English Language Arts exam in January fell short or performed abysmally...."

New York Post 5/26/99 HERMAN BADILLO "...YESTERDAY, with great fanfare, the Board of Education announced the results of the fourth-grade English Language Arts Tests. As might be expected, Chancellor Rudy Crew and the board sought out every ray of sunshine, and presented the scores with the best possible spin. A close look at the results, however, shows that our grade schools are perpetuating practices to virtually guarantee that by the fourth grade many students, particularly those in predominately African-American and Hispanic districts, will be performing at unacceptable levels. For many years I have been urging the Board of Education to abolish social promotions - the practice of automatically promoting students from one grade to another. Beginning in first grade, students advance without regard to academic performance...."

U.S.News & World Report 5/31/99 JOHN LEO "...Non-Asian minorities tend to score lower on standardized tests used for college admissions than do Asian-Americans and whites. The obvious answer to this gap is better schools in minority neighborhoods and better study habits. But the Clinton administration has a quicker fix: Let's just declare the tests invalid. The draft of a new "resource guide" by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights says that "the use of any educational test which has a significant disparate impact on members of any particular race, national origin, or sex is discriminatory" unless the school using the test can prove otherwise. That makes almost all educational tests suspect. Specifically, the department is warning that the SAT and ACT tests are presumed to be invalid if they are a significant basis for college admissions and financial-aid decisions that fail to produce proportional representation by race and gender...."

WorldNetDaily 6/16/99 Walter Williams "….The May 14 Chronicle of Higher Education ran a story by Robin Wilson titled "Ph.D. Programs Face a Paucity of Americans." Wilson says that if you visited just about any physics laboratory at U.S. research universities, you'd find as many foreigners as Americans. The American Institute of Physics estimates that this year, for the first time, the majority of first-year doctoral students in physics at our universities is foreign. In the academic year 1997 to 1998, China alone supplied 20 percent of all international physics students. At Penn State University, as is typical at other universities, half the students in its graduate physics program are foreigners. In 1997, foreign students earned 37 percent of all science and engineering doctorates at American universities. By contrast, at most American universities, there are few to no foreigners getting Ph.D.s in education, cultural studies and history. The evidence clearly demonstrates that the more intellectually challenging a field of study is, the fewer American students…."

www.jewishworldreview.com Walter Williams 6/99 "…THE MAY 14 CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION ran a story by Robin Wilson titled "Ph.D. Programs Face a Paucity of Americans." Wilson says that if you visited just about any physics laboratory at U.S. research universities, you'd find as many foreigners as Americans. The American Institute of Physics estimates that this year, for the first time, the majority of first-year doctoral students in physics at our universities is foreign. In the academic year 1997 to 1998, China alone supplied 20 percent of all international physics students. At Penn State University, as is typical at other universities, half the students in its graduate physics program are foreigners. In 1997, foreign students earned 37 percent of all science and engineering doctorates at American universities. By contrast, at most American universities, there are few to no foreigners getting Ph.D.s in education, cultural studies and history. The evidence clearly demonstrates that the more intellectually challenging a field of study is, the fewer American students….Even our brightest students aren't challenged, as evidenced by the fact that far fewer high school students score 1400 to 1600 on the SAT today than during the 1960s. Today's educational emphasis is on sex indoctrination in the name of sex education, environmentalism and solving society's problems. Even at colleges, students can learn nonsense like standard English is "essentially an instrument of domination." They can take courses for academic credit like "Queer Theory" and the works of PeeWee Herman. While American students trail their counterparts in other industrialized countries in just about every academic area, they have the highest levels of self-esteem and feel good about their educational achievements. That's sad. They're fools and don't know it…."

Washington Post 7/8/99 Laura Sessions Stepp "…"The mother of an Arlington teenager will never forget the phone call she received from Williamsburg Middle School, where her daughter was in the eighth grade. "I'd like to invite you to a meeting about girls at risk," said Latanja Thomas, the eighth-grade school counselor. "What risk?" the mother asked. "Eating disorders?" "No." "Drugs?" "No." "Well, what is it?" "Oral sex." "I about dropped the phone," the mother recalled. "I was stunned." So were other parents of girls at Williamsburg who took similar calls that evening and showed up for a meeting in the school library a few nights later. ..."

USA Today 6/8/99 Editorial "...If it's not OK for your high school student to get a "D" on a math test, why should it be OK for your child's teacher? That's the case in Oregon, where would-be teachers must score only 65% on a commonly used national exam required for teaching math in middle and high school. And compared to the rest of the country, that's tough grading. The lowest cutoff score on the test is set by Georgia, where prospective teachers can score less than 50% and still qualify...... The nation's poorest schools are the very schools stocked with an overabundance of underqualified teachers. And the notion that minority students can't pass tougher teacher certification tests is based on the insulting assumption that minorities can't meet high standards...."

Dallas Morning News 6/11/99 Linda K. Wertheimer "....Most Dallas high school students this year once again bombed on the state's end-of-course Algebra I exam. Just 15 percent passed. Still, they did better than last year, when only 11 percent passed. Students now can graduate even though they haven't proved their prowess in algebra. But by 2003, they'll have to master algebraic equations or risk not getting diplomas because of new state testing rules...."A lot of teachers don't teach higher-order thinking skills because they don't understand them that well," said Robert Mendro, the school district's interim assistant superintendent over testing. ..."

New York Post 6/11/99Andrea Peyser "....THIS is a fine time in America to be a drug addict. Not convinced? Perhaps you will be in a moment. This news item reads like some kind of futuristic fiction. It's not: At Columbia University, heroin junkies are being paid. To take heroin. Free drugs are served up to a select handful of addicts as part of a federally funded study. This study involves giving users drugs meant to induce them to stop using other drugs - namely, heroin. Still with me? The researchers believe that they must administer pure heroin to the test subjects in order to test an anti-heroin drug. This is meant to cure addiction. Too bad it doesn't work. To sign up for the study, the 14 test subjects, men and women ages 21 to 45, need to meet two qualifications: They must have no violent criminal history. And, most important, they must exhibit absolutely no desire to quit using heroin....."

Associated Press 6/11/99 Hal Spencer "...Several students walked out of their college commencement Friday and some stood with their backs to the stage to protest the inclusion of convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal as a speaker. Protesters, including police officers in dress uniforms, walked out of the Evergreen State College commencement when Abu-Jamal's audiotaped remarks were played. A handful of about 800 graduating seniors wearing blue armbands also walked out, while two dozen others stood and turned their backs during the 13-minute speech....."

Florida Times-Union 4/29/99 Jim Saunders "...A deeply divided Florida House yesterday approved a plan that would use taxpayer-funded vouchers to send thousands of children to private schools. The plan, which House and Senate negotiators hammered out this week, could go to the Senate for a vote today. If approved in the Senate, it will head to Gov. Jeb Bush, who has made vouchers one of his top priorities. Supporters said the plan will help students escape failing public schools and allow parents to choose the best schools for their children. ''This is a threat to the status quo,'' said Rep. Tom Warner, R-Stuart. ''Thank goodness.'' Opponents, however, likened the debate to a ''funeral'' for public schools. They say public schools will be hurt by sending children and tax dollars to private schools...."

 

Investors Business Daily, Inc. 7/19/99 Anna Bray Duff "...It has been a long time since California residents got any good news about their public schools. But statewide scores on a standardized test are headed up in almost all grades. Why? You'd be hard-pressed to think of a school reform -other than school choice - that hasn't been launched there over the past few years. Class-size reduction, back-to- basics math and reading, English immersion. Just name the reform, and you can find a backer crediting it for higher test scores. California schools do have far to go. On tests that measured students' skills relative to a set standard, rather than to other students, scores were dismal. The gap between poor students and others is shockingly wide. And some experts caution that higher test scores may mean nothing at all. It's the second year students have had to take this test, so they could be doing better just because they're better prepared for it...."

Association of American Educators, & Wash. Times 7/17/99 Donna Garner, & Marian Kester Cooms "…Project Follow Through by Association of American Educators July 17, 1999 …. What does Project Follow Through conclude is the best method of teaching students? "The teacher in a face to face, reasonably formal manner, tells, shows, models, demonstrates, and teaches the skill to be learned. The key word is teacher, for it is the teacher who is in command...There was a general finding that highly structured classes focused on basic skills produced better results on basic skills tests." Based on the research results of Project Follow Through, the writers of the Texas Alternative Document (TAD -- http://www.htcomp.net/tad) for English / Language Arts / Reading stated in the Introduction to their standards document, "...the classroom [should be] both teacher-directed and student-centered." …."

 

Fox News 7/21/99 Jim Abrams AP "...President Clinton says he will veto a House-passed teacher improvement bill that Republicans say will give schools more choice but the president says would trample on his goal to put 100,000 new teachers in the nation's elementary schools. The legislation, passed 239-185 Tuesday with support from 24 Democrats, carries forth the longtime Republican priority of moving control over education dollars from Washington to the states and local school districts..... Under the bill, local school districts would be held accountable for raising student achievement but could decide how best to use the money to improve teacher quality, whether that be by hiring more teachers, teacher training or expanding special education...."

American Spectator 7/22/99 Kyle Harper "... The sound had a familiar ring to it. Something was wrong. The program wasn't working. It was failing because of a lack of funding. It was failing because of sexism. No, the program isn't welfare, government-subsidized child care, or any other social program. It's the Women's Studies program at the University of Oklahoma....As the Washington Times pointed out in a front-page story earlier this spring, college students nationwide are becoming more conservative. That certainly holds true in Oklahoma -- one of the most socially conservative states in the Union. Oklahoma has the largest all-Republican congressional delegation and prides itself on being the buckle of the Bible Belt. There's little question, as on so many campuses across America, the faculty here is more liberal than the student population...."

American Spectator 7/22/99 Kyle Harper "... Like a social program, the problem with Women's Studies is inherent. At the University of Oklahoma you won't find many students interested in the type of classes this major offers. A look at the course descriptions alone tells why.... For example, one of the options for a student majoring in women's studies is "Rethinking Gender Roles in Counter Cinema," where students can "explore psychoanalytic film theory as the critical tool for examining gender construction ... including heterosexual, gay, and lesbian films." No matter how much funding the program had, it most likely couldn't generate widespread interest in another course, "Sexism and Homophobia." Students who take this course can "familiarize themselves with the history of homosexuals, gay men and lesbians in the United States, to recognize homophobia and heterosexism in themselves..." And these are just a few examples. The usual "sex roles," "sexism in curricula," and "alternative arrangements to marriage and family institutions," are all there. Perhaps the vast majority of students aren't ready to give up on traditional values like family...."

New York Times 7/23/99 Alan Chodos "...The most important lesson of the recent suspected Chinese spy case is not that we must guard against foreign nationals who are conspiring to infiltrate our national laboratories. Rather, it's that American scientific pre-eminence is at risk because there are so few good young American physicists and labs must fill their ranks instead with foreign-born scientists. The golden age for physics in this country was the 1960's, when university budgets were ample and young people considered physics to be a challenging and worthwhile career. Today, even though American graduate schools still provide the world's best education in physics, the classes are half their former size and are filled mostly with foreign students. Only 3,826 bachelor's degrees in physics were awarded in 1997 (the last year for which statistics are available), the lowest figure in 40 years. And half the entering graduate student class in 1998 was foreign, compared with 42 percent 10 years ago...."

Conservative News Service 7/26/99 Justin Torres "...After winning a recent legal battle on narrow grounds, the National Education Association (NEA) and several other advocacy groups have filed a new lawsuit against a school voucher program in Cleveland, Ohio. The NEA - joined by its Ohio affiliate, the American Civil Liberties Union, People for the American Way, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State - filed a lawsuit in federal district court last week, seeking a temporary injunction to close the program down. The suit charges that the program violating the First Amendment of the Constitution, and alleges that financial abuse and safety code violations are rampant throughout schools participating in the program...."

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 7/27/99 Ernie Suggs "...With a judge's recent ruling, the University of Georgia has joined a growing number of large state institutions of higher learning that are facing a question with no easy answer. Their dilemma: how to provide blacks a fair opportunity to attend publicly funded universities without employing admission policies that elevate black candidates over whites solely on the basis of race. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge B. Avant Edenfield dismissed a lawsuit against UGA and the Board of Regents that claimed a white student had been unfairly denied admission because of a policy favoring blacks. But the ruling was based on a technicality: The student lacked standing to challenge the policy because it hadn't clearly affected his failure to gain admission. The judge used the rest of his decision to declare that UGA's policy allowing racial preference in admissions amounts to reverse discrimination. It was a warning to the university that, had the student been found qualified to challenge the ruling, UGA would have lost the case...."

latimes.com 7/28/99 Louis Sahagun, Kenneth Weiss "...Tens of thousands of black and Latino high school students are deprived of equal access to California's most prestigious public universities because their schools do not offer as many Advanced Placement courses as schools with predominantly white students, according to a class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday. The American Civil Liberties Union, acting on behalf of four Inglewood High School students, charges that as a result of this disparity blacks and Latinos are being disproportionately rejected from top universities such as UCLA and UC Berkeley...."

Los Angeles Daily News 7/28/99 K Lloyd Billingsley "...A federal court has handed a mixed victory to California's children but at the same time revealed why the state's education levels remain among the worst--teachers who barely know as much as the students they teach. Last week the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the California Basic Education Skills Test, used since 1983 to test prospective teachers. Though the knowledge level of the test reaches only that of a high school sophomore, a group of eight unsuccessful test takers and three groups sued, claiming that the test was discriminatory and the standards "too high." ..."

WorldNetDaily 7/28/99 Walter Williams "...I've discovered what might be the root cause of many of the nation's problems. It hurts me to my heart to own up to it; but a large percentage of Americans are either misinformed, stupid or both.... Fox News Opinion Dynamics conducted a survey. On July 16, the results were reported on its website by Fox News reporter Dana Blanton. One question asked, "Some people say the government has plenty of money of its own and it should be spent on programs. Other people say that the government has no money except that which it takes from citizens in taxes. Which do you believe?" Thirty-nine percent of the respondents said the government has no money except what it takes from citizens in taxes. Eleven percent said neither or they weren't sure. But get this: 50 percent said the government has plenty of money of its own. Since government can't spend what it doesn't first take, the correct answer is government has no money except what it takes from its citizens in taxes. But what about that 50 percent of the American people who believe that government has plenty of money of its own? These are the people big-spending politicians love.....I wouldn't be surprised at all if teacher lesson plans promoted the idea that government has plenty of its own money. Otherwise, how is it possible for a person to have a high-school diploma or college degree and have a Santa Claus vision of government? ...."

Associated Press 7/30/99 Robert Jablon ".... At $175 million, the Belmont Learning Center would be the most expensive high school in the United States. But it may never open. The 35-acre site school officials chose is a former oil field with high levels of potentially explosive methane gas and lesser amounts of hydrogen sulfide, a highly toxic gas...."

Houston Chronicle 4/25/99 Charles Miller "...IN spite of the constant complaints of those who are unwilling to accept the fact that public school performance is improving, the Texas public school system and our students continue to garner local and national acclaim. Let's review the facts: · The National Education Goals Panel, which is overseen by a board of directors that includes eight governors and four members of Congress, found that students in Texas and North Carolina made greater combined achievement gains in reading and math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress between 1992 and 1996 than any other of the states....· When compared to their peers, Texas students perform above the national average in reading and mathematics. In some instances, Texas scores are at or near the top on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. In the "State of State Standards" published by the Fordham Foundation, Texas received the highest grades for its academic standards. The American Federation of Teachers in its 1998 Annual Standards Report praised the Texas system standards, measurement and consequences...."

New Times 7/22/99 Jill Stewart "...The 100 really awful lemon principals in Los Angeles who have long been allowed to ruin the city's schools got a rare moment of attention last week, when the reform group LEARN released a report decrying the outrageous system that protects incompetent principals from dismissal. It was a nice, but ineffective, gesture. LEARN has never accepted the fact that the only way to reform Los Angeles schools is to take off the gloves. Classroom reform will not happen unless those in power accept the philosophy that reform is behavior modification for adults – especially the principals and teachers who control what happens inside the classrooms..."

Reuters CNETnews.com 8/2/99 "...A U.S. Appeals Court upheld a $2 billion annual federal program to subsidize Internet connections for schools and libraries. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Friday backed the Federal Communications Commission's decisions to allow the subsidies to be used to pay directly for Internet access as well as needed internal wiring at schools and libraries. Major telephone carriers such as GTE had argued the money could only be spent on telecommunications services. Thousands of schools and libraries around the country connected to the Internet thanks in part to the program created in the 1996 Telecommunications Act and known as the education rate or e-rate...."

8/3/99 Education Week Jeff Archer "...Efforts to bring teacher testing back to Alabama have kicked up a storm of criticism in the Heart of Dixie this summer, even prompting a gag order against officials involved in the negotiations.... "We believe our reputation rests on our allegiance to some very high technical standards and on some very sound advice to our clients," said Mari Pearlman, an ETS vice president. "And we believed we were going to be jeopardizing that." At the same time, The Birmingham News reported that much of the PRAXIS I exam's content is geared toward a middle school level, making it an easier test than the high school graduation exam Alabama recently adopted. State board members and Gov. Don. Siegelman, a Democrat, excoriated the education department. Tempers were stoked by state schools Superintendent Edward R. Richardson's admission that he didn't realize the relatively low level of the PRAXIS I. "I was surprised," he said. "It's used in 25 states, so we assumed that would be what we would use." ...."

Baltimore Sun 8/2/99 Neal Peirce "...From New Jersey to Baltimore to Oakland, Calif., mayors and governors have been seizing control of public schools from failing school boards. Parents are being offered more choices for their children. Charter-school laws have passed in 37 states; this fall such schools will enroll 350,000 children. Voucher programs are increasingly being adopted. ....What changes might the next 10 years bring? The Education Commission of the States (ECS) in Denver, an interstate compact of governors and legislators, appointed a school governance panel to ask just those questions. The panel (of which this writer is a member) isn't supposed to come up with a single, governance formula -- just raise ideas. But the ideas surfacing are already causing jitters among school boards and teachers' unions. They include: Decentralize school systems so even the hiring of staff is done by individual schools. Parents would choose schools for their children, schools would get to hire the faculty they prefer and teachers would be are free to shop around for jobs. Make all schools charter schools, leaving each free to define its own mission and compete for students. School boards would simply let contracts for services? ...."

Lexington Institute 8/8/99 "...One of the greatest challenges facing charter schools is a general inability to obtain start-up financing. In many cases, charter schools are housed in ramshackle facilities with little prospect for improvement. How serious are these problems for the charter-school movement? How might they be solved? Are there institutions that might be willing to lend money to charter schools and/or obtain an equity stake in them> Are there other solutions that are compatible with the charter school mission of innovating and providing families choices in education?...."

ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE 8/7/99 Kenneth Heard "...Federal Emergency Management Agency officials will help develop a national program to combat school violence in the aftermath of shootings at Westside Middle School near Jonesboro and other schools around the country, an agency official said Friday. "We didn't have school violence before," said Kay Goss, associate director of the agency and a native of Northwest Arkansas who was appointed to her post six years ago. "But the definition of emergencies in school has to be changed to include school violence." ..."

http://www.eagleforum.org/column/1999/aug99/99-08-04.html 8/4/99 Phyllis Schlafly "...President Bill Clinton's earliest and most steadfast supporters, the members of the National Education Association (NEA), met in Orlando over the Fourth of July to pass their usual list of radical resolutions. Unlike Party platforms, which are often consigned to the circular file or even repudiated by the candidates, NEA resolutions spell out the lobbying orders for the well-paid NEA staff. To no one's surprise, the NEA passed strong resolutions demanding that federal funding for public schools be "substantially increased" and that all proposals for tuition tax credits or vouchers be vehemently opposed. The NEA is so vindictively against private schools that one resolution even opposes ever renting or selling a closed public school building to a private school. The NEA's hostility to nonpublic education is also manifest in its demand that parents be licensed in order to homeschool and be permitted to use only curricula approved by the state. And, when their convention headliner, Hillary Clinton, included a kind word for charter schools in her speech, she was greeted by stony silence....."

St. Petersburg Times 8/8/99 Stephen Hegarty "...The test results can determine which public schools will have to grant students private tuition vouchers, and which will get increased state money. But despite its importance to the state, when the announcement was made in February ordering 10th-graders at Pinellas County's Dixie Hollins High School to report to take the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, dozens of sophomores ignored it. Some figured they already took the test once (they were repeating 10th grade), and didn't have to take it again. They were wrong. But 44 students didn't even have that excuse. Though they apparently were in school, they simply skipped the two-day test.

"It is obvious these students skipped or dodged the test," Dixie Hollins Principal Jeff Haynes wrote to the Departmen of Education when asked to explain why fewer than 80 percent of his 10th-graders took the FCAT. Dixie, in Pinellas County, wasn't alone. Across the state, 52 schools received an "incomplete" grade from the state because they didn't have enough students take the test. That includes three high schools in Pasco County. The phenomenon has reminded school officials of a simple truth: If you're going to give students a truly challenging test -- a test that requires hours and days of concentration -- you had better give them a clear incentive to show up. Otherwise, they might just say no -- and suffer no consequences. ..."

Washington Post 8/8/99 Hanna Rosin "...For biology teacher Al Frisby, teaching evolution to the many students who take the Bible literally is like "banging his face against a brick wall." More than a third of the students at his suburban high school in Shawnee Mission, Kan., wrote in a final evaluation last year that they did not believe a thing their teacher had to say on the subject. The challenge Frisby faces is apt to get tougher next year. On Wednesday, a majority of the Kansas Board of Education may vote to pass a new statewide science curriculum for kindergarten through 12th grade that wipes out virtually all mention of evolution and related concepts: natural selection, common ancestors and the origins of the universe..... If the conservative majority on the school board prevails as expected, it will mark the most decisive victory in recent years for the creationist movement: Christians who read the book of Genesis literally and believe that God created human beings and animals fully formed. "This is the most explicit censorship of evolution I have ever seen," said Molleen Matsumura of the National Center for Science Education. ...."

Washington Post 8/8/99 Hanna Rosin "... The century-old debate erupted again, ironically, in part out of a push to improve science education. About five years ago, a craze for national standards and accountability in every subject swept American classrooms. In response, national groups of science educators wrote benchmarks for scientific literacy to serve as models for states. The idea was to replace blind memorization of facts and figures with broad central concepts. With evolution, the results were not what scientists had predicted. Religious conservatives tapped into skepticism from inside and outside the scientific community to discredit evolution, seizing on routine disagreements among scientists to disparage it as nothing more than a theory...."

WorldNet Daily 8/12/99 "..."... believe them not, though they speak fair words unto thee." --Jeremiah 12:6 We live in a world built upon deceit. Ours is an age that cannot know truth, for its professional wise men -- those who inhabit our halls of learning -- deny that truth exists. Our fate as individuals under their tutelage is to stumble from one passionate, lying embrace to the next, fueling our pain and alienating our souls, engaged in a blind search for that which we have been warned we cannot have..... These colorful balloon-beasts they send forth to slay the demons of our collective guilt, selfishness and ambition, so that we may all together appear wise, just, and righteous in our own eyes. It is now an accepted fact that the perks of high political office in the United States include sex with campaign contributors' children; that there is no accountability -- not from the courts, the people, or the Congress -- for lies so voluminous that they can no longer be properly counted and catalogued; that treason in the form of leaving our nation naked and defenseless before its enemies is an acceptable means of campaign fundraising -- provided that it helps you to win the next election; and that God is an absentee landlord, doesn't bother to vote, and neither sees nor hears our multitudinous affronts to His character, perhaps because He is too busy blessing us with His patience and grace.

WorldNet Daily 8/12/99 "..."... Our society has accepted the notion that "guns kill people," while excusing the murderous madmen who wield them.... The "evil influences" of Jesus Christ and the Bible, which gave us the foundations upon which our freedoms, our government and our unimaginable prosperity were built -- must, at all costs -- be kept out of our schools. Let us instead worship evil under the guise of tolerance -- and invite in the demonic "spirit guides" of the "new age" to teach our children how to listen to these lying voices and follow them "wherever they lead."....Science, once the proud god of this age, has been profaned by her own worshipers: in her very temple researchers fabricate evidence to get the politically-correct answer that yields their next fix of government money....The destruction of colleagues' lives is of no concern if it enhances their imagined "infallibility." Our children have accepted these lies as their own, and are busy building their lives upon them...."

MSNBC 8/11/99 Reuters "...The Kansas Board of Education rejected evolution as a scientific principle Wednesday, dealing a victory to religious conservatives who are increasingly challenging science education in U.S. schools. The 10-member board, ignoring pleas by educators and established scientists, voted six to four to embrace new standards for science curricula that eliminate evolution as an underlying principle of biology and other sciences.... "

Associated Press 8/11/99 Kimberly Hefling "...With essentially no community opposition, volunteers placed the Ten Commandments in every classroom in a rural eastern Kentucky school district before classes began on Wednesday. The Jackson County school board and superintendent made the decision as part of ``an effort to start having good morals in school ... because of all the violent issues that have been showing up,'' said Betty Bond, principal of Jackson County High School. Timothy Crawford, the district's attorney, said he's concerned about lawsuits, but believes the Ten Commandment plaques in the district's five schools are allowed by law because they were paid for and posted by local volunteers. Robert Lakes, a business teacher at Jackson County High School, said the Ten Commandments were posted in the classroom when he was growing up. ``It's like the flag,'' Lakes said. ``We've been tearing down symbols that have been in this country'' for a long time....."

The New Australian 8/99 Phyllis Schlafly Report "... A federal district judge in White Plains, NY, ruled last month that the Bedford Central School District must stop requiring schoolchildren to create paper images of a Hindu god, to make toothpick and yarn "worry dolls" to ward off anxiety, and to take part in Earth Day worship services. Third graders had been required to make clay and construction paper cutouts of the elephant-headed Hindu god, Ganesha.

Judge Charles Brieant ordered the school district to (1) "prevent school sponsorship of worship of the Earth" and North American Indian animism or nature worship, (2) "remove the worry dolls from the school system" and "refrain from suggesting that (such) tangibles have supernatural powers," (3) prohibit "any direction to a student to make a likeness or graven image of a god or religious symbol," and (4) "direct the adoption of a published policy containing clear instructions (about religion) to teachers and others." The school was engaging in what the judge called "truly bizarre" Earth Day celebrations. He said that these events "take on (many) of the attributes of the ceremonies of worship by organized religions." According to the parents who filed the lawsuit, "student and senior citizens, who have also become part of earth worship services, sit in concentric circles around a giant inflated globe placed atop a bamboo tripod. The elderly people form the inside circle, symbolizing that they are closer to the earth and will return to it to nourish it." A chorus of tom-tom drums plays throughout the ceremony, while teachers and school officials read speeches. The ceremony pretends that the earth is deified, and students are urged to "do something to make Mother Earth smile." Evidence submitted in this case included an audiotape (Exhibit 62) entitled "Listening to Nature," which intersperses prayers and invocations sonorously uttered along with background sounds of forest and ocean. The plaintiff parents particularly objected to the fact that the tape, which they characterized as "nature worship and guided imagery," was played in science classes. The accompanying book contains this creed: "This is what we believe. The Mother of us all is the Earth. The Father is the Sun. The Grandfather is the Creator who bathed us with his mind and gave life to all things. The Brother is the beasts and trees. The Sister is that with wings."..."

The New Australian 8/99 Phyllis Schlafly Report "...The school district is expected to appeal the decision in this case, Altman et al. v. Bedford Central School District. If it does, the parents should appeal the failure of the court to throw out the offensive classroom activities involved in the use of the card game called "Magic: The Gathering." It was this card game that alerted the plaintiffs to contest the peculiar classroom activities. They objected to the "Magic" card game because it is steeped in satanic imagery, signs, and rituals such as human sacrifice and the casting of spells. The object of the game is to accumulate "mana," which is "power that comes from the earth." The plaintiffs contend that the card game "initiates children into satanism using perversion of actual Bible verses." One card, depicting a man about to be sacrificed with a knife about to plunge into his heart, carries this strange message: "Sacrifice one of your creatures to add to your mana pool a number of black mana equal to that creature's casting cost." Another card shows a terrified woman with a hand holding her head down and a huge knife at her throat. The parents charged that the card game is part of a New Age curriculum that includes yoga lessons, cult worship, and religious activities. "The cards represent a billion dollar industry," attorney Mary Ann DiBari said, "and our children are paying the price with indoctrination in the occult."...."

Education Week 8/12/99 "...Volunteer effort in rural district is unopposed With essentially no community opposition, volunteers placed the Ten Commandments in every classroom in a rural eastern Kentucky school district before classes began on Wednesday. The Jackson County school board and superintendent made the decision as part of ``an effort to start having good morals in school because of all the violent issues that have been showing up,'' said Betty Bond, principal of Jackson County High School...."

Education Week 8/12/99 "...With essentially no community opposition, volunteers placed the Ten Commandments in every classroom in a rural eastern Kentucky school district before classes began on Wednesday. The Jackson County school board and superintendent made the decision as part of ``an effort to start having good morals in school because of all the violent issues that have been showing up,'' said Betty Bond, principal of Jackson County High School.

Timothy Crawford, the district's attorney, said he's concerned about lawsuits, but believes the Ten Commandment plaques in the district's five schools are allowed by law because they were paid for and posted by local volunteers. Robert Lakes, a business teacher at Jackson County High School, said the Ten Commandments were posted in the classroom when he was growing up. ``It's like the flag,'' Lakes said. ``We've been tearing down symbols that have been in this country'' for a long time. Jackson County isn't the only school district in Kentucky or the country where the Ten Commandments are on display in schools. Tonya Adams, principal of Union Chapel Elementary School in Russell County, which has had the Ten Commandments posted for years, said she's never received any complaints about it..."

Wall Street Journal 8/13/99 "...And on the seventh day, He rested. Whoa, no way! "Adam" evolved many millennia ago from a series of random mutations. Whatever. It is not our purpose today to throw in with either the Kansas Board of Education, which voted this week to drop biological evolution from its curriculum guidelines, or with the biologists now screaming that the creationism movement is driving out serious science. We do, however, very much want to discuss driving important things out of public life. Specifically, we have in mind the Supreme Court decisions way back in the early 1960s that led over the years not merely to banning prayer from the schools but to wiping God and religion out of textbooks, graduation ceremonies and anywhere else the ACLU and its ilk could find Him hiding inside a public school. This is what we think is the message these Kansans are sending into the world: "About 35 years ago, you folks banned our religion from the public schools. So we've just voted to drop your religions from the public schools. Now maybe you'd like to sit down and negotiate a deal."..."

Associated Press 8/14/99 "...Gov. Bill Graves and some legislators are talking about abolishing the State Board of Education or stripping it of authority because of its vote to de-emphasize the teaching of evolution. "It's going to be an issue in the legislative session," Mr. Graves, a moderate Republican, said Friday of the board's 6-4 vote this week. On Thursday, Mr. Graves said the decision was "so out of sync with reality" that it minimized the board's credibility. Legislators say the controversy over evolution could create support for changes that have been sought for years by lawmakers in both parties. ..."

Fox News 8/14/99 John Hanna AP "...The American Civil Liberties Union says school districts could face lawsuits if they attempt to teach creationism in wake of the state school board's recent decision to de-emphasize the teaching of evolution. The ACLU, in a letter Friday to school superintendents, warned the districts about adopting "religiously-based standards'' in teaching science. The ACLU also noted U.S. Supreme Court decisions that forbid the teaching of creationism, the belief that a higher power created the universe, because of its religious foundation. People for the American Way and Americans United for the Separation of Church and States also said they would consider lawsuits if religion-based standards were implemented....."

New York Times 8/15/99 George Johnson "...Whenever setbacks like the one in Kansas occur, scientists leap forth to point out the fallacy of the reationist position: There is no compelling reason to single out the evolution of life or the cosmos as being less than absolute. It would be just as sensible for school boards to affix a warning inside physics books: "No one has directly observed the detailed substructure of matter. Therefore, any statement about it being made of atoms should be considered as theory, not fact." The problem is that the dynamic view of science doesn't come across strongly enough in the classroom. For reasons of expediency, scientific theories are presented as done deals. Little appreciation is conveyed for the intellectual struggle that went into interpreting the data or examining the assumptions -- always open to question -- that lurk behind the experiments. Lost from most explications is the exhilarating possibility that a theory that seems undeniable today could be overturned tomorrow. With science presented almost as though it were received wisdom, it's little wonder that some legislators and school board members confuse it with a competing religion, and misconstrue a religious belief like creationism as an alternate scientific theory. They're encouraged to do so by a new wave of creationists who, in an act of intellectual jujitsu, promote their belief in absolute knowledge by invoking the relativistic arguments of post-modern philosophy: While creationism is built on belief in a caring, all-powerful, constantly intervening creator, who completed his work thousands of years ago, evolution has its own tenets of faith. The most fundamental is the belief that the world consists of insentient matter unfolding on its own over vast eons of time -- eons that can only be inferred from indirect evidence. One is still free to believe in a deity, but it's not a necessary part of the equations..... For something to be called a theory, it has to be falsifiable, capable of being overthrown. Students could also be taught the dangers that come when a scientist mistakes a theory for eternal truth, shoring up flimsy hypotheses by contorting the data. They could learn of cases in which a religion flexibly adjusted its doctrines because of new social realities, allowing, for example, homosexuals into the ministry. But slowly, by giving creationism equal time with evolution, the class would see a powerfully subtle difference. Science is, foremost, a method of interrogating reality: proposing hypotheses that seem true and then testing them -- trying, almost erversely, to negate them, elevating only the handful that survive to the status of a theory. Creationism is a doctrine, whose adherents are interested only in seeking out data that support it. In making sense of the world, one is always free to start from different assumptions. But part of a good education is learning what you are trading off in the bargain...."

The Washington Times 8/9/99 Zhengyuan Fu "...President Clinton has renominated Bill Lann Lee as head of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department and pressured the Senate to confirm his nomination. In 1997, the Senate refused to confirm the appointment of Bill Lann Lee because of his support of racial preference policies. But Mr. Clinton installed Mr. Lee on an acting basis. Since then, Bill Lann Lee has been holding illegally the post for more than 18 months in blatant violation of federal law that limits the tenure of acting officials to 120 days. One of the purposes of Mr. Clinton's nomination of Bill Lann Lee is to portray his opponents as bigoted against racial minorities of Asian descent. Another purpose is to portray himself as a supporter of the Asian-American community. In reality, as the former director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's Western office, Bill Lann Lee is renowned for his support of the racial preference programs that openly discriminate against Asian-Americans and violate the fundamental principle of equal treatment under the Constitution. Under the pressure of Bill Lann Lee's former organization, the NAACP, the San Francisco Unified School District imposed different standards of admission based on race and outright racial quotas, which brazenly discriminated against Asians in general and Chinese in particular...."

Florida Times-Union 8/11/99 "...Georgia state School Superintendent Linda Schrenko wants to bring the Bible into high school classrooms as an elective history course. The chairman of the state school board wants a legal opinion first. Both are on the right track. Schrenko is proposing to sanction elective high school social studies courses on the Old and New Testaments. The idea, she says, is to teach students about the Bible's influence on law, history, culture and community life. Schrenko's office reports more than 2,000 comments on the idea, with 90 percent approving of the courses, which would be called History of the Old Testament I and II and History of the New Testament I and II. ''It's a pretty cut and dried syllabus,'' she said. ''It discusses the Bible in the context of history, and it has value in that context.'' ..."

The American Enterprise, a National Magazine of Politics, Business, and Culture 9/10 1999 "...Ithaca, New York is a typical college town. A hotbed, in other words, of left-wing Big Brotherism. At Ithaca's Boynton public middle school, all students were recently indoctrinated in a day-long "celebration" of homosexuality. For four school periods there were videos, lectures, and panels featuring gay teachers, parents, and students. "I did not know that I was a lesbian in the seventh grade, but I have since learned to like 'doing it' with a girl," explained one student panelist. "Now that I have 'done it' with both boys and girls I find I like both." At one point, all students were asked to stand in solidarity with homosexuals. When roughly one-third of the 11- and 12-year-olds did so, parents in attendance observed adults and student peers putting pressure on the rest to conform. After lunch, all students returned to their rooms for the remainder of the day for small group discussions led by teachers who organized the presentations. When a number of aprents registered concerns about the all-day seminar with Ithaca School Board President Steve Shiffrin (who is a Cornell law school professor in his day job), he told them that if they didn't like the district's "multicultural" policy they should put their children in private schools. The same school district has just proposed banning the Boy Scouts (and other single-sex groups) from distributing any literature on school property, on the grounds that they are intolerant organizations...."

Wall Street Journal 8/15/99 Phillip Johnson "...A Chinese paleontologist lectures around the world saying that recent fossil finds in his country are inconsistent with the Darwinian theory of evolution. His reason: The major animal groups appear abruptly in the rocks over a relatively short time, rather than evolving gradually from a common ancestor as Darwin's theory predicts. When this conclusion upsets American scientists, he wryly comments: "In China we can criticize Darwin but not the government. In America you can criticize the government but not Darwin." That point was illustrated last week by the media firestorm that followed the Kansas Board of Education's vote to omit macro-evolution from the list of science topics which all students are expected to master. Frantic scientists and educators warned that Kansas students would no longer be able to succeed in college or graduate school, and that the future of science itself was in danger....The root of the problem is that "science" has two distinct definitions in our culture. On the one hand, science refers to a method of investigation involving things like careful measurements, repeatable experiments, and especially a skeptical, open-minded attitude that insists that all claims be carefully tested. Science also has become identified with a philosophy known as materialism or scientific naturalism. This philosophy insists that nature is all there is, or at least the only thing about which we can have any knowledge. It follows that nature had to do its own creating, and that the means of creation must not have included any role for God. Students are not supposed to approach this philosophy with open-minded skepticism, but to believe it on faith. The reason the theory of evolution is so controversial is that it is the main scientific prop for scientific naturalism. Students first learn that "evolution is a fact," and then they gradually learn more and more about what that "fact" means. It means that all living things are the product of mindless material forces such as chemical laws, natural selection, and random variation. So God is totally out of the picture, and humans (like everything else) are the accidental product of a purposeless universe..... All the most prominent Darwinists proclaim naturalistic philosophy when they think it safe to do so. Carl Sagan had nothing but contempt for those who deny that humans and all other species "arose by blind physical and chemical forces over eons from slime." Richard Dawkins exults that Darwin "made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist," and Richard Lewontin has written that scientists must stick to philosophical materialism regardless of the evidence, because "we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." Stephen Jay Gould condescendingly offers to allow religious people to express their subjective opinions about morals, provided they don't interfere with the authority of scientists to determine the "facts" -- one of the facts being that God is merely a comforting myth.....So one reason the science educators panic at the first sign of public rebellion is that they fear exposure of the implicit religious content in what they are teaching. An even more compelling reason for keeping the lid on public discussion is that the official neo-Darwinian theory is having serious trouble with the evidence..... "

World In Review 4/99 Dr John Coleman "...One of the reasons why there has been such a marked decline in the morals of this nation may have to do with the type of education which has prevailed long enough to produce a people who sheltered President Bill Clinton from being removed from office, and which now seems unwilling to face that what is happening in Serbia, is indefensible.... This is the curriculum of the New World Order known by the Aquarians as "Outcome-Based Education."--OBE.....Thanks to funding by Carnegie Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, OBE has supplanted what education should be and replaced it with what is taught by the priests of the National Education Association. (NEA).....It was this approach that enabled Tavistock to gain control over so many school teachers who were turned from teaching traditional education, to New Age education, which included deviant sexual behavior, under the guise of "sex education," in school rooms all across the 50 states. "How to use a condom properly" was given more classroom time than teaching the United States Constitution. Silently, a cultural war was unleashed against the Founding Fathers of America, against the Christian religion, until today we have reached the point of no return. We either realize that we are in a spiritual battle to keep what is left of the United States and join in that battle or, we stand aside and take no part in it..... "

 

Eagle Forum/Education Reporter 8/99 Phyllis Schlafly on the N.E.A. - excerpted from some of the 1999 NEA Convention resolutions "….

A-2. Educational Opportunity for All. The National Education Association believes that each student has the right to a free public education that should be suited to the needs of the individual and guaranteed by state constitutions and the United States Constitution. Education is a lifelong process, and public schools serve a constituency that embraces all age groups. Access and opportunities for postsecondary education should be widely available, and no qualified student should be denied such opportunities because of the cost of tuition and fees. The Association also believes that all schools must be accredited under uniform standards established by the appropriate agencies in collaboration with the Association and its affiliates.

A-15. Financial Support of Public Education. Funds must be provided for programs to alleviate race, gender, and sexual orientation discrimination and to eliminate portrayal of race, gender, and sexual orientation stereotypes in the public schools. The Association opposes the use of public revenues for private, parochial, or other nonpublic pre-K through 12 schools

A-27. Deleterious Programs. The National Education Association believes that the following programs and practices are detrimental to public education and must be eliminated: privatization, performance contracting, tax credits for tuition to private and parochial schools, voucher plans (or funding formulas that have the same effect as vouchers), planned program budgeting systems (PPBS), and evaluations by private, profit-making groups

B-7. Diversity. The National Education Association believes that a diverse society enriches all individuals. Similarities and differences among races, ethnicity, color, national origin, language, geographic location, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical ability, size, occupation, and marital, parental, or economic status form the fabric of a society. The Association also believes that education should increase acceptance and foster an appreciation of the various qualities that pertain to people as individuals or members of a group. The Association further believes in the importance of observances, programs and curricula that accurately portray and recognize the roles, contributions, cultures, and history of these diverse groups and individuals.

B-8. Racism, Sexism, and Sexual Orientation Discrimination. The National Education Association believes in the equality of all individuals. Discrimination and stereotyping based on such factors as race, gender, immigration status, physical disabilities, ethnicity, occupation, and sexual orientation must be eliminated. The Association also believes that plans, activities, and programs for education employees, students, parents/guardians/caregivers, and the community should be developed to identify and eliminate discrimination and stereotyping in all educational settings.

B-37. Sex Education. The Association recognizes that the public school must assume an increasingly important role in providing the instruction. Teachers and health professionals must be qualified to teach in this area and must be legally protected from censorship and lawsuits. The Association also believes that to facilitate the realization of human potential, it is the right of every individual to live in an environment of freely available information and knowledge about sexuality and encourages affiliates and members to support appropriately established sex education programs. Such programs should include information on sexual abstinence, birth control and family planning, diversity of culture, diversity of sexual orientation, parenting skills, prenatal care, sexually transmitted diseases, incest, sexual abuse, sexual harassment.

B-40. Environmental Education. The Association supports educational programs that promote - The concept of the interdependence of humanity and nature -An awareness of the effects of past, present, and future population growth patterns on world civilization, human survival, and the environment -The protection of endangered, threatened, and rare species -Protection of the earth's finite resources -Solutions to such problems as pollution, global warming, ozone depletion, and acid precipitation and deposition -The recognition of and participation in such activities as Earth Day, Arbor Day, and Energy Education Day.

B-65. Home Schooling. The National Education Association believes that home schooling programs cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience. When a home schooling occurs, students enrolled must meet all state requirements. Home schooling should be limited to the children of the immediate family, with all expenses being borne by the parents/guardians/caregivers. Instruction should be by persons who are licensed by the appropriate state education licensure agency, and a curriculum approved by the state department of education should be used. The Association also believes that home-schooled students should not participate in any extracurricular activities in the public schools.

I-13. Family Planning. The National Education Association supports family planning, including the right to reproductive freedom. The Association further urges the implementation of community-operated, school-based family planning clinics that will provide intensive counseling by trained personnel.

I-27. Freedom of Religion. The Association opposes the imposition of sectarian practices in the public school. The Association also opposes any federal legislation or mandate that would require school districts to schedule a moment of silence.

I-47. English as the Official Language. The Association believes that efforts to legislate English as the official language disregard cultural pluralism; deprive those in need of education, social services, and employment; and must be challenged.

I-50. Equal Opportunity for Women. The Association supports an amendment to the U.S. Constitution (such as the Equal Rights Amendment) that guarantees that equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state because of gender.

Philadelphia Inquirer 8/17/99 David Boldt "….As the hysteria over the sequence of school shootings slowly begins to subside, an answer to the question of what we should do about youth violence is beginning to emerge. In short, we should keep on doing what we've been doing in recent years, because it's working. Despite the now-indelible pictures we all have in our minds of terrified children running for their lives to escape fellow students turned mass murderers, it is now clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that juvenile violence has actually been plummeting. The Department of Education has reported that the number of school shootings dropped sharply over the last five years and may continue downward in 1998-1999, even with the carnage at Columbine High School last spring.

School shootings have always been extraordinarily rare. (There were only 40 in 1997-98.) What's truly remarkable is the decline in teen violence generally. The overall rate for murders by 14-to-17-year-olds dropped from 30.2 per 100,000 in 1993 to 16.5 in 1997. …"

Los Angeles Times 8/18/99 Marian Bergeson "…For thousands of California children who are falling through the cracks--who live in poverty, who attend crumbling school campuses or who are taught by improperly trained teachers--education reform isn't coming fast enough. Indeed, the National Assessment of Education Progress, the nation's report card on schools, placed California pretty much at the bottom of the barrel among the participating states. Even when compared with just the large states that have diverse populations, California's scores were alarmingly low. ..."

www.wbal.com 8/18/99 Ron Smith "…The ongoing degradation of "public", i.e., government education has prompted a tremendous spurt in home-schooling. As many as 1.2 million American families have opted to school their children at home, often at great financial sacrifice, a fact that has goaded the educational establishment and its political servants into a frenzy and into accusations that home-schooled children are somehow being cheated out of a proper childhood. It is worth noting, then, that a study conducted last year by professor Lawrence Rudner, director of the Educational Resources Information Center Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation at the University of Maryland shows that home-schoolers are doing very well indeed in testing. The study, released last week and published in the Educational Policy Analysis Archives, shows home-school students scoring higher on basic skills tests and being more likely to achieve above grade level than either their public or private schooled contemporaries. I wish to thank listener Ernest Purcell fo alerting me to this study, which has been, as far as I can tell, ignored by the prestige media….Typically, home-school families are well-educated, Caucasian, two-parent, and most mothers don’t work outside the home. About 25% are also certified teachers themselves, though the test scores didn’t reflect any differences based on that fact…."

Students Schooled at Home Ace ACT 8/18/99 Andrea Billups "…Home-schooled students scored well above their traditionally educated peers on a national assessment test used by colleges for admission. Home schoolers posted an average score of 22.7 out of a possible 36, tying with students in Rhode Island, who had the highest American College Testing (ACT) marks of teens in any state. "Once again, we can clearly and undeniably tell you that home schooling works," said Michael Farris, president and founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association in Purcellville, Va. "We’re doing quite well as a movement. We should be rewarded with more freedom and not more regulation." …"

Jewish World Review 8/19/99 Thomas Sowell "…NOW THAT THERE HAS BEEN yet another vicious shooting spree, the familiar cry of "gun control" is ringing out from people in politics and the media, along with the equally familiar question: How could anyone do such a thing? It may seem almost utopian to expect rational thinking in the wake of tragic and appalling events. But we can try. In fact, we have a duty to try, if we want to do what we can to understand what has happened and reduce the chances of its continuing to happen. First of all, these are not "senseless" shootings. They are expressions of hatred that disregard morality and common decency, but they are very rationally planned and executed…. That is why there have always been evil and dangerous individuals. The big question is: What have we been doing over the past two generations that has led to there being so many more of them? Since the 1960s especially, we have systematically undermined personal responsibility. It has seemed as if everything that went wrong in our lives was the fault of somebody else, if only "society." Morality has been seen as just a bunch of arbitrary hassles imposed on us by the "power structure." Most people have no idea what an all-out war against morality has been conducted in our public schools from coast to coast over the past generation. "Values clarification" programs under a variety of names encourage children to create their own personal rules of conduct, independent of the traditional morality taught to them by their families, churches and other social institutions. That is what the young murderers at Columbine High School did. That is what was done by the Unabomber and by those who bombed the government building in Oklahoma City and those who are now shooting up all sorts of people they don't like…."

Conservative News Service 8/20/99 Bruce Sullivan "…New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said that Mildred Rosario's firing from a Bronx middle school earlier this month for discussing heaven, death and God with her students "astounded" him. In a statement released to CNS, the mayor allowed that he had not seen all the documentation on the incident, but added, "She (Rosario) seems to have received very little representation, so I was astounded by the procedure." Giuliani said that New York City schools have had teachers accused of theft, sex crimes and even pedophilia who "remained hanging around for two, three or four years with very vigorous representation." Rosario, 43, was fired from her teaching job at IS-74 on June 12 for discussing God and heaven with her sixth graders and praying with them as the children attempted to come to grips with the death of a classmate, who died earlier this month in an accidental drowning….. "

Judicial Watch 8/20/99 Judicial Watch, Inc., the Washington, D.C.-based public interest law firm that fights government corruption, today announced that it will seek to participate in a lawsuit to be filed against the Harrison County School District in Mississippi. Monday, the school board unanimously prohibited Ryan Green, a 15 year old Jewish student, from wearing a Star of David pin given him by his grandmother. The school board feared that the Star of David was a gang symbol. "This is a case of the government’s hostility to religious expression, and the school board’s decision must not stand," stated Judicial Watch General Counsel Larry Klayman. "Our public schools are going down the tubes, they are graduating illiterates, and they spend their time and energy picking on an innocent boy who wishes to express his faith. And then they wonder why more and more parents are pulling their children out of government-run schools. Clearly, we need more God in school, not less," Klayman continued. Judicial Watch joins the American Civil Liberties Union and the Christian Coalition in support of the case. With the court’s permission, Judicial Watch, Inc. will seek to file an amicus curiae or similar legal brief on behalf of Ryan and his fundamental right to free exercise of religion and freedom of expression. …"

Conservative News Service 8/18/99 Tom DeWeese "…Parents looking to the beginning of the new school year may fear a repeat of the violence that has occurred, but the real House of Horrors, says the American Policy Center is just as frightening. Here's what the Center says awaits returning students: 1. Social promotion into grades where they are unable to compete, having failed to acquire the basic skills in the previous year. 2. Math courses in which the memorization of multiplication tables is neither required, nor encouraged. Teachers who believe math, an absolute science, can be absorbed by osmosis. 3. Being in classrooms where the teacher is now a "facilitator" and students are expected to learn from each other. 4. School books of every description in which children are taught to worship the earth or "Gaia", the earth as God. 5. Deceptive permission slips sent home where "physical examinations" do not mention the inclusion of genital examinations for young girls. School health centers that provide information about sexual behavior contrary to the beliefs or wishes of parents. 6. Geography courses where students are asked to make a "Me Map" that has nothing to do with the nations of the world, locations of oceans, rivers or mountain ranges, but rather becomes a device to shape the student's social values. 7. English classes where students are posed ethical questions including those requiring decisions as to who should die and who should live. 8. Science courses that falsely teach that the earth is running out of energy resources, that forests are disappearing, that the provision of abundant food crops is bad because of the use of agricultural chemicals that have been safely applied for decades, and barely hidden advertisements for environmental groups such as the Sierra Club. 9. The widespread administration of mind altering drugs to students, often without the parent's permission or knowledge, for alleged disorders such as Attention Deficit Disorder. 10. The intrusion of often poorly trained "social workers" conducting unsolicited home visits with the power to remove a child they deem to be "at risk."…."