Call 202-224-3121 to be connected to your Representatives and Senators in D.C. today.
They are about to vote to pass No Child Left Behind/ESEA in a new form that is Constitutionally unacceptable.
It promotes accountability, backwards. Instead of the creation (government school system) being accountable to its creator (We, the individual People) this NCLB/ESEA proposed law wants We, the People accountable to the creation itself via data tagging and an increase of laws to bind us.
I recommend reading what American Principles Project is saying at The Pulse 2016 and what U.S. Grassroots organizations said in an open letter to Congress.
You can also just read the official US Dept. of Education blog to see the at-first-glance-seemingly-innocuous words from Secretary Duncan:
“…the nation is at a crossroads with two different paths for an new ESEA — a choice with moral and economic consequences“. That is true. Then he says, “ESEA should be replaced with a law that ensures opportunity for every child in this country; strengthens our nation economically; and expands… accountability.”
Do you see any dangerous false premises behind those words?
- It’s based on the premise that the new version of ESEA is a better law, which is false. ESEA cements big government controls over citizens, assumes that the federal government knows best how to define and how to turn around struggling schools; increases the workforce-not-academic mindset of schools; pushes toddlers into the government influence with early childhood education fund promotion, and builds its whole monstrous mess on federally structured, interoperable, common longitudinal databases (SLDS), and common educational data standards— data tags that are nonconsensual citizen tracking for most of the person’s life. That alone should give Congress a second thought.
- It assumes that the federal government Constitutionally does, or morally should, hold the power to influence “every child in this country”. But the Constitution says otherwise. So does the Bible.
- It assumes that economic fulfillment, defined by government, is a proper role of a school system. That’s communism, folks. In America, we go to school to learn truth– not to be minimally trained in order to serve the government’s definition of what the economy needs.*
- It assumes that accountability should be from students, teachers and schools to Big Government. False. That’s almost exactly backwards. Accountability should be from public servants (teachers, state officials, and elected officials, to the clients of public ed: that is, voters, student familes, and taxpayers. We the People created government. We created the school system. The creation cannot demand accountability from its creator. The creation cannot boss its creator –unless We the People who created it, are sweet-talked and bribed by Duncan and others into allowing it. We the People must hold on to the reins of power and not become sheep to our own creation. But ESEA is threatening us.
*The Business Roundtable has written a letter to Congress that says, “A prepared workforce is essential for U.S. employers of all sizes. This is how we guarantee a brighter future for our workers and their families. We ask you to encourage the conferees to strengthen ESEA’s accountability provisions. Schools should be required to implement support strategies in cases where students are not meeting state-defined achievement goals…”
What? Corporations want Congress to pass ESEA so that schools will be forced to move toward a workforce-based, rather than a liberty and individual-based, achievement plan. That sounds no different that the thinking of the communist countries’ systems. Decision making for children should never be based on the judgment of the government machine’s economic dictates –but on what the student, with guidance from the parent, and trusted teachers, choose.
Please don’t be fooled by the cronies’ talk. This is America. We want academic and creative and computer freedom, not a top-down system run by the coupling of government to corporation, which bypasses the will of the voters and the individuals that must abide by it.
Call today. Tell your Senator and Representative in DC to vote NO on ESEA reauthorization. 202-224-3121.
COMMON CORE 
Common Core is another example of how anything the federal government gets involved in is quickly perverted. I am against Common Core on a few different levels. I don’t like the fact that the federal government now controls the curricula for every grade. This does create an environment ripe for inducting propaganda in the curricula. The controls for learning is dangerous under this condition. I see the potential for stifling the growth of those students who wish to excel by holding them back to the limits of the curricula standards of Common Core.
Dr. James Milgram has been quoted as stating that under Common Core, that math standards do not match up to international expectations. “They were at least 2 years behind the high achieving countries by 7th grade.” This is unacceptable!
I have other issues with Common Core but I will wait for another time.
The final reason for opposing the standardized testing is that the Federal DOE has made the states’ DOE’s their agents in mining data about every student. The DOE paid for the longitudinal computer systems that have been installed in every state’s education department. These are compatible with the federal computer system granting direct access by the Federal Government to the data on every student/citizen in the country! The DOE also paid for the development of the standardized tests that contain the questions about the student’s family and home environment. Therefore, the federal government has paid for the sequencing of questions and data to be gathered by the states. And has paid for the computer system that was created according to their specifications. Therefore, even though the DOE clains that they are not data mining because it is unconstitutional, their agents are using their tools to gather the information for them.
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