Even if you had time to read the final version of the new ESEA bill which will get released days from now –which you won’t, because you’ll be eating turkey– and even if you agreed with every word (which I’m betting you won’t, because Senator Alexander’s view of ed reform is sick and wrong) –but even if you liked it– shouldn’t you, on principle, still oppose its passage, based on the devious process being used, a pushing of laws into their cemented form without representative debate– very fast, and mostly in the dark?
Senator Mike Lee’s fight against this now-brewing, corrupt, “new” No Child Left Behind, inspires me. His backbone in standing up to the corruptos in Congress that are pushing ESEA is a rare treasure in politics. Do you realize that he’s fighting for the actual freedom of our children and grandchildren? This is real. Listen to him.
Senator Lee’s railed against some of the corruption; for example, its $250 million plan to hurt good preschools by pushing loser-federal preschools on all; its cementing of Common Core standards, etc. There’s more brewing that he hasn’t taken time to denounce yet, such as its creepy, parent-ditching “community school” program that puts government ahead of families, churches or anyone else in influencing kids and eating up too much of kids’ time; and its cementing of common, kid-stalking data tags (CEDS) –but you can study all of that.
(I keep calling the other members of the Utah delegation to leave messages asking them to join his fight. Please do, too.)
This process that Senator Lee speaks of is so corrupt.
It is un-American to make Congress vote on something so fast that it hasn’t been vetted or understood by voters. It is un-American to skip debate and to ditch input. We all know that this law will weigh heavily on everyone who will be ruled by it afterward. Shouldn’t voters have a real opportunity to look at the bill from all angles and then take the vote?
Senator Lee has pointed out that the process creates the policy. This is how ESEA/NCLB is to be rammed down the throat of Congress (and all of us) next week.
Step one: right now, a tiny handful of pro-reauthorization members of Congress, behind closed doors, are cooking up the poison pill.
Step 2: They’ll speed it to a vote so fast that the rest of Congress has no time to think before swallowing, no chance to offer what they are supposed to be allowed to offer: “motions to instruct the conferees” (input).
Step 3: They’ll market it under the banner of good-sounding lies and slanted press releases and news stories that will successfully deceive Americans (including our politicians) into believing that control has been returned to the localities. It won’t be true. But we’ll figure it out too late to easily reverse it. Because nobody’s going to really read the bill before they vote yes.
The draft was released a few day ago.The bill won’t be released until next week, the same week that the vote will be taken: December 2.
This hurried method is a sick pattern used by the Obama administration. We saw Secretary Duncan push states with the monetary lure of “Race to the Top” millions to adopt Common Core and its tests and SLDS systems for a chance in that race. Before that, there was the ARRA funding that was tied, among other things, to governors agreeing to get federally-approved student data collection systems and standards.
Now, the speed of ESEA will similarly maim freedom, pushing these controversial programs into nation-binding law.
I’m reposting Senator Lee’s entire speech below.
After you read it, please call. This monster will affect all Americans for years to come.
Ask for any senator and representative in D.C. at 202-224-3121. Say, “VOTE NO ON ESEA.” Done? Thank you!! Please call again. Then call for your neighbor who isn’t taking the time to call. Skip the gym or the crochet project and call some who aren’t your direct reps, too. Leave them messages — ask them to call you to account for how they plan to vote on December 2.
Politicians need constituents’ support to get re-elected. Tell them that this is a make or break issue; you won’t vote for them again if they vote yes on ESEA. Your voice and vote are leverage.
At some point today the Senate will vote on the motion to appoint conferees – or what’s often called the motion to go to conference – for a bill that reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or the ESEA, which is the legislation governing our federal K-12 education policy.
Because most Americans have probably never heard of this obscure parliamentary procedure – the motion to appoint conferees – I’d like to take a moment to explain how it works… or at least, how it’s supposed to work.
When the House and the Senate each pass separate, but similar, bills, the two chambers convene what’s called “a conference.”
A conference is essentially a meeting where delegates from each chamber come together to iron out the differences between their respective bills, and put together what’s called “a conference report” – which is a single piece of legislation that reconciles any disparities between the House-passed bill and the Senate-passed bill.
Once the delegates to the conference – the conferees – agree on a conference report, they bring it back to their respective chambers, to the House and to the Senate, for a final vote.
It’s important to note here that, once the conference report is sent to the House and the Senate for a final vote, there’s no opportunity to amend the legislation. It’s an up-or-down vote: each chamber can either approve or reject the conference report in its entirety.
If each chamber votes to approve the conference report, it’s then sent to the president, who can either sign it into law or veto it.
So what we’re doing today is voting on the motion to appoint conferees for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
Earlier this year, both the House and the Senate passed their own ESEA reauthorizations. And now, we’re voting to proceed to the conference process and to appoint certain senators to participate in that process as conferees.
Historically, and according to the way the conference process is supposed to work, this vote is not that big of a deal. Voting on the motion to appoint conferees is usually, and mostly, a matter of routine.
But it’s not a vote that should be rushed through on a moment’s notice, because it is the last opportunity for senators and representatives who are not conferees – such as myself – to influence the outcome of the conference process.
We can do that by offering what are called “motions to instruct the conferees.”
For example, let’s say I was not chosen to be a conferee to a particular bill, but there was an issue related to the bill that was important to me and to the people I represent – in that case, I could ask the Senate to vote on a set of instructions that would be sent to the conference to inform their deliberations and influence the substance of the conference report.
Mr. President, this is how the conference process is supposed to work.
But it is not how the conference process has been conducted with respect to this bill, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization.
Sure, we’re still voting to appoint conferees.
And those conferees will still convene a conference.
And that conference will still produce a conference report.
So from the surface, it will still look like the conference process is happening the way it’s supposed to.
But beneath the surface we know that all of this has already been pre-arranged, pre-cooked, pre-determined… by a select few members of Congress, working behind closed doors, free from scrutiny.
And we know that this vote was scheduled on extremely short notice, so that it would be difficult – if not impossible – for the rest of us to influence the substance of the conference report through motions to instruct.
Now, why does this matter?
We know the American people care deeply about K-12 education policy. But why should they care about this obscure parliamentary procedure in the Senate?
They should care – and Mr./Madam President, we know that they do care – because the process influences the policy.
In this case, the process expedites the passage of policies that we know don’t work – policies to which the American people are strongly opposed.
For instance, it’s my understanding that this pre-agreement may authorize $250 million in new spending on federal pre-K programs – what amounts to a down-payment on the kind of universal, federally-run pre-K programs advocated by President Obama.
This would be a disaster not only for American children and families, but for our 21st-century economy that increasingly requires investments in human capital.
We know that a good education starting at a young age is an essential ingredient for upward economic mobility later in life. A mountain of recent social science research proves what experience and intuition have been teaching mankind for millennia: that a child’s first few years of life are critical in their cognitive and emotional development.
Yet we also know that too many of America’s public schools, especially those in low-income and disadvantaged neighborhoods, fail to prepare their students to succeed.
Nowhere has the top-down, centrally planned model of public education failed more emphatically than in our nation’s public pre-K programs. The epitome of federal preschool programs is Head Start, which has consistently failed to improve the lives and educational achievements of the children it ostensibly serves.
According to a 2012 study by President Obama’s own Department of Health and Human Services, whatever benefits children gain from the program disappear by the time they reach the third grade.
But because bureaucracies invariably measure success in terms of inputs, instead of outcomes, Head Start and its $8 billion annual budget is the model for Democrats as they seek to expand federal control over child care programs in communities all across the country.
This bill also doubles down on the discredited common-core approach to elementary and secondary education that the American people have roundly, and consistently, rejected.
Mr. President, parents and teachers across America are frustrated by Washington, D.C.’s heavy-handed, overly prescriptive approach to education policy.
I’ve heard from countless moms and dads in Utah who feel as though anonymous government officials living and working 2,000 miles away have a greater say in the education of their children than they do.
The only way to improve our K-12 education system in America is to empower parents, educators, and local policymakers to meet the unique needs of their communities and serve the low-income families the status quo is leaving behind.
With early childhood education, we could start block granting the Head Start budget to the states.
This would allow those closest to the children and families being served to design their own programs – rather than spending all their time complying with onerous, one-size-fits-all federal mandates – and designate eligible public and private pre-schools to receive grants.
We know this works because many states are already doing it. In my home state of Utah, for instance, United Way of Salt Lake has partnered with two private financial institutions, Goldman Sachs and J.B. Pritzker, to provide first rate early education programs to thousands of Utah children.
They call it a “pay-for-success” loan.
With no upfront cost or risk to the taxpayers, private capital is invested in the Utah High Quality Preschool Program, which is implemented and overseen by United Way.
If, as expected, the preschool program results in increased school readiness and improved academic performance, the state of Utah repays the private investors with the public funds it would have spent on remedial services that the children would have needed between kindergarten and the twelfth grade, had they not participated in the program.
Washington policymakers should not look at Utah’s pay-for-success initiatives – and other local success stories like them – as potential federal programs, but as a testament to the power of local control.
Mr. President, we shouldn’t expand Washington’s control over America’s schools and pre-K programs. Instead, Congress must advance reforms that empower parents – with flexibility and choice – to do what’s in the best interest of their children.
The policies in this bill move in the opposite direction.
Protecting our children from increasing oppressions and loss of freedoms will require not allowing federal S.1177 to pass.
The name of S.1177, which now sits in the Senate on Capitol Hill, is also: “The Every Child Achieves Act of 2015,” “No Child Left Behind – rewritten,” “Elementary and Secondary Education Act,” and is virtually the same as House Bill HR5, “The Student Success Act” which passed the House yesterday.
I decided to skim the near-800 page bill using American Principles Project’s 21 items as my guide. The hide and seek that readers must wield with the real purposes and powers of this bill is ridiculous. Clearly, the authors of S.1177 aim to obscure its true purposes, which I now see only serve the Obama-UN agenda for education.
The media’s calling S.1177 “a bipartisan compromise” but that’s far from true. It’s all part of the Common Core bipartisan profiteering scheme that aligns federal tests and standards, but elbows out parents and voters. Many in Congress are fooled, but don’t you be fooled by the word “bipartisan” –nor by the bill’s misleading talking points.
The power struggle is no longer between the Republicans and the Democrats. Bipartisan means almost nothing. The fight is between voting families– We the People, whether Democratic, Republican or other– versus the clique of profiteering businessmen and politicians. Those who profit in money or with the power that increased data mining provides, each profit from the standardization and nationalization of testing, data standards, education standards, accountability measures, and aligned curriculum.
Killing this bill ought to be easy because nobody likes No Child Left Behind, that ugly federal law, and this is its big brother. Ask any teacher, any principal, any politician in any party. NCLB blessed no child and was a bureaucratic quagmire. Why did its reauthorization successfully pass the Senate committee– unanimously— in April after being stopped in its tracks in March? And why is S.1177 onstage again? The answer is simple: because the states have become addicted to federal money and many are selling souls to get it.
Passing S.1177 based on money-fear is pure stupidity. More school funding comes from local sources, by FAR, than from federal funds, and ugly strings are attached to the federal money– strings that take away freedom, privacy rights, a say over our own schools. If we’d be courageous and fiscally responsible, and fire most of the outrageous salary-consumers at state offices of education and the entire federal Dept of Ed, we’d have abundant cash for legitimate school needs. Plenty. We should be retaining local dollars, rather than sending them to D.C. to be redistributed back to some of us, conditionally. It’s common sense.
So here is my little list.
Six Things That I Find Evil, Hidden in S.1177
1. The bill aims to kill parental rights in the parental opt-out movement.
Taking away a parent’s authority over his or her own child is a crime that the Fed Ed is willing to try to get away with. This bill says that states must not only give federally aligned common core tests (they use the code term “college and career ready” which is Common Core) but must collect data from 95 percent of the students. That aims to kill our huge, growing parents’ opt out movement. The bill says, “Measures the annual progress of not less than 95 percent of all students, and students in each of the categories of students”. (1111)
2. The bill’s master-servant relationship between Fed Ed and State Ed is unconstitutional.
I don’t like the master-servant relationship between the Fed Ed agencies and the State agencies. It’s clearly, clearly unconstitutional. States are supposed to be in charge of their own educational systems. But in this bill, read: “The state shall submit,” and “The Secretary [Fed Ed] shall have power to disapprove a state plan” (Sec. 1111) “If a State makes significant changes to its plan at any time… such information shall be submitted to the Secretary”. That just gives the Fed Ed Secretary power to disapprove a state’s decision to drop Common Core. (Sec. 1111)
Cementing Common Core is not what the authors of S.1177 said were the goals of the bill, yet there it is. Putting parents last, and making states do the dirty work for the false authorities at the Department of Education, is a deceptive way of getting people to think that there’s less federal involvement, a misleading attempt to get conservative people to pass this bill.
3. The bill will suppress student expression of religious and political values.
I don’t like the bill’s repeated use of the concept and term “school climate” –for example, in conditional “formula grants”. These give the federal government power to model citizenship, to influence what is a federally appropriate world-view, and to pressure schools to suppress student expression of religious values, using each state as enforcer. (Sec. 4103-4104). The bill says that money will be conditionally given and that data gathered by the school will determine whether a student holds appropriate beliefs in the “school climate”. This will allow absolute federal indoctrination in local schools. If family values don’t match Fed Ed values, there will be federally-directed school-based re-education.
Here’s the very wordy sentence that unsuccessfully aims to hides its true aim, asking for collection of “school-level data on indicators or measures of school quality, climate and safety, and discipline, including those described in section 1111(d)(1)(C)(v); and risk factors in the community, school, family, or peer-individual domains that are known, through prospective, longitudinal research efforts, to be predictive of drug use, violent behavior, harassment, disciplinary issues, and having an effect on the physical and mental health and well-being of youth in the school and community.”
The bill says: “may include, among other programs and activities— drug and violence prevention activities and programs, including professional development and training for school and specialized instructional support personnel and interested community members in prevention, education, early identification, and intervention mentoring, and, where appropriate, rehabilitation referral, as related to drug and violence prevention… extended learning opportunities, including before and after school programs and activities, programs during summer recess periods, and expanded learning time… school-based mental health services, including early identification of mental-health symptoms… and appropriate referrals to direct individual or group counseling services” (4105)
4. The bill sees government, not families, at the center of the universe– for younger and younger people, for more and more of the time.
I don’t like the way federal schools are creeping into the community life via this bill. It allots money to fulfill Sec. Duncan’s “21st –century community learning centers” (Sec. 4201) I don’t like that this bill consumes more family time, giving so much time to government schools. The “community creep” of Fed Ed schools expands in multiple ways if S.1177 passes. The Fed Ed Secretary will pay “programs that support extended learning opportunities, including before and after school programs and activities, programs during summer recess periods, and expanded learning time; in accordance with subsections (c) and (d), school-based mental health services, including early identification of mental-health symptoms” — which means more government surveillance of belief and behavior, via more time spent with Fed Ed, and less time spent with Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa.
The bill’s long, long, long, long sentences hide a lot, probably on purpose. So I’ve cut phrases to highlight what I see under the wordiness. Let me know what you think. Am I reading this wrong?
“The local educational agency or consortium… shall take into account… school-level data on… family… predictive of … mental health and well-being of youth in the school and community.” (See 4104)
I don’t like that the bill puts it hands on preschoolers. It bullies preschools, too, by mandating federal preschool standards to be enforced by states, as it encourages states to take over toddler time from moms and dads. I don’t like the time-away-from-family aim nor the data mining aim (without consent of parents, of course). Preschool babies are to be psychologically profiled by the state. The bill does not state this plainly. You have to connect the dots: the word “preschool” shows up 43 times in the bill. Statewide preschool standards align with federal standards, creating nationalization of measurement of citizen babies; federal standards are heavily socio-emotional; it all results in the compilation of psychological data on very young children. We already had the Dept. of Ed and its partners co-creating Common Educational Data Standards (CEDS) the better to align everyone with, without voter input, and these folks wave banners with their motto (fourth principle) : “Continued Commitment to Disaggregation“ of students’ personal data. Your specific, individual child is wanted in their clutches. That’s what disaggregation means: not in a clump; individual.
I happen to have a toddler, who will never attend government preschool. Since my toddler has been watching VeggieTales for too long I’m going to quit right here and right now and take off to the park. I will be speed dialing senators with one hand while pushing the swing with the other, and hope you do the same.
To read the whole, near-800 page monster bill, CLICK HERE, and insist that your senators and school boards read the bill. They are paid by our tax dollars to read bills and to speak intelligently about them. Pressure is on. No one can afford to trust talking points; verify claims in the bill’s language.
Look at more actual language found in S.1177 “THE EVERY CHILD ACHIEVES ACT” (duplicated on my other post here.)
Pretending to protect states and parents from federal overreach using redundant, nonhelpful (and contradictory) language:
First the bill raises our hopes; the talking points sound good; maybe this won’t be a federal sledgehammer to parents and states. The bill’s sections 5001-5010 (a large chunk of the very large bill) even go under the title “Empowering Parents and Expanding Opportunity Through Innovation”. Sounds nice. But deep inside, the bill almost conceals ugly and unconstitutional words like this:
“State plan disapproval: The Secretary shall have the authority to disapprove a State plan” –1004
“If the Secretary determines that a State plan does not meet the requirements of this subsection or subsection (b) or (c), the Secretary shall, prior to declining to approve the State plan immediately notify the State of such determination… offer the State an opportunity to revise” –1111
“A State educational agency may use not more than 5 percent of the amount made available to the State… for the following activities…”
“Closing student achievement gaps, and preparing more students to be college and career ready” -2501(4) (Making everyone common does tend to close the achievement gaps, by slowing those who would otherwise soar ahead of the mediocre and the slow.)
Cementing the unconstitutional Fed-Master/State-Servant relationship:
“State plan disapproval: The Secretary shall have the authority to disapprove a State plan” –1004
“For any State desiring to receive a grant under this part, the State educational agency shall submit to the Secretary a plan…” – 1111
Retaining federal testing and standards mandates:
“Same standards: … standards required by subparagraph (A) shall be the same standards that the State applies to all public schools and public school students” –1111 (Do you want to give the feds the authority to dictate uniformity to us? What if a state wants to be innovative and diverse and various? That won’t be allowed by this federal law.)
“Alignment: Each State shall demonstrate that the challenging State academic standards are aligned with entrance requirements, without the need for academic remediation, for the system of public higher education in the State; relevant State career and technical education standards; and relevant State early learning guidelines” –1111
“Measures the annual progress of not less than 95 percent of all students, and students in each of the categories of students” -1204
“Measure the annual progress of not less than 95 percent of all students and students in each of the categories of students” – 1205
Adding to the list of programs States must consult, and aligning with workforce socialism program:
“(aa) student readiness to enter postsecondary education or the workforce” -1111 (repeated many times)
“an application … shall include the following: A description of… assets, identified by the State… which shall include— an analysis of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education quality and outcomes in the State… labor market information regarding the industry and business workforce needs within the State….” –2504
Dictating types of testing– including using nonacademic, interpretive, and diagnostic student reports:
“produce individual student interpretive, descriptive, and diagnostic reports… include information regarding achievement on academic assessments aligned with challenging State academic achievement standards… in uniform format” –1111(b) (2) (B) (vi) (xiii)
“(vi) involve multiple up-to-date measures of student academic achievement, including measures that assess higher-order thinking skills and understanding, which may include measures of student academic growth and may be partially delivered in the form of portfolios, projects, or extended performance tasks” – 1111 (b) (2) (B) (vi)
Assessments must “be administered through a single summative assessment; or be administered through multiple statewide assessments during the course of the year if the State can demonstrate that the results of these multiple assessments, taken in their totality, provide a summative score” – 1111 (b) (2) (B) (viii)
“(xiii) be developed, to the extent practicable, using the principles of universal design for learning.” – 1111 (b) (2) (B) (xiii)
Forcing out the parental opt-out movement; also, booting family out and putting government in to the center of the universe:
Crushing opt outs, each state test must “Measures the annual progress of not less than 95 percent of all students, and students in each of the categories of students” -1204
Same: “Measure the annual progress of not less than 95 percent of all students and students in each of the categories of students” – 1205
Schools to be far, far more than places to learn numeracy and literacy: “21st Century Learning Centers… an array of additional services, programs, and activities, such as youth development activities, service learning, nutrition and health education, drug and violence prevention programs, counseling programs, art, music, physical fitness and wellness programs, technology education programs, financial literacy programs, math, science, career and technical programs, internship or apprenticeship programs, and other ties to an in-demand industry sector” – 4201
“address family instability, school climate, trauma, safety, and nonacademic learning.” -7304
This video, which comes from parents in Massachusetts and Dr. Sandra Stotsky, is important.
Its message is:
Please call 202-224-3121 –the number to call all senators in Washington, D.C. Ask that your senators stop the reauthorization of ESEA also known as No Child Left Behind. Passing this bill violates civil procedure. Ask to speak your national Senators (both of them) –or just ask for Sen. LaMar Alexander of TN and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington State, who are the bipartisan sponsors of the ESEA reauthorization.
Why?
“No Child Left Behind” is ESEA. It should NOT have been reauthorized! The reauthorization of this awful, 800 page bill (that hardly anyone has read; ask your senators if they’ve read it!) –is a gross violation of civic procedure: there been no public hearings for the parents of U.S. children, those who will be affected most. There should have been many opportunities for parents to read and testify for or against this bill.
People are being fooled by the bill’s talking points, saying that it takes power away from the federal government –but this bill does not do what it says it will do. It puts power into the hands of state commissioners, giving parents even less power than they now have.
Know this: the power struggle is no longer between the Republicans and the Democrats. It is between the Democratic and Republican voters who love children, value academic freedom, cherish time-tested classical education and liberty versus those Democrats and Republican businessmen and politicians who profit (with money and with the power that data mining provides) by the standardization of all testing, data standards, education standards, accountability measures, and aligned curriculum.
Don’t be fooled by the word “bipartisan.”
Please call. Defend the constitutional right to have a REAL voice and vote in education. This is for the children, the future citizens of this nation.
COMMON CORE 