INDOCTRINATION: PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND THE DECLINE OF CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA (DVD)

Nearly 90% of Christian children attend a public school. Their families have a vested interest in all that happens there. Join Scottish filmmaker Colin Gunn, a homeschool father of seven, on the field trip of a lifetime. Driving an old school bus, Colin and family travel across America, asking questions about the origins and social impact of American's public education system. Colin asks:


•Who established the American public school system?

•Are my kids physically and morally safe in the schools?

•Are the public schools religiously neutral?

•Should Christians try to be “salt and light” in public schools?

•Can the public school system be fixed or redeemed?

Featuring interviews with whistleblower teachers, administrators, students, parents, and others, this film is part documentary, part testimonial, and totally captivating. Above all it is both an encouragement and challenge to the millions of Christians who need to know what God's Word says about the discipleship and training of the next generation.

http://superstore.wnd.com/video/Education_2/IndoctriNation-Public-Schools-and-the-Decline-of-Christianity-in-America-DVD

AMERICAN THINKER: The Un-American American President

June 29, 2011
by Jay Clarke

Something is wrong with Barack Obama. We all know it. We all see it. When he speaks about America, Americans cringe. There is a strangeness to his manner, an unease when he talks about America. He appears awkward and uncomfortable. His speech seems performed and practiced yet, oddly halting. It's reminiscent of American POW's in Vietnam or Iraq reading a forced confession. His eyes, expressions, and vocal tone are disconnected from his words. The words themselves often sound American, but the delivery is clinical and detached. His attempts at patriotic sentiment ring hollow and phony. "Once again, with feeling!" is how Americans are left feeling. He just doesn't seem right. He doesn't seem like, well...one of us.


Before anyone "goes there" and makes accusations of racism, this is about a pervasive, nagging, national perception that Barack Obama does not intuitively understand or appreciate America or Americans. Not our past. Not our present or future. He just doesn't act or sound like an American. In fact, there are good reasons and ample evidence for why.


CONTINUED:  http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/06/the_un-american_american_president.html

ACLU Targets School Web Filters

The American Civil Liberties Union has partnered with Yale Law School in launching a nationwide campaign to force schools to stop filtering "web content geared toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities."
http://ncfamily.org/stories/110413s1.html

Big Brother? Feds Order Schools to Monitor Kids Facebook Posts & Lunchtime Chatter

The Daily Caller is reporting that Department of Education (DOE) officials “are threatening school principals with lawsuits if they fail to monitor and curb students’ lunchtime chat and evening Facebook time for expressing ideas and words that are deemed by Washington special-interest groups to be harassment of some students.”


According to the report, the DOE issued new guidelines in a “Dear Colleague” letter in October, which the site sums up as saying “federal officials have reinterpreted the civil-rights laws that require school principals to curb physical bullying, as well as racist and sexist speech, that take place within school boundaries.”

MORE FREEDOM ERODED!

READ MORE AND THE LETTER ON THE BLAZE:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/govt-tells-educators-to-monitor-kids-internet-use-while-not-at-school/

H.S. Principal Promotes Dem Progressive Propaganda Film Contest

In what seems to be an endless supply of stories supporting the theory that our education system is riddled with uber-liberal indoctrination programs and a Progressive agenda, we present the latest jaw-dropping story about a school Principal in Pittsbugh, PA who is handing out flyers to faculty members in hopes they will encourage students to enter a contest with the sole purpose of creating Progressive propaganda.


READ ON!
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/h-s-principal-promotes-dems-progressive-propaganda-film-contest/

Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina

Mon, January 17, 2011


A Letter from Darrell Allison, President of PEFNC
"Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Since 2005, Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina (PEFNC) have been working to inform North Carolinians of the benefits of expanded educational options and empower them to exercise freedom in meeting their children's needs, regardless of income, race, or religion. PEFNC envisions an education system that maximizes parental choice because children have unique needs and parents should have the freedom to choose the best education to meet those needs.

Unfortunately, we are living in a time of educational crisis - where one education model simply doesn’t work for every child. Many children in North Carolina’s schools are struggling to keep up. Often these struggles will result in low-performance, disciplinary issues, and dropping out of school entirely. This is the situation for too many children in North Carolina.

Consider the crisis in North Carolina:

According to the 2010 Education Week study, North Carolina currently ranks 46th in the nation in graduation performance, with an average graduation rate of only 57.8 percent.

According to The Raleigh News & Observer, North Carolina currently ranks 4th in the nation for suspension and expulsion rates, with minority and special needs students disproportionately represented within those statistics.

According to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, of economically-disadvantaged middle school students pass their math and reading End-of-Grade tests.barely 50 percent 

Finally, a study released by PEFNC and the Foundation for Educational Choice determined that each statewide class of dropouts costs North Carolina approximately $169 million.

Clearly, North Carolina needs new and innovative solutions.

Over the past few months, nearly 2,000 North Carolinians from communities across the state have attended our free screenings of the critically acclaimed documentary Waiting for “Superman.” As the finale to our statewide campaign based on the movie, we are hosting a Town Hall Forum themed No Longer Waiting for “Superman" on Monday, January 24th at the North Raleigh Hilton at 6:30 p.m. This forum will discuss the political realities and potential solutions for transforming K-12 education in North Carolina.

Special guests will include Dr. Howard Fuller, who is featured in the Waiting for “Superman” film and is a Distinguished Professor of Education at Marquette University, and Peter Groff, former president of the Colorado State Senate and now President of the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools.

Other leaders at the forum will include elected officials, policy makers, community leaders, educators, and school officials. This is a bi-partisan effort to discuss needed education reform for North Carolina.

This forum will be an opportunity for folks to ask questions and express their support for school reform.

I would like to extend a personal invitation to you to attend the forum on Monday, January 24th. This is YOUR opportunity to let your voice be heard and express your desires for education reform in this state.

The simple truth is that a good, sound education is essential for the future of our children. We can only ensure that they receive one if we all become aware of the problem and potential solutions to the educational crisis. In short, we need you and so do our children.

Please come and learn how you can make a change – a real difference – for the future of our children and grandchildren. Come join us on Monday, January 24th!

To RSVP, click here or call 888-977-3362.

Sincerely,
Darrell Allison, President, PEFNC

WND: Life with Big Brother

Schools tag kids with RFID chips

Stimulus money used for tracking every move inside school building

Posted: September 15, 2010

© 2010 WorldNetDaily

A California school district is using some $115,000 of federal stimulus money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to have kids wear vests with RFID chips embedded so their every move inside the school complex can be monitored.

A report from TechNewsDaily cites the work of the Contra Costa County Employment and Human Services agency, which already has spent $50,000 setting up the system for a first Head Start site.

"We did some research and we thought this would be a good utilization for the money," Karen Mitchoff, an agency spokeswoman, told TechNews Daily.

The action has raised some alarms among privacy advocates, but also met a qualified endorsement from a columnist at the RFID Journal.

There, Mark Roberti wrote, "I think it is fair to say that there are several good reasons to use RFID to track school children. But I was struck by a New York Times editorial on the topic ... that was unusually balanced for an article about RFID. The editors wrote, 'Concern that school officials would use the ID chips to keep tabs on children's behavior – and tag them perhaps as hyperactive or excessively passive – seems overwrought.' But it also asks the question, 'Though it may seem innocuous to attach a chip to our preschoolers' clothes, do we really want to raise a generation of kids that are accustomed to being tracked, like cattle or warehouse inventory?"

He continued, "This is a profound question. If we track all children with technology and they get used to it, do we open the possibility that they will accept government tracking of them as adults?"


Get the prescription for reclaiming America's heritage of liberty, justice and morality – Joseph Farah's "Taking America Back," autographed only at the WND SuperStore.

At TechNewsDaily, Linda Rosencrance said Mitchoff explained that the program would free up teachers from having to fulfill administrative duties such as attendance – and recording when children eat.

"This just helps us to know where that child is at all times," Mitchoff said. "Not that the teachers wouldn't know where they are. It's just an assist to teachers. It frees up teachers to spend more time with students and less time on paperwork, attendance and meal schedules."

According to Rosencrance's report, a parent or someone signs a child into the system on arrival in the morning. The child then is given a jersey with an RFID – or tracking – device embedded. The tab transmits data to various receivers around the school, and computers monitor the child's movements and activities.

TechNewsDaily said Marc Rotenberg of the Electric Privacy Information Center in Washington told Rosencrance there are concerns about the procedure.

"Up until now these tracking devices have been used for farm animals or house pets. Now a school district thinks it's a good idea to tag children," he warned.

He said there are several possible ramifications.

"If you get into the scenario of stalkers and pedophiles, now it's possible to determine when a child is outside the classroom and that can pose a real threat," he told TechNewsDaily. "These systems generate location information and they can create audit logs, so the information is not just available in real time but historic information as well. From our perspective that will create privacy risks because parents will be wondering, 'Who, apart from me, knows where my child is at any particular moment.'"

The report said Rebecca Jeschke of the Electronic Frontier Foundation also worries that any information from the system would be misused.

"You could have what would appear to be a very complete picture of a child's movements," she said. "If a child is moving around all the time, will administrators label him hyperactive? And will that information follow that child through high school?"

Mitchoff reported that the program, for now, gives parents the opportunity to keep their child out of the system.

http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=203529

ParentalRights.org--Protecting Children by Empowering Parents

Abandoned to the State?


In 2006, parent David Parker insisted he would not leave his son’s elementary school until someone spoke to him about opting his kindergarten son out of offensive sexual material. Parker was arrested for trespassing and spent the night in jail. Further, the school refused to excuse his son from the class. The case of Parker v. Hurley ensued.

The United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts in that case held that “Parents do have a fundamental right to raise their children. They are not required to abandon that responsibility to the state. [They] may send their children to a private school…. They may also educate their children at home.” In other words, the court outlined three options for parents: send your child to private school, teach them at home, or “abandon [your] responsibility to the state.”

The court further held that allowing students to opt out of offensive materials “might also undermine the [school’s] efforts to educate the remaining other students to understand” the subject being taught.

In 2008, the Supreme Court refused to grant review to this case, leaving the District Court’s decision to stand as precedent nationwide. Parents who believe they have a right to opt a child out of offensive material in the public school, therefore, should think again; the courts have already decided otherwise. (Read more on this case here.  http://parentalrights.org/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={21351315-D12C-435B-B553-B1267BF782CB})

The proposed Parental Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution will restore the responsibility of all government institutions (including public schools) to treat parental rights as a fundamental right. As a result, these rights will have to be respected even inside the school, and not evaporate at the front door.

Take action now to restore this and other reasonable rights of parents by signing the petition to support the Parental Rights Amendment.

Then, please pass this message along.

We must get the government out of Education!

Back to Constitutional Basics in Education
Posted By Jennifer Marshall On September 12, 2010
The Foundry: Conservative Policy News. - http://blog.heritage.org


In the mid 1960s, education policy took a wrong turn, away from America’s founding principles. That was when President Lyndon B. Johnson, as a part of his War on Poverty, created the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA). It was the first major federal foray into local schools.

But the Constitution doesn’t provide for a federal role in education, and public schools had traditionally been under the jurisdiction of local authorities.

What’s more, Washington’s intervention seemed to bring out the worst in education governance: State officials became the middlemen to administer federal funding and bureaucratic bloat followed. Staff at state education agencies doubled in the five years after ESEA became law.

In 1965, ESEA was about 30 pages long. Today ESEA is known as No Child Left Behind, and its prescriptions for American schools run on for almost 600 pages.

After multiple reauthorizations, the law has accumulated program after program to intervene in everything from English as a second language to after-school care. Meanwhile, federal education spending has tripled, while student achievement has generally stagnated.

How can we steer a course back toward our founding principles in education?

The first step is to send dollars and decision-making authority out of Washington and back to states, localities, and ultimately, parents.

That’s why Heritage analysts have developed an education policy proposal that would allow states to consolidate funding from dozens of federal education programs–cutting bureaucracy by eliminating multiple program applications–and direct the funding toward local education priorities. Members of Congress have adopted the plan as the conservative alternative to No Child Left Behind, known as “A-PLUS.”

A critical element of the plan is its shift in accountability. In most education policy discussions, accountability means answering up the bureaucratic chain of command to Washington. But real accountability answers to parents and other taxpayers. Real accountability provides transparency for expenditures and academic results, showing parents their children’s progress and taxpayers their return on investment.

To continue in this path of reform, state and local policy should allow money to follow students to the educational setting of their parents’ choice. Freeing parents to shape their children’s education according to their needs in a setting that supports the family’s character-forming role will not only take American education back to the Founders’ ideals. It will also equip us for the future far better than the centralized factory model of education of decades past.


Article printed from The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.: http://blog.heritage.org/

URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2010/09/12/back-to-constitutional-basics-in-education/

Copyright © 2008 The Heritage Foundation. All rights reserved.