CURE’s Ideal Non-Partisan Education Platform
April 18, 2010
This is CURE’s education platform. All political parties are welcome to use this platform or parts of the platform, to develop their party’s position on education.
CURE Ideal Education Platform for political parties
Revised in May 2010
1. Recognizing that educating children is a power reserved to the States or the people under the Tenth Amendment of the US Constitution, eliminate the US Department of Education and retain those education dollars within the states;
2. Refuse all federal education money (which comprises an average of 6 to 7% of state and district education budgets) and the connected requirements that cost more than is received;
3. Reduce state and federal regulation of local education curricula;
4. Restore control of education to families;
5. Support freedom of conscience in education, whereby citizens may direct the education portion of their property taxes to be used to homeschool their own children, or to donate to the private school of their choice;
6. Encourage teacher candidates to major in the subject areas they will teach;
7. Reduce administration costs so that more tax money reaches the classroom to benefit the students;
8. Support teachers in restoring discipline to classrooms;
9. Require all children to master the English language;
10. Teach a view of our nation’s history, its ideals and accomplishments, with academic integrity, relying on unedited, fundamental documents of the United States of America;
11. Prohibit teaching that encourages sexual activity by school-aged children;
12. Restore emphasis on basic education tools (reading, arithmetic and science);
13. Return the focus of education to academics, eliminating such programs as School-to-Work and turning back from the destructive regulations and effects of Goals 2000 and No Child Left Behind;
14. Abolish the Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EALR’s), which are neither essential nor academic, and write new standards which emphasize fundamental, age-appropriate, academic standards;
15. De-link the HSPE (High School Proficiency Exam) from the diploma, and insure that both the HSPE and the MSP (Measurements of Student Progress) — used for the lower grades– are free from questions assessing attitudes and values;
16. Re-institute standardized academic testing such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) as a check on schools and districts, but not as a graduation requirement;
17. Reject government-designed and funded Early Childhood Education, as it interferes with the family’s right and responsibility to nurture and train young children in its own values;
18. Maintain the university and colleges systems’ independence from the state EALR’s and the WASL; require the cost of remedial classes for entering freshmen to be borne by the respective school districts;
19. Increase freedom for private schools by removing government certification requirements;
20. Protect homeschooling from government interference;
21. Elect the State Board of Education directly by the people;
22. Reinstate the supermajority requirement for levies and bonds.
Tags: platform
This is CURE’s education platform. All political parties are welcome to use this platform or parts of the platform, to develop their party’s position on education.
CURE Ideal Education Platform for political parties
Revised in May 2010
1. Recognizing that educating children is a power reserved to the States or the people under the Tenth Amendment of the US Constitution, eliminate the US Department of Education and retain those education dollars within the states;
2. Refuse all federal education money (which comprises an average of 6 to 7% of state and district education budgets) and the connected requirements that cost more than is received;
3. Reduce state and federal regulation of local education curricula;
4. Restore control of education to families;
5. Support freedom of conscience in education, whereby citizens may direct the education portion of their property taxes to be used to homeschool their own children, or to donate to the private school of their choice;
6. Encourage teacher candidates to major in the subject areas they will teach;
7. Reduce administration costs so that more tax money reaches the classroom to benefit the students;
8. Support teachers in restoring discipline to classrooms;
9. Require all children to master the English language;
10. Teach a view of our nation’s history, its ideals and accomplishments, with academic integrity, relying on unedited, fundamental documents of the United States of America;
11. Prohibit teaching that encourages sexual activity by school-aged children;
12. Restore emphasis on basic education tools (reading, arithmetic and science);
13. Return the focus of education to academics, eliminating such programs as School-to-Work and turning back from the destructive regulations and effects of Goals 2000 and No Child Left Behind;
14. Abolish the Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EALR’s), which are neither essential nor academic, and write new standards which emphasize fundamental, age-appropriate, academic standards;
15. De-link the HSPE (High School Proficiency Exam) from the diploma, and insure that both the HSPE and the MSP (Measurements of Student Progress) — used for the lower grades– are free from questions assessing attitudes and values;
16. Re-institute standardized academic testing such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) as a check on schools and districts, but not as a graduation requirement;
17. Reject government-designed and funded Early Childhood Education, as it interferes with the family’s right and responsibility to nurture and train young children in its own values;
18. Maintain the university and colleges systems’ independence from the state EALR’s and the WASL; require the cost of remedial classes for entering freshmen to be borne by the respective school districts;
19. Increase freedom for private schools by removing government certification requirements;
20. Protect homeschooling from government interference;
21. Elect the State Board of Education directly by the people;
22. Reinstate the supermajority requirement for levies and bonds.
Tags: platform