All Charter schools must follow the same learning standards as each other and as the public schools, according to the initiative. Read more about this….
Common Core and More — Federal and National Standards and Policies
Article Ten of the Bill of Rights to the US Constitution states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
This means that the federal government is not supposed to interfere in the educational affairs of any state. Yet since 1965, the federal government has heaped educational mandate upon mandate on the states through the strings attached to federal funding. The creation of the Department of Education in 1979 has not improved education but has eroded local control.
Scholastic Aptitude Test scores peaked in the mid 1960s and have declined ever since 1965, coincidentally when federal aid to local schools first started. We cannot infer causality, but it is clear federal aid did not help.
Public schools function best when they are truly run locally.
A Kindergarten Career Test! This is wrong on so many levels–and also very revealing. Read more.
Reward good teachers and get rid of bad teachers–sounds like a good idea right? But in this era of re-defined terms nothing is as it seems. The problem is how “good” and “bad” teaching are defined. Read this commentary by Kyle Olson who examines just one of the many problems with teacher evaluations.
Bar-coding and data-archiving information on your children in a free country? In the USA? Don’t say it couldn’t happen. It already is happening. Read J.R. Wilson’s article from Education News .
A change in privacy laws included in the Stimulus bill of 2009 will allow your child’s private information to be shared by agencies and individuals. Watch the video.
“In the ‘you-can’t-make-up-this-stuff’ category, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is spending about $1.1 million to develop a way to physiologically measure how engaged students are by their teachers’ lessons.”
Make way for the techno-educrats. Diane Ravitch’s blog reveals their plans for “galvanic skin response” monitoring.
The United Nations has declared the years 2005 to 2014 to be the decade for Education for Sustainable Development.
According to the UN Bruntland Commission: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
In reality, it is a philosophy of redistributing wealth and destroying freedom.
Teachers are the latest scapegoat in the attempt to improve education. Bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. and legislators in Olympia are devising ways of assessing students and collecting student data for evaluating teachers and principals. Bureaucrats should allow districts the freedom of local control and allow those closest to the students to find appropriate solutions.
Veteran teacher Bob Dean describes what unintended consequences are likely to occur in his commentary in The Columbian.
The political caucuses for 2012 are coming up. Here are some resolutions to submit at your respective caucus meetings.