This Federal publication gives a government job description of a large list of jobs, and explains how the government thinks this job is done. I doubt if a bureaucrat, sitting in Washington D.C. is familiar with all these jobs…such as manure-spreader, for example….yet here are the government specifications for these tasks.
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Pull Quote: “Young elementary school students should use the proper names for body parts and, by the end of fifth grade, know that sexual orientation is “the romantic attraction of an individual to someone of the same gender or a different gender,” according to new sexual education guidelines released Monday by a coalition of health and education groups.” Read the Seattle Times article.

Paradigm Change: More Magic than Logic by John C. Hillary, is an article from the 1990-91 issue of OUTCOMES, a professional education journal on outcome-based education. Read the article linked from the “American Deception” website.

“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.

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 disturbing education issue that is not being mentioned in the media or by policy makers is the massive amount of personal information that will be collected on every child, all in the name of “education.” Ultimately, the government will have archived massive amounts of personal information about every person from birth.

The federal law “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) required that ALL children must be proficient in math and language arts by 2014. It was a noble goal, but it was unrealistically naive. Now states want relief…..

Money can’t buy everything, it’s true…..but it can buy quite a lot. This article explains how major foundations–primarily the Gates, Broad, and Walton Foundations– influence national education policy.

One of the concepts in the federal Race to the Top initiative is the evaluating of teachers and administrators to reward–or punish–them according to their “effectiveness”…. but this view does not recognize or attack the deeper problems.