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Bring Fenty Back
July 11, 2012 | 63 comments
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Mitt W. Bush
May 7, 2012 | 29 comments
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Education’s Medicaid Problem
January 11, 2012 | 39 comments
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The NEA’s Progressive Turn
December 9, 2011 | 13 comments
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Taking Over Lousy Schools
December 2, 2011 | 29 comments
The Public Policy
Return of the One-Room Schoolhouse
Even in Detroit, bureaucratically bloated, educationally failing school districts are giving way to charter schools.
Even among the nation’s woeful traditional big-city school districts, Detroit Public Schools is a particular abomination. Between falling into state receivership for the second time in the past 12 years, facing $327 million in budget deficits for the next four years, wrangling with scandals such as the travails of literacy-bereft now-former school board president Otis Mathis (who resigned last year after the district’s superintendent complained that he had engaged in lewd acts during meetings), and constant news about its failure to educate its students, the Motor City district has secured its place as the Superfund site of education.
So it wasn’t a surprise when Detroit’s state-appointed czar, Robert Bobb, announced on March 12 that the district would slash its deficit — and eliminate as much as $99 million in costs from operating its bureaucracy — by getting rid of 29 percent of the 142 dropout factories and failure mills. But instead of just shutting down the 41 schools (as the district originally planned to do) it would convert them into charter schools, handing off instruction, curriculum, and operations to nonprofits, parents groups, and others interested in running schools.
While Detroit’s move is certainly driven by cost-cutting, the district is conceding to the reality that the school district model — with its expensive central bureaucracy, woeful inefficiency, and lengthy record of academic failure — no longer works either for children or taxpayers. With states and districts facing $260 billion in budget shortfalls over the next two years (and $1.4 trillion in pension deficits and unfunded teacher retirement liabilities in the long haul), charter-like ways of operating schools have become more appealing than ever.
Just outside of Atlanta, the suburban Fulton County school district is taking advantage of a Georgia state law and beginning to convert itself into a charter system. Under the contractual status, the district would be free from traditional degree- and seniority-based pay scales and be allowed to use such innovations as teacher performance pay plans; in turn, school operations move from the central bureaucracies to school-based councils run by adults, teachers and principals. Six other school systems in the Peach State have already converted into charter school systems, and others will likely do follow suit.
In tiny Elkton, Oregon, a town better known as a hotspot for bass-fishing than for school innovation, the one-school district there has taken advantage of a state loophole and fully converted itself into a charter. This has allowed the district to attract students from nearby traditional school systems, creating a form of competition that hadn’t previously existed. In the three years since it converted to a charter, Elkton’s enrollment increased by 54 percent. Eleven other rural districts in the Beaver State have abandoned the traditional district model in the past eight years; three more have already applied to do so this year.
Then there is New Orleans, which has become the nation’s model for school reform. Right after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Louisiana state officials moved to take over 107 of the Crescent City’s failing public schools from the faltering traditional school district and began aggressively launching new charter schools. Since then, the traditional district model has been all but abandoned, with both the state-controlled Recovery School District and the old Orleans Parish system operating just 26 of the city’s 84 schools; charters account for 70 percent of all New Orleans school enrollment. And even the schools under state control have become de facto charters and, under a plan approved by the state in December, will remain so even after they return to Orleans Parish oversight.
Certainly, traditional school districts still educate the overwhelming majority of the nation’s students — and if the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and other defenders of traditional public education have their say, it will remain that way. As in the private sector, the advantages of size — including greater purchasing power — means that there will always be some large school operators of some sort; even big names within the charter school movement, such as KIPP (which runs 99 schools throughout the nation), Aspire (30 schools in California), and Green Dot Public Schools (17 in California and New York), have enrollments as sizable as some mid-sized traditional districts.
But with just 69 percent of the nation’s students ever graduating from high school, big-city districts such as Cleveland and Los Angeles failing to reach even those low graduation rates, and one out of every three fourth-graders reading at levels of functional illiteracy, any thought that big districts equals better student achievement is clearly mistaken. Size (and corresponding big-spending) doesn’t turn out to equal efficiency or achievement either. Just 17 percent of the top-spending districts in Florida were among the top third of districts in student achievement, according to a report released in January by the Center for American Progress.
State laws that govern how school districts manage spending and labor — including collective bargaining rules that were at the heart of the battles last month between unions and governors such as Wisconsin’s Scott Walker — are part of the problem. Detroit, for example, must negotiate with 10 different unions, including locals of the AFT, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Decades of dealmaking between districts, states and the NEA and AFT have also saddled school systems with teacher pay plans — including defined-benefit pensions and near-free healthcare — that have become too expensive to bear; in Jersey City, N.J., for example, the district there spent 184 percent more on teacher benefits in 2007-2008 than it did a decade earlier. These burdens, along with federal regulations such as “supplement-not-supplant” (which requires districts to essentially use Title 1 dollars to fund field trips to prove that they aren’t shortchanging students instead of programs that might actually improve their performance), add to taxpayer burdens without improving graduation rates.
The other problem lies with the unwillingness of districts to move to into the 21st century. The refusal to ditch antiquated academic, financial, and management information systems — even as the federal government has begun embracing the use of MySQL databases and Drupal content management systems — and the failure to use outsourcing as a way to wring out efficiencies are two examples. Just 69 percent of school buses are kept in operation throughout the school year, according to a 2010 study by Michael Casserly of the Council of the Great City Schools. The contracts districts strike with NEA and AFT locals, along with the bloat in central bureaucracies, also restrict the ability of school principals to actually run schools. School budgets often run in the millions — usually in the form of teacher salaries — yet the average principal only controls $60,000 of it, according to education policy analyst (and former Clinton administration honcho) Andrew Rotherham.
But technological advancements offer opportunities to run schools differently. Online learning, for example, offers schools a chance to provide more students with good-to-great teachers — especially in areas in which districts struggle to staff such as math and science; it’s sensible especially given that even poor kids have Internet access. As seen in Detroit, more districts (and states) recognize that they need to adapt charter-like approaches to running schools. New York City took an important (albeit costly) step four years ago when it handed principals the authority to remove laggard teachers from their classrooms.
But cutting down bureaucracies and handing over decisions to schools can only be the start. The need to reform how the nation recruits and train teachers — which, along with woeful reading and math curricula, is the main reason for the low quality of the nation’s schools — remains paramount. While charter schools have had greater success in improving student achievement than traditional districts, the fact that they still draw from the same university schools of education as traditional district counterparts still means there are many runts in the proverbial litter.
While President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top effort has helped force states to ditch laws that restrict the ability of districts to subject teachers to private sector-style performance management, the threat of future restrictions (and the ability of the NEA and AFT to use their lobbying and campaign clout to stop reforms) remains in place. And more districts will be forced to embrace smaller bureaucracies (or out of business), once families are given wider arrays of options through school choice and parent trigger laws that can take schools out of district control. The threat of parent power (along with pressure from school reformers such as Green Dot founder Steve Barr) is why the gargantuan Los Angeles Unified School District is spinning off 186 of its schools into private hands and will authorize 200 charter schools by the 2011-2012 school year.
Given the woes of America’s schools and their high costs, returning to the one-room schoolhouse would be better than bloated school bureaucracies.
About the Author
RiShawn Biddle the editor of Dropout Nation , is co-author of A Byte at the Apple: Rethinking Education Data for the Post-NCLB Era. He can be followed at Twitter.com/dropoutnation.
Appleby| 3.29.11 @ 7:15AM
I attended two-room schools until Grade 5, when all the two-room schools were decanted into a central school; I went from a school population of about 30 to a classroom of 40, and from an experienced teacher with time for all of her students to a first-year teacher whose 40-student class ranged from 10 gifted children to 4 retarded teenagers. How was this an improvement? I quickly discovered that learning was very low on the priority list; the teacher was a ringmaster, and keeping order was all he had time to try to do. (He actually took the books away from the students except when we were actually using them, to prevent us from reading ahead). Fortunately I had well-read parents who took us to the library every week. Lots of other kids just learned to make trouble.
Alan Brooks| 3.29.11 @ 5:40PM
"Even in Detroit, bureaucratically bloated, educationally failing school districts are giving way to charter schools."
Of course, they have no choice anymore.
Another alternative is vocational schools in place of academia; some students are better off learning carpentry and electronics than majoring in French Postmodern Tapdancing.
Alan Brooks| 3.29.11 @ 9:12PM
...not ALL students have to attend college- in fact for the cost of tuition today they can do a real start-up business.
Richard Baker| 3.29.11 @ 8:04AM
Close the public schools, fire all the teachers and administrators, give the money to the parents in the form of education-only vouchers, and allow them to find the best private/parochial school possible. The public school system we have is a joke and should be put to sleep, as soon as possible.
Alan Brooks| 3.29.11 @ 5:43PM
Agreed, it is not about the students, it is-- as you know-- about the administrators and teachers versus parents.
Seek| 3.29.11 @ 6:05PM
As long as Detroit's racial composition remains intact, institutional arrangements are almost irrelevant. Black-run charter schools are as corrupt as black-run public schools.
Alan Brooks| 3.29.11 @ 9:15PM
Because you want to marginalize blacks.
They were right about white trash-- they have to be on top at all coss.
Michael Tomlinson| 3.29.11 @ 8:13AM
The only way to save public education is to break the teacher's unions.
Alan Brooks| 3.29.11 @ 5:45PM
That's just for starters. And BTW, smarter students can learn online, freeing up classrooms for those who can't be educated save for force-feeding them info.
Louis Jenkins| 3.29.11 @ 8:49AM
This year my wife and I are trying to get my youngest daughter into a Charter School. Unfortunately, it is by lottery, a pick of the cards so to speak. But our visit to the school showed us the difference between public and charter. A world of difference. We want the child out of public schools. We will know the child's fate on April the 8th.
Brian Mc| 3.29.11 @ 10:07AM
While reading this article I could not help but see in my mind a picture from long ago; Abraham Lincoln sitting on a split rail and reading a book. I wonder what Abe would say about the mess we are in. I wonder what nuggets of wisdom he would offer to us about this debacle, if given the chance.
Also, the grammatical errors in the piece had me wondering as I re-read the sentences in question, whether it was me, or the writer who was causing the confusion with same. And yes, I know that I use commas too much!
Appleby| 3.29.11 @ 11:37AM
"It was me" is incorrect, actually; the simple test is whether it makes sense when you reverse it. You would not say "Me was it", would you?
Nowadays a sentence is considered grammatical if it has no curse words in it.
Brian Mc| 3.29.11 @ 10:32PM
Good point, App!
I thought that 'whether' would cancel this rule...
cicero| 3.29.11 @ 11:50AM
All of the government programs to monitor student achievement over the past two administrations concentrate on reading and math. As a result, the public schools concentrate their efforts on teaching to math and reading results. Even with that, a review of the test results in the Detroit schools are sad. It is more than just the fact that the public schools operate on the basis that their purpose is to employ a lot of people at high wages. It is the culture in the communities and families that are aqually to blame. In those communities where the family culture values education, there is no tolerance for inept educators. Unfortunately, we have two to three generations in our poor communities where education is not valued. Therein lies the real problem,
JP| 3.29.11 @ 11:55AM
Education is nothing but a rotten sink hole. The entire establishment should be dismantled from top to bottom. Not even state mandates should survive the dismantling. The entire edifice should be returned to the village, nieghborhood or township - including all of the tax dollars that go with it.
KyMouse| 3.29.11 @ 12:00PM
My father's mother taught in a one-room Kentucky schoolhouse circa 1900-1920. She once told me that the most serious problem she ever had with a student was this: A boy brought a whistle to class and blew it whenever she turned her back to write on the blackboard.
MikeBee| 3.29.11 @ 12:27PM
In Detroit Public Schools (DPS), the idea to move from traditional public schools to charter schools is simply an attempt to lower teacher salaries and to get rid of unfunded pension liabilities. DPS has operated at an extreme deficit for many years. However, its teacher salaries rank among the lowest in the state of Michigan. How is it that other districts, with much higher teacher salaries, are thriving, with some of these districts even carrying $millions in excess Fund Balance (rainy day funds)? (Note: new Republican governor of MI, Rick Snyder, is presently eyeing these surpluses as a means to right the MI budget.)
The answer is simple: DPS spends huge amounts of money in administrative support for its schools. In one DPS school building, there are presently 20 teachers and 4 administrators. That's an administrator for every five teachers! When Robert Bobb gained control of DPS, he downsized the Curriculum Department (administration) from 250 employees to only 53 employees (probably twice as many as they need, still!). How many other administrative departments are operating with bloated staff who spend most of their days filing their nails or surfing the internet?
Parents are quickly sending their children to charter schools in Detroit, trying to avoid having their children spend any classroom time with other children who are "thugs." The charter schools are presently allowed to remove children from their schools, if they are too unruly. The effect of this is that the charter schools in Detroit have the higher-achieving children of Detroit as students, while DPS, with its charter to accept every child, has the lower-achieving children, some of whom have been kicked out of the charters.
Changing to all charter schools for Detroit should have bad results for the charters, as they would then be forced to accept the lower-achieving children, along with a new charter to serve all children of Detroit. Take away the charter's ability to kick unruly students out, and you take away their effectiveness. (This is also the biggest reason that private schools are so effective.)
We have been shown the way to effective learning in numerous analyses and studies done over the years by conservatives. Blankenhorn's "Fatherless America," Murray's "Losing Ground," and other works have shown us that the real problem is fatherless families. Sowell's "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" taught us that if poor Americans continue to embrace the culture of the old, deep South (which was actually the culture of the poor area of Britain whence the original settlers of the South came), they will continue to NOT value education for their children. Culture change is needed in America's poor cities. Fathers (and two-parent families) are needed there.
While competition (from charters) can improve graduation rates, no school will ever be effective if it cannot kick out unruly students, or, at the very least, discipline them in some manner.
Bhan999| 3.29.11 @ 6:16PM
Why would you take away the charters' ability to eject unruly students even if all the schools were converted to charters? Do you want to start crippling them with the same nonsensical rules that have ruined the public schools? The "student" doesn't have the right to disrupt the classroom and interfere with the education of the other students.
Let their parents be responsible for them. Or devote a cell at the Sheriff's for these students until their parents can certify that they have found a school that will take them. After a few are kicked out and everyone sees you are serious about order in the classroom, the rest will fall into line.
When I was a high school student in the late 50s, Ball High - the high school on Galveston Island - would expel any student caught stealing from another student's locker. Since this was the only high school on the island, an expelled student would have to go to the mainland to find another school that might take them. A major inconvenience for student and parent alike.
The result? There were NO locks on any student lockers in the entire school. I saw it with my own eyes. Everyone knew that the rule would be enforced with speed and finality so no one broke the rule. Galveston Ball High was a theft-free zone.
MikeBee| 3.29.11 @ 9:42PM
Bhan999,
You are right. However, multiple lawsuits against school districts over the last 40 years have ensured that there can be no discipline in schools, and children can figure that out pretty quickly.
The charters in Detroit would have to take all children, without being able to kick them out, because Robert Bobb is planning to REPLACE Detroit Public Schools with charter schools. Public school districts are required by law to teach all children, and cannot kick them out, except in severe cases, like if a child tries to kill other kids (in which case he ends up in juvy hall).
I believe that public school troubles with graduation rates would cease if they were allowed to kick unruly kids out. You don't want an education? Fine. You want to disrupt the learning process for everyone else? You're out of here. The many should not be made to suffer because of the bad behavior of the few.
CJohnson| 3.29.11 @ 1:10PM
Until Teachers taught us we cannpt teach without being in a Union, schools would rely on older students to help teach the younger students. In doing so, learning is reinforced and the art of teaching was taught. Anyone could teach basic ciphering and arithmetic, to anyone, including a boarder or hired hand. Just ask my Grandmother how they managed in the middle of a homestead in MT, circa 1920. A widowed Aunt taught them to read, write and do math until they went to a boarding high school; older siblings taught the younger ones. My Grandma was educated in this way and later on became a teacher (she was the youngest, and was deprived of having a sibling to teach, so she taught her kitty).
jgo| 3.29.11 @ 1:35PM
Out-sourcing doesn't necessarily increase efficiency, but it does consistently cut total compensation to the bodies shopped in a fraudulent way.
cowgirl| 3.29.11 @ 3:10PM
I am a native San Francisco Bay Arean (Part of the Stupid State-California). I have lived in the Stupid State all my life. Half of the Stupid State's budget is Schools - 80% of that money is pensions and salaries. The testing scores and dropout rates in the schools are unacceptable. The school system in the Stupid State is nothing more than welfare and entitlements for teachers and professors who grew up in the 1960's smoking dope, having sex with everyone and listening to rock and roll and following the likes of Fidel Castro, Che Chevara, Karl Marx, Saul Alinsky, Noam Chomsky, Jane Fonda, Howard Zinn and the rest of the ususal suspects. Just look at who the people of the Stupid State elected to Governor - the pride of the 1960's Governor Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown.
I pulled my son out of public school when he was in sixth grade and homeschooled him. He is a Junior in honors math, science and history. He is well-rounded, intelligent and more mature than his 17 years. People comment to me about socializing him.... Really, in the public school system? Okay fine, then he can learn how to speak foul language, wear his pants on the ground and disrespect everyone around him and drop out of high school. Oh yes - that is a great idea.
Home School. Home School. Home Schoo.
PattyMor| 3.29.11 @ 4:35PM
Well, the bureaucracy and the bloated salaries and benefits all provide one thing: Reliable Democrat Voters. The teaching and learning are secondary. We saw that in Wisc. when the teachers called in "sick" and left to protest the governor. And, they can indoctrinate your kids in the care and feeding of socialism. Remember, Barack Hussein Obama, um, um, um.
Pat| 3.29.11 @ 4:38PM
It would take a spectacular miracle for charter schools to turn Detroit’s education system around. An alternate solution proposed and always rejected is to put Detroit’s school system under the exclusive control of a federal judge. Lansing, Michigan’s capital, wants no part of the Detroit problem, they periodically take over Detroit’s school system but then quickly return it to local control as soon as the problem is “solved” – Detroit is always a Lose-Lose situation from the state government’s historic perspective. Detroit’s politicians view involuntarily giving up control over their school system as akin to a double root canal followed by a radical chemo therapy treatment the same day – they want no part of that. And a federal judge would have very little patience with Detroit’s nonsense and feel no reluctance to mandate financial changes shutting down the graft and inefficiencies endemic throughout Detroit’s education system.
As unlicensed mendicants, Detroit’s politicians shove their beggar’s bowl under the noses of all incoming presidents. Their hope – send more federal money our way, they’ll figure out how to dam the money stream and extract something for themselves and their local allies. Jumping on the charter school bandwagon represents no mental sea change for Detroiters and their entitlement mindsets. Obama and his minions want Detroit to stagger forward a few more years and need a plausible excuse to channel funds to the Motor City – if Detroit singing praises to charter schooling helps, then your tax dollars will somehow find their way to the Motor City. Time and money are always the solutions proposed by the Democrats and their hope is taxpayers won’t notice that most problems can’t be solved with federal welfare payments to urban bastions under long term Democratic control.
jennifer | 3.29.11 @ 5:31PM
My children all attended a one room schoolhouse-as I homeschooled them all. The youngest, at 15 is taking college course currently and all are graduates of our little farm school.
The costs to the nation-zero. Oh and my oldest is in the armed forces and has been since 2008, my second son began as a volunteer fireman at 17 and is training to become an EMT/and eventually law enforcement officer, and the third son at seventeen holds a full time job saving for college.
Make your own one room school house-that is my advice.
Milwaukee| 3.29.11 @ 5:37PM
Part of the problem is credentialing. Credit is given in Algebra I for sitting in a chair for 50 minutes-a-day and 180 days, and being relatively better than the worse students in the class. If a student masters the material in 157 days, too bad. They are not free to leave. If the student needs 201 days, t0o bad. The course is repeated in 90 day chunks. We need credit based on mastery of material, not on time spent studying or performance relative to others in the class. Death to Carnegie Units for graduation and college admissions!
Is there no one out there interested in a Project based high school? I am.
MikeBee| 3.29.11 @ 9:48PM
Milwaukee,
You're talking about the older European method of school. My dad schooled in China, where he was raised, pre-WWII, in the old European method. Under this system, there were six levels. One did not pass to the next level until he/she had mastered the material of the present level. My dad went to school in level one with a 15-year-old. I don't know if one was allowed to pass to another level earlier, though, and my dad passed in 1992, so I can't ask him.
Charlie Martin | 3.29.11 @ 7:05PM
You all might enjoy my piece on modern one-room schools, from 2008:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/a.....t-century/
bill johnson| 3.29.11 @ 9:54PM
Nice Article. What would make it more compelling is if the author actually looked at what he writes. Fulton County is NOT suburban Atlanta, but Atlanta itself. Very urban, comprising the center city. It had annexed some northern suburbs (a county formerly called Milton), but they have seceeded, as Fulton county bled their tax money for inner city purposes.
A mistake of this size calls into question the rest of your work, no?
RiShawn Biddle | 3.29.11 @ 10:07PM
Actually, Bill, for the purposes of the article (and in fact), Fulton County school system and the Atlanta Public Schools district are separate entities. Atlanta Public Schools only covers Atlanta proper; Fulton County Schools covers the area of Fulton County outside of Atlanta, which is suburban. There is no error. And given that I had spent five years in Atlanta (including two years reporting on Fulton County schools, along with the Fulton and DeKalb County governments), I made no oversight.
But thanks for commenting.
Donna| 3.30.11 @ 8:34AM
My friend pulled her son out of Milton High School and put him in Charter. Fulton County School Systems is a suburb and NOT part of the Atlanta school districts. BTW: Would be interested in your opinion on Kaseem Reed’s taking over the Atlanta School Board. There are a lot of educational problems right now and to only blame the schools, their unions and governance is 50% of the problem. The other 50 lay at the feet of the parents and their hands off approach to their children and education. The parents are in fact out there protesting the quality of education, but at the same time parents can ensure an education in the “system” if they put effort in the outcome. Have a friend whose daughter is attending college for senior year from a public school. It appears that teachers have gone into protection mode instead of education mode.
BooMushroom | 3.29.11 @ 10:23PM
"Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing...after they have exhausted all other possibilities."
-- Winston Churchill
We have exhausted all the other possibilities on improving schools. It looks like, now that we've reached the "run out of other people's money" stage of affairs, we are going to do the right thing and introduce competition to the schools.
teapartydoc| 3.29.11 @ 10:36PM
Is Robert Bobb a one-man version of the two Bobs?
Dee See| 3.29.11 @ 11:59PM
----Just yesterday
"RED China to Surpass the U.S. in Science"
-BBC News
AGAIN, about that 4 decades of Globalist-
RED China empowerment and sellout (i.e. TREASON).
HUAC meets NUREMBERG
------HUAC meets NUREMBERG
------------HUAC meets NUREMBERG!
C Smith| 3.31.11 @ 2:45AM
Teachers Unions Gone Wild
The caption "Teachers Unions Gone Wild" screams for attention. Seems some itinerant journalist recently "crashed" a New Jersey Education Association's "leadership" conference and video chronicled the event. Reminds me of an expose I compiled (circa 1992) regarding America's only government funded religion. The intent: to challenge believers to "have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them" (cf. Ephesians 5:11). The elder board did not approve distribution. The following is a facsimile:
The National Education Association (NEA) with 2.1 million members is the most powerful force in education. Although it purports to represent the interest of teachers, many of its members are not in agreement with its policies, have limited awareness of its politics, and are naive about its power and past. William Bennett, former Secretary of Education, in The Devaluing of America, describes the NEA's policies and politics:
In recent years, the union's Representative Assembly went on record in favor of teacher strikes; school- based clinics dispensing contraceptives; a nuclear freeze; gay rights; the Equal Right Amendment; D.C. statehood; and Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis for president. It has voted against merit pay for teachers; parental choice; voluntary school prayer; state takeovers of bad schools; home schooling; English as the official language; drug, alcohol, and AIDS testing; nuclear power plants; aid to the Nicaraguan resistance; the nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court; and Ronald Reagan and George Bush for president...Opposes every common-sense reform measure: competency testing for teachers, opening the teaching profession to knowledgeable individuals who have not graduated from 'schools of education,' performance-based pay, holding educators accountable for how much children learn, an end to tenure, a national examination to find out exactly how much our children know, and parental choice of schools....
Thomas Toch, education correspondent for U.S. News and World Report, "In the Name of Excellence" writes:
In 1989 it [the NEA] spent $7.4 million on such things as a computerized system of mass producing letters to Congress from 300,000 NEA members who "pre-authorized" the use of their names; "Congressional Contact Teams" made up of 2 NEA members in each Congressional district who are specially trained as lobbyists and flown back and forth from Washington to promote the NEA's cause from the local level; a computerized file of NEA's entire membership; a satellite link-up between a television studio in the NEA's Washington headquarters and its state affiliates; and a full-time lobbing staff of 15.... The NEA also has been a major backer of Democratic candidates since 1976, when it played a leading role in the Carter campaign. (Carter signaled the size of the NEA's contributions to his election by pushing through Congress the law that established the U.S. Department of Education - a longtime NEA goal).
The NEA's power in Iowa is of special concern. Again quoting Mr. Toch: "The NEA has sought to gain control of teacher licensing by establishing licensing boards with teacher majorities. Only Minnesota and Iowa have granted this board final authority in teacher certification." Particularly disconcerting for those of us in Iowa where an overwhelming majority of teachers are NEA members."
With the NEA in charge, the role of the teacher continues to evolve. The NEA's report, Education for the Seventies, states: "Schools will become clinics whose purpose is to provide individualized psycho-social treatment for the students, and teachers must become psychosocial therapists."
The NEA has encountered little resistance because so little is known of its political expediencies, and according to Mr. Toch, that's the plan. "Though the NEA has fought virtually every educational reform, it has poured millions of dollars into a public relations campaign designed to convince the nation that it is committed to the reform of the public schools, and of teaching in particular." The NEA's publication NEA Today spawns a plethora of glossy images of appreciative students and their obliging teachers, but so little content that it prompted author Samuel Blumenfeld to describe it as having been "written at the intellectual level of the National Enquirer."
No expose on the NEA would be complete without investigating its contention with evangelical Christianity. Blumenfeld in his book NEA: Trojan Horse In American Education describes the organizations long association with secular humanism:
...in 1933 John Dewey and 33 other liberal humanists drew up and signed that extraordinary document known as the Humanist Manifesto. It reflected all of the influences of science, evolution, and the new psychology which were reshaping American education... It was thus Dewey who began to fashion a new materialist religion in which humanity was venerated instead of God. This is basically the religion of Secular Humanism, and this is what has become the official religion of the United States, for it is the only religion permitted in its public schools and totally supported by government funds.... The NEA has remained remarkably faithful to the Humanist Manifesto since 1933. For all practical purposes, the public school has become the parochial school for secular humanism. Its doctrines pervade the curriculum from top to bottom.
Dewey, for his contributions to education, was elected honorary president of the NEA in 1932. He was also issued the American Federation of Teachers' first membership card. With the 1973 signing of Humanistic Manifesto II, humanism became even more culturally entrenched:
As in 1933, humanist still believe that traditional theism, especially faith in the prayer-hearing God, assumed to love and care for persons, to hear and understand their prayers, and to be able to do something about them, is an unproved and outmoded faith. Salvationism, based on mere affirmation, still appears as harmful, diverting people with false hopes of heaven hereafter. Reasonable minds look to other means for survival.... No Deity will save us; we must save ourselves.
Signers of Humanist Manifesto II include Alan F. Guttmacher, president of Planned Parenthood; Betty Friedan, founder of N.O.W; behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner, a horde of Unitarian ministers, and Lester Mondale, former president of the Fellowship of Religious Humanists. Such is the NEA's consanguine "fellowship."
The NEA's domination of education affects all teachers. It dictates the rules of professional advancement. It pressures teachers to be politically partisan. Its infusion of humanist curriculum places conscionable teachers in a moral dilemma. And its influence over accreditation and other policies is disconcerting for teachers public and private. In summation, the NEA's monopoly on education places teachers, and our children, at risk!
http://popularapostasy.blogspo.....-wild.html
Creative Recreation | 8.10.11 @ 11:15PM
is good
Bill Vining | 9.23.11 @ 9:30AM
Great article,
you may be interested in visiting our website for what another school is doing.
www.heartbridgeusa.com