MN Takes Center Stage in Academic Standards Battle this Week

Minnesota legislators played prominent roles this week in the battle to preserve academic liberty at both the state and federal levels. These pieces of legislation that passed the Minnesota Senate and the U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee respectively are very important for re-establishing constitutional authority, state sovereignty, and separation of powers, as well as protecting students from the imposition of an indoctrinating federal curriculum coerced with unconstitutional and borrowed federal dollars.

The Minnesota Senate passed a bill (SF 1656) authored by Senator Carla Nelson (R-Rochester) that requires legislative approval before the implementation of academic standards. This is a variation of the bill that the legislature passed last year (audio of testimony available here for 3/16/11 starting at 39:50) prohibiting implementation of any current or future Common Core standards without legislative approval that was sadly vetoed by Governor Mark Dayton as part of the omnibus education finance bill and then dropped during special session negotiations.  The Common Core Standards have been rightly opposed by Education Liberty Watch and many other expert groups and individuals for a multitude of reasons including lack of constitutionality and legality, poor quality, lack of necessity and cost. (See our testimony submitted to the Senate on this bill).

The bill would have also allowed the legislature to weigh in on the horrifically revisionist, anti-academic, anti-American, pro-big government social studies standards revision that are being implemented by the very leftist members of the Dayton education department and the of the “Blame America First” crowd that resides in too much of the academic social studies community.

It is important to note that this bill passed unheralded after the Indiana Senate education committee voted down a bill to withdraw from the Common Core in part because they were too desperate to receive a waiver from Big Brothers Arne Duncan and the Obama administration on NCLB which essentially requires the Common Core in order to receive that waiver. It also occurred after the Obama administration excoriated and threatened the state of South Carolina for even considering exercising their sovereign right to withdraw from the supposedly voluntary Common Core Standards that are being imposed via bribery and blackmail with Race to the Top, Obama’s NCLB reauthorization plans and NCLB waivers. The South Carolina bill, supported by conservative heroine, Governor Nikki Haley, was voted down in a subcommittee of the Senate Education Committee. The bill will still be reviewed by the full Senate Education Committee. Continue reading »

Government Preschool Tyranny – “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet!”

Karen R. Effrem, MD – President

The appalling report of government agents demanding inspection of preschoolers’ lunch, judging the home packed lunch not adequately nutritious, seizing the contents, and then billing the family for the government imposed mystery meat nuggets has rightly stirred a storm of controversy. American citizens living in what they thought was the “land of the free and the home of the brave” might be tempted to think that this is just an isolated incident and wouldn’t apply to them or that it only deals with lunch. However, after review of the tyrannical requirements and goals of multiple other government programs for young children, the idea from the classic Bachman Turner Overdrive tune “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” is far more apropos.

Education Liberty Watch has been warning of the dangers to freedom, parental autonomy, academics, and health of programs like quality rating systems (QRIS), Head Start, home visiting, mental health screening, and the preschool Race to the Top (RTT-ELC) for a long time. However, we will focus on Race to the Top because it is the most current and the most comprehensive example of the efforts to consolidate government control over young children in so many interconnected and overarching ways.

The preschool situation is analogous to what is going on in health care. Unfortunately though, instead of fighting against the federalization of preschool the way they have against the federalization of health care, many Republicans have been deceived by big business and liberal foundations that government preschool will somehow close achievement gaps and be the next silver bullet in education. This is despite the facts that there is no evidence of long-term academic gain for children involved in preschool (in fact there is actual evidence of academic harm), and the very people who have presided over the destruction of K-12 public education in this nation – the federal government and unions – want to now control preschool education as well.

The following excerpts are from a summary of the big government nanny-state plans from all of the applicants for the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge at a recent forum held in Washington, DC and put on by the Early Learning Challenge Collaborative. For the sake of time and space, here are some highlights of the most chillingly freedom robbing initiatives from the nine winners of the $550 million boondoggle (Only winning applications will be discussed for time and space reasons.  Text in bold italic font is added emphasis) :

1) More Lunch Box Monitoring – Delaware in its application highlighted plans to expand its health and nutrition guidelines and “will include an online version of a toolkit that includes a self-assessment, nutrition rules, tools to plan healthy eating, feeding guidelines, family engagement guidance, and physical activity guidelines.” It sounds as though we will soon be hearing similar stories out of Delaware as we did out of North Carolina. Continue reading »

Oppose NCLB Waivers and Support Federal DOE Elimination

The following testimony was submitted to a joint hearing of the Minnesota House Education Reform and Finance Committees regarding No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waivers held today.  Although this testimony pertains to Minnesota, the concepts described apply to all states that have received or are applying for these waivers.

Despite the great desire for funds and the desire for even the illusion of flexibility, state legislatures must stand up for state sovereignty, separation of powers, local control and parental rights or the federal takeover of education will be complete.

On the federal level, Minnesota’s own Rep. John Kline (R-MN 6), chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee has authored two bills – The Student Success Act (HR 33989) and The Encouraging Innovation and Effective Teachers Act (HR 3990).  While these bills do many good and important things, like properly codifying flexibility at the legislative level and prohibiting the executive branch from setting standards and demanding other requirements and we support them, we are even more enamored by Senator Rand Paul’s bill that cuts $5 trillion of federal spending over five years and completely eliminates the US Department of Education.  Given the horrific extent of federal spending, debt, and government overreach into every aspect of children’s and their families’ lives, we see this as a more direct approach.

Please urge your state legislators to resist the waivers and their implementation in your states as well as to urge your members of Congress to support the Kline bills as the interim step on the way to the ultimate goal of the Paul legislation.

February 16, 2012

Dear Chairwoman Erickson, Chairman Garofalo and Members of the House Education Committees,

Thank you for your willingness to consider these written comments on the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waivers. Education Liberty Watch has several concerns:

1)      The waiver program as implemented by the US Dept. of Education is unconstitutional as the executive branch  is usurping legislative authority and implementing reforms not in law.

Former federal judge and law professor Michael  McConnell said, “ [T]he Obama administration has admitted to a strategy of governing by executive order when it cannot prevail through proper legislative channels. Rather than work with Congress to get reasonable changes to President Bush’s No Child Left Behind education law, it has used an aggressive interpretation of its waiver authority to substitute the president’s favored policies for the law passed by Congress. Continue reading »

Education Liberty Watch Testimony on SF 1656 – Legislative Approval of Standards

Karen R. Effrem, MD

President – Education Liberty Watch

February 8, 2012

Dear Chairwoman Olson and Members of the Senate Education Committee,

Thank you for your willingness to consider these written comments on SF 1656.  Education Liberty Watch enthusiastically supports SF 1656.  We are grateful to Senator Nelson for sponsoring it and to Senators Michel, Harrington, and Madame Chairwoman as well for their willingness to co-author it.  The list of sponsors speaks to the Minnesota legislature’s long and proud heritage of bipartisan and ideologically diverse opposition to both federal and executive branch interference in education matters.  This fidelity to separation of powers doctrine, state sovereignty, local control, and parental rights is admirable.

As to the merits of the legislation, it has many.

1)      Legally and constitutionally, it is important after the Profile of Learning debacle from 1998-2003, the bureaucracy and unfunded mandates of No Child Left Behind, the unconstitutional and illegal efforts of the Obama administration to go around Congress, the unilateral actions of state departments of education to commit to the federal department of education’s requirements for waivers that include imposition of national standards, and the Race to the Top Process which also required this imposition of a federal curriculum, it is very important for the people’s representatives in the legislature to have a say about these standards and their implementation.

2)      From a fiscal and fiduciary standpoint, the legislature must also weigh in.  Changing standards and the associated assessments is an enormously expensive undertaking.  California has estimated that it will cost $3 billion dollars to develop new assessments that comply with the Common Core National Standards.  While certainly not likely to be that high in Minnesota, there is already much concern about the number, cost and rigor of the myriad of assessments that Minnesota already gives to comply with federal mandates without developing a whole new set for these less than ideal standards.  Given the precarious financial situations of both the Minnesota and federal governments, it is wise to proceed carefully in changing its standards.

3)      And most importantly from the quality perspective, these national standards should not be implemented without much greater scrutiny.  Before the Pawlenty administration imposed the English Common Core Standards without legislative input, they were quite universally panned by experts across the country.  Dr. Sandra Stotsky, who had reviewed Minnesota’s English standards coming off the Profile refused to validate the Common Core standards when they were developed.  The math standards are even worse as witnessed by the opposition to them by Minnesota’s own experts such as Dr. Larry Gray.

Finally, although this legislation deals with K-12 standards, the very same situation is playing out in the pre-K realm with the state department of education attempting to impose statewide preschool standards that have never been reviewed by the legislature to force compliance with the Parent Aware Quality Rating system by bribing or blackmailing poor parents and private childcare programs and preschools with scholarships and Race to the Top grants.  Even if these standards were perfectly academic and non-controversial, which they are not, the imposition of one top-down, government mandated set of standards on all programs – public, private or religious who “volunteer” for this rating system cannot be allowed to stand.

Thank you again for this opportunity to testify.