Horrific Bills Continue Cradle Control
Despite the horrible economy, enormous deficits, and boiling frustration with big government on the part of the electorate, the nanny state busy bodies in the legislature, state bureaucracies, and a cabal of progressive foundations are moving full speed ahead with implementing policies and laws to make parents irrelevant, destroy private childcare, and control every aspect of children’s lives from birth to school entry.
Besides the bill we discussed in our last alert that plans to continue implementation of the quality rating system, several more bills have tried to make a comeback or a new appearance that would unite all of the different entities that try to control our children, expand the subjective, invalid kindergarten readiness assessment, cement into place the controversial Early Childhood Indicators of Progress, create a cabinet level Commissioner of Early Learning and expand the subjective early childhood screening. Here is the list of bills with authors and a brief summary of their problems: Continue reading »
Global Education/Global Government at the Door by: Allen Quist
The worldwide financial crisis is being used as an excuse to create a global government.To that end, on April 26, 2010, the President of the European Central Bank, Jean-Cluade Trichet, delivered a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) called, “Global Government Today.”
Forbes online summarized the Trichet speech to the CFR as follows: “The President of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, told Forbes that global governance is extremely necessary if we want to prevent another financial crisis.”
Robert Rubin, Chairman of the CFR, signaled his support and that of the CFR for global government by responding to Trichet as follows: “Jean Claude, you were terrific.” Continue reading »
Senate Committee Adopts Core Standards
A valiant bipartisan effort to remove the Common Core Standards language from the Senate omnibus education policy bill was narrowly defeated on the evening of May 4th. This language was the same that was defeated and that we warned you about in the House bill last week. It would adopt the yet to be completed national standards by expedited rulemaking authority, meaning no public hearing, all to gain 20 points in the unconstitutional, sovereignty-robbing Race to the Top program. These national standards, especially because they are likely to become the basis for federal funding for No Child Left Behind, and as confirmed by many respected groups, such as the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Heartland Institute, will become a de facto federal government run curriculum.
Senator David Hann (R-Eden Prairie) offered the amendment in committee that would have taken out that odious standards language. It was eloquently supported by Senator Kevin Dahle (DFL-Northfield) and Senator Gen Olson (R-Minnetrista). Continue reading »
DFL Bills Promote Mental Health Curricula, Continue Child Care Takeover and Micromanage High School Counseling
Continuing the big government trend to spend money that neither the state nor federal governments have for ideas that are not only not at all needed, but are actually intrusive and harmful, a trio of bills will be heard in House education committees this week:
1. HF 664 (Welti)/ SF 1531 (Torres Ray) heard in the House Education Policy Committee on 2/17 at 8:30 AM – This bill as introduced required the commissioner of education to establish a model mental health curriculum for grades 7-12. The proposed substitute amendment instead encourages districts to develop these curricula and demands that the Minnesota Department of Education provide support based on the national health education standards and a bunch of Minnesota developed benchmarks that are not even easily available for public review.
This is a bad idea for numerous reasons. First, national and international groups like the World Health Organization, the US Surgeon General, and authors of psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual all admit that the definitions of both mental health and mental illness, especially in children and adolescents, is difficult to uniformly describe and is based on ever-changing societal and cultural norms. Secondly, this is further psychologization of curriculum open to political indoctrination and labeling. Thirdly, it is a diversion from academic curricula when math and reading scores are stagnant and there are large achievement gaps between poor students often from single parent families and middle class students. Finally, neither cash-strapped districts nor the state department that is subject to further budget cuts from the governor’s proposed budget balancing plan can afford this. Continue reading »
Issues
- Assessments + Testing (25)
- Bullying/Sex Education (6)
- Child Protection League (2)
- Common Core Standards (78)
- Curriculum + Standards (65)
- Data Collection and Data Privacy (64)
- Early Education/Nanny State (75)
- Federal Education (128)
- International Education (6)
- LGBT Issues in Education (9)
- Media Appearances (4)
- PL/CBE (2)
- Planned Economy (11)
- Politics of Education (26)
- School Violence (9)
- Social Emotional Learning/Mental Health (52)
- State Education (89)
- Testimony/Presentations (17)
- Uncategorized (13)
- Unions (10)
Education Liberty Watch Projects
ELW Allies
- American Principles Project
- Cato Institute
- Conservative Teachers of America
- Constitutional Coalition
- Eagle Forum
- Minnesota Advocates and Champions for Children
- Missouri Education Watchdog
- Restore Oklahoma Parent Empowerment
- Stop Common Core
- The Pioneer Institute
- Truth in American Education
- What is Common Core – Education Without Representation