If you get all your information from television, you may be only distantly aware that home schooling is a viable
alternative to public schools, and that there are ideas in the works to make public schools more competitive
with each other and with private schools. Worse yet, if you watch too much television, perhaps you think
that home schooling is strictly for hillbillies or Branch Davidians. On the contrary, home schools are
more popular than ever, and compared to public schools, they produce better educated students at a
fraction of the cost per student.
The Editor of this web site, and Mrs. Editor, have
had personal experience with both public education and home schooling, some of which is described in a
subsection at the bottom of this page.
Home schools teach:
Civics
Ethics
Christian principles
Geography
Grammar
Penmanship, or at least legible handwriting
American History and the reasons for America's superiority
Math (without a calculator)
Spelling (without a spell-checker)
Reading, inference and comprehension
Resistance to propaganda
The benefits of capitalism and the proven dangers of communism
Logical deduction and rational thinking
Self-reliance and independence
The public schools teach:
The answers to the next STAR test
How to line up and march in single file (just like in prison)
How to depend on the government for at least two meals a day
How to count on your fingers and knuckles
How to depend on a calculator for the simplest arithmetic
How to watch television (instead of paying attention to a teacher)
How to cheat on a test using a cell phone
How to walk the halls in packs to avoid thugs who also walk the halls in packs
How to throw the ball, catch the ball, kick the ball, and worship anyone who plays sports for a living
How to save the earth from coal, oil and styrofoam
101 ways to benefit from government handouts
If you place any value on your children's education, moral standards, personal safety, polite behavior,
and eternal salvation, then you must get them out of the public school system. Private schools
are expensive, and home schooling is a lot of work, if you do it right, but the rewards are well
worth the ivestments.
When you're finished here, read about the teachers' labor
unions and the socialist ideas they support.
Note: Items related to a 2008 court ruling in California are
now located here
Michigan
State Board Members Warn State Homeschool Registration List is a Precursor to "Unwarranted Home
Entry". The government loves putting people on "lists." They want a list of the
vaccinated. A list of gun-owners. A list of individuals who make purchases involving
the terms "MAGA" and "Trump". And now, in Michigan, legislators and the attorney general are
pushing for a list of parents who homeschool their children. But even more Orwellian, the
dog-whistle is the possibility of "warrantless searches" for those who decide to homeschool their
children in the Great Lakes State, according to one State Board of Education member. On
February 13th, the Michigan State Board of Education met for their monthly meeting.
Towards the end of the meeting, prior to closing, Board Member Tom McMillin of Oakland Township
added his comments regarding a push to require registration requirements for homeschooling.
Warning:
State Take Over of Private, Religious and Home-Schools if HB1610 Becomes Law! This
bill requires all students to participate in standardized statewide assessments. Make no
mistake about this one: if this legislation is passed, it essentially allows the GOVT/STATE to
control our private, religious, and home schools. How? By making the children who
receive EFA funds take the STATE Standardized Test. The Education Freedom Account (EFA) is
one of the current school choice programs in NEW Hampshire. It would mean that children who
use the school choice (EFA) money to go to a private, religious, or home school would be forced to
take the STATE Standardized test. THIS IS A THREAT TO EVERY PRIVATE, RELIGIOUS, and
HOME-SCHOOL family in New Hampshire!! It MUST be STOPPED! Currently, students who
participate in the school choice program (EFA) can take the standardized test offered at their
private, religious, or home school. This legislation would change that. All of these
EFA students would have to take the STATE standardized test, which is COMMON CORE ALIGNED. In
Indiana and Ohio, when children used their vouchers to attend private and religious schools and
were forced to take the STATE standardized test, those schools began aligning their curriculum to
Common Core. This is a de facto takeover of our private and religious schools!
Michigan
State Officials Call for Registry of Homeschooled Children. Michigan officials are
calling upon state lawmakers to enact a mandatory state registry of all homeschooled children in
Michigan. Since December 2023, Michigan state officials — including Attorney
General Dana Nessel, the state House and Senate Education Committee chairs, the State Board of
Education, and State Superintendent Michael Rice — have criticized homeschooling and
called for stricter government regulation and oversight over homeschooled students and their
parents. The motivation for these attacks was the arrest in December of two couples in
Clinton County for "allegedly abusing and financially profiting from foster and adopted children."
However, instead of focusing on the crime itself — or on the high levels of abuse in
government schools — these officials are broadly attacking homeschooling and parents
seeking alternatives to government schools. For example, Attorney General Nessel alleged that
homeschooling had contributed to the couples' actions.
[A]
Homeschooling revolution [is] reshaping American education. In the ever-evolving
landscape of American education, a quiet revolution is taking place. Over the past six years,
home schooling has surged by 51%, in stark contrast to the 7% rise in private school enrollment,
and a 4% dip in public schools over the same period, according to an in-depth look by the
Washington Post at thousands of school districts spanning 32 states which provide accurate
data. Once limited to the peripheries of mainstream education, home schooling is rapidly
emerging as a force to be reckoned with. [...] The pandemic, with its sweeping disruptions to
conventional schooling, undoubtedly served as a catalyst for this seismic shift. Schools
across the country shuttered, forcing millions of families to grapple with remote learning and
rethink the entire educational paradigm. Yet, as the pandemic wanes and schools reopen, shedding
many of their COVID-19 constraints, the surge in home schooling has not only persisted but flourished.
Public
School Refuseniks. According to one estimate I have seen, in 1973 there were only
about 13,000 children being homeschooled. Today the number is over 5 million — and
may be much higher, as many states do not track the numbers very carefully. The Washington
Post has noticed, and you can tell they are worried about it. (The left has always hated
homeschooling, and the teachers unions rightly understand what a threat homeschooling is to their
gravy train, as most public schools derive their revenue by how many students are enrolled.)
Biden
Admin to Deport Christian Homeschool Family. The Biden Administration has ordered a
German homeschool family, who came to America legally, to leave the country. The move comes
as the White House has turned a blind eye to millions of illegals invading the southern
border. The Romeike family was forced to flee Germany in 2008 after they were persecuted by
the government for homeschooling their children. The Germans levied fines against the family
and threatened to take away their children. I documented the plight of the family for years
when I was working at Fox News. Uwe and Hannelore Romeike and their five children eventually
settled in eastern Tennessee and were granted indefinite deferred action status. The
evangelical Christians were allowed to live, work, and remain safely in the United States without
fear of deportation.
Not All
Refugees Are Welcome. As the border crisis spirals out of control, the Biden Regime
responds by granting legal status to 470,000 illegal aliens from the socialist basket case
Venezuela, encouraging Third World hordes to invade in still greater numbers so as to displace the
American population, transforming the country forever. The border is wide open, and it seems
that once in the country, anyone from anywhere can avoid deportation by claiming refugee
status. But there are exceptions: ["]Uwe Romeike and his wife Hannah moved their
seven children to the U.S. in 2008 to avoid religious persecution in their native land, where the
parents had pulled their children from public schools to teach them at home.["] They
were heavily fined, and armed police dragged their kids off to public school, which is presumably
no more suitable for Christians in Germany than it is in the USA, where at least it isn't mandatory.
The
Great Untethering. [Scroll down] Consider that up until now, the schooling
of most children has meant sending them through a predictable thirteen-year program at the local
public school. And since a family's only way to control the quality of that program was to
buy or rent a residence in the most affluent zip code it could afford, the parents had to accept
considerable restrictions of their own. These limits included living in a certain kind of
community, becoming slave to a high mortgage and property taxes, missing out on career and
investment opportunities in less-developed areas, and associating with neighbors who are resigned
to making the same compromises. School choice clearly enables parents to pick the kind of
schooling best suited to their child's needs and personality. But it also liberates the
parents themselves to live anywhere they wish — to start a small business, to get an
advanced degree, to help a favored charity, or simply to enjoy a different culture — all
without having to sacrifice the quality of their kids' educations.
Homeschooling
will revolutionize education and society. Imagine a kid with a smart, dedicated, private, full-time tutor
who dearly loves him, never goes on strike, and conducts classes within walking distance at a place that is physically
and emotionally safe. It's called "homeschooling." Homeschooling used to be illegal. Children were
required to attend organized schools even if they were physically assaulted, as I was, or were shaken down for their
lunch money daily, as I was. (Other than the physical assaults and thievery and emotional torment and a few other
things, I have very fond memories of public school.) Later, homeschooling became slightly more common but was
still an offbeat thing. It was mainly something for oddball religious sects. Never mind that the kids
"victimized" by it tended to be very knowledgeable and well-adjusted and won all the spelling bees. They were
considered weirdos because their parents were considered weirdos. COVID changed that. Politicians and the
teachers' unions that owned them, looking as always for more money and less work, shut down the schools.
Educating
For Today. Someone defined education as "that which is done to prepare a child for life." If that is
truly the definition, then our schools are doing a terrible job. Many kids graduate from school believing somehow
that the world owes them a living; that they have a right to a good income, whether they happen to work or not. [...]
One result of the COVID-19 lockdowns is that it forced parents to see what their children were experiencing in
school. Many were upset enough they decided to make the sacrifice and home-school their children. They were
surprised that it really was not much of a sacrifice and that their children did so well it caused them to wonder why
they had not started teaching them sooner. [...] Parents who home-school have discovered that teaching is fairly
simple. One of the joys they have experienced is seeing their children excel in achievement. In fact,
children want to learn, and will do so if we do not discourage them. Our schools have known for a hundred years
that the best way to teach reading is a system of phonics, yet they continue to use a look-say method in one form or
another. With that system the child memorizes certain words, and so it is limited by how many words he can
memorize. With phonics the child learns the meaning and pronunciation of every letter, and knowing that, he can
read almost any word. Children can learn to read at age three or four; they can read words that are beyond their
understanding, but they can pronounce them.
Why
Families Are More Important Than Ever. Your favorite politicians, journalists, teachers, and even
celebrities are uninterested in truth and instead are interested in pushing a specific agenda (whatever that agenda
happens to be). Every news organization out there has a specific slant they consistently maintained, pushing out
independent minded journalists in favor of people willing to submit to whatever narrative is currently popular amongst
readers. State funded schools, unsurprisingly, favor statist policies. Regardless of whether your children
are in public schools, private schools, or in home schooling, you have the power to dispel some of this
propaganda. You can spend time teaching your kids about your values and philosophies and why they're important to
you. You can help point out some of the flaws and shortcomings in the lessons they've learned elsewhere. But
most importantly, you can spend time teaching them the power of critical thinking, so they can reliably assess the
accuracy and veracity of the information they encounter in the future.
Why
suburban women are flocking to the GOP: As simple as A,B,C. [Scroll down] Even in 2020, The Atlantic
reported that parents in New York, worried about crime and bad schools, were taking over the education of their
kids. Since then, as schools did a worse and worse job, more and more parents decided to educate their own
kids. Many kept it up post-pandemic. As the Associated Press reported: "In 18 states that shared data
through the current school year, the number of homeschooling students increased by 63% in the 2020-2021 school year,
then fell by only 17%" the next year. (It's not just white suburban women. Black families, too, as The New
Yorker recently reported, are increasingly homeschooling their kids.)
Lenin
is Educating Your Children. About 46 million students attend traditional Public Schools and another
3.5 million attend Public Charter Schools. Also, about 4 million are homeschooled while another 5 million
are in private schools. The number of children abandoning traditional public schools is on the rise. Government
leaders don't want to talk about either the megatrends affecting enrollment or when offered a choice, how many parents
vote with their feet. Traditional education leaders are frantic to change the subject when challenged and offer
bogus excuses for their failure to deliver a good academic education.
How
Can Teachers Expect to Regain Support from Parents? The politicization of the education system has
destroyed parent-teacher relations. Instead of encouraging healthy communication among parents, teachers, and
administrators, public school officials have continued undermining parental rights and implementing their own political
ideologies into coursework. Teachers unions work to vilify concerned parents and label them as "extremists" for
showing up and trying to be involved in their children's educational process. Sixty-eight percent of parents
surveyed by The Learning Heroes expressed concerns about politicians making curriculum decisions. Eighty-two
percent of parents recently admitted in a Harris Poll that they are willing to change their political affiliation over
educational policies. Trust in the public education system has dropped to a second all-time low, and conservative
and moderate teachers recognize this. They are leaving left-leaning in favor of private schools, microschools, and
homeschooling options. I have been homeschooling my children for over 10 years now.
Texas
School District Brands Homeschooling as 'Dangerous' to Intimidate Parents. This is a rather odd way to try
to prevent parents from homeschooling their children. A North Texas school district was recently exposed for
making a thinly-veiled attempt to intimidate parents who are pulling their children out of school. Madison
Bratcher, the mother of a girl who was enrolled in the Bridgeport Independent School District (BISD), received an odd
reaction from her daughter's school after withdrawing her. "Her daughter was bullied, exposed to inappropriate
sexual talk by other students, and mistreated in classes and on the bus. Bratcher said she raised these issues
with her daughter's school, but they were not addressed," according to a report from The Texan. "All of these
incidents show that Bridgeport doesn't have the best interest of students at heart," Bratcher told the news outlet.
Bratcher and her husband made the decision to homeschool McKinley, their daughter, who is in the sixth grade.
The Editor says...
This is why you need to learn your rights before homeschooling. The school district will lie to you, and
to everybody else, because the school district is paid in proportion to the number of students enrolled.
Homeschooling laws differ from one state to another,
but HSLDA is a good source of helpful information.
And
then they wonder why parents are pulling their kids out. We see it all around us. I meet more and
more parents who are homeschooling or doing whatever it takes to take their kids out of public schools. In
California, for example, 250,000 have dropped out. Well, one thousand here, one thousand there, and pretty soon a
lot of kids are not attending their local public schools.
Private
schools [and] homeschoolers [are] booming as parents exit public schools. Eleanor Jones started
homeschooling her learning-disabled son in the fall of 2020 when Maryland's public schools were virtual — and
she's had no desire to send him back since they've reopened. Now 10, her son was born with severe hearing loss due
to a congenital inner ear anomaly. He wears cochlear implants to hear, suffers from a processing disorder and
reads lips to understand others at his home in Westminster, 36 miles northwest of Baltimore. "He didn't handle masks
well," Ms. Jones said Friday. "We decided to continue homeschooling this year as things still don't seem to be
completely settled regarding COVID mandates, particularly in school settings."
NYT:
Say, where have all the public-school students gone? Over one million students have evaporated from public
school rolls over the last two years, the New York Times reported late yesterday. "No overriding explanation has
emerged yet for the widespread drop-off," writes reporter Shawn Hubler. Really? [...] Did anything unusual happen in
the last two years? To be fair to Hubler, she offers at least two obvious explanations, but seems more concerned about
the impact on public schools from them rather than the students.
Public
schools are feeling the fallout from the COVID lockdowns. Vladimir Lenin allegedly said, "Give me four years to
teach the children, and the seed I have sown shall never be uprooted." America's leftists have taken those words to heart
and, since the 1930s, have assiduously winnowed their way into America's education system. The COVID lockdown, for all
its destruction, may have ended up performing a huge service by exposing to parents just how bad the leftist toxin has grown
in the last ten to fifteen years. The sea change in parental attitudes toward education is shown in the fact that,
across America, public school enrollment is collapsing.
Maryland
Legislature Kills Bill to Collect Home-Schoolers Information. After pressure from Maryland parents, Democrat
Delegate Sheila Ruth (Baltimore) has announced that she will not longer push the bill she initially sponsored to collect
information on households homeschooling their children.
Maryland
Legislature Considers Creating 'Advisory Council' to Collect Data on Homeschoolers. If we have learned anything
about left-wing cultural revolutionaries over the past few years and decades, it's that they insist that all conform to their
view of "diversity." All are welcome, except for those who disagree. That's why it's so troubling to see
government authorities rope in, and attempt to control, people attempting to maintain their independence. Maryland
Delegate Sheila Ruth, a Baltimore County Democrat, recently proposed legislation in the Maryland House of Delegates that
would create a deeply worrisome "advisory council" to watch over and gather data on homeschool families. The 16-seat
council would be staffed by four political appointees, four government officials, and eight members of the homeschool
community. It would "gather information on the needs of homeschool parents and homeschool umbrella schools," and would
effectively sweep homeschool parents under the wing of a government agency.
100 Reasons
to Homeschool Your Kids. From fostering creativity and freedom to providing impressive educational outcomes,
homeschooling is an increasingly appealing option.
Leftists
are using our children as pawns for all their policies. One of the most obvious things leftists have done is to
destroy the school systems' ability to teach anything meaningful, replacing real knowledge with "correct think" drivel that
denies everything from history to mathematics to science in favor of inclusion, diversity, LGBTQ "training," and such.
Leftists believe that, if this continues, they'll have a malleable and manageable bunch of kids who grow up to become shills
for their point of view. What leftists miss is that we have a goodly number of intelligent children — the
rebels, questioners, and readers — willing to go beyond the leftist soft porn now replacing reality in the school
library and ferret out truth for themselves. Many kids in this group have parents still awake enough not to be woke,
who are willing to go to the mat to preserve our republic, and willing and able to counteract what their kids are
force-fed with lessons in reality. Many have become homeschoolers to avoid kowtowing to the system.
We've
Only Just Begun To See The Benefits Of The New Surge In Homeschooling. Parents across America were caught
unprepared for the mass closure of government schools in 2020. Soon after, however, many decided they and their children had
had enough of the status quo. Now at a crossroads, will they choose reform or repudiation? The wave of ill-advised
school shutdowns last year compelled tens of thousands of parents to rethink their children's education. When the classroom
was virtually forced into their homes via Zoom, parents realized just how abysmal the curricula and tutelage were. Statistics
on families fleeing to homeschooling must be worrying the education establishment. From 2012 to 2019, the homeschooling rate
hovered around 3.3 percent of K-12 US students. That figure rose to 5.4 percent in spring 2020. By the
following fall, that figure had more than doubled to 11.1 percent. Among black families, the increase was particularly
noteworthy considering only 3.3 percent of black children were homeschooled in spring 2020 versus 16.1 percent in the fall.
Is
there a wholly unexpected benefit from the left's COVID madness? Thanks to the lockdowns and school closures,
parents have been home to witness their children's distance learning. They've seen, up close and personal, the Critical
Race Theory, LGBTQ propaganda, and general anti-Americanism inundating their children. And many parents, having seen
it, haven't liked it. And at long last, I'm ready to get to the two items I saw today that suggest the possibility of a
Black Swan that leftists didn't see coming when they weaponized COVID to achieve the short-term goal of ridding themselves of
Trump and the long-term goal of striking a blow at America's political, economic, and social infrastructures. The first
story is that, in Washington State, 55,000 students have withdrawn from the public school system. Many withdrew for the
reasons mentioned above, as well as the fact that public schools are failing at their core mission, which is to teach
children basic skills, such as reading, writing, and arithmetic.
US
Surge in Homeschooling Sparked by More Than Pandemic. Because of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus,
there's been a surge in homeschooling in the United States. The U.S. Census Bureau conducted what it calls its
"experimental Household Pulse Survey," described on the bureau's website as "the first data source to offer both a national
and state-level look at the impact of COVID-19 on homeschooling rates." The survey shows "a substantial increase" in
homeschooling from spring 2020 to the start of the school year the following fall. These dates coincide with the start
of the pandemic. But the surge didn't end there. In March, the agency reported that the number of households with
at least one homeschooled child more than doubled to 11.1 percent from 5.4 percent.
Mom gets standing ovation
after calling for 'mass exodus' from public schools. Florida mom Quisha King called for a "mass exodus" from
the public school system, arguing that school officials left parents with no other choice for fighting left-wing ideas.
Her comments came during the Family Research Council's annual Pray Vote Stand Summit during a Thursday panel on "Fighting
Indoctrination on a National Scale." "I really think at this point the only thing to do is have a mass exodus from the
public school system — that's it," King said. In response, she received prolonged applause, and many in the
audience rose to their feet at the Leesburg, Virginia, event.
Homeschooling
[is] Growing by Leaps and Bounds. Homeschooling numbers have increased over 300% in the last two years,
according to federal government Census data. This spike does not include Americans engaged in virtual learning through
a public or private school program due to COVID protocols. These are full-time homeschoolers. The United States
Census Bureau has been tasked with collecting data through nationwide surveys for over 80 years. The data are intended
for use by other government agencies and elected officials for policy decisions. This is the first time the Census
Bureau has sought to identify the total number of homeschoolers in America. Previous surveys only marked children who
were un-enrolled in public or private school. That rate usually hovered around 3.3% and was as high as 5.4% in 2019.
Homeschool families have been traditionally seen as a small minority and have been largely ignored by elected representatives.
A
Deserved 'Moment of Truth' for Public Schools as a Record Number of Parents Opt Out. The public school system
in America is in crisis — the worst crisis since the forced bussing and integration issues of the 1970s.
Simply put, parents and students have lost faith in the school system to educate. They doubt whether the schools have
the best interests of their students at heart. This poisonous doubt is having a tangible effect on enrollment.
Despite the fact that public education is free, parents are sending their children to private schools with more reliable,
more predictable policies. Enrollment in public schools nationwide declined by 3 percent last year. But it was
the numbers for kindergarten enrollment that should chill the blood of teachers' unions and school district officials.
Kindergarten enrollment tanked by 13 percent last year, and it's only expected to get worse this year.
As
thousands of teachers endorse critical race theory, home schooling surges. In the past few months state
legislatures across the country have passed resolutions that ban schools from teaching the Marxist and bigoted program dubbed
Critical Race Theory (CRT). Not surprisingly, the leftists who dominate our school systems have fought back. The
very leftist Zinn Education Project immediately created a petition calling for teachers to defy such laws and to continue to
teach CRT, which teaches children to hate whites and to give minorities privileged status. In the two months this
petition has been on line almost 6,000 teachers have signed it, with many adding comments of defiance.
Classroom
Cameras Won't Stop Big Education. During my forty-plus years of teaching — both inside the classroom
and outside as a tutor — public education has morphed into Big Education, and it is as protective of itself as are
Big Tech and Big Media. Big Education is no longer largely populated by people who believe in teaching critical
thinking and knowledge, people who encourage innovation and creativity by modeling those qualities in their own
classrooms. Rather, it is populated with generations of teachers and "educators" who worship at the altar of the latest
"approved" pedagogy, methodology, and ideology, and who work hard to keep everyone in line. Big Education, again like
Big Tech and Big Media, is particularly adept at repelling foreign invaders and is willing to repel them with great ferocity.
[...] Big Education has convinced parents that they have no other option than sending their children to their local public
school because (and here is the Big Lie) no one can be a teacher without a state certificate in teaching.
Famous
Investor: The Homeschooling Boom Is Just Beginning. Speculation abounds over whether or not the
pandemic-induced growth in homeschooling is temporary. While there are several signs indicating that parents won't be
sending their children back to public schools this fall, and homeschooling continues to be a popular choice, the question
remains: for how long and to what extent? According to remarks by one prominent investor, this is just the
beginning of a widespread shift away from conventional schooling models toward disruptive innovation in education —
with homeschooling leading the way. "It certainly feels like we're on the front end of a pretty dramatic homeschooling
boom," said Marc Andreessen, co-creator of the original Mosaic web browser, co-founder of Netscape, and co-founder and general
partner of the leading venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz.
Homeschooling
Skyrocketed In 2020, As Much As 700 Percent In Some States. Between May and October 2020, homeschooling more
than doubled among U.S. households with school-age children, from 5.4 percent that spring to 11.1 percent that fall,
according to new Census Bureau data. Black and Hispanic Americans were the most likely to switch to homeschooling,
while white and Asian Americans were the least likely. This could be due to the fact that African-American children are
the most likely to be financially locked into poor-quality school districts, or that black Americans have been the most
likely to exhibit COVID caution, or some combination.
Homeschool Your Children.
Plain and simple. If a Christian is true to their faith, by putting their faith in God and Only God through Christ,
then God will lead them to do what is right, and the right thing to do is to Homeschool. In 99% of the World, the
government's education system is anti-Christian. So why are you sending your child to be indoctrinated against you and
your GOD? I specifically blame pastors who fail to educate the flock as to the importance of homeschooling. [...]
Homeschooling does NOT need to be a difficult, nor cumbersome task. Put faith in GOD, and I promise that He will be
faithful to those who are truly faithful to Him.
Rethinking
American Education. Public K-12 education in this country suffers from a lack of effective competition that
prevents market forces from working the way they should. What would happen if there was school choice in America
today? Parents who are dissatisfied with the educational product their public schools provide could vote with their
feet and take their tax dollars and their children to schools that offer better value. Opposition to school choice is
highly regressive because the wealthiest families have the ability to pay twice for their children's education, first through
taxes and second through private school tuition. This is not an option for lower-income households. The benefits
of school choice are substantial. [...] The teachers' unions oppose school choice precisely because it would force public
schools across the country to actually compete on the merits or perish the way any underperforming enterprise should.
A Tsunami of Hate.
[Scroll down] To be fair, there are two main areas of systemic racism in America today, but both are supported and
enforced by the Democrat Party, which is why they exist. The first is the systemic racism that traps inner city
children — mainly ethnic minorities — in inferior schools that for fifty years and more have failed to
provide 80 percent of them with the skills that are necessary to succeed. Every year 40% of inner city children drop
out of school without graduating, and 40% of those who do, are functionally illiterate. The Democrat teacher
unions — the same which went on strike during the pandemic with full pay at the expense of children who could not
afford to miss school — exert absolute control over these school systems and have stifled all attempts at
reforms. They are unalterably opposed to every alternative to their racist policies, from charter schools to vouchers
that give inner city kids the same privilege as their middle-class counterparts, to allow their parents to enroll them in
schools that will teach them.
8 Education
Choice Wins in 2020. This year, the coronavirus pandemic presented new hurdles for 55.1 million students and
their families after 124,000 public and private schools closed nationwide. Despite these unprecedented challenges,
policymakers and families responded quickly with innovative solutions, which helped to advance education choice in 2020.
Here are eight examples of education choice wins from this year: [...] [#4] Learning Pods Explode in Popularity:
Learning pods entered the education foray as parents — dissatisfied with the crisis virtual options implemented by
many district schools — collaborated to create small education environments that emphasize in-person schooling to
small student groups. As civil society's response to the education crisis caused by the pandemic, learning pods gained
widespread popularity. According to a nationally representative EdChoice poll, 35% of parents claimed to participate in
a learning pod, and nearly 20% of respondents indicated they were looking for a learning pod to join. The popularity of
learning pods was not limited to students and their families, as approximately 70% of surveyed teachers expressed interest in
teaching or tutoring a learning pod.
The Editor says...
As I may have mentioned before, the idea of "learning pods" has been around for a long time. In homeschool circles,
they are often called "homeschool co-ops." Not every homeschooling parent has a math degree (like Mrs. Editor) or
is a state-certified teacher (like Mrs. Editor), but many homeschooling parents have skills that can be shared with a
dozen other families once a week, usually in a church classroom.
Why
John Saxon Is the Brightest Star in Math Education. Homeschooling parents unerringly find the most efficient
textbooks. This is only natural if you have to spend all day at a kitchen table teaching children. A decade back,
I was startled to find homeschoolers almost unanimous in praising the legendary John Saxon (1923-1996). What was his
secret? Saxon, with three advanced degrees in mathematical subjects, flew jet planes in the Air Force, first as a
bomber pilot and then as a test pilot. Reaching retirement age, he wasn't certain what to do next. A counselor
suggested he teach math at a community college. He liked the idea but was dismayed to find that his students knew
almost no math. Now he had found his destiny. He would fix this problem. How could he possibly do
that? By creating better textbooks. He ended up creating a publishing empire that was sold for roughly
$100,000,000 in 2004. Saxon had a big heart, an exceptional mind, and a precise vision of how children can most
quickly learn arithmetic.
Black Education
Matters. Most Americans would probably be shocked and angry if they knew all the dirty tricks used to sabotage
charter schools that are successfully educating low-income minority children. This is not "systemic racism." It is
plain old selfishness on the part of traditional public school officials and teachers unions protecting their own vested
interests. Most of us might see charter schools that succeed where traditional public schools have failed as welcome
news, especially in minority communities where there is so much bad news. But, when there are a million public school
students on waiting lists to get into charter schools nationwide, that amounts to many billions of dollars a year that
traditional public schools would lose, if all those students could actually transfer. That would represent a lot of
jobs lost in traditional public schools. It would also represent a lot of union dues lost, because most charter school
teachers do not belong to a union. The success of many charter schools is definitely unwelcome news to both traditional
public school officials and teachers unions.
The
Truth Is Out. We Don't Need The Public School System. A recent article in The Atlantic tells us that the
pandemic has families leaving the public school system in droves and embracing homeschooling. This shift, we are told,
may be permanent. From the article: "Homeschooling families, which included roughly 3 percent of school-age
children in the United States in 2016, have lots of different reasons for wanting to educate their own kids. But
they're united in a common assessment: They want out of the traditional system. The question is whether COVID-19
will cause a temporary bump in homeschooling as parents piece together their days during the pandemic or mark a permanent
inflection point in education that continues long after the virus has been controlled. Some families may find that they
want to exit the system for good."
Gallup
Poll: Homeschooling Rate Doubles as School Satisfaction Plummets. Results of a new Gallup poll released
this week may give us the sharpest look yet at how the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted American education and what may lie
ahead. According to the poll, parents' overall satisfaction with their child's education dropped 10 percent over last
year, while at the same time the number of parents saying they will choose homeschooling doubled in 2020 to 10 percent.
Throughout the summer, parents have expressed their frustration with back-to-school plans, including disappointment over
continued remote learning and strict social distancing requirements. Homeschooling registrations soared across the
country, and many families began to spontaneously organize "pandemic pods" to offer small group learning and social
interaction for their children. Opting out of conventional schooling this fall for homeschooling or "podding" has
become not only acceptable but widely embraced.
A.G.
Barr on 'Public Education:' 'That's a Racist System Maintained by the Democratic Party and the Teachers Union'.
If you want to find "systemic racism" in America, then look no further than the public schooling system, which is "maintained
by the Democratic Party and the teachers' unions," said Attorney General William P. Barr. The entire system keeps
"inner-city kids in failing schools," he added. "And people talk about implicit racism or systemic racism," said Barr
during an Aug. 13 interview on Hannity. "The racism in this country, look no further than our public
education system." "That's a racist system, maintained by the Democratic Party and the teachers union," he said,
"keeping inner-city kids in failing schools, instead of putting the resources in the hands of the parents to choose the
schools to send their kids to." "That's empowering kids," said Barr. "That's giving them a future."
Profs
to white parents: Keep your kids in public schools to show you're not racist. A pair of Minnesota
professors say one of the ways in which white parents can demonstrate a commitment to "anti-racism" is to keep their children
in public schools. The University of Minnesota's Abby Rombalski and Carleton College's Anita Chikkatur, both professors
of education, write in MinnPost.com that (white) parents who transfer their kids to private or charter schools end up
putting funding for public schools "at serious risk."
Maryland
Gov. Hogan clashes with officials over county mandate for private schools to go virtual. Maryland
Gov. Larry Hogan and officials in the state are at odds over a county's decision to mandate private schools to begin
virtual-only learning this fall amid the coronavirus pandemic. Health officials in Montgomery County last week made the
decision to keep private and parochial schools closed through October for in-person learning, arguing that having students in
the classroom would present a danger to pupils and teachers as the state grapples with COVID-19.
'Pandemic
Pods' Are Fundamentally Reshaping K-12 Education. The practice of organizing "pandemic pods," in which parents
team up with other families in their neighborhoods or social circles to hire teachers for their children, is getting more and
more popular by the minute. With many school districts around the country planning not to reopen classrooms this
fall — or, at best, planning to offer some combination of virtual and in-class instruction — families
are clamoring to secure education consistency for their children as the school year quickly approaches. So what,
exactly, do these pods look like? Families work together to recruit teachers that they pay out-of-pocket to teach small
groups — "pods" — of children. It's a way for clusters of students to receive professional
instruction for several hours each day.
The Editor says...
This system has been around for decades. It's called a Home School Co-op. Classes meet once or twice a week,
usually at a church, and competent teachers instruct the kids on technical subjects, for a nominal fee.
More
parents consider homeschooling as permanent option during coronavirus pandemic. Jacklynn Walters has
homeschooled her oldest child for the last 6 years. When schools closed early this year to help stop the spread of
the coronavirus, this mom of four says she didn't have to worry about her children's education. "I had a number of
parents concerned about their child getting behind because they weren't finishing that last little bit of their school
semesters," she said. "It wasn't something in my mind. I didn't have to worry about my child getting behind or
even in the future." Walters volunteers as the media director for the homeschooling organization Midwest Parent
Educators. She says more parents are inquiring about homeschooling.
9
Radical Ideas in the Biden-Sanders 'Unity' Platform. Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie
Sanders (I-VT) released the policy recommendations of their "unity task force" on Wednesday [7/8/2020]. [...] Here are nine
of the most radical proposals in the "unity" document: [...] [#7] "Oppose private school vouchers." There is growing support
for school vouchers that allow students to escape failing public schools in their local districts by choosing alternative
schools — including private and religious schools. Vouchers are especially popular with minority families,
who are desperate to escape the failing system in which the teachers' unions have trapped their children. Democrats
also want to restrict the expansion of charter schools, too.
Enemies
Of Homeschooling Are Scared. Here's Why. Nearly every family with kids has gotten a taste of
homeschooling over the past two months. In an attempt to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, at least 124,000 schools have
closed for over 55 million children in the U.S. At the same time, opponents of homeschooling launched several unfounded
attacks on the practice. For example, The Washington Post ran an opinion piece claiming "homeschooling during the
coronavirus will set back a generation of children," and a Salon article said that "homeschooling as a result of the pandemic
will likely worsen education for students and pose serious problems to the economy and nation's social well-being." The
most relentless attacks on homeschooling, however, have come from publications affiliated with Harvard University.
Harvard Magazine initially released an article on "The Risks of Homeschooling," highlighting the work of Harvard Law School
Professor Elizabeth Bartholet, who calls for a presumptive ban on the practice because she believes it "violates children's
right to a 'meaningful education' and their right to be protected from potential child abuse."
Homeschooling
Thrives in the Face of Coronavirus. The government has closed most schools. So, more parents are teaching
kids at home. [...] Debbie Dabin, a mom in Utah, is one of many parents who started home schooling this spring and now is
"definitely considering home schooling" next year. Dabin bought teaching materials over the internet from a company
called "The Good and the Beautiful." Her son likes the lessons better than what he got in school. "It's great," Dabin
says. "He likes the activities; he wants to do them." Before the pandemic, he'd told his mom he hated school.
I hated school, too. Classes were boring. Listening to lectures is a poor way to learn, and unnecessary
today. In addition to home-school teaching programs, there are also free internet games that teach things like math,
reading, and writing, while customizing the speed of lessons to each learner's needs.
Kommissar
Bartholet of Harvard Casts Her Jaundiced Eye on Homeschooling. Not unsurprisingly, a Harvard law professor has
recommended banning homeschooling. Elizabeth Bartholet recently called for a presumptive ban on homeschooling, with the
burden of justifying this method of education resting on the parents, who would have to obtain the permission of the state.
She says homeschooling gives parents absolute power over their children, which is against state laws and the Constitution and
violates children's human rights. What is fascinating is how she attacks the right of parents to raise their children in
accordance with their beliefs, savages conservative Christians who have refused to kowtow to liberal shibboleths that these
parents wish to protect their children from, and disparages the quality of education the children receive.
'It
Was Just Too Much': How Remote Learning Is Breaking Parents. Daniel Levin's son, Linus, 7, was supposed to be
doing math. Instead, he pretended to take a shower in the living room, rubbing a dry eraser under his arms like a bar
of soap, which upset his 5-year-old sister, distracting her from her coloring. As much as he tried, Mr. Levin, who
lives in Brooklyn, could not get Linus to finish the math. His hopes for the reading assignment were not high,
either. "He's supposed to map out a whole character trait sheet today," Mr. Levin said one day last week.
"Honestly, if he writes the name and the age of the character, I'll consider that a victory."
The Editor says...
Home schooling is difficult, and the task is especially hard because of the pressure on little kids to learn advanced material in the
earliest grades. Ridiculous standards like Common Core don't help matters, either.
Harvard
vs. the Family. This June, pandemic conditions permitting, Harvard University will host a conference —
not open to the public — to discuss the purported dangers of homeschooling and strategies for legal reform. The
co-organizer, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet, believes that homeschooling should be banned, as it is "a realm of
near-absolute parental power. ... inconsistent with a proper understanding of the human rights of children." [...] Harvard
[magazine] claims, based on a Bartholet law review article, that as many as 90 percent of homeschoolers are "driven by
conservative Christian beliefs, and seek to remove their children from mainstream culture." But Bartholet's research falls
short of supporting this observation. In fact, we know strikingly little about homeschooling families. A 2013 review
of the academic literature noted that, while academics assume that conservative Christians make up the largest subset of
homeschoolers, "whether this percentage is two-thirds, one-half, or less is a matter of speculation."
Harvard
to Host Pro-Homeschoolers in Response to 'Disinformation Campaign Against Homeschooling'. Harvard stirred
controversy earlier this month when they announced a June invitation-only summit to discuss increased regulations and a
presumptive ban on homeschooling. The event, dubbed, "Homeschooling Summit: Problems, Politics, and Prospects for
Reform," is set to feature a who's-who of academics, lawyers, and activists who have been outspoken in their belief that
parents should not legally be allowed to educate their children at home.
Harvard
Professor Doesn't Want You to Be Alone with Your Children. [H]er name is Elizabeth Bartholet. She's a law
professor at Harvard. Not only is she a law professor at Harvard, she is the faculty director of Harvard's child
advocacy program. And she is not happy. [...] She is worried about your children being homeschooled by you, the
parents. She is worried about your children being forced into lockdown with their parents, with you all day, every
day. This is unacceptable to Elizabeth Bartholet of Harvard's child advocacy program. This is a huge, huge
problem that parents have this kind of access to their children and thus have this kind of access to their education.
Professor Bartholet says that the question is whether parents should have 24/7 essentially authoritarian control over their
children from age 0 to 18.
Elites
go to war on homeschooling — just when everyone's doing it. Schools have closed for more than 55 million
students nationwide, and at least 34 states have shuttered schools for the rest of the academic year. Just in time, our
media and academic elites are coming out swinging against homeschooling. The Washington Post and Salon have raised questions about
the practice lately. More alarming, Harvard Magazine this week unleashed a thoroughly unfounded attack on homeschooling, drawing
on the work of Harvard University law professor Elizabeth Bartholet. The article cited Bartholet's call for "a presumptive ban,"
because homeschooling supposedly "violates children's right to a 'meaningful education' and their right to be protected from potential
child abuse."
Harvard
Professor Wants A 'Presumptive Ban' On Homeschooling, Claims It Promotes White Supremacy. In a shocking essay
for Harvard Magazine, a professor of law and director of Harvard Law School's child advocacy legal clinic, claims
homeschooling is a threat to children's rights, a method of promoting white supremacy, and a drain on democratic
society — and even goes so far as to suggest a national "presumptive ban" on the practice. Harvard is
playing host to a "homeschooling summit," slated to take place (at least digitally) June 18-19, according to the Daily Caller
News Foundation. But Harvard's concern isn't so much whether homeschooling is a viable, cost-effective, and comfortable
method of education for many Americans, but rather whether homeschooling is (and homeschooled children are) a ticking time
bomb. The summit brings together a number of "experts" from across the spectrum to discuss the "problems of educational
deprivation and child maltreatment that too often occur under the guise of homeschooling, in a legal environment of minimal
or no oversight."
The Welcome
Rise of Homeschooling. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced public schools will be closed for the
rest of the academic year due to the new coronavirus. More mayors and governors will likely make similar announcements,
if they have not already done so. Rather than look upon this as a negative, I suspect some parents are enjoying new
relationships with their children that full-time work and day care did not allow. This new bonding experience could
lead some to continue the practice of educating their children at home once this crisis has passed and public schools reopen.
Coronavirus:
Perfect Time to Rescue Children From Public School. Amid nationwide school closures due to the Wuhan virus
(also known as coronavirus and COVID-19), advocates of real education through homeschooling and private Christian schools are
pointing to a silver lining: Millions of American children at home, safe from the increasingly extreme indoctrination,
sexualization and dumbing down taking place in government schools. As school closures were announced, proponents of
homeschooling were quick to step in and offer support for the affected families. Online alternatives also jumped in
with offers of support, including free classes.
Welcome
to Homeschooling, America! Here in Georgia, the mass hysteria about the coronavirus has caused the governor to
declare a "public health state of emergency." He has advised public schools and daycare centers to close for two weeks in
order to curb the opportunities for the virus to spread. It's unclear which is causing more panic in the hearts of
Georgia citizens — the coronavirus, the toilet paper shortage, or the fact that parents will have to be home with
their children nonstop for two weeks straight. Many other states are also closing schools, so millions of our nation's
families are suddenly experiencing a little of what it's like to homeschool.
Record
numbers homeschooling — Study shows interest from parents at 'all-time high'. The percentage of
American parents who want to homeschool their children is at an all-time high, and they're citing violence, drugs and
bullying in public schools as the main reason why. The 2019 Schooling In America survey, conducted by the school choice
nonprofit EdChoice over the summer, details several interesting trends in education, including insight into what's driving
the explosive growth in homeschooling in recent years.
Virginia
case could test reach of homeschooling laws. A legal fight in Virginia is drawing national attention over a
county government demanding homeschooling families produce documents not required by an already-stringent state law.
The state's supreme court heard oral arguments Oct. 15 on behalf of the Sosebee family. The family is appealing after a
circuit court agreed with Franklin County schools late last year that state law allows flexibility not just for cafeteria
meals and disciplinary rules, but also gives the public school district the legal right to request a birth certificate and a
proof of residency. The possible legal scope of such a ruling grabbed the attention of the Homeschool Legal Defense
Association since the ruling on behalf of Franklin County could mean Virginia's 95 counties and 33 cities could
create ad hoc rules for homeschoolers.
Parents
Must Get Children Out of Public School. Citing indoctrination and sexualization of children in government
schools, along with other concerns, a number of top conservative and Christian voices across America have urged parents to
remove their kids from public schools in recent days. Among the leaders who have joined the growing nationwide chorus
were talk-radio king Rush Limbaugh, evangelist Franklin Graham, Christian leader David Lane, and Catholic talk-show host
Mother Miriam. And this may be just the start. Speaking on his radio show, which estimates suggest is heard by
over 15 million Americans, Limbaugh blamed government education for the sorry state of affairs in America. And for
the first time ever, he brazenly urged parents to pull their children out and homeschool them.
Homeschooling
Produces Better-Educated, More-Tolerant Kids. Politicians Hate That. There's no better sign of success
than an escalation in attacks by your enemies. Based on such evidence, homeschooling is enjoying a boom, as growing
numbers of families with diverse backgrounds, philosophies, and approaches abandon government-controlled schools in favor of
taking responsibility for their own children's education. As they do so, they're coming under assault from officials
panicking over the number of people slipping from their grasp. There's little doubt that homeschooling is an
increasingly popular option. "From 1999 to 2012, the percentage of students who were homeschooled doubled, from an
estimated 1.7 percent to 3.4 percent," reports the National Center for Education Statistics. While the
government agency suggests that growth has leveled off since then, other researchers say data is hard to come by, since
many states simply don't count people who homeschool.
The
German Government Forcibly Removed These Children From Their Parents Over Homeschooling. The Wunderlich family
wanted to do what thousands of families in America do with no questions asked: educate their children at home. But
homeschooling is not allowed in Germany, and the state has relentlessly pursued the Wunderlichs and even seized their
children. One morning in August 2013, 33 police officers and seven social workers showed up at their front door,
threatening to open it with a battering ram. The parents cried as their children were carried screaming out of their
home. The children were later returned, but ordered to attend public school. Since then, the Wunderlichs have
continued their fight in court, ultimately reaching the European Court of Human Rights.
Homeschooling
Skyrockets as Parents Wake Up to Left-Wing Social Engineering. More parents are reportedly pulling their
children out of government schools and opting to teach them at home due to the increasing levels of Left-wing counter-culture
social engineering. It's not just left-wing programming though, many parents in the US saw the recent school shooting
at Parkland, Fla. as the 'last straw.' The Washington Times noted, "the phones started ringing at the Texas Home School
Coalition, and they haven't stopped yet."
School
choice opponent sends her kids to charter school. Sharon Kirsch, co-founder of Save Our Schools in Arizona (a
group that vehemently opposes school choice) was recently outed for sending her children to a charter school. Buried in
an AZ Central article about a number of topics relating to school choice and education in Arizona, it's reported that
"...Kirsch, who sends her children to a charter school, agreed with Robinson. She said she's fortunate to be able to
drive her children 25 miles to school each day, but knows that wouldn't be an option for many families."
Toxic Humanism.
By the time our youngest child got to middle school, the intensifying toxic indoctrination of false humanism made it hard for
her and other pubescent children to accept their richer heritage and deeper moral orientation. Routine exposure to a
worldview that contradicts home training regarding basics of right and wrong, replacing Judeo-Christian morality with do
what you want ("situation ethics," which in reality is no ethics), is a hazard to the mental and emotional
development of a child. The problem has led many to homeschool their children and many to fight the culture wars.
Homeschool
attorneys ride to the rescue in WV. West Virginia legislators updated and modernized the state's homeschooling
laws in 2016 but a letter sent to parents failed to follow those new guidelines about notifications and testing, says
attorney Mike Donnelly of the Home School Legal Defense Association. Donnelly tells OneNewsNow that uncooperative
school officials in Wirt County sent an outdated, error-filled letter to homeschoolers. Wirt County has a population of
approximately 5,800, the smallest county in the state.
Life,
Liberty, and the Pursuit of Education: The Homeschooling Option. Americans have lost faith in the public
school system. Only 36 percent of U.S. parents have a "great deal" of support for public schools, according to a
2017 study by Gallup. But despite this dismal reality, more than 90 percent of American children remain enrolled in
public schools. There is, however, a growing contingent of parents who are rejecting government schools and instead
choosing to educate their own children at home. Although homeschoolers only currently make up about 3.4 percent of
the total student population, homeschooling is a shining example of what education freedom can deliver. When it comes
to standardized testing and other educational benchmarks, there is no denying that homeschoolers fare much better than their
public school counterparts.
Why
There's an Increased Interest in Homeschooling. There's a lot to dislike about many public schools —
and right now, student safety is at the top of the list. "After a gunman opened fire on students in Parkland, Florida,"
a new Washington Times feature explains, "the phones started ringing at the Texas Home School Coalition, and they haven't
stopped yet." Like so many state organizations, the Texas organization was used to a certain number of inquiries about
homeschooling. President Tim Lambert says they usually averaged about 600 calls a month — a number he
watched double over the past several weeks. "When the Parkland shooting happened, our phone calls and emails
exploded. And they're not alone.
Homeschooling
Rates Skyrocket As Parents Are Waking Up To Liberal Social Engineering & Violence. These are only a few reasons
for homeschooling your children, but the main reason should be because you honor God by doing so (Deut. 6) and your children
get a far better education than they will in the public indoctrination centers we call public schools. Don't think you can
do it? Don't think you can afford it? If my wife and I can do it with 10 kids on one income, you can do it too!
Homeschooling
surges as parents seek safer option for children. After a gunman opened fire on students in Parkland, Florida,
the phones started ringing at the Texas Home School Coalition, and they haven't stopped yet. The Lubbock-based
organization has been swamped with inquiries for months from parents seeking safer options for their kids in the aftermath of
this year's deadly school massacres, first in Parkland and then in Santa Fe, Texas. "When the Parkland shooting
happened, our phone calls and emails exploded," said coalition president Tim Lambert. "In the last couple of months,
our numbers have doubled. We're dealing with probably between 1,200 and 1,400 calls and emails per month, and prior to
that it was 600 to 700." Demands to restrict firearms and beef up school security have dominated the debate following the
shootings, but flying under the radar is the surge of interest in homeschooling as parents lose faith in the ability of
public schools to protect students from harm.
Here are 1,366 well
sourced examples of Barack Obama's lies, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism, hypocrisy, waste, etc.. [#176]
In Germany in 1938, Adolf Hitler outlawed homeschooling. He said "Give me a child when he's seven and he's mine forever."
Hitler's ban on homeschooling is still in effect today. In 2006, Katharina Plett was arrested for homeschooling her own
children. Her husband and their children fled the country. In 2008, Juergen and Rosemary Dudek were sentenced to
90 days in jail for homeschooling their own children. Uwe and Hannelore Romeike and their homeschooled children fled
Germany after the police showed up at their house to enforce Germany's ban on homeschooling. They came to the United
States in 2010 and were granted political asylum, which gave them legal permission to live in the U.S. as political refugees.
However, in March 2013, the Obama administration argued in federal court in favor of deporting them and sending them back to
Germany. This means that Obama does not consider them to be political refugees, and that he does not consider Germany's
policy of jailing homeschooling parents to be a form of persecution
How
Homeschoolers Defeated California's Push to Take Power From Parents. They came by the hundreds, one newspaper
said — "perhaps thousands." Some traveled hours, others waited hours, all for the opportunity to protest one of
the most outrageous homeschooling bills ever introduced: California's AB 2756. Spilling out into crammed hallways
and overflow rooms, families poured into the Statehouse just for the opportunity to spend a few minutes speaking out on a measure
that would give the government more power over parents who educate at home. Initially, the bill tried to mandate fire
inspections of all homeschooling families (which, not surprisingly, firefighters rejected). Then the proposal was
amended — this time to force homeschooling families to give out private information about the names and address
of homeschooling families.
California's
crazy-intrusive politicians can't keep their hands off anything — Next up? Homeschoolers!
[Scroll down] The recently introduced Assembly Bills 2756 and 2926 are cases in point. This first, AB 2756,
requires fire marshals to perform in-home inspections of home-schoolers every year, implying that somehow home-educators are
less fire-safe than other individuals. This is, of course, egregiously discriminatory on its face. But wait.
The second one is even worse! With AB 2926, Assembly Member Susan Eggman proposes forming an appointed committee to
"investigate" homeschooling. The "instruction" committee would subsequently share its findings so that the California
legislature might consider how best to regulate those families. Because there isn't anything a bureaucrat loves
more than a new regulation! And these particular bureaucrats are already doing such a fine job of regulating
our public schools that roughly half of California public school students surveyed reported experiencing bullying.
Sen.
Ted Cruz says Democrats hate homeschoolers. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is furious after a provision that
would have expanded 529 savings accounts to cover homeschool expenses was removed from the Republicans' tax reform
plan. Cruz joined the Todd Starnes Radio Show on Wednesday and blamed Democrats for having the homeschool component of
the amendment removed from the bill. Under the Cruz plan, homeschool families would've been able to deduct the cost of
homeschooling their kids. A provision allowing parents to save for private or religious schools remained in the bill.
Senate
Democrats Target Homeschool Families in Last-Minute Tax Reform Tantrum. As the Republican Party edged closer to
passing historic tax reform, Democrats in the U.S. Senate used a last-minute procedural protest to attack homeschool
families. Their petty complaint struck the short title of the tax reform bill, one provision of the endowment tax, and
the extension of college savings plans to homeschool expenses. The homeschool attack proved particularly
revealing. The Republican tax bill would extend the use of 529 tax-advantaged saving plans — originally
intended to foster saving for college tuition — to K-12 public and private schools, as well as
homeschooling. Rather than complaining that 529s should only be for college, the Democrats struck the homeschool
provision, leaving the K-12 school extension in place. Make no mistake: this was a disgusting attack on the
families of approximately 1.5 million American children who are educated at home, perhaps in an attempt to privilege
teacher's unions.
How
Much Money Each State Saves Thanks to Homeschooling. Compared to public school students, studies suggest that
homeschoolers perform up to 30 percentile points better on standardized tests, have higher college GPAs and completion rates,
and may even be better adjusted socially. Judging from these numbers, it would seem that homeschooling definitely
benefits the individual student. But what about the nation as a whole? Are there any immediate benefits which
homeschoolers offer to their communities?
Charter
School Rejects Common Core and Ranks #1. Teaching phonics is crucial to teaching reading when dealing with a phonetic writing
system such as the one used in the English language. Memorizing so-called "sight words," by contrast, is mental poison, or Thalidomide
for the brain as my friend and colleague Dr. Sam Blumenfeld used to say. As if more evidence was needed of this, the recent Florida
Standards Assessments results from Collier County, Florida, make it perfectly clear. One school, known as the Mason Classical Academy,
shines bright in the district. It scored number one in English Language Arts (ELA) in the county, with 90 percent of its third
graders scoring proficient. By contrast, just 58 percent of third graders in the county were proficient, even using Common Core's
dumbed-down metrics.
There are many reasons to home school your children. How to Short-Circuit
a Child's Thinking: Radical education reformers have made a point of removing context from children's education, and to squash their natural
curiosity, undermining their capacity to think. They have done this in five ways: 1) by withholding the basic tools and codes of learning,
such as suppressing phonics for reading, as well as clarity in standard arithmetic; 2) by withholding the content knowledge necessary to connect dots
in understanding history and civics; 3) by withholding and demeaning literature that reveals universal human experiences and shared understanding, such
as the classics and Shakespeare; 4) by de-stabilizing a child's sense of self and identity. This is a natural byproduct of de-sexing every child,
which happens through mandates to teach kids about transgenderism; and 5) by promoting relational aggression against any child or parent who might resist
this totalitarian program. Radical education reform encourages schools and communities to single out those who disagree with this coercive program as
misfits, bigots, or religious nuts. All of the above would subvert anybody's ability to think clearly.
Dad sent to
prison for homeschooling his kids. A homeschooling father who sought to give his children the best education
available, by pulling them out of the politicized state schools in Cuba and teaching them at home, has been ordered to spend
a year under house arrest. The sentence was announced by a Cuban court for pastor Ramón Rigal and his wife, Adya,
according to the Home School Legal Defense Association. In a report by HSLDA Director of Global Outreach Mike Donnelly,
Rigas said authorities used his three-hour trial this week as a platform for denouncing alternatives to government-controlled
education.
After
school Satan clubs coming to public elementary schools. An organization that calls itself the Satanic Temple
has been very active in promoting its overlord. It conducted a Black Mass and agitated, but failed, to build a 7-ft
tall statue of Satan next to a 10 Commandments monument in Oklahoma City; actually erected the statue in Detroit; and wants
prayer in school to the Devil. Now, in the name of religious parity, the Satanic Temple is bringing After School Satan
Clubs to America's public elementary schools. Another reason to home school your children.
Ed
Secretary John King: Homeschooling deprives kids. Decades of positive results from homeschool families
still haven't stopped their critics from repeating outdated, debunked myths. Education Secretary John King recently
told an audience he worries that most homeschool students aren't "getting the range of options that are good for all kids."
[...] King must not have seen the recent report by the National Home Education Research Institute showing that homeschool
students outperform their peers by an average of 40 percent on the SAT. If he had, he probably wouldn't have joined
the countless politicians, bureaucrats, teacher unions, and lobbyists who insist that the government knows how to educate
children better than their own parents. Despite government's best efforts to drive it out of existence, homeschooling
is more popular than ever as generations of success stories prove the benefits of tailoring education to a child's needs.
Homeschooling
and Other Education Alternatives on the Rise. Horace Mann, the first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of
Education, speaking a few years before the Civil War, declared that public schools constituted "the greatest discovery ever
made by man." [...] Such utopian sentiments provoke laughter today, especially when one considers that a large part of the
exodus from the public schools into private schools and homeschooling is because of the unsafe environment in many of
America's public schools. About 1.8 million children in the country are now homeschooled, with the numbers growing each
year. This is double the number of homeschoolers as recently as 1999. Today, the number of children schooled at home
represents 3.4 percent of U.S. students between the ages of five and 17. Twenty-five percent of parents surveyed have said
that the environment of the public schools — including such issues as safety, drugs, and peer pressure — is the most
important reason for either pulling their kids out, or not ever placing them there to begin with.
Why
homeschooling is an issue that affects every conservative whether they do it or not. There's a voting block
that has received nearly zero attention this election year from the Presidential candidates. [...] It's an issue that doesn't
directly affect many Americans because such a small percentage in this country take advantage of this crucial educational
option. What people need to realize is that it's a core issue that indirectly affects all Americans, conservatives in
particular. It's one of the last bastions of defense for those of us who believe that the government should watch our
backs and essentially leave us alone otherwise. When the government tells us how we're allowed to educate our children,
the dominoes start falling.
Who
Knows How Best to Raise Your Kids: You or the Government? Was this a warning shot? Or just a
misinformed opinion? Homeschooling parents want to know. Recently, U.S. Secretary of Education John King, while
speaking at a press conference, remarked that although some homeschool situations are just fine, in general, "Students who
are homeschooled are not getting kind of the rapid instructional experience they would get in school." King also said that
part of the school experience is learning how to deal with and build relationships with peers and teachers —
implying that homeschoolers don't get this kind of experience.
Home
schooling ripped by Obama education chief. With nearly 2 million students and even a Virginia college dedicated
to their higher education, parents and kids who homeschool ought to be getting some respect in Washington. Instead,
President Obama's education chief is expressing concerns that the growing practice is robbing children of educational and
life experiences. "I worry that in a lot of cases students who are homeschooled are not getting the kind of the breadth
of instruction experience they would get in school, they're also not getting the opportunity to build relationships with
peers unless their parents are very intentional about it," said Education Secretary John B. King Jr.
They're Legally
Snooping On Parents: Creepy. [Scroll down] We lived on a small farm. We homeschooled.
We worked at home, we brought them to church, we taught them morals, we loved them, we disciplined them. In short, we
tried our best to raise daughters who would someday become upstanding, productive adults contributing to society. As
far as we're concerned, it worked. They are now young women to be proud of. But in the eyes of CPS or busybodies
like the twit who accosted me, that's not good enough. If we didn't do things "their" way, we were wrong. There
are as many ways to parent children as there are parents; and for everything a parent does, there is an "expert" who won't
hesitate to tell us our parenting style will lead to grave but unspecified harm.
Another motive for homeschooling: Mom:
Son Was Attacked, Injured by Classmates and School Never Told Me. A mother says that her 13-year-old son was
left cross-eyed after being attacked by fellow students, and she's questioning how school officials handled the situation.
Amanda Anderson, whose son Dustin Johnson is a seventh-grader at Livingston Junior High in Livingston, Texas, told Fox 26
that Dustin woke up on March 29 seeing double and with blurred vision. After questioning what happened to her son,
Anderson says school officials eventually showed her video of Dustin being attacked by several classmates.
First-Grade
Teachers In Durham Enroll Kids In Black Lives Matter March. Central Park School for Children in Durham, North
Carolina has enrolled grade-school students in a "Black Lives March and Rally" scheduled for March 17, 2016. The
teachers can opt-in or opt-out their classes, but parents have not been given a choice. Stef Bernal-Martinez, a teacher
of 6-year-old children, signed up all the children in her class for a "Black Lives March and Rally" to take place during the
school day, at the city's downtown Central Park and Farmer's Market. Ms. Bernal-Martinez describes herself as a "Radical
Queer Progressive Educator" and "white-passing Xicana."
The Editor says...
If you find out that your 6-year-old child's teacher is a "radical queer progressive," that's an excellent reason to start
homeschooling. If you don't, you will probably spend a lot of time every evening un-teaching all the junk the poor kid was
taught at school that day. You might as well do the teaching yourself. It can be done.
Ten Lawful Acts
of Political Resistance for Liberty Guerillas. [#4] Reject the Public School System. How you feel about this
says volumes about whether or not you understand the concept of taking steps to being a free person, or whether or not you remain a
victim of "Stockholm Syndrome". Challenging the status quo and "settled social norms" especially with respect to state
constitutionally mandated "public schools" is difficult. I know — I used to be one of those people who viewed
families who chose the Homeschooling option with skeptical eyes. However, once you complete even some cursory investigation into
the history and purpose of "mandatory schooling", seeking out alternatives becomes a matter of urgency. There are lots of options
beyond the model of children being instructed inside the home by a parent — many communities now have thriving, creative
"homeschooling co-ops" which balance the positives of homeschooling with the negatives, such as isolation, lack of similar-age peer
interaction, and evaluation by impartial instructors. This is probably one of the most important steps any parent can take, and
should take, while it is still legal to do so!
Popularity
of Homeschooling Grows, Parents Flock to Homeschooling Conventions. The popularity of homeschooling continues
to grow nationwide as more parents choose to withdraw their children from government schools and take a more active role in
their children's education. Current estimates of the popularity of homeschooling suggest there are over two million
homeschooled students in the United States. There are just over 50 million students in government school systems
today, meaning homeschoolers now constitute just over 4 percent of all school-aged children in the United States.
DC
Homeschooling Rises by One-Third in Just Two Years. Home-based education is gaining traction in the nation's capital; the number
of families choosing to homeschool their kids in the Washington, DC area has grown by roughly one-third over the past two years. Ethan
Reedy, president of the DC Home Educators Association, says there are several reasons for the growth of homeschooling. "The first is a
demographic change," Reedy said. "More young families are moving into the city. They are tired of commuting and spending a large
part of every day on the road. They want more time with their families." Reedy says more young parents are enthusiastic about the
idea of trying homeschooling because they aren't satisfied with the performance of the public schools.
Team Obama wins
fight to have Christian home-school family deported. Uwe and Hannelore Romeike came to the United States in 2008 seeking political
asylum. They fled their German homeland in the face of religious persecution for homeschooling their children. They wanted to live
in a country where they could raise their children in accordance with their Christian beliefs. The Romeikes were initially given asylum,
but the Obama administration objected — claiming that German laws that outlaw homeschooling do not constitute persecution.
Homeschool
parents sue New Jersey, allege 'unlawful, unconstitutional home intrusion'. Nothing really changed after a New
Jersey state social worker banged on Christopher and Nicole Zimmer's front door, and yet everything was different. Over
the next two hours, the social worker quizzed their 15-year-old son, Chris, including questions on whether his parents fought
or did drugs. She wanted to see his homeschool curriculum. She wanted to inspect their firearms. She told the
Zimmers to sign papers agreeing to turn over their son's medical records. And then she left, and the Zimmers never saw her
again. But they can't let it go. They can't erase the memory of what it felt like when they thought the state might
take away their son.
Why Home Schooling? In 1970, there were only
10,000 home-schooled children. In 2012, according to recently released data from the National Center for Education Statistics,
there were about 1.77 million children who were being home-schooled. Parents give a number of reasons for home schooling.
Many want a safer environment for their children — away from violence, alcohol and other drugs, psychological abuse, and
improper and unhealthy sexual indoctrination found in public schools. Some want to teach and impart a particular set of values
and beliefs to their children. In terms of academic achievement, home-schoolers beat out their public school counterparts.
In reading, language, math, science and social studies, the average home-schooler scores somewhere near the 80th percentile.
The average public school student taking these standardized tests scores at the 50th percentile in each subject area.
Home-schoolers also tend to score higher than their public school counterparts on college admittance tests, such as the ACT and SAT.
As
Left Celebrates, Right Preps For All-Out Anti-Religious Assault. [Scroll down]
With the gay flag flying high atop government installations and the rainbow projected onto the
exterior of the White House, why wouldn't the new Godgovernment wage an all-out crusade on the
idolaters who refuse to acknowledge its rule? And that crusade won't stop with private schools or
churches. It will extend to homeschooling. When parents decide that they don't want to send
their children to a school forced to propagandize on the morality of homosexuality, they will begin
homeschooling in larger numbers. The left will suggest that all homeschooling programs must be
accredited, too, and accreditation will be rejected for programs that fail to comply with Justice
Kennedy's New New Testament. [...] Then, when parents refuse to comply, parents will be accused of
participating in truancy, or worse, propagation of anti-gay bullying. It's a convenient way of
utilizing government-approved education as a proxy for shutting down religious parenting.
NEA
union mandates new government restrictions for homeschoolers. What a bunch of arrogant
fascists. Directly insulting parents, claiming that only the public school system is capable of
educating their children... demanding that they have to have some random certification to teach
their own children. That is farcical. We homeschooled our children and they turned out fine.
In fact, most homeschoolers turn out far better than public school students and are educated to a far
superior degree as well. Testing proves it time and again. If I still had kids in school, no way
would they be in the public school system where global climate change, Marxism, gender theories and other
perversions are being forced upon students of all ages now. The NEA can stuff it.
Time
to pull your kids out of public school? If there were an exodus from public schools by people
who are sick of political correctness, not to mention the government school system's inability to bring students
up to the levels of other nations, perhaps the politicians and those responsible for these propaganda camps might
wake up and offer parents school choice. As long as parents willingly put their children in a school
system that not only undermines their values, but in many cases openly opposes them, and then makes children who
hold to a different worldview feel odd, even bigoted and behind the times, public schools will continue to do so.
This is what happens when standards are abandoned and truth becomes subjective.
U.S.
Department of Education: Higher Educated Parents More Likely to Homeschool. According
to information from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the number of homeschooled
students between the ages of 5 and 17 has increased dramatically over the last decade, soaring
61.8 percent. The data also indicates that the more educated the parents, the more likely
they are to homeschool their children.
New Jersey
Interrogates Homeschoolers, Lawsuit Follows. [T]he woman wasn't only interested in the
child's education. She wanted to know if there were guns in the house, if the kid was vaccinated and
she demanded signed privacy waivers granting her access to the kid's medical records and to do
background checks on the parents. Note that there was no probable cause to assume the kid was
being abused or any crime had been committed. Apparently choosing not to subject your children to
substandard public school indoctrination is crime enough in the all seeing eyes of the State.
Obama
While Trying to Kill School Choice in D.C.: We Need to Make Sure 'All Children' Get 'Great
Education'. After having presented a budget to Congress that would phase out a
school-choice program that allows a limited number of children to escape Washington, D.C.'s public
schools, President Barack Obama delivered a weekly address today that said all Americans have a
responsibility to make sure all children — not just their own — get a great
education. Obama's two daughters go to Sidwell Friends, one of the most expensive private
schools in Washington, D.C.
New Michigan
Bill Keeps Tab on Homeschoolers. On April 17th a new bill was introduced in Michigan
that would keep tabs on homeschoolers. An incredibly sick woman had her two children in a freezer
for 2 years and nobody knew it because when they were noticibly gone from activities the mom told
everyone they were being homeschooled. Michigan does not currently require homeschoolers to
register with their school district; one of 11 states that does not have that requirement.
Politicians took this opportunity to jump on the thousands of homeschool families in Michigan with
more strict provisions. Punishing the lawful for the barbarous acts of one woman.
Slate:
Sending Kids to Private School Makes You a 'Bad Person'. The single greatest cultural
barrier to the preservation and advancement of liberty is our reverence for sacrifice. We use the
word in reference to things which are actually profitable transactions, like choosing to study for a
test instead rather than go drinking. The true meaning of sacrifice is exhibited by an author at
Slate who think you should give up what's best for your kids for the sake of an "eventual common good."
The Editor says...
Mr. and Mrs. Obama send their kids to a private school.
Obama's Little Shop of
Horrors. [Scroll down] The United States Department of Education, allowing
government to take over the Education system in the US, was implemented under Jimmy Carter and
continues to weigh down our education system. The Obama administration along with our Justice
Department and Eric Holder sued many states to stop the use of educational vouchers, which allows
taxpayers to choose to attend charter schools instead of their own failing public schools.
Although Obama and Democrats claim to support the education of minorities, they have sued states
and demanded taxpayer choices be taken away.
Virginia
Senate OKs home-schoolers for public varsity teams. After getting sacked for years by
the Virginia legislature, the state Senate on Tuesday passed a version of the so-called "Tebow bill"
to allow home-schooled children to participate in public school interscholastic sports, likely
putting the issue before Gov. Terry McAuliffe. The Senate approved a House-passed measure on a
22-13 vote after amending it to allow for a local "opt-in" provision so local school boards wouldn't
be forced to recognize the policy.
Thousands
of School Choice Advocates Rally at Texas Capitol. Supporters of school choice
gathered at the Texas Capitol on Friday [1/30/2015] to send a message to Legislators: they
want education reform, and they want it now. A bustling, diverse crowd of students, parents,
teachers, elected officials and other reform advocates — and even a marching band —
enjoyed a festive atmosphere as they listened to speeches, sang and danced, and then lined up to
enter the Capitol to take their message directly to their elected representatives.
A New York Times article clearly in opposition to homeschooling: Home
Schooling: More Pupils, Less Regulation. Unlike so much of education in this country,
teaching at home is broadly unregulated. Along with steady growth in home schooling has come a
spirited debate and lobbying war over how much oversight such education requires.
"Class
Dismissed": New Film Promotes Homeschooling. Class Dismissed, a new full-length documentary film about
homeschooling, was screened in the Boston area on December 1, having already been seen by sold out audiences in November
on the West Coast (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland). It explores the rapidly growing homeschool
movement — its challenges and great successes. I was informed about it by my old friend and "unschooling"
pioneer Pat Farenga, who appears briefly in the film.
Social
workers now assessing home education? The latest case of alleged government intrusion
into the home comes out of Savannah, Georgia, where homeschooling parents were reported to a state
agency by a social worker for the "educational neglect" of their 12-year-old daughter —
who they have successfully and legally taught at their home for some time.
Opposition
to Common Core spurs jump in homeschooling. The home-schooling boom is getting a new
push due to opposition to Common Core, the controversial national education standard that some
parents claim is using their children's public school lessons to push a political agenda, according
to critics of the Washington-backed curriculum. North Carolina, already a home-schooling hotbed,
saw a 14 percent rise last year in the number of students being educated at home, according to a
report from Heartlander Magazine. Similar increases have been seen in Virginia, California and New
York, according to education activists.
Homeschooling
Parents Pepper Sprayed and Tasered Because Home School Was 'Messy'. A family that home
schools their children were attacked by government thugs with a home invasion where the parents were
tasered, pepper sprayed and handcuffed and all this in front of their kids. And why was this done?
Because the government thought the home school environment was "messy." This is the sort of stuff
that you should expect from our thuggish governments. They really, really hate homeschoolers not
only because they are usually conservative and religious but because it takes children out of the
hands of government propagandists who want to indoctrinate kids.
Vindictive
Officials Seize Homeschool Family's Assets. More than a year ago, police in Germany
obtained court permission to use "force" and arm themselves with a battering ram to take custody of
four homeschooled children, only to see the parents resume homeschooling, and regain custody later.
But that ultimate defeat for the government apparently isn't going to be the end, according to the
father in the case, Dirk Wunderlich. In an online interview from his German residence, he told
WND that a local school board attorney since then has begun issuing "notices of enforcement" that
come with penalties of 1,000 euros, or about $1,350.
SWAT Team Tasers,
Pepper-Sprays Homeschoolers. A Missouri homeschooling family is suing a sheriff and another
officer who forcibly entered their home without a warrant, Tasered the father, pepper-sprayed the mother
and put their children in the custody of social service workers. A court already has ruled that the
actions of Sheriff Darren White and Capt. David Glidden of Nodaway County, Missouri, violated the U.S.
Constitution, resulting in the dismissal of charges of child endangerment and resisting arrest against
the couple, Jason and Laura Hagan, of New Hampton.
Students
are Fleeing Common Core's Sinking Ship. [Scroll down] In fact, parents do have an escape hatch,
and one that they are increasingly eager to use: the option to homeschool their children. In
North Carolina, homeschoolers now outnumber children enrolled in private school. Today, more than
150,000 North Carolinians are being educated at home. Compare this to a private school enrollment of
about 96,000 and the fact that the largest public school district in the state has 143,000 students,
and this is a pretty impressive statistic. It's also shown significant growth of 14 percent
over last year.
Why our
family believes in homeschooling. The Common Core curriculum, which is now being
forced upon teachers and students in schools across the country, is using students as guinea pigs.
We choose to not participate. Many good teachers and many thoughtful parents I have spoken with
agree firmly that the standardized tests have been a disaster. It has forced schools to teach to the
tests, to the great detriment of students' overall education. Schools are dropping untested
subjects such as art and music. After all, why provide art and music classes? They aren't
tested. Yet, it's self-evident that art and music are necessary to become a well-rounded person,
and they complement science and math, as many a scientist will testify. Schools are no longer
emphasizing creativity and critical thinking (to the extent that they ever did). Why not?
Because such things are not tested.
They
Are Coming for Your Children. Home-schoolers represent the only authentically radical
social movement in the United States (Occupy Wall Street was a fashion statement) and so they must
be suppressed, as a malevolent committee of leftist academics and union bosses under the direction
of Governor Dannel Malloy is preparing to do in Connecticut, using the Sandy Hook massacre as a
pretext. The ghouls invariably rush to the podium after every school massacre, issuing their insipid
press releases before the bodies have even cooled, and normally they're after your guns. But the
Malloy gang is after your children.
Connecticut Targets Homeschoolers.
In Connecticut, Governor Dannel P. Malloy's Sandy Hook Advisory Commission has returned a curious
and controversial draft recommendation: the state should increase its oversight of homeschooled
children with emotional or behavioral challenges. The proposal has outraged the state's
homeschoolers, who, like homeschoolers everywhere, are keenly aware of their sometimes conditional
freedoms. In Connecticut, as elsewhere, the law allows parents to homeschool if they choose. But the
practice has always been viewed as threatening by left-wing academics, social architects, and teachers'
unions — all well represented on Malloy's 16-member panel. Sadly, this is only the most
recent assault on the rights of Connecticut homeschoolers.
Home
schooling rate accelerates in North Carolina. "If you're dissatisfied with public
education, you really have two routes," said Kevin McClain, president of North Carolinians For Home
Education, a statewide support group. "You can send your child to a private school —
which is really expensive — or you can home-school. The economy means that, for many
people, you home-school." Home schooling has steadily risen in North Carolina since it was legalized in
1985 by the state Supreme Court. Twenty-five years ago, there were about 2,300 home-schooled students in
North Carolina. But concerns about school violence, lack of a religious focus and the large size of
public schools have helped fuel home-school growth. And home-school growth in North Carolina has
surged the past two school years.
Homeschool
Family Sends Seven Kids to College — All by Age 12! A family from Alabama is inspiring the nation with its
amazing homeschool success story. In fact, Kip and Mona Lisa Harding, from Montgomery, have been so successful in educating
their 10 children at home that seven have gone on to college — by the age of 12! It all began when the
Harding's oldest child, Hannah, was in third grade, enrolled in public school. A friend suggested that the couple try
homeschooling their daughter, something they conceded wasn't even on their radar. But they ended up giving it a try and
soon decided that they could do a better job educating their children than the local school district could.
Company
rescinds Ohio man's job offer after learning he was home schooled. Home school advocates are outraged by an energy
company's decision to rescind an Ohio man's job offer after learning he had been home schooled. Michael Donnelly, an attorney
for Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), told FoxNews.com that the young man was offered a competitive job by the NiSource
energy company. The man, whose name has not been made public, had a home-schooled high school diploma and three years of
relevant experience when he applied for the job, according to his attorney, who also noted he had completed seven college-level
courses. Donnelly claimed the energy company offered him the job and then changed its decision upon hearing he did not
have an official high school diploma, which the company requires.
U.S. Supreme Court
declines German home-school case. To the disappointment of many home-schooling supporters, the U.S. Supreme Court said
Monday [3/3/2014] it would not consider the case of a German family seeking asylum in the U.S. because they cannot teach their children
at home in Germany. The leader of a home-school advocacy group said that while "normal" legal battles are exhausted, he and others
would seek other avenues to support Uwe and Hannelore Romeike and their six children.
DHS
allows German home-schooling family to stay in US. A German home-schooling family facing deportation following the
Supreme Court's refusal to hear their appeal is being allowed to stay in the U.S. The Department of Homeland Security has
granted the family "indefinite deferred status," their attorney confirmed to Fox News.
Why school choice opens a door to the
American Dream. In America, a good education is the great equalizer, something that gives our children the chance to fulfill their
potential no matter how they fared in the lottery of life. That's why the more we can do to empower parents to pick and choose the schools
that best meet their kids' needs, the better. It's one way for us to live up to our billing as the "Land of Opportunity."
Don't Destroy This Family.
The Romeike family was granted asylum in the United States because the German government was intent on wresting away the children and putting
the parents in cages for the crime of homeschooling their children, which is verboten in Germany, a legacy of the country's totalitarian past.
The Obama administration, which in other notable areas of immigration law has enacted a policy of "discretion" regarding deportations, took the
Romeike family to court to have its asylum protections revoked, and succeeded in doing so. The family has appealed to the Supreme Court,
which has ordered the Obama administration to respond to the Romeikes' petition, but the administration has so far refused to do so.
Consider Alternative Schooling.
Even when they work well, public schools introduce all sorts of costs and rigidities into everyday life. That's not surprising. Public schools were
designed to be rigid. Back in the 19th century, when Massachusetts Board of Education Secretary Horace Mann toured Europe looking for models of public
education to import to America, the one he chose came from Prussia. Inflexibility and uniformity were Prussian specialties, and when Mann brought
Prussian-style education to America, those characteristics were seen not as a bug but as a feature. School was practice for working in the factory.
Thus, the traditional public school: like a factory, it runs by the bell.
Why I Sent My Children to a School of
Another Faith. Although my husband and I deliberately moved where our children could attend high-performing public schools, the school board
arbitrarily rezoned us, forcing our children into a middle school that experienced violence daily. This was unacceptable. Finding a private
school that fit without forcing us into bankruptcy was daunting. It was easy to find schools in the yellow pages, and every school welcomed me
when I visited. However, no school seemed like the right fit.
Supreme
Court orders White House to respond to Romeike petition. The Supreme Court has ordered the White House to respond to an
asylum petition that appeared on Whitehouse.gov on behalf of Uwe and Hannelore Romeike. The Romeike family fled Germany in 2008 when
they were fined and threatened with jail-time for homeschooling their children. They were denied asylum in 2012, and a lower court
ruled against them when they appealed. They have appealed to the Supreme Court, which has not decided to hear their case.
However, the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), which represents the family, has announced that the Supreme Court has ordered
the Obama administration to issue an official response to the WhiteHouse.gov petition asking for "full and permanent legal status" for
the Romeikes.
Supreme
Court Orders DOJ to Respond to German Homeschoolers' Petition. The Supreme Court has ordered Attorney General Eric Holder to
respond to the Home School Legal Defense Association's (HSLDA) petition on behalf of the Romeike family, a German family who sought legal
asylum in the United States to escape persecution because homeschooling is largely prohibited in their home country. In a press
release, James Mason, HSLDA's director of litigation, said that the order is a hopeful sign that the High Court will hear the case.
Judge Allows Federal Oversight Louisiana
Voucher Program. A federal judge ruled against Louisiana in a case against the state's scholarship program on Friday
[11/22/2013], requiring federal oversight for the program that allows children to escape failing schools. The ruling may lead to a
lengthy review process preferred by the Justice Department (DOJ), which Gov. Bobby Jindal (R.) says could regulate the program to death.
The decision was the latest in a legal battle between the Obama administration and the state, dating back to August.
DOJ Drops Anti-School Choice Lawsuit
in La.. The Obama administrated has abandoned its request for an injunction against Louisiana's school-voucher program, designed to help
low- and middle-income students in failing schools to attend schools of their choice. The Department of Justice claimed that the program
impeded the federally mandated desegregation process, but in late October was unable to produce the documents central to their lawsuit, saying
they needed to obtain the documents from archives and review them. A number of more comprehensive studies indicated that the program
presented no such problem, and may have actually been encouraging integration.
One Hundred Reasons to Abandon Public
Education Now. [For example,]
(42) History curriculum designed by post-Marxist revisionists.
(43) The entitlement mentality.
(44) Natural attachment to the "provider." Abstract state replaces concrete parents as the object of future obligation and duty.
(45) "Gender role" and "alternative lifestyle" lessons.
(46) Unceasing Marxist critique of Western civilization: sexism, systemic oppression, capitalism is racist, the rich get richer, etc.
(47) Public education requires lowest common denominator approach. Stifles natural intelligence.
(48) Discouraging female modesty.
(49) Discouraging male admiration for female modesty.
Where do public school teachers send their own
kids? About 11 percent of all parents — nationwide, rural and urban — send their children to private schools. The
numbers are much higher in urban areas. One study found that in Philadelphia a staggering 44 percent of public school teachers send
their own kids to private schools. In Cincinnati and Chicago, 41 and 39 percent of public school teachers, respectively, pay
for a private school education for their children. In Rochester, New York, it's 38 percent.
This happened in Germany, but could happen here someday: Police Raid on German Home School Family Brings
Back Memory of Darker Times. Even if the raid and the law were not contrary to certain European Union human rights agreements, Germany ought to be
embarrassed at the spectacle of armed police kidnapping children for the crime of being home schooled. That it gives rise to an earlier, much darker time
in German history almost goes without saying.
Police storm homeschool class, take children by force.
Four children, ages 7 to 14, have been forcibly taken from their Darmstadt, Germany, home by police armed with a battering ram, and their parents have been told
they won't see them again soon, all over the issue of homeschooling, according to a stunning new report from the Home School Legal Defense Association.
Police Raid on German Home School Family Brings Back
Memory of Darker Times. Apparently the raid stems from a Nazi era law still on the books in the Federal Republic of Germany that requires all
children to be educated in state sanctioned schools, no exceptions. Dirk and Petra Wunderlich preferred that their children be home schooled, a widely
accepted practice in the United States, because of their religious convictions. The German state disagreed and made their objections known with brutal
efficiency. The Wunderlichs have been informed that they will not see their children any time soon.
Ohio Lawmakers Consider Homeschooler
Property Tax Credit . Senate Bill 127, pegged to become effective in 2014, would give homeschoolers a tax credit equal to the proportion of property
taxes on their home that fund their local school district. "Home schooling requires an immense amount of parental involvement, which has many positive benefits
for children, but it also involves a great deal of sacrifice," said bill sponsor and state Sen. Kris Jordan (R-Powell), in a statement. "Families that elect to
home-school their children often pay directly out of pocket for many of the materials and other items needed, and my proposal could help significantly in defraying
some of these costs."
Senate Dems to
resurrect United Nations treaty opposed by home schoolers. Senate Democrats will try to resurrect a United Nations treaty on
rights for the disabled that was rejected last year over GOP concerns it would imperil home-schooling. The treaty fell five votes
short of the necessary two-thirds majority in a 61-38 vote in December after former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) led a charge that it
would give unelected UN bureaucrats the power to challenge U.S. home-schooling.
Education News report tells us homeschooling is
thriving. In a recent report, we learn that since 1999, the number of children who are homeschooled has increased by 75 percent.
Though homeschooled children represent only 4 percent (about 2 million) of all school-age children nationwide, they are growing seven times
faster than the number of children enrolling in grades K-12.
Report:
Homeschooling Growing Seven Times Faster than Public School Enrollment. As dissatisfaction with the U.S. public school
system grows, apparently so has the appeal of homeschooling. Educational researchers, in fact, are expecting a surge in the
number of students educated at home by their parents over the next ten years, as more parents reject public schools.
GOP
Senators Drafting Letter to Urge Asylum for German Homeschooling Family. In an interview with Breitbart News, William
Estrada, Director of Federal Relations of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), said that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has
taken the lead in the Senate to draft a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, urging him to allow the Romeike family asylum in the
United States.
Another reason to abandon government schools: They are not safe. Black on white violence in the schools.
The word bullying is often used to obfuscate. Not illuminate. In this case, it covered up significant and intense black mob
violence in this school. And it is happening all over the country.
Enough With the Bipartisanship. In 2001,
newly elected president George W. Bush decided he wanted to work with Democrats in Congress to do something about education. So
backs were slapped and hands were shaken. Sen. Ted Kennedy was invited to the White House for a movie screening. The resulting
No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was co-sponsored by Kennedy, and amounted to little more than a consolidation of federal education
power. The one initiative that might have ameliorated the plight of inner-city students — school vouchers — was
stripped out during negotiations.
Dewey: Stalin's Propagandist, the World's
Teacher. [In 1928], The New Republic published Dewey's Impressions of Soviet Russia and the revolutionary world.
This polemic stands as a remarkable testament to progressivism's disdain for mankind, reason, and truth. It is also Dewey's most honest and
concise primer on the principles of his progressive education method. Anyone prepared to defend the idea of government-controlled schooling
after reading this work is perhaps beyond reach of rational argument.
Obama
Admin Wins Ruling to Deport German Homeschooling Family. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the Obama administration's
denial of asylum granted to the Romeike family, who fled Germany over its strict anti-homeschooling laws. In a press release Tuesday [5/4/2013],
Michael Farris, founder and chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), said, "We believe the Sixth Circuit is wrong and we will
appeal their decision. America has room for this family and we will do everything we can to help them."
US Court Denies German Home-Schoolers
Asylum. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Obama administration's refusal to grant asylum to the Romeike
family. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder filed against the family, arguing that asylum should not be granted because home schooling
isn't a fundamental right protected under religious freedom. The Romeikes fled Germany in 2008 facing criminal prosecution for home
schooling. In 2010, they were granted political asylum by immigration Judge Lawrence Burman, but his decision was overturned by the
Board of Immigration Appeals last year. On Tuesday [5/14/2013], the three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit issued a unanimous
decision against the family.
Court
Rules Against German Homeschool Family Seeking Asylum. The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Obama Administration's
decision to deny asylum to a German homeschooling family. The Romeike family fled their German homeland in 2008 seeking political
asylum in the United States — where they hoped to home school their children. Instead, the Obama administration wants
the evangelical Christian family deported.
25 Reasons To Dislike
Liberals. [#14] There's a reason why the average homeschooled kid gets a better education than he would in a
public school run by liberals. It's because the kid's parents are interested in educating him while his liberal teachers view
public schools as just another way to indoctrinate children.
The Case of the German Homeschoolers. In a case that calls to mind
Melissa Harris Perry's recent opinionating on MSNBC about children and their relationship to their families and to the community ("We have to break through the kind
of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or that kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities"), the Obama
administration is trying to deport a German family, now resident in Tennessee, that sought refuge in the United States for the purpose of homeschooling their six
children. Homeschooling is against the law in Germany and can result in fines, jail time, and the removal of children from their families.
The Education of the Romeiki Family.
One of the great moments in this author's academic career came when I dropped out of public high school to return to homeschool.
My mother marched into the principal's office and informed the administration that she would be taking me out. The principal, a
woman who ran the school with all the delicacy of a Hessian dragoon, was visibly indignant. "You can't do that," she said.
"Oh," my mother said, smiling, "yes I can." And she could, thanks to Virginia's generally permissive homeschooling laws.
So I left, free to pursue an actual education instead of a daily helping of public school eyewash.
The Education of the Romeiki Family.
All homeschoolers in Germany, religious or otherwise, are persecuted in the same way; since the Romeikes aren't being singled out for their religious
beliefs, but are merely suffering the same indignities as everyone else, they don't have a case. Got that? We've gone from a
country of "All men are created equal" to "All men are created to suffer equally."
The Fifth Column. [Scroll down] At
issue is the question of whether they can defy the German law against homeschooling their children. The German Supreme Court has
ruled that it wants to "counteract the development of religious and philosophically motivated parallel societies" — thus
preventing the development of a 5th Column. In pursuit of that policy goal the Romeikes were fined and punished; and so they fled
to the US to avoid 'persecution'. Or so they thought. But the Obama administration isn't buying it.
Ron Paul launches his own home-school curriculum.
Former Republican congressman and three-time presidential candidate Ron Paul has launched his own K-12 home-school curriculum to provide an "education
in liberty like no other." The curriculum, which includes courses on "the economics of the Austrian school," provides its K-5 program for free,
meaning that students and families will be able to learn under Ron Paul for six years "without spending a dime," according to one of the curriculum's
high school teachers, Ludwig von Mises Institute senior fellow Tom Woods.
There are a hundred compelling reasons for removing your
children and grandchildren from the public schools. American
Education: Rotting the Country from the Inside. [Scroll down] So it is my conclusion that what the WU
failed to accomplish when they went underground and began their strategic sabotage is now being accomplished through the
educational system and the political means that they have gained by supporting such people as Barack Obama and his Chicago
supporters. I tell people today that we are losing our freedoms because of the attacks that emerge from the left and
are targeted on all of our basic societal organizations. God is eliminated from the classroom; the history of our
country is no longer being taught, but rather a revised edition which depicts our people and our nation as enemies of the
world and of all that is good and right. This includes church, religion, veterans, educational institutions, and any
organization that supports the greatness of our country and the strength of its institutions.
One Hundred Reasons to Abandon Public Education Now.
[#10] Benjamin Franklin. Little formal schooling; a printer's apprentice at twelve.
[#11] Jane Austen. Little formal schooling; read books and wrote stories at home.
[#12] Alexander Pope. Little formal schooling; major poet and literary critic at twenty-three.
[#13] John Keats. Medical apprentice (and orphaned) at fourteen, professional surgeon's assistant
at twenty, licensed apothecary at twenty-one, greatest English poet of his era at twenty-three (dead at twenty-five).
[#14] Under compulsory schooling, only two entries in Keats' biography (item 13) would have been
possible — "orphaned" and "dead at twenty-five."
Title IX for our boys.
Large urban school districts are losing students at an alarming pace. They're going to charter schools, to online schools and
to home-schooling. But now there's another reason for parents to think about moving their children out of public
schools — the boys. It seems that teachers — overwhelmingly female — just might be prejudiced
against boys and it's hurting their grades. Stereotyped as "naughty," boys quickly learn that they are thought of as dumber and
more trouble than girls. And that has consequences.
Atty General Holder Argues
Parents Have No Right to Educate their Children. The background for this case is the German war on homeschooling that has led some families to seek
political asylum in the United States where homeschooling is still legal for now. While the Obama Administration refuses to expel illegal aliens who have
committed felonies and welcomes in immigrants with AIDS, European Christians who don't like the compulsory indoctrination of their children are not their
cup of tea.
A Miscarriage of Justice: Obama administration seeking to deport Christian
homeschooling family. The Obama administration is attempting to deport a German family that came to America seeking asylum
from a Nazi-era law that prohibits homeschooling. Uwe and Hannelore Romeike decided to homeschool their children in 2006 because the
curriculum at their public school ran counter to the family's Christian convictions.
German home-schooling family fights to stay in US.
While the White House and many lawmakers push to grant legal status to immigrants who crossed the border illegally, the Romeike family thought they followed the
rules — but now face deportation. They are devout Catholics who emigrated from Germany in 2008 to home school their six children in Tennessee.
As Uwe Romeike told Fox News, it is illegal to do that in Germany.
The Editor says...
The government allows millions of unwelcome people to sneak across the Mexican border, then rewards them with food stamps. The Romeike family came to America
seeking freedom, and Barack H. Obama and his evil minions want to throw them back over the fence.
It's
Time to Push for Impeachment Proceedings Against Eric Holder. Attorney General Eric Holder has again shown his
true colors — his disdain for America and her laws. Recently, he took action against the Romeike family that is
seeking asylum in the United States after being forced to flee their home country or risk losing their five children to the
German government. Germany was attempting to force the Romeikes to put their children in a government school against their
religious beliefs in a terrifying repeat of history.
Home Schooling German Family
Fights Deportation. Uwe and Hannelore Romeike, devout Christians from the southwest of Germany who now have six children,
initially took their three oldest children out of school in their native country in 2006. Shortly after, the German government started
fining the family and threatening them with legal action. Home schooling has been illegal in Germany since 1918, when school
attendance was made compulsory, and parents who choose to homeschool anyway face financial penalties and legal consequences, including the
potential loss of custody of their children.
Obama Trying to Deport
Homeschooling Family. In 2010 a federal immigration judge awarded political asylum to a family whose German
government was persecuting for having the temerity to homeschool their children. Now, three years later, the Obama
administration seems poised to reverse that decision and deport the family back to Germany. Uwe Romeike, his wife,
and children were told that they could stay as legal residents in Morrisstown, Tennessee, when the family moved there in
2008 after being threatened by German authorities because they homeschooled their children instead of sending them to
government schools.
Obama
Admin Wants to Deport Christian Home School Family. The Romeike family fled their German homeland in 2008 seeking political
asylum in the United States — where they hoped to home school their children. Instead, the Obama administration wants
the evangelical Christian family deported. The fate of Uwe and Hannelore Romeike — along with their six
children — now rests with the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2010 an immigration judge granted the family
political refuge, but the Dept. of Homeland Security objected and argued they don't deserve asylum. Neither the Justice Dept. nor
the Dept. of Homeland Security returned calls seeking comment.
DOJ
seeks deportation of family persecuted in Germany for homeschooling. In the United States, the right to homeschool ones'
own children is accepted, although frequently mocked by the left. The homeschoool movement is thriving in the United States, but in
Germany it is illegal, a holdover from Nazi-era law. The Romeikes fled to the United States in 2008 after they faced mounting
fines and the potential of imprisonment.
Deportation
of German homeschool family affects US homeschool freedom. In 1938, the practice of homeschooling was outlawed in Germany by Adolf Hitler and the
infamous Third Reich. [...] Sadly for freedom and for many families, Germany has never lifted this archaic and totalitarian ban on homeschooling.
On the contrary, the German government seems to have stepped up its opposition to homeschooling over the past decade, forcing several families to flee,
and others to enroll their children in state-approved schools against their will.
Obamunist America Is No Sanctuary for Homeschoolers. Brainwashing of
children to reject notions of individual liberty in favor of collectivist ideology has always been crucial to the progressive
agenda. This is why Hitler era laws against homeschooling are still on the books in Germany, the land that produced modern
socialism. Escaping from Germany to America isn't as effective as it once was.
Swallow Your Pride, Save Your Child.
To summarize: parents who are capable of providing private or home schooling, but who leave their children in public school while hoping to undo
the damage at home, are fooling themselves. Some damage can never be undone, and even that which can be somewhat mitigated would be better
avoided entirely.
Why Homeschooling is
Becoming Hipster. When I was five years old, homeschooling was not as cool and acceptable as it is today; homeschooling parents
were scrutinized and ridiculed. My mother did not care; she was an entrepreneur. My mother's friends openly doubted her ability to
teach her own children. She proved them wrong; I graduated Summa Cum Laude from college, my sister is a teacher at a private
school and I have a brother in medical school.
The Last Radicals. There is
exactly one authentically radical social movement of any real significance in the United States, and it is not Occupy,
the Tea Party, or the Ron Paul faction. It is homeschoolers, who, by the simple act of instructing their children at
home, pose an intellectual, moral, and political challenge to the government-monopoly schools, which are one of our
most fundamental institutions and one of our most dysfunctional. Like all radical movements, homeschoolers drive the
establishment bats.
Online Schools Becoming
More Popular, Despite Union Resistance. Online schools, and other forms of digital learning, are an inevitable and promising form of
education for the 21st Century, unless special interest forces are able to keep technology from becoming more integrated into everyday education.
Professor Gary Miron of the National Education Policy Center is a leading voice for those special interests, which include teachers unions and the
education establishment in general.
How a Homeschooler
Became a Best-Selling Author. [Scroll down] The decision to homeschool was made by parents who truly cared about their
children's future happiness and success. And they were willing to make the economic sacrifices in order to be able to do the right
thing. In other words, strong parents are the backbone of the homeschool movement, and that is why the education establishment will
never be able to control them. The essence of a free society is educational freedom, and in the end it also produces great economic
benefits.
My Education in Home Schooling.
Today in the U.S., some two million children are home schooled, growing at an annual rate of 7% to 15% for over a decade, according to the
president of the National Home Education Research Institute. The term "home schooler" once implied "isolationist religious zealot" or
"off-the-grid anarchist who makes her own yogurt." Today, it also means military parents who hate to see their kids keep changing
schools; or the family with a future Olympian who ice skates five hours a day; or your cousin whose daughter is gifted but has a
learning disability. The average home schooler is no longer a sideshow oddity.
With
Traditional Schooling Increasingly Obsolete, How To Learn Without Being Taught. It's odd how many people take my skepticism about
college and try to twist it into an opposition to learning. But like the quote often attributed to Mark Twain, "I never let schooling
interfere with my education." Here's a radical idea worth contemplating: that school is not the best way to learn.
Outcry
over Sweden's Persecution of Homeschoolers Grows. As homeschooling families continue to flee Sweden in the face of
escalating persecution, the global outcry over the controversial Swedish policies is growing louder. More than a few critics
and reporters have even blasted the government's actions and behavior as reminiscent of the former Soviet Union.
Home schooling: Why
more black US families are trying it. Until recently, home schooling in the US was mostly practised
by white families, but a growing number in the black community are now also turning their back on the public school
system and educating their children at home. Why? Maybe because blacks are getting the worst public
schooling.
Blitzing
the Department of Education. Tim Tebow and I both blitzed the Department of Education; we were both
homeschooled. Tebow became the first homeschooler to win the Heisman Trophy and he's now an NFL starting
quarterback. And, as someone who was homeschooled through eighth grade and attended a private high school
before graduating from college, I personally know that young people don't need the federal government running
their education. I think American children and their parents deserve more than an unconstitutional,
one-size-fits-all federal education system.
Alberta
Law Would Ban Homeschool Parents From Teaching Against Homosexuality. If you want to witness the eventual direction of
"diversity" in America, you may want to take a long look at what is happening in Canada. Under the new Education Act poised for
implementation in Alberta, Christian schools and homeschool parents would be prohibited, as part of their academic program, from
teaching children that homosexuality is sinful.
The Editor says...
Please note: This law does not pertain to the public school curriculum -- it restricts what parents can teach their children
in their own homes.
Surveilling homeschoolers, the 2nd
try ... For the second time in just months, an attempt to assemble information such as names and addresses
on all homeschool students in one Mississippi judicial district and provide those details to judges has been defeated.
The latest attempt came in the form of a legislative proposal that would have added to each school attendance officer's
obligations the responsibility to "(c)ollect and maintain information concerning each compulsory-school-age child who
is being educated in a legitimate home instruction program."
Homeschool
Leader Flees Swedish Persecution. As the government intensifies its persecution of homeschoolers in
Sweden, the president of the Swedish Association for Home Education (ROHUS) has finally been forced into exile
with his family in neighboring Finland. The battle for human rights and homeschooling in the Scandinavian
kingdom, however, is far from over.
One more reason to resort to home schooling: Sheboygan
elementary school bars student from giving religious valentines. In preparation for Valentine's Day, second-grader
Dexter Thielhelm worked with his mom and siblings to create valentines of candy and a special message of love for his friends at
James Madison Elementary School. He filled empty water bottles with candy and included a rolled-up verse from the Bible with
the message, "Jesus loves you." The valentines never reached the hands of his friends, however, because school officials
collected them before they could be distributed.
A World without Schoolteachers.
Americans should be able to envision a future without public-school teachers — indeed, a future without
public-school administrators or state departments of education with their rigidly enforced, politically correct
social-transformation curriculum. A future without onerous school taxes, "education president(s)," self-preening
school boards, or million-dollar classrooms. ... And it's all possible because these cheap, handheld, downloadable
reading devices such as Kindle and Nook now give parents a choice between tutoring and classroom education.
The Editor says...
An abundance of self-taught, self-reliant home-schooled students is entirely possible, with or without electronic
media, but it would only come about if every student was willing to learn and they all used their time wisely and
productively. That would only happen in a sink-or-swim society where each individual either gets a job or
goes hungry. It will not happen in a godless, fatherless welfare state in which every kid has a cell
phone and a television.
Homeschool Parents to Lose Children Permanently.
Swedish officials on the Island of Gotland are seeking to terminate the parental rights of homeschool parents
Christer and Annie Johansson. The latest development in this monumental homeschool rights case started
when the state seized the parents seven year old son in June 2009. Domenic, now 9 years old, has been
held in state foster care for more than 24 months. News of these developments does not sit well in
the homeschool community.
Overreaching Judge Overruled. The
Mississippi Supreme Court ruled on April 21, 2011 that a court order issued by Judge Walker requiring state
officials to disclose the identities of all the homeschoolers in the Thirteenth District of Mississippi was
improper and thus vacated by the higher court. The Supreme Court came to its conclusion after receiving
HSLDA's Writ of Prohibition and Emergency Motion to Stay, Judge Walker's response, and HSLDA's response memorandum.
The Education plantation.
We are now approaching the end game with respect to sanity and the public school system. A homeless woman
who registered her 6-year-old son at a Norwalk, Conn. elementary school has been charged with first-degree
larceny and conspiracy to commit first-degree larceny for ostensibly "stealing" over $15,000 worth of
education. Tonya McDowell, 33, was released after posting a $25,000 bond. She faces a fine of up to
$15,000 and as many as 20 years in jail.
Education
should start at home. While theres no denying that teachers play a central role in a child's
academic life, there's no place like home. And that's where the struggle against the dropout epidemic
needs to begin. See, we know why children drop out, we know when they most likely will drop out and
we know who most likely will drop out.
The Evolution
of Home Schooling. Anne Gebhardt's kids are learning about geography — in her dining
room in Bedford, Texas. It's not your typical schoolhouse, but it's one that Gebhardt says is serving
her six children well. "We can teach our religious values to our children freely," says Gebhardt.
"We can teach anything that we want." Gebhardt is part of a growing trend. Across the county, an
estimated 1.5 million children are home schooled and that number's growing. In the span of eight
years, home schooling has grown nationally by almost 75 percent.
Education: The Elephant
in the Room. As youngsters, our Founding Fathers were educated like most other children of early America.
Of the six Founding Fathers, three were homeschooled: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.
Two were self-taught: Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin (though Franklin did attend primary school for two
years). And one, John Adams, was both homeschooled and privately taught (at a very small school). How far
from our early ways America has strayed! Today, only a minority of children are homeschooled.
Home-Educated Youth and
the Election. For years liberals have sought to contain the home-school movement by harassing
families and banning their children from publicly funded athletic programs and other extracurricular activities.
It hasn't worked. On the contrary, these discriminatory practices have created a generation of motivated
activists. With every passing election cycle, Republican candidates become increasingly reliant on
home-educated students to propel them to victory.
Back to school without leaving the
house. [Scroll down] "Guess how much I care about August 23rd?" she asked the parents
gathered for a meeting Friday night at a bookstore in The Woodlands. [Melissa] Robertson doesn't care at
all. She plans to take her own three children, whom she has taught since kindergarten, to the park today.
She said she teaches them year-round. "Home schooling is a lifestyle," Robertson said. "The line
between learning and living gets blurred — and it should."
Home
School, Sweet Home School. As I addressed a home school graduation exercise the other day,
I thought — more than once — ah, good old human nature at work once more. It's
what happens when institutions fail or give the distinct impression they're about to. Customers head
for the exits: not all of them, maybe just a handful. Yet those who do flee, taking their hopes
and their children with them, tend to be people of sharp and quick perception; the kind you want around as
much and as long as possible.
Up Close with Homeschoolers. Homeschooling
has been on the rise across the country for some time. And with conventional schools engaging in the likes
of providing free condoms to elementary school students, asking students to turn their American flag T-shirts
inside-out, and preaching about barrier methods of contraception to fifth-graders, homeschooling is likely to
become even more prevalent.
Have
Government Schools Become a Criminal Enterprise? [Scroll down] The moral risk is in being
taught that premarital sex is okay, that experimentation with drugs is a matter of private decision making,
and that the child's decisions should not be thwarted by parents' old-fashioned moral values based on
superstitious religion. ... Millions of children are thus condemned to lead lives as intellectual cripples,
stunted in mental growth, spiritually empty, open to vicious temptations without a moral code to protect
them. This criminal enterprise has become totally impervious to rational reform. The only
sensible thing that parents can do is remove their children from these schools and put them in private
schools or teach them at home. Parents still have the freedom to take matters into their own
hands. If they don't, then it is the children who will suffer.
Homeschooling
and Socialism? The most important institution in a socialist society is a government-owned and -controlled
education system in which children can be indoctrinated to willingly accept state control of their lives. Public-school
teachers are not freedom fighters. They are government employees who must obey the mandates of the state. In
a socialist system, the state owns the children. Parents are merely breeders, and since homeschoolers tend to
like large families, the population-control socialists will no doubt try to abolish homeschooling.
Homeschooling vs. Howard Zinn.
[Scroll down] While I may not be a history major, or a certified teacher, I can read these books, teach
from them, and supplement the text with additional curriculum of my choosing. If my child were in a public
school, what would they be learning from? One of the more popular texts is The People's History of the
United States by the late Howard Zinn, a radical Marxist.
Socialization
not a problem. Since the re-emergence of the home-school movement in the late 1970s, critics of
home-schooling have perpetuated two myths. The first concerns the ability of parents to adequately teach
their own children at home; the second is whether home-schooled children will be well-adjusted socially.
Home-schooler
ordered to attend public school. A New Hampshire court ordered a home-schooled Christian girl to
attend a public school this week after a judge criticized the "rigidity" of her mother's religious views and
said the 10-year-old needed to consider other worldviews as she matures. Ever since the judge's ruling
came out in July, the case has aroused the interest of home-schooling groups nationwide, who have asked why a
court has the power to decide whether someone's religious views are too extreme.
The Editor says...
This is an issue far greater than home schooling. No judge has the authority to rule on
the merits of any person's religious values or beliefs.
Study: Homeschoolers score 37 points higher.
A newly released study from the Home School Legal Defense Association shows that not only do homeschoolers
incur expenses only 5 percent of what public schools spend on each student, they score nearly 40 points
higher on standardized achievement tests. "These results validate the dedication of thousands of homeschool
parents who are giving their children the best education possible," said Michael Smith, president of the
advocacy organization.
Huge Victory for Homeschoolers in New
Hampshire. Today [1/13/2010], the New Hampshire House of Representatives resoundingly
rejected a draconian homeschool proposal by voting 324-34 to maintain the current law.
Home schooling grows.
The ranks of America's home-schooled children have continued a steady climb over the past five years, and new
research suggests broader reasons for the appeal. The number of home-schooled kids hit 1.5 million
in 2007, up 74% from when the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics started
keeping track in 1999, and up 36% since 2003.
Christian Girls, Interrupted.
Two Christian girls. Two sets of distraught parents. And two state courts smack in the middle of it. One of
these courts is in New Hampshire, where a judge recently ordered that home-schooled Amanda Kurowski be sent to public
school. The order signed by Family Court Justice Lucinda V. Sandler says the 10-year-old's Christian faith could
use some shaking up — and that the local public school is just the place to do it.
Homeschoolers:
Trailer-Park Denizens or Modern Heroes? Robin L. West, in an essay titled, "The Harms of
Homeschooling", and published by the University of Maryland's Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly, argues for
greater government oversight of home schooling and takes a shot at fundamentalist Christian families
who are short on mammon but big on procreation.
A Call to
Arms for Parents Upset About Obama's Public School Address. Public school parents cannot afford to be
passive any longer. You cannot simply delegate your child's education to others — some who are
wholeheartedly committed to subverting the traditions and values you hold dear — and walk away. You
must be prepared to work as hard as homeschooling parents when the need arises. You must make every
effort to know what is going on in your children's schools — and now, obviously, coming down from the
executive branch — and become a parent activist in what in some places is beginning to look like a
resistance movement.
Home-school effort becoming
mainstream. In 1984, the Virginia legislature passed a law allowing home schooling as an education option.
Until then, it was illegal and the few who dared say they were subject to persecution. Today, nearly 27,000 children in
the state are taught at home, and the number is growing 10 percent to 15 percent a year, said Jim Bentley,
executive director of the Home Educators Association of Virginia.
Amateurs
Outdoing Professionals. When amateurs outperform professionals, there is something wrong with
that profession. If ordinary people, with no medical training, could perform surgery in their kitchens
with steak knives, and get results that were better than those of surgeons in hospital operating rooms, the
whole medical profession would be discredited. Yet it is common for ordinary parents, with no training
in education, to homeschool their children and consistently produce better academic results than those of
children educated by teachers with Master's degrees and in schools spending upwards of $10,000 a year per
student….
Homeschool: A Quiet
Revolution. Ten states, including Oklahoma, take a completely hands-off approach to home schools,
subjecting them to no government regulation at all. On the other side of the spectrum, half a dozen
states — mostly in the Northeast — have strict standards, in some cases requiring parents
to become certified as teachers or to use state-approved curriculum. The other 34 states fall widely in
between, some requiring home-school parents to register with local school districts and others demanding
to see test scores.
The Editor offers a word to the wise:
Keep your healthy skepticism handy — the article above includes a small amount of accurate
information and a great deal of bias against the whole notion of home
schooling. Part two of
the article is even more biased against the home school movement; in fact, it sounds like it was written by someone
from the teachers' union.
What Would MLK
Do? An altogether inconvenient reality for Barack Obama is that school vouchers do indeed work.
The Milwaukee school voucher program for low-income parents is the largest program of its type and has been
operating since 1990. According to a recently completed study on the program's effectiveness, about
64 percent of Milwaukee students who used vouchers to enter ninth grade at ten private schools in 1999
graduated from high school four years later, compared with 36 percent of students in public schools.
Home
schooling grows by 80 percent in state in past decade. When the upcoming school year begins
Aug. 18 for Treasure Coast public schools, there likely will be more home-schooled students than ever
before and the number of home-schooled students is expected to continue to rise. For the 2007-08
school year, the Florida Department of Education estimated 56,650 students were home schooled, compared
with 31,440 students in 1997-98 — an 80 percent increase.
Christians called to abandon public
education. You've heard all about the disputes: "Silent Night" banned at the "holiday"
program, artistic references to the Bible censored and faith-inclusive children's programs facing
discrimination. Now some people are fed up with public school treatment of Christianity and
have launched a campaign calling for a rescue of kids from government education programs — a "Call
to Dunkirk."
NEA Teachers Have Become
Re-Educators. The NEA fiercely opposes any competition for public schools, such as vouchers,
tuition tax credits, parental option plans or public support of any kind to nonpublic schools. The NEA strongly
opposes designating English as our official language even though such a designation is supported by more than 80% of
Americans. The NEA opposes home schooling unless children are taught by state-licensed teachers using a
state-approved curriculum. The NEA wants to bar home-schooled students from participating in any extracurricular
activities in public schools even though their parents pay school taxes, too.
Ten Principles of School Choice: Competition
Encourages Creativity. Since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled school vouchers are constitutional in
2002, grassroots activists around the country have been organizing to support passage of school choice
programs. Legislatures passed statewide programs in Florida and Colorado, and other states are
expected to follow their lead. Some 35 cities have privately funded voucher programs.
Protests Call for Public School
Exodus. Houston lawyer Bruce Shortt refers to himself as an ordinary guy who "lives in flyover
country." But he has an unusual pastime that has attracted both critics and supporters: He's
working to encourage parents to "leave behind" public schools. Shortt said if parents take their
Christian beliefs seriously, they will do everything possible to ensure their children get a thoroughly
Christian education. A growing segment of the faith community is joining Shortt's call for an exodus,
saying the public school system is hostile to their values and unresponsive to their concerns.
The Editor says...
This idea has come up before. Earlier in 2006, it was the Southern Baptists who were in favor of
abandoning the public schools. There is more information in a subsection near the bottom of
this page.
German Court Says Parents May Not Educate
Children. German parents lost their last legal appeal on September 11, 2006 when the European
Court of Human Rights (ECHR) allowed to stand a German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) decision from
November 2003 stating parents do not have a right to educate their children at home. The case involved
Fritz and Marianna Konrad, a Herbolzheim couple that wanted to homeschool their two children because they
believed the public schools undermined their religious values.
Homeschooling Stereotypes Shattered.
No longer in the throes of adolescence, North Carolina's homeschooling movement celebrated its 20th birthday this year.
Much has changed since the General Assembly moved to legalize homeschooling in 1988. Here and across the nation, the
homeschooling movement has grown in stature and popularity — defying stereotypes and occasionally, disarming
critics.
Homeschooling,
sweet homeschooling. [Even] though over one million children are homeschooled in America,
there's a surprising amount of resistance to the idea, even from many who support other alternatives
to the state schools (i.e. charter and private schools).
Research points to benefits of
home schooling. Two million children are home schooled in the U.S., according to the Nation Home
Education Research Institute. NHERI reports homeschooled students typically perform 15 to 30 percentile
points above public school students on standardized achievements tests.
The Little Book of Big Reasons to Homeschool:
Drawing from David d'Escoto's experience as a church ministry leader and adult Bible teacher, and Kim's background in
elementary education, these two veteran homeschoolers are committed to reaching out to families and spreading the
homeschool vision. The d'Escotos give concise and compelling reasons why homeschooling is your best option for
educating your children today.
Why Home School? There
is now incontestable evidence that, on average, children who are home schooled fare better academically than children
of either public or private schools. This is not surprising since tutoring has always been recognized to be
the best method of education. Home educated children are spared the corrupting environment of the peer-oriented
classroom and thus benefit socially. A common myth of our society is that children need to be with other children
for extended periods of time to be properly socialized, but this is the exact opposite of the truth. Much time
in a peer culture is damaging to children. Socialization is one of the best reasons to home school.
Here is another reason to start home-schooling... School
Apologizes to Muslim Student Over Graduation Held in Church. A Muslim student who sued
because his public high school graduation ceremony was held in a Baptist church has received an apology
from Newark's school district and assurances that it will not hold future events in houses of worship.
And another... Teacher suspended for letting class vote
out autistic boy. Criminal charges will not be filed against [Wendy] Portillo, because authorities
determined the incident did not amount to emotional child abuse. However, the boy's mother, Melissa
Barton, said she plans to file a civil lawsuit, claiming discrimination and violation of the child's civil
rights. "This woman needs to be fired," she said. "There is no reason for someone with that
mentality to be around children. I think nothing less than her being terminated needs to happen."
And another... It is us. Barack Hussein
Obama did not sneak into power. An army of clueless, disconnected, ignorant Americans invited him to bring
his Marxist, glaringly anti-American jihad into our lives. ... But it gets worse. For, you see, the blame
doesn't fall just on the obvious stupidity of our friends and families who voted for this corrupt, death-wish
government in whose stranglehold we find ourselves. Ultimately, it is our fault. It is the
failure of those of us who know better but have failed miserably to educate our own.
Home Is
Where the School Is. During a break in a high school debate tournament not long ago, my 17-year-old son struck
up a conversation with a student on the rival team from a New Jersey public school. "Where's your school?" asked the
boy. When my son replied that he was home-schooled, the student probed. "How do you socialize when you're at
home all the time?" he asked. "Well, for one thing, I'm here, right?" my son laughed.
The Why of Homeschool: The
National Education Association regularly passes an anti-homeschooling resolution at its annual
convention. The resolution states that homeschooling "cannot provide the student with
a comprehensive education experience." … Even in a nation that applauds innovation and
liberty, the act of homeschooling continues to raise many uncomfortable, but important,
questions about government regulation of private choices.
Why Public Schools Hate Homeschooling
Parents: Homeschoolers are a direct challenge to the public school monopoly. This
monopoly makes it almost impossible to fire tenured public school teachers or principals. As a
result, tenure gives most teachers lifetime guaranteed jobs. They get this incredible benefit
only because public schools have a lock on our children's education.
Don't Suffer the Little Children.
Another school year has sprung itself upon us, which is always an occasion for my wife, a former Detroit
public-school teacher, and me to remind ourselves why we home-school. Part of the reason, in addition to
my wife's expertise in this area, can be found in Thomas Sowell's "A Conflict of Visions," published 20 years ago.
Supreme Court
levels playing field. Now, for the first time, home-schooling has been recognized in an opinion
by a U.S. Supreme Court justice as a viable educational alternative. Morse v. Frederick, which recently
made national headlines, involves free speech and whether a public school can regulate what a student
says. … It is a reminder to all families that when your child enters the public school, you have
virtually ceded your parental rights to the public school.
Publik Skule
vs. Home School: It's been eleven months since we pulled our teenage daughters out of the public
school system and started to home school them, and I could kick myself for waiting so long. … Now …
they actually get to study the basics, pursue their educational and athletic interests, without waiting for the
186% overcrowded class to decide to cease fighting and copulating long enough that the teacher can teach the
students how to write their name so that they can endorse their unemployment check later on in life.
Here's another incentive for homeschooling: Violence Scares Kids
Into Avoiding School. More than one out of every 20 high school students —
5.4 percent — skipped at least one day of school because of safety concerns in 2003, according
to a CDC survey. That is up from 4.4 percent in 1993.
Colleges Welcome Texas Homeschoolers.
While Texas homeschools often field inquiries from public school officials, social service workers, law enforcement
officials, and employers who question their legitimacy, graduates are finding most colleges and universities eagerly
accept them, and some are actively recruiting them.
Woman abandons home to escape
public schools. A Utah woman who was ordered by a juvenile court judge to enroll
her children in public school or lose custody of them has abandoned her home, furniture and
other possessions to escape the order. Denise Mafi, a nine-year veteran of homeschooling,
has confirmed to WND she and her children packed up their essentials — clothes and
homeschool materials — and fled Utah over the weekend, spending more than 50 hours
on a bus trip to an undisclosed part of the country.
City Tries to Bring Big Brother to Home
Schooling. After moving to Lynn, Massachusetts in 1993, Michael and Virginia Brunnelle decided
not to enroll their five children in the public schools, opting to educate them at home instead. Although
Lynn public school officials approved the Brunnelles' qualifications as teachers and the contents of the
curricula and the instructional materials, they still would not allow the Brunnelles to home school their
children unless they allowed school officials to conduct periodic inspections of their home "to verify that
the Home Instruction Plan is being implemented."
Liberating your children from government
schools: Some parents are ready to take the big step to liberate their children from government
school and enroll them in private or homeschool. They just need to find out how and where to do so.
Many others are considering the idea but are concerned about the cost of private schooling or the difficulty of
homeschooling.
Home Schooling Yields Socially Involved,
Above-Average Citizens. The first large-scale study of adults who were home-schooled as children has
been released, and among other revelations, it debunks the notion that home schoolers become socially isolated.
Homeschoolers
in the trenches: Given the poor academic track record of public education in
many areas of this country, you would think the government and education establishment would
be a little less arrogant about superimposing their will on homeschooling families who prefer
to opt out of their system. But you would be wrong.
Homeschoolers
vs. big brother: Legislators and the liberal media are pushing for increased regulation of homeschooling
parents, including criminal background checks, because the grass-roots movement gravely threatens their
socialist agenda of promoting dependency.
Government
agent, cops confront homeschoolers: [The parents] contend that no government
entity has the legal right to force their children to take standardized tests, even
though DSS workers have threatened to take their children from them.
California homeschool advocates celebrate
"victory": California homeschool advocates are breathing a sigh of relief after the state education
department reversed its former stance that home education is illegal.
Homeschoolers get a knock on the
door from police: A public school superintendent [in Illinois] has sent police in squad cars to
the houses of homeschooling families to deliver his demand that they appear for a "pre-trial hearing" to prove
they are in compliance with the law.
Tune in, turn around, drop
out: If you are for constitutionally limited government, freedom, individual rights, self
government, personal responsibility and accountability to God, you are a rebel in today's America. The
political-cultural status quo opposes all of that.
Why Christians don't belong in
government schools - Part 1: "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America
the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war."
The rantings of a right-wing fanatic? No, it's the conclusion of the National Commission on Excellence in
Education, convened 21 years ago by U.S. Education Secretary Terrence Bell.
Why Christians don't belong in
government schools - Part 2: These are not people who are deliberately trying to destroy
youth. They are, rather, people who fervently believe, with a religious zeal, in a radically different
worldview than the one in which you believe, in which most Americans believe.
Why Christians don't belong in
government schools - Part 3: Some Christians, aware that the modern public school has become a
God-free zone, comfort themselves with the notion that their Christian children are bearing witness to their
unsaved peers. This, increasingly, is being seen for what it is — a convenient excuse.
Why are Christians losing
America? [Quoting John W. Chalfant] Once God was shown the door, America went into chaos.
Scholastic Aptitude Test scores plummeted. Violent crime rocketed upward. The abortion mills did an
unprecedented business as they devised ever-more-sadistic ways to kill children before and even during birth.
Home-school
battle heats up in California: Confusion over California's insistence
that home-schooling is illegal has prompted the state's superintendent of public
instruction to call on lawmakers for help.
Homeschooling Must Be
Decriminalized: Parents Really Do Know Best. Every fall, as students
return to school, the education debate intensifies. This year it is especially visible
in California — even though the state pumps $45.7 billion a year into K-12 public
education, California's public schools are still among the worst in the country. Critics of
public schools are arguing for alternatives to public education, including school vouchers and charter
schools. However, hardly anyone is citing the merits of homeschooling, the most successful and
affordable alternative to date. Instead, liberals and defenders of the public school system
attempt to criminalize and stigmatize homeschooling as deficient in educating and socializing
children.
Home Schooling Popularity Grows as Public
Education Falters: The popularity of home schooling is growing every semester as more and more
parents in the U.S. opt out of the public education system. And a recent survey found that 75% of
Americans support the right to home school children.
Public education vs. homeschoolers:
When you read about the state of California's latest assaults against its homeschoolers, don't just dismiss it as
another left-coast phenomenon that doesn't affect you. This is bigger than California and involves more than education.
Publik Skool
Biggotz: Despite criminally low test scores, enormous waste, unsafe classrooms and administrative
incompetence, the public schools remain a hallowed and untouchable fixture. The snickering snobs of the
education establishment smear those who seek to protect their children from that corrupted system as ignorant
and intolerant anti-government radicals.
Home
schooling has come a long way: In 1984, five Florida home schooling families were prosecuted for
truancy and one family temporarily lost custody of its children. Home-schooling parents often had to suffer
the disdain of neighbors, ignorant accusations of child abuse, and the hostility of the teachers union. The
Florida State Legislature got the message in 1985 and legalized home schooling.
No Child Left
Behind. President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are using the leverage of federal
dollars to promote an increase in charter schools, which are still limited in many states by caps on their
number and on funding. State and local policy makers who cave to union demands and block the growth
of charters aren't doing traditional public school students any favors.
The Constitution Favors Parental
Autonomy and Religious Liberty: At its core, the Cleveland Pilot Project Scholarship Program
effects a transfer of power over one of the most basic decisions in a child's education—the decision about
which school a child will attend—from State officials to parents. Far from representing some radical
departure, the program harmonizes with our rich constitutional tradition that recognizes the central role of
parents in the education upbringing of their children.
Study Finds
Home Schooled Children Better at Social Skills: Despite a 1999 statement from the National
Education Association that, "home schooling cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education
experience," a study released earlier this month shows home-schooled students are actually more socially and
academically dvanced than their peers.
Home-schoolers outperform
peers: Home-schooled children in Canada and the United States are more "academically advanced"
than their public and private school-educated peers, according to a noted policy research group.
Revolution via home schooling: The only
effective group of citizens today in open opposition to big government are the home schoolers. They are
the only Americans willing to take on the public education system that props up the entire statist enterprise of
big, intrusive government. Forget about conservative politicians. They are more concerned about
conserving their legislative privileges than rolling back increasingly intrusive government.
Book review Can Teachers Own Their Own
Schools? Despite more than 15 years of effort, it is widely acknowledged that internal reform
of the public schools has produced little if any success. This has led to renewed interest in alternative
forms of educational delivery to devolve decision-making through charter schools, public and private voucher
plans, contracting out educational services, and home schooling. However, such reforms have largely been
resisted by public school interest groups, including teacher unions, state departments of education, colleges of
education, and school board and administrator organizations that have fought any but the most benign changes.
Another book review School Choices: True
and False. Economist John Merrifield shows that the "school choice" movement has become
mired in false alternatives, petty distinctions, and diminished vision. Yet, he argues that
programs providing real educational choices must not be allowed to fail like so many government
programs — a freely competitive market for education must remain the ultimate goal.
Vouchers, Charter Schools, and School Choice:
School
Vouchers Are So Popular Some Districts Are Running Out. More states have been
adopting expanded school choice options, offering vouchers for families who wish to move their
children from failing public schools to private schools. In just the past year, nine states
have adopted new rules that not only provide for this choice but have reduced or eliminated caps on
household income levels so that even less economically challenged families can qualify for the
vouchers. This trend is creating budgetary challenges for states while raising questions over
programs that were originally envisioned as a way for low-income households to help their children
succeed. But it also highlights the question of how education, long viewed as primarily a publicly
funded responsibility of the state, can survive if it increasingly moves into the private sector.
Democrats
Are Throwing Kids Off the School Bus. Have you heard the outrageous story of what
happened recently in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's capital? Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.),
elected in 2022, had campaigned on school choice for tens of thousands of children, mostly
minorities, who are forced to attend failing public schools in places like Philadelphia. "It's
what I believe," Shapiro, then state attorney general, assured voters as he ran for governor.
Last month on a national Fox News broadcast, Shapiro was unequivocal in his support for school
choice because "every child of God" deserves "a quality education." But there's a force far
more powerful in politics than Shapiro's convictions, such as they are. And that force is the
teachers unions. They put on a full-court press to stop the roughly 10,000 vouchers for the
poorest kids in Pennsylvania's worst school districts even though the state budget bill gave
billions more for the public schools. It didn't matter that this voucher program comprised
less than 0.5% of state spending. The union brass commanded Democrats to vote no on even a
single penny going to schools that work.
Pennsylvania
governor [terminates] school voucher push [due to] opposition from teachers unions.
Pennsylvania Democrat Gov. Josh Shapiro says he plans on dropping his push for private school
vouchers from the state budget amid opposition from teachers unions and members of his own
party. The budget passed the state House and Senate on Wednesday after discussions had been
deadlocked on the $100 million voucher program, local outlet Spotlight PA reported.
Shapiro as well as Senate Republicans had supported the voucher program, but Pennsylvania House
Democratic leadership did not and refused to act on the Senate's budget bill.
Pennsylvania
Republicans Get Played and Betrayed on School Choice. Pennsylvania continues to be a
place of nightmares for Republicans. Democrat Gov. Josh Shapiro, who ran in 2022 on
being a strong supporter of school choice (an oddity in his party), has done an about-face and will
now line-item veto the necessary funding to provide vouchers. That represents a capitulation
to the teacher's unions that lobbied the governor's office. In all, $100 million will now be
denied, locking students in failing schools. Democrat in the State House had previously
demanded $750 million more in funding for public schools as a counter to the school voucher
program. Senate Republicans in the state put out the following statement in response. [Tweet]
Iowa
[was] Flooded With Over 25K Applications For New School Choice Funds. Iowa was
flooded with more than 25,000 applications for the state's new school choice savings accounts,
nearly twice as many as the program's budget can fund. A total of 25,576 students have signed
up for an education savings account as of Friday, hours before the midnight deadline. Iowa
began accepting applications just a month earlier, on May 31. The education savings accounts
give families about $7,600 per year in state money to spend on tuition or other education expenses
related to an accredited private school.
North
Carolina's governor, who sent his own kid to private school, just issued a state of emergency over
Republicans pushing school choice. This is an emergency! People with lower
incomes in North Carolina, particularly people of color, may soon be able to enroll in private
schools soon, ruining the party for the rich kids!! Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper seriously
thinks this is an emergency[.] [Tweet] The North Carolina House just passed a school
voucher bill that would more than double the funding for school vouchers, opening opportunities for
kids to get out of failing public schools. School voucher programs give money to students
instead of school systems and allow students who otherwise couldn't afford it access to private
schools. Democrats, of course, oppose this because they want kids in government schools
because they're Democrat propaganda machines and activist training grounds. They don't want
poor kids to become less dependent on the government.
North
Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper declares 'state of emergency' over school choice bill. Democratic
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper declared a "state of emergency" on Monday [5/22/2023] in an attempt to
stop a school choice bill from passing the state legislature. Cooper released a video announcement
where he declared a state of emergency, arguing that the state of public education is "no less important"
than other emergencies. "It’s time to declare a State of Emergency for public education in North
Carolina. There’s no Executive Order like with a hurricane or the pandemic, but it’s no less
important," Cooper stated.
The Editor says...
The three-year Covid "emergency" worked so well, it's now a tool that will be used whenever
the socialits meet insurmountable political resistance. An impending political defeat in
the legislature is not an emergency. Moreover, any adverse developments in the public schools
have taken place over the last several years.
Houston,
we have a problem. Down in Austin, Texas education has dominated the legislative
session. First, there is a move for school choice. Second, there is a move to have the
state take over the Houston school district. Third, to no one's surprise, the other side is
playing the race card. Let's look at school choice, a favorite of Governor Greg Abbott. [...]
Some version of school choice will come out of Austin this year. The other big topic down
here is Houston's school district, perhaps Exhibit A of why we need school choice. At the
moment, there is talk of the state taking over the district.
Five
Democrats Who Hate School Choice, Unless It's for Themselves. In recent years, Republican lawmakers have
taken the lead to promote school choice policies, which empowers parents to select the best education for their
children. In some states, these policies include Education Savings Accounts, that allows parents to access the
state's per-pupil spending amount for their kids. Parents can then use these funds on education expenses of their
choice, such as tutoring, textbooks, or private school tuition. Many Democrats oppose ESAs and other similar
measures that ensure that families have school choice. However, many notable Democrats either attended private
schools themselves or sent their children to private schools as opposed to the public schools available in their
area. From Democratic governors to our current president, here's five Dems who choose private education over
public and push for policies that will not give parents across the country the same opportunity for their kids.
How
public employee unions damage schools, policing and government itself. Two public schools in Manhattan
illustrate the high stakes of a political choice that the nation, and many states and municipalities, must
reconsider. In 2019, Success Academy Harlem 2 charter school ranked 37th among New York state's 2,413 public
elementary schools, one of which, PS 30, had only about a third as many pupils as Harlem 2, spent twice as much per
pupil and ranked 1,694th. PS 30 and Harlem 2 operate in the same building. The contract for
PS 30's unionized teachers is 167 pages long, mostly detailing job protections, and what teachers can and
cannot be required to do. The contract for Harlem 2's nonunion teachers is one page long. Those teachers
can be fired at will, and are paid 5 to 10 percent more than PS 30 teachers on the other side of the building.
Two
States Now Have Universal School Choice — And Yours Could Be Next. On Tuesday, Iowa became the
second state in the country to pass universal school choice, directly providing families with funds to support their
children's education. Arizona was the trendsetter for this new wave of educational freedom after Gov. Doug
Ducey signed universal school choice into law on July 7, 2022. Now the race is on to advance educational
freedom, with several red states looking to follow suit. The significance of these developments can hardly be
overstated. What was once a pipe dream for many education reformers — the enabling of school choice at
scale during their lifetimes — is now becoming a reality.
Arizona
Teachers' Union Push to Overturn School-Choice Expansion Fails. The teachers' union-backed campaign to
overturn school-choice expansion in Arizona has failed due to a shortfall in signatures, the state's secretary of state
announced Thursday. Under the expansion of Arizona's universal-voucher program, known as the Empowerment
Scholarship Account (ESA), enacted in June, over one million K-12 public school students in the state will become
eligible to receive vouchers to fund their attendance at private, charter, or home schools, up from the 11,000 students
who are currently eligible. To subject the expansion to a referendum, the anti-school-choice advocacy group Save
Our Schools Arizona had to collect 118,823 valid signatures. After completing the statutorily prescribed review of
petition sheets and signatures enclosed in them, Secretary Katie Hobbs and her office determined that the initiative
does not "meet the constitutional minimum" and therefore "will not qualify for the 2024 General Election Ballot."
Hypocrisy:
Fetterman Puts His Own Kids in Private School, While Standing in the Way of Vouchers.
As most readers know, Pennsylvania's race for Senate is one of the most-watched across the country
to potentially swing the upper body of Congress back to the GOP, with Democrat candidate John
Fetterman facing off against Republican candidate Mehmet Oz in the purple state. Of course,
Fetterman's unforced errors and inability to put on a semblance of a real campaign make for prime
fodder for ridicule — since they're attempting to pass his campaign off as running the
way a normal Senate campaign should. One of the most glaring issues is of him not agreeing to
debate the Republican nominee — as my colleague Bonchie pointed out earlier this week,
not because the Keystone state lieutenant governor holds a slight, five-point lead in August and
doesn't want to shine a spotlight on Oz, but because videos show he can't hack it after suffering a
stroke before the Democrat primary.
Homeschooling
as a Safe Haven. Teachers are being caught molesting students, working in pornography in their free time, and
even allowing young girls to pose topless in sexual positions for art projects. These incidents are growing.
Child sex changes are being normalized, and sexuality is being pushed onto children even in preschool. No longer can
parents brush these incidents off as isolated. Children are being sexualized more and more at younger and younger ages
and it's gotten to the point that parents who wish to protect their children's innocence must stand up and take
control. While politicians and the media fearmongers about the 1 in 10 million children who will face school shootings
(those are the same odds as being struck by lightning), 1 in 10 public school students are sexually abused by a teachers or
other school staff members. This is the epidemic communities need to be fighting. Yet the sexualization of minors
has become so commonplace that Ghislaine Maxwell was charged and sentenced for sex trafficking minor girls and not a single
man who sexually abused those involved has been arrested or brought to justice.
Libs
Have Full Blown Meltdown After SCOTUS School Choice Ruling. As Katie reported, the Supreme Court sided with
school choice advocates on Tuesday in a 6-3 decision regarding voucher programs in Maine. [Tweet] Predictably, as with
any victory for individual freedom — and especially in dealing with parents' choice of where their children get an
education — the mainstream media and liberal activist organizations have not been taking the Supreme Court ruling
well. Most of the unhinged wailing centers on the supposed "separation of church and state," which is invoked dubiously
to claim that allowing parents to choose where their children attend school means that religion is being forced by the
government. But, that's just not true, as the Court's ruling made clear. When in full meltdown mode, though, libs
never let the facts get in their way.
Supreme
Court Rules State and Local Government Cannot Ban Faith-Based Schools from Public Funding. A major win for
parents and school choice today in a 6-3 decision from the Supreme Court [pdf Ruling Here]. The high court ruled that Maine
violated the Constitution by refusing to make public funds available for students to attend faith-based schools. The
ruling is broad and makes it clear when any state and/or local government choose to subsidize private schools or provide
vouchers for school choice, they must allow families pay for religious schools. Teachers' unions, left-wing
indoctrination institutions and the media are not happy with the Supreme Court decision. The ruling now makes it
possible for state or local school vouchers to be used for private, faith-based schools. Those schools also have
religious exemptions on the types of material and educators they allow in their education programs.
Where did
all the kids go? A Dallas friend well connected with Catholic schools told me that the phone does not stop
ringing at the office. Why? Parents are calling wondering how they can move their kid from public schools.
Most of them are not even Catholic. As my friend said, one mother said on the phone that she wants to send her kids to
a school where boys and girls go to different bathrooms and no one makes it a constitutional issue. Homeschooling is
booming, too, or another way that parents are voting against the system.
Iowa
Dem Wants To Keep Kids in 'Failing' Public Schools, Just Not Her Daughter. In 2011, fourth-grader Mira Bohannan
Kumar was thrilled to start her new life at Willowwind School, a private pre-K through sixth-grade school in Iowa City.
Kumar "had trouble fitting in" at her old school, she told the Iowa City Press-Citizen, and she couldn't wait to take
advantage of the smaller class sizes, individual attention, and advanced curriculum her newfound private education
offered. Roughly a decade later, Kumar's mother, Iowa Democrat Christina Bohannan, is fighting to make it harder for
local children to enjoy the same private school experience.
COVID-19
school closures led to boom of support for school choice. The failure of many public schools to reopen during
the 2020-2021 school year appears to have created a boom of support for school choice policies nationwide among the general
public and elected officials. As COVID-19 case rates waned over the months and years following the lockdown of spring
2020, many public schools across the country remained closed even as restaurants and businesses reopened their doors and
despite repeated assurances from public health officials that schools could safely reopen to in-person instruction.
For
Parents, School Choice Provides Hope. There's a local coffee shop that has become a hub for people working from
home who also want to get out a bit. As we all sit in front of our computers, taking calls and working from large
community tables, it never fails that someone, usually a parent, sees my "Love Your School" logo — and asks me
what I do. "I help families learn about their education options. Do you have kids?" Without a second thought,
a conversation has begun, and parents begin to share about their kids and their concerns, curious if I might be able to offer
some hope for their situation. I love these conversations — because I do have hope to offer. Its
name? School choice. Parents worrying about their children's futures is nothing new, but the last two years have
compounded those worries and added a dose of fear.
This
activist wants all parents to have educational freedom for their kids. Seventeen years ago, Corey DeAngelis
made a decision in middle school that changed his life. He applied to Communications Arts High School, a magnet high
school in San Antonio, Texas, got in, and his experience there turned him into a national advocate for parents demanding a
choice in their children's education. "Everyone wanted to be there. Everybody wanted to learn," recalled
30-year-old DeAngelis of his magnet school. His magnet happened to share a campus with the local traditional public
school. When he took a math class in the other school's building, the difference was stark. "Just walking through
the halls, you could see the difference immediately," he told me. "The classrooms were disorderly. The culture
incentivized bad behavior. Being in a gang and doing drugs was the cool thing to do." Meanwhile, the hallway at
his magnet school boasted a map plotting where graduates were heading to college.
5
Supreme Court Cases to Watch in the 2021-22 Term. [#3] Carson v. Makin: The Carson and Nelson
families are challenging Maine's prohibition of applying state funds from the state's tuition assistance program towards
secondary schools that, in addition to teaching academic subjects, provide religious instruction. Petitioners argue
this law prevents their families from using the funds towards the schools they consider to be best for their children and,
more importantly, that it violates their Constitutional rights under the free exercise, establishment, and equal protection
clauses. Petitioners filed suit and lost in both federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st
Circuit. Although the Supreme Court ruled in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, that states cannot
exclude families or schools from participating in a student-aid program solely because of a school's religious status, the
lower courts relied on a distinction between use-based versus status-based restrictions. The lower courts reasoned that
the Supreme Court's decision in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue prevented states from excluding schools from
government programs on the basis of the school's religious status, but it did not address whether states could prohibit how
the funds were being used — for religious education.
Voting
With Their Feet: Parents [are] Taking Their Kids Out of Traditional Public Schools in Astounding Numbers.
A new report from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools shows what a great advertisement American Federation of
Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten and her more radical members provided for school choice. After more than a
year of school closures, Zoom classes, and battles over critical race theory, parents are increasingly taking their children
out of public schools. The study looked at enrollment shifts between the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years.
Arizona
charter schools add thousands of new students amid COVID-19 closures. Arizona's charter schools experienced a
rush of new applications amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools released a
compilation of state-by-state data on charter school enrollment compared with enrollment in the 2019-2020 school year.
It found nearly 240,000 new students enrolled in charter schools nationally, a 7% increase from the prior year. The
report, released Wednesday, said the pandemic forcing schools to educate children remotely led to frustrated parents who saw
charters and private schools welcoming students back to classrooms. "During the 2020-21 school year, the pandemic
forced schools of all types to close their doors and switch to remote learning," the report said. "Many families were
dissatisfied with the quality of what was available to their children. And that dissatisfaction led them to learn more
about the other educational options available. For many families, charter schools' nimbleness and flexibility made them
the right public school choice."
Despite Union Efforts, School Choice Gains
New Ground. People can choose where to live, work, and shop for goods or services. But few Americans are
afforded the opportunity to choose where their children attend school — a more important choice than almost all
others. And efforts to expand educational freedom are vigorously opposed by groups with self-serving agendas. To
them, parent empowerment is a dangerous enemy to be defeated. Government control, teacher union money, and dominance
are prioritized over freedom. Students are assigned to failing public schools year after year, despite the existence of
successful alternative options, which often cost less than the mandated government school. For example, public charter
school students consistently outperform traditional public school peers despite charter schools only receiving a portion of
the government funding per student. Similarly, private school students achieve higher test scores, graduation rates,
and matriculation to college than traditional public school students. In contrast, private schools spend on average
$4,000 less to educate each student per year.
School
Choice [is the] Only Option in [a] Divided Nation. The issue of critical race theory is raising a more
fundamental question about our nation: education. Education is about more than teaching children to read and
write. It is about transmitting values, transmitting a worldview, that will define how our youth think and how they
will live. Per the Department of Education, in 2020, 56.4 million children were enrolled in K-12 education. Of
these, 50.7 million were in public schools, and 5.7 million were in private schools. So, government plays a
substantial role in the education of our children. Per the Department of Education, "Each educational institution that
receives federal funds for a fiscal year is required to hold an educational program about the U.S. Constitution for its
students." But do we care at all what is taught?
Demand
After COVID-19 Sparks School Choice Proposals in Pennsylvania. Low-income families in Pennsylvania's
lowest-performing school districts could gain access to tuition assistance for private schools as part of a reform
package. Pending legislation would create education savings accounts, into which the state could deposit funds that
parents may use to buy education products and services for their children. Such accounts can make private schooling
options more affordable. The proposal also would expand existing tax credit programs that provide students with tuition
assistance in the form of scholarships. "Once this bill moves forward and passes, Pennsylvania is going to be a model
state for educational opportunity," state Rep. Andrew Lewis, a Dauphin County Republican and lead House sponsor, said in
an interview with The Daily Signal.
School Choice
Shines This Week. School choice was a policy star this week at the Republican National Convention.
President Donald Trump capped off the week by stating his desire to "expand charter schools and provide school choice for
every family in America" during his speech Thursday night, the final night of the convention. A slate of speakers
throughout the week made impassioned cases for school choice, including Rebecca Friedrichs, famous for bringing a legal
challenge to the forced collection of union dues. Her effort resulted in the Supreme Court's ruling in favor of teacher
freedom in the case of Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. South Carolina
Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., also made powerful arguments for education freedom. Scott called
a good education "the closest thing we have to magic in America... When a parent has a choice, a kid has a better chance."
The School Choice Debate
Misses the Point. The debate on school choice focuses on whether parents should have a right to choose what
school their children attend and if the public education funds should follow the child. Both sides spar over the
efficiency and effectiveness of the public school system and if parents should have the right to opt out of it in order to
pursue other options for their children. However, this debate fails to question the conventional structure of school
and only operates within the narrow framework of controlled learning, standardized tests, and measuring and ranking human
potential rather than how to best develop it. Consequently, it ignores more important questions like: Should
children control their own education? Do standardized tests prepare students for real world challenges and develop
critical thinking skills? Why should children be forced to learn subjects against their will, especially subjects that
have little relevance to today's economy? Does expanding school choice strengthen or weaken the relationship between
parents and children? Should we use statistics to justify freedom of choice? Should the school day be shorter or
at least start later to prevent children from experiencing sleep deprivation? Should children have more time for free
play without supervision? Is the education business doing more harm to students than good?
Democrats
Hate What Trump Is Highlighting about Them. Poorer Americans, many of them minorities, are harmed
disproportionately when forced to send their children to failing schools. The Democrats, buried in the pockets of the
teachers' unions, have no room to maneuver on this issue. The fiscal argument also strongly favors school choice since
it is costing more by the year to send kids to public schools. In the Northern Virginia area, where I live, it costs
between $15,000 and close to $20,000, depending on the county, to educate each student every year. To spend that much
to send students into often unsafe environments where they are certain to fail is ludicrous. As the president noted,
"no parent should be forced to send their child to a failing government school." My only quibble is that schools are failing
only when examined from an American perspective, since they are doing exactly what Democrats want, which is cranking out
postmodern anti-American anti-religious future Democrat voters by the truckload.
On
school choice, Democrats are the hypocrites. Ask most Democrats, and they will claim that it is their party
that represents marginalized Americans, and specifically lower income black and Hispanic voters. This makes the
Democratic Party's near abandonment of charter schools, and the mostly minority voters who need them, one of the most
politically perplexing shifts in recent memory.
Black
and Latino Voters Blast Dem 'Establishment' for Opposing Charter Schools. As top 2020 Democratic candidates
unveil plans to curb or reverse the spread of charter schools, many Black and Latino voters are asking why their voices
aren't being heard, according to a New York Times report. "As a single mom with two jobs and five hustles, I'm
just feeling kind of desperate," Sonia Tyler told the Times. "They're brilliant; they're curious. It's not
fair. Why shouldn't I have a choice?" Tyler is seeking to enroll her children in a suburban charter school
outside Atlanta, joining many other parents who have found in charters a lifeline to escape failing public schools.
Say Goodbye to Charter Schools.
There's no way to reform public schools, in California or elsewhere, given that they are government monopolies that are dominated by
unions. They will put kids first, as one former teachers' union official reportedly said, after the kids start paying dues.
People who think that such schools can be improved through new reforms and more money probably believed that the Soviet economy could
have been fixed with a better-developed five-year plan. The only way to deal with that reality is to escape. In 1992,
California passed one of the nation's most far-reaching school-reform experiments, by making it easy to create publicly funded
alternative schools where kids could flee. The original law authorized the establishment of 100 charters. The state
now has more than 1,300 of them, and they educate 11 percent of the state's students.
Study Links
School Choice to Crime Reduction. A new study compared over 1,000 students on vouchers to their public school
peers, finding that school choice programs may help reduce crime. The study, authored by Prof. Patrick J. Wolf
of the University of Arkansas and Corey A. DeAngelis, Director of School Choice for the Reason Foundation, found that
participation in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) lowered the chances of a student being convicted of a crime in
adulthood. The pair analyzed over 1,000 students on vouchers via the MPCP in 2006 and compared them to their peers
at public schools. Enrolling in the MPCP throughout high school lowered the chances of a student committing a misdemeanor
by 2 to 7 percentage points, a felony by 3 to 4 percentage points, being accused of any crime by
5 percentage points, and being found guilty of theft by 2 percentage points.
Bernie Sanders
flips off urban minority kids. Few things offend Bernie Sanders as much as people escaping from command-and-control
government systems, even minority students whose parents are desperate to get their kids a decent education. The socialist
wants to turn George Wallace on his head and not block black children from attending traditional public schools but block them
from exiting them for something better.
How
Charter Schools Empower Inner-City Children to Escape Failing Public Schools. Butler College Prep, a top-rated
charter school on the South Side of Chicago, provides an atmosphere that reflects and engages the local community. The
founder and principal, Christopher Goins, built his school community by intentionally hiring teachers from historically black
colleges so students would have relatable role models.
Elites'
hypocrisy on charter schools for blacks. The Nation's Report Card for 2017 showed the following reading scores
for fourth-graders in New York state's public schools: Thirty-two percent scored below basic, with 32 percent scoring
basic, 27 percent scoring proficient and 9 percent scoring advanced. When it came to black fourth-graders in the
state, 19 percent scored proficient, and 3 percent scored advanced.
The
Moral Bankruptcy Of Charter School Opponents. Often located in low-income, minority neighborhoods, these
schools have in many cases produced educational outcomes far better than the traditional public schools in such
neighborhoods. A Success Academy charter elementary school in Harlem had a higher proportion of the children in one of
its classes pass the statewide math exam than in any other class at the same grade level, anywhere in the state of New
York. As a result of the charter schools' educational achievements, it is not uncommon for thousands of children to be
on waiting lists to get into such schools — in New York City, tens of thousands. This represents a huge
opportunity for many low-income, minority youngsters who have very few other opportunities for a better life. But, to
politicians dependent on teachers' unions for money and votes, charter schools are expendable.
Levine
is gunning for private charter school operators. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Philip Levine may be
relatively new to politics, but he has a veteran campaigner's knack for sidestepping or talking around questions about issues
about which he seems not fully informed. So when a someone at a Suncoast Tiger Bay Club luncheon in St. Petersburg
today [5/10/2018] asked the Miami Beach businessman about how Florida virtual schools can damage the funding for local school
districts, Levine did not miss a beat. He launched right into an applause-generating denunciation of charter schools in
Florida, which sounded like he actually might have been talking about Florida's school voucher system.
Democrats
say school choice is racist. Democrats are saying that letting Black parents choose which school their children
go to is racist. That's because the teachers unions pump millions into the Democrat coffers each year. If
Democrats weren't racist they would support school choice because wherever it's tried Black kids do better and learn
more. But giving Black parents a choice threatens the union teachers in public schools whose pay is not impacted by
their inability to actually teach Black children. Perhaps, and this is just speculation, the Democrats of today believe
what the Democrats of yesterday believed; namely that Blacks are inferior and can't be educated. Or perhaps Democrats
realize that if Blacks could get a decent education they'd realize how the Democrats are using them.
The Benedict Predicament.
The spread of homeschooling, the lines to get into charter schools, the sacrifices made for private education, the increasing popularity
of alternatives to meaningless, expensive college degrees, attest to Americans' coming to grips with our educational system's
top-to-bottom rot.
Why
Government Schools Are Unsustainable. The private school-charter school debate is complex, but it's obvious that the
traditional government school system is broken. The very way it has been set up makes its demise inevitable. Its
doom is a matter of not "if," but "when." How many students have to suffer and fail before its ultimate downfall becomes reality?
Fresh proof of
charter school miracles. Yet another study is out showing New York City charters outperforming the regular
public schools — even as Mayor de Blasio keeps on working to stifle charters' growth. The study, by Stanford
University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes, used test scores to compare the gains of 75,000 third- through
eighth-graders in 197 city charters to those of their traditional-school peers between 2011-12 and 2015-16. It found an
average charter kid displays growth in reading "equivalent" to 23 extra school days; for math, it's 63 extra days.
Matt
Damon makes anti-school choice movie — but sends kids to private school!. The point of "Backpack
Full of Cash" is to decry alleged funding cuts for music and art classes in public schools, and "save" public
education. "To see these kids not have that kind of access — how many of these kids in these schools, how
many artists have we lost?" Damon said. "How many learners have just given up because they feel like this is not for
them?" Damon said helped with "Backpack Full of Cash" because public education has been "at the forefront of our family
and dinner table conversations my entire life." Those conversations, however, convinced Damon to send his own kids to
private school — an option he would rather deny to parents who can't afford it.
School
choice keeps the peace. Public schools are commonly described as engines of democracy and citizenship, and a
bulwark against social strife. Which makes the Democrats' bitter and unremitting campaign against Betsy DeVos all the
more ironic. [...] Teachers unions, which exercise so much clout in Democratic Party circles, despise DeVos because of her
passion for dramatically expanding school choice — through charter schools, online "virtual" teaching,
homeschooling, or vouchers to pay for private or parochial school tuition.
Tim
Kaine's appalling smear of vouchers. If Sen. Tim Kaine harbors any sour grapes over his failed vice
presidential campaign last year, those grapes have now become poisonous. Last week, the Virginia Democrat attempted to
smear school choice programs by tying them to the unconscionable segregation of his home state in the 1950s and 1960s.
In fighting the nomination of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Kaine waved the bloody flag of segregation, likening school
choice to the "states' rights" movements of a half a century ago. DeVos is a staunch supporter of allowing parents to
send their children to private schools using government-funded vouchers.
DeVos
Critics' Hypocrisy on Public Schools. "The basic reason I'll oppose her nomination is that I don't think she is
committed to public education," Senator Robert Casey (D., Pa.) declared about DeVos. This could be easier to take from
Casey, if he were the product of public education. "Casey and his father are regarded as the most famous alumni of
Scranton Preparatory School, a Catholic Jesuit preparatory day school in Pennsylvania," the Daily Signal reported last
month. "Casey's daughters, Caroline Casey and Julia Madeline, also attended Scranton Prep." Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
(D., R.I.) announced that "I have received thousands of letters, calls, and emails in opposition to her nomination, many of
them citing the school voucher and privatization agenda Mrs. DeVos and her allies imposed in Michigan." He also
addressed government-education advocates in Providence in December. As WPRI reported, "The senator also questioned
whether DeVos had ever entered a public school, drawing laughs from the supportive roundtable." While Whitehouse surely has
entered a public school, he never studied in one until he had graduated from Yale and entered the University of Virginia Law
School. Whitehouse is an alumnus of St. Paul's School, a private boarding institution set on 2,000 bucolic acres
in New Hampshire. Whitehouse's daughter, Molly, studied at Providence's Wheeler School. His son, Alexander, also
attended a private boarding school, as the Daily Caller discovered.
Think
Again, Collins and Murkowski. There is no shortage of problems to address when it comes to the American
educational system, but the central and urgent problem is the spectacular expansion of the federal government's role in local
education decisions. For going on 20 years, through both Republican and Democratic administrations, the federal
government has more and more aggressively insinuated itself into the day-to-day workings of school districts and
classrooms. In the last few years, there has been modest rollback at the state level, as states and municipalities,
aiming to break the longstanding, union-backed public-school monopoly, have created new opportunities for school choice.
By
Taking Down DeVos, Unions And Democrats Hope To Kill School Reform. [Betsy] DeVos is unquestionably qualified
to head the Education Department. She has spent most of her adult life as an enthusiastic and thoughtful school
reformer, fighting the teachers unions and their bought-and-paid-for Democratic political pals, to bring hope and educational
change to the state of Illinois' dysfunctional schools. What irks unions and Democrats alike is that DeVos is an
unabashed advocate of school choice, which mostly means charter schools and voucher programs. Most thoughtful critics
of our failing education system agree that greater choice for parents and students is the only way to make our schools
excellent again.
NAACP is supposed to
be for blacks? The NAACP wants to freeze expansion of charter schools until, according to the
resolution, they meet the same "transparency and accountability standards as public schools," no longer compete for the same
public funds as public schools, don't reject students public schools accept, and that evidence of segregation is no longer
evident. It is disappointing that the NAACP, which defines itself as a civil rights organization, wants to deny a right
as fundamental as parents determining how and where to educate their children. But although disappointing, it not
surprising. It is not just charter schools NAACP opposes, but all alternatives to public schools.
Corrupt
Academics and the Media. More than 43,000 families are on waiting lists to get their children into charter
schools. Teachers unions are opposed to any alternative to public education and contribute to politicians who place
obstacles and restrictions on the expansion of charter schools. The NAACP, at its 2016 national convention in
Cincinnati, voted to support "a moratorium on the proliferation of privately managed charter schools." It's easy to
understand why the NAACP is against any alternative to public schools. Many of its members work in public education.
However, many of those people do want alternatives for themselves. In Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, 25 percent
of public-school teachers send their children to private schools. In Philadelphia, 44 percent of teachers send
their children to private schools.
Detroit
Free Press Editor Calls For Murder Of GOP Lawmakers. [Scroll down] While teacher unions and the
politicians whom they support fight many changes to the educational system that give parents more leverage, charter schools
have been making a difference in educational outcomes. A Stanford study last year showed they make a meaningful
difference for underserved kids in urban areas. These results carried across multiple subgroups, including black,
Hispanic and Asian students, as well as students from poor families and students with special educational needs. In the
41 cities studied, students educated at charter schools learned significantly more than their peers in traditional public
schools in math and reading.
As
charters grow, public schools see sharp enrollment drop. Standing before the Los Angeles Unified School Board,
Susan Zoller delivered a startling assessment: More than 100,000 students in the nation's second-largest district were
now enrolled in charters, draining more than $500 million from the budget in a single academic year.
Charter schools turn away thousands
in Texas. Business is booming at Texas charter schools. The independently operated public campuses
continue to grow — and so do the waiting lists to get in. IDEA charters — with 44 schools in San
Antonio, Austin and the Rio Grande Valley — conducted their annual admission lottery on Saturday. More than
26,000 children applied; 7,000 were accepted. Overall, 129,589 children are on charter waiting lists in Texas, more
than double the 56,000 reported in 2011. Total charter enrollment in the state hit 227,827 last year.
State law
prevents 3rd grader's return to charter school because he is black. A decades-old Missouri anti-segregation law is preventing a
third-grader from returning to his charter school because he is black. Edmund Lee's mother has started an online petition to change the
law. She had gathered more than 45,000 signatures. "When I read the guidelines I was in shock," La'Shieka White told
Fox 2 Now. "I was crying." Edmund is an A student at Gateway Science Academy in St. Louis.
In
Tennessee, vouchers aren't the problem. Scare tactics are. Called the "Tennessee Choice & Opportunity Scholarship
Act," the program would offer "opportunity scholarships" to families to pay for a private school education of their choice.
By targeting students who qualify for free and reduced price lunch and are zoned to attend a public school in the bottom 5% of
all Tennessee schools, the program would create an unprecedented opportunity for some of the state's neediest families.
The program would expand by 5,000 students each year before reaching 20,000 students total. Despite the bill's potential
to create opportunity for those who need it most, it has faced much of the typical anti-voucher rhetoric from teachers unions
and some legislators, often grounded in false claims and scare tactics linked to money, race, and privatization.
Louisiana
School Kids, 1; Obama's Anti-School-Choice Fanatics, 0. In a victory for school choice, an appeals court has thrown out a Department
of Justice bid to take over a popular voucher program in Louisiana and thereby deny poor African-American kids a better education.
All Hail The Unions! Just Kidding, You're Awful.
Again and again they prove that the end goal isn't to get the most children the best education, but to maintain their power and
ability to exact dues from every teacher working in the state. Even going so far as to vote to, in essence, hold hostage
Washington students during their yearly strike in order to bend the state to their contract demands. As it stands right
now over 1,000 students will be without schools in the next 20 days if the ruling is upheld.
State
Supreme Court: Charter schools are unconstitutional. After nearly a year of deliberation, the state Supreme Court
ruled 6-3 late Friday afternoon [9/4/2015] that charter schools are unconstitutional, creating chaos for hundreds of families
whose children have already started classes. The ruling — believed to be one of the first of its kind in the
country — overturns the law voters narrowly approved in 2012 allowing publicly funded, but privately operated,
schools. Eight new charter schools are opening in Washington this fall, in addition to one that opened in Seattle last
year. It was not immediately known what would happen with the schools that are already running.
The Border Hoppers Liberals Don't
Love. Washington DC's attorney general recently sued a married couple, alleging they had illegally enrolled their
three children in well-regarded local public schools despite living outside the District, and demanding more than $224,000 in
back tuition. Reached by the Washington Post at home, Alan Hill, the father named in the lawsuit, sounded
bewildered: "We are in the middle of this process and still trying to understand it." "The issue of nonresidents
enrolling in D.C. public schools is often heated, particularly as students compete for a limited number of seats in highly
sought-after schools," the Post reports. "Parents often talk of sitting on wait lists for schools while they
see drivers with license plates from neighboring states lining up to drop off their children."
A Union Charter Flunks
Out. 'Our schools will show real, quantifiable student achievement and with those
results finally dispel the misguided and simplistic notion that the union contract is an impediment
to success." So declared teachers union chief Randi Weingarten in 2005 upon launching the United
Federation of Teachers charter school in Brooklyn, New York.
Sen.
Tim Scott: Choice in Education 'Would Lead to Revolution'. Sen. Tim Scott, the first
black Republican elected to a full term in the Senate from South Carolina, says putting more poor
students in better schools is a priority for him. [...] Scott said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has
done a "great job" of changing things in his state, where 90 percent of students in New Orleans are
in charter schools. "I'd love to see that throughout this country," Scott said. "I am a great
advocate and champion ... on that issue." He also hailed the District of Columbia's opportunity
scholarship program, a voucher system that has produced a much higher percentage of college-bound
students than ordinary public schools.
In
New Orleans, major school district closes traditional public schools for good. The
second-graders paraded to the Dumpster in the rear parking lot, where they chucked boxes of old
worksheets, notebooks and other detritus into the trash, emptying their school for good.
Benjamin Banneker Elementary closed Wednesday as New Orleans's Recovery School District permanently
shuttered its last five traditional public schools this week. With the start of the next school
year, the Recovery School District will be the first in the country made up completely of public
charter schools, a milestone for New Orleans and a grand experiment in urban education for the nation.
Soros-Backed
Group Claims Charter Schools Are Racist. A George Soros-backed advocacy group filed
complaints in three cities alleging that charter schools are racist. The Advancement Project is
asking the Justice Department to investigate the closures of failing public schools in New Orleans,
Chicago, and Newark on the grounds that the closings are racially motivated. The group, whose
mission is to dismantle "structural racism" and promote "racial justice," filed complaints under
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act on behalf of "Journey for Justice," a coalition of grassroots
organizations supported by teachers unions.
Emanuel's Plan to Build Elite 'Barack Obama High School' in an
Upscale Chicago Neighborhood Has Parents Enraged. Shortly after he became president, Barack
Obama killed Washington, DC's school voucher program. His own Department of Education had concluded
that students who received the vouchers benefited from it and improved, but that did not matter a bit.
He callously turned a deaf ear to pleas from parents and students who found the vouchers to be an escape
from the city's terrible schools. He sided with the teachers' unions against those families and their
children, even while claiming to be a champion of the oppressed and under-represented. Obama also
sided with the unions on charter schools, another escape path for children from terrible public schools in
Washington. He only relented under massive pressure three years later, in an election year. So,
Barack Obama's record on education opened to scenes of him siding with the powerful teachers' unions against
the powerless children our public schools are supposed to exist to educate. Barack Obama stood in
the doorways of private schoolhouses, keeping poor children out.
Congress Should
Promote Charter Schools. There is bipartisan agreement that the American economy needs entrepreneurship.
There is bipartisan agreement that our education system could stand some improvement. Charter schools are a
development that addresses both of these needs. Entrepreneurs have been putting energy and innovation into the
charter school effort, and we are starting to see positive results. Now is the time for Congress to provide
funding to states to set up the apparatus needed to facilitate further charter school growth.
When government bullies children.
Last Monday, March 17, parents in New York City who send their children to Success Academy, a Harlem charter school,
filed suit in federal court to stop another school bully, Mayor Bill de Blasio, from denying them previously arranged space
in a public school building. Without space, their children and 173 others will not be able to continue at Success
Academy this fall. Across the nation, teachers unions' and civil rights opportunists are standing on the school house
steps, trying to stop the rapid growth of school choice and the emergence of charter schools that serve kids rather than
union bosses.
Democrat Bullies Against School Choice.
On March 17, 19 parents who send their children to Success Academy, a Harlem charter school, filed suit in federal court to
stop New York Mayor Bill de Blasio from denying them previously arranged space in a public school building. Without space, their
children and 173 others will not be able to continue at Success Academy this fall. School bullying is a problem nationwide,
but in New York the bullies are de Blasio and his pals — state NAACP President Hazel Dukes and teachers unions.
Their targets are middle-school kids, 97 percent of them minorities, and 80 percent eligible for lunch assistance.
New
York, Chicago, and the war on charter schools. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has launched a war against charter
schools. [...] But a welcome thing has happened. The assault on charter schools has been met by a public backlash.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has forcefully defended charters. Many New Yorkers have made it clear that they elected de
Blasio — but they didn't elect him to push poor children out of successful schools. [New York Schools Chancellor
Carmen] Farina and de Blasio have felt the heat and have tried to step back.
Parents will file
federal suit over Harlem charter school's closing. Parents of students at Success Academy Harlem Central Middle School contend
the city's decision to close the school violates their children's constitutional right to adequate education, a source told the [New York]
Daily News.
The Left versus minorities
and charter schools. If anyone wanted to pick a time and place where the political Left's avowed concern for minorities
was definitively exposed as a fraud, it would be now — and the place would be New York City, where far-Left Mayor Bill de Blasio
has launched an attack on charter schools, cutting their funding, among other things. These schools have given thousands of
low-income minority children their only shot at a decent education, which often means their only shot at a decent life. Last
year, 82 percent of the students at a charter school called Success Academy passed city-wide mathematics exams, compared to
30 percent of the students in the city as a whole.
Fired
Up Gov. Cuomo Vows To 'Save Charter Schools' At Massive Capitol Rally. A fired up Gov. Cuomo vowed Tuesday afternoon
[3/4/2014] to "save charter schools." "We are here to tell you we stand with you. You are not alone," said Cuomo,
speaking at a massive pro-charter school rally that attracted thousands of parents, teachers, and kids from across the state who
braved frigid 20-degree temperatures to fill the park in front of the Capitol in Albany. "Our point today is that parents
deserve a choice," Cuomo said. "I am committed to ensuring charter schools have the financial capacity, the physical space,
and the government support to thrive and grow."
De Blasio starts his
war on charter schools. Mayor de Blasio brought down the hammer Thursday on three charter schools operated by his nemesis Eva
Moskowitz, leaving hundreds of kids without classrooms this fall. "This has to be the saddest day for the Success Academy's children,
family, teachers, school leaders," Moskowitz said after meeting with stunned charter parents in Harlem.
NYC mayor boots charter
schools from city space. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio took off the gloves in his battle with education reformers, rescinding
an agreement for the city to share space with several public charter schools. The move undercuts educators, parents and some 700 students
at four schools, including Harlem Success 4, one of the public charter school movement's top success stories, and two set to open in the
fall. While agreements at those schools were rescinded, expansion of a fourth school was also blocked.
Politics Versus
Education. Among the few bright spots in a generally dismal picture of the education of black students are
those successful charter schools or voucher schools to which many black parents try to get their children admitted.
Some of these schools have not only reached but exceeded national norms, even when located in neighborhoods where the
regular public schools lag far behind. Where admission to these schools is by a lottery, the cheers and tears that
follow announcements of who has been admitted — and, by implication, who will be forced to continue in the
regular public schools — tell the story better than words can.
AFL-CIO
goes after charter school supporters. The New York State AFL-CIO is targeting two of the Legislature's
staunchest charter school supporters — Sens. Jeff Klein of the Bronx and Craig Johnson of Nassau —
claiming they're anti-union. The 2.5 million member union umbrella group blitzed the two senator's
districts today with flyers accusing them of "siding with big corporations and against teachers and students"
by voting for a bill last week to expand charter schools "with no real reform."
Jindal: DOJ 'More
Interested In Skin Color' Than Education. In November, the Obama Justice Department dropped a lawsuit aimed at stopping
a school voucher program in Louisiana. The Louisiana Scholarship Program is intended to give students in failing public schools
a chance to attend better schools, including private ones. Justice tried to block the program on the basis that it may have
violated a 1975 federal desegregation order.
School
Choice — Now More Than Ever. Inside of two decades, charter school enrollment in the
U.S. has climbed to 1.1 million from zero. Two tiny voucher programs in Maine and Vermont blossomed
into 21 programs in 13 states and the District of Columbia. Tuition tax credits, once puny and rare,
are now sizeable and commonplace. The idea that teacher pay should be based on performance, not just
seniority, is gaining ground. Not bad for a small band of education reformers facing skepticism from
the liberal media and outright hostility from well-funded, politically connected heavies like the National
Education Association.
DOJ Tries to Stop Parents from Defending
Louisiana School Voucher Program. The Justice Department is attempting to block parents from defending the Louisiana school voucher program
in court, according to a brief filed Tuesday [10/22/2013]. Four families filed last month to intervene in the DOJ's lawsuit against the Louisiana
Scholarship Program, which grants vouchers to students so they can flee failing schools rated C, D, or F.
Mendacity, thy name is Eric Holder.
Mendacity should never be associated with the U.S. Department of Justice, but Attorney General Eric Holder's minions are giving the nation a textbook
example of that characteristic. In a motion filed earlier this year in federal court, Justice Department lawyers asked the U.S. District Court
for the Eastern District of Louisiana to enjoin state officials from "awarding any school vouchers to students attending school in schools operating
under federal desegregation orders." Why? Because enabling such students to flee their typically failing institutions to other schools
allegedly "impedes desegregation."
"What makes charter schools preferable to traditional schools is that
failing schools can be easily closed down and replaced by new
schools."
What Democrats Really Care About. Black unemployment
is twice that of whites. Yet not only do liberals refuse to try to improve the black inner-city schools so that blacks have a fighting chance of using
their talents to support themselves, but they actually work to ensure that public education stays bad. Obama ended a school choice program that
disproportionately helped blacks in D.C., and Obama's administration is suing Louisiana to end a school voucher program that is primarily helping poor blacks.
Any competition would result in the public schools having to improve, but if they do, then there will be fewer dependent people, and that is bad for Obama.
Obama proves he cares more about power than about the poor when he works to ensure that the public schools in poor areas remain horrible.
Justice Department vs. Louisiana Voucher Kids.
School-choice programs have faced no shortage of legal challenges en route to their adoption in 18 states and the District of Columbia.
But none of the challenges is so perverse or perplexing as the Justice Department's motion last month to wield desegregation decrees to halt Louisiana's
voucher program.
Obama's
cruel fight against school choice. The Justice Department has challenged my state in court for having the temerity to start a scholarship program
that frees low-income minority children from failing schools. In other words, Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder would rip children out of their schools
and handcuff them to the failing schools they previously attended. And, in the ultimate irony, they are using desegregation orders set up to prevent
discrimination against minority children to try to do it.
Obama, Holder
Stand In Louisiana Schoolhouse Door. The Justice Department has asked a federal court to stop 34 school districts
in Louisiana from handing out private-school vouchers so kids can escape failing public schools, just like the president's daughters.
Bobby Jindal: Obama's DOJ
using civil rights law against black children. President Obama spoke about the fulfilling the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who hoped
every American child receive a good education, but his Justice Department is using a civil rights law to shut down a school choice program that allows black
children to escape failing schools.
Justice
Department bids to trap poor, black children in ineffective schools. Nine of 10 Louisiana children who receive vouchers to attend private
schools are black. All are poor and, if not for the state assistance, would be consigned to low-performing or failing schools with little chance of
learning the skills they will need to succeed as adults. So it's bewildering, if not downright perverse, for the Obama administration to use the banner
of civil rights to bring a misguided suit that would block these disadvantaged students from getting the better educational opportunities they are due.
The Holder-Jindal Collision. Louisiana governor
Bobby Jindal found out late on Friday, August 23. Attorney General Eric Holder was suing to block the state's school voucher program, which
aims to give low-income kids in terrible schools the opportunity to attend better public schools and even private schools. The Justice Department
claims the two-year-old program could interfere with federal desegregation orders in several Louisiana parishes, holdovers from the Civil Rights era.
Justice Dept. tries to stop La. school
vouchers. The U.S. Justice Department is trying to stop the state from distributing school vouchers in any district that remains under a
desegregation court order.
MLK's Dream Deferred. The irony isn't merely rich.
It's tragic. As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech this week, the Obama Justice Department is suing
the state of Louisiana to stop it from distributing school vouchers to kids seeking to escape failing schools.
Meet the Radical Lawyers Suing
Bobby Jindal to Block School Choice. Personnel is policy, and the Obama administration knows it. That's why they hired swarms of committed
leftist lawyers to populate the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. Bobby Jindal and school choice advocates are finding out the hard way how
it works.
Holder vs. Martin Luther King Jr..
Give Eric Holder credit for cognitive racial dissonance. On nearly the same day the Attorney General spoke in Washington to honor the 50th
anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech, his Justice Department sued to block the educational dreams of minority children
in Louisiana.
Some
say vouchers push limits of the law. As the Indiana voucher program enters its third year, with more than 9,300 students enrolled in private
schools this academic year, some still say the program pushes the limits of the state constitution's clause calling for separation of church and state.
The voucher program, established in 2011 under House Enrolled Act 1003, enables parents to use state tax dollars to pay tuition for their children attending
private schools, typically religious schools. The law also expanded the state's pre-existing tax credit scholarship program and instituted a tax deduction
for families with children home-schooled or already enrolled in private school.
The
Research Conclusively Supports School Vouchers. School choice opponents frequently claim vouchers don't improve recipients'
academics, hurt public schools, cost taxpayers, increase segregation, and even reduce civic unity. A new report reviewing the
highest-quality research on all these topics concludes the opposite is true.
Indiana Supreme Court
upholds nation's broadest school voucher program. The Indiana Supreme Court has upheld the nation's broadest school voucher
program, clearing the way for its expansion. Critics had argued that the program primarily benefited religious institutions that run
private schools. But the program's supporters say parents can send their children to any school they want, whether it's public or
private, religious or not, and the Supreme Court agreed with that Tuesday [3/26/2013]. In a 5-0 decision, the justices said the
program does not violate the state constitution.
Terrorist
Professor Bill Ayers and Obama's Federal School Curriculum. Three years after the Department of Education announced a
contest called Race-to-the-Top for $4.35 billion in stimulus funds, some parents, teachers, governors, and citizen and public
policy groups are coming to an awful realization about the likely outcomes. [...] When these dangerous initiatives are implemented,
there will be no escaping bad schools and a radical curriculum by moving to a good suburb, or by home schooling, or by enrolling your
children in private schools. How was it that 48 governors entered Race-to-the-Top without knowing outcomes?
A Short History of the
Obama Campaign Against Education. President Obama has been a foe of education reform, since his days of thwarting
reform via his chairmanship of the Annenberg Challenge, where he proceeded to waste $387 Million dollars that could have been
spent helping students get and education in Chicago. In his role against education, Obama has been a leader in attacking
parental choice in education, consistently siding with entrenched unions and failed institutions against parents, taxpayers and
students. Since being elected President, Barack Obama, along with Sen. Dick Durbin and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan,
have battled against public education in private schools in Washington DC.
Louisiana's bold bid to
privatize schools. Louisiana is embarking on the nation's boldest experiment in privatizing public education,
with the state preparing to shift tens of millions in tax dollars out of the public schools to pay private industry,
businesses owners and church pastors to educate children.
Kids' charter crush hits record high.
City parents desperate to give their children the best education available are storming the doors of charter schools — but
nearly 53,000 heartbroken kids will be left out in the cold. Savvy moms and dads have learned that kids in charter schools
are more likely to score high on math and English exams. They're also more motivated — as proven by the higher attendance
rates at charters. A record 67,500 families have applied for the 14,600 seats available in the fall, according to estimates
released yesterday by the New York City Charter School Center.
NEA: Poverty Pimp #1. Charter schools typically lead to better educated
kids and save us money at the same time. Inner city charter school operators like Eva Moskowitz and Geoffrey Canada and the KIPP schools do a far better
job — with fewer tax dollars — than traditional public schools. Even taking the superstars of the movement out of the mix, charter
schools outperform traditional public schools. As Jay Greene writes, "Charter Benefits Are Proven by the Best Evidence." But no, the NEA doesn't
back charters.
Poll: 71 Percent of Moms Support School Choice.
A national, statistically representative survey of mothers of school-aged children has found 71 percent say school vouchers should be available to all families,
regardless of income or a child's special needs. Sixty-one percent of moms and 55 percent of adults polled nationally favor a school voucher system that would
allow tax dollars to follow children to the school of their choice, private or public.
The
story of how the New York NAACP sued charter schools serving black kids. The United Federation
of Teachers, the New York City teachers' union, joined forces with the New York State NAACP in a lawsuit to
evict charter schools from the buildings those schools share with traditional district schools. This
despite the high percentage of minority children who attend the city's charter schools. Why would the
NAACP agree to sue the very charter schools that were saving the lives of so many black kids?
A Revolving Door Of Media Bias.
Bill Clinton was very big on touting his achievements on "proven strategies" for public school reform "instead
of gimmicks like vouchers." Yet while he was doing so, Washington reporters weren't supposed to ask whether
Clintonian privilege and power let Chelsea skip a grade of elementary school, then attend D.C.'s most prestigious
private school, the pricey Sidwell Friends, where both of the Obamas' daughters now go, not to mention Vice
President Biden's granddaughters. Those gimmicky vouchers could let ordinary Americans taste such privilege.
Grand theft education.
Two cases of what might be called "grand theft education" raise serious questions for many states, especially
California. Tonya McDowell, a single mother from Bridgeport, Conn., was arrested and charged with
first-degree larceny for "stealing education" by using the address of a baby sitter to register her
6-year-old son in a Norwalk school district where she didn't live. Ms. McDowell, 33, could face
repayment of more than $15,000 and 20 years in prison.
New Documentary Dares to Question ACORN/Labor Union Infestation of Public
Schools. "In a country where 58% of African-American 4th graders are functionally illiterate, The
Lottery uncovers the failures of the traditional public school system and reveals that hundreds of thousands
of parents attempt to flee the system every year. The Lottery follows four of these families
from Harlem and the Bronx who have entered their children in a charter school lottery. Out of thousands
of hopefuls, only a small minority will win the chance of a better future."
The Lottery: Movie trailers and other information.
Unions'
Special Interest: Blocking School Choice. A new spate of documentaries and media
coverage have all centered on the role teachers unions play in blocking necessary change and
innovation in public schools. At this point in the national discourse, a majority of
Americans are convinced that our education system is in crisis and are looking for someone or
something to blame. Unfortunately for effective teachers across America, the finger has
been pointed in the wrong direction. It is the teachers unions — the NEA and the
AFT — that are largely responsible for a system that is failing far too many of our
children, especially those trapped in the inner cities.
School Choice:
Past, Present, and Future. Beginning in the 1850s, [the American educational] system was undermined
and then destroyed. Public funds were withdrawn from all but Protestant schools, and those schools became
government schools, with their buildings owned by governments, their teachers working for governments, and their
curricula chosen by governments. Parental choice and competition in education, except for a very small
private sector of mostly religious schools, came to an end.
Parental choice in education works.
Allowing parents to choose the schools their children attend empowers them vis-a-vis the school's staff, making it
possible for them to play a more decisive role in their children's education. This encourages parents to
participate in their children's schooling, which in turn is positively related to student learning. Higher
levels of parental involvement are a major reason private schools tend to outperform public schools.
Step up for
D.C. vouchers. Parents love it. Students benefit from it. But neither the White House
nor most Democrats in Congress had the backbone to support a unique program that provides vouchers to low-income
D.C. families in search of better educational opportunities.
Speak Up on D.C.
Schools, Mr. President. That deafening roar you hear — that's the sound of Barack
Obama's silence on the future of school reform in the District of Columbia. And if he doesn't break it
soon, he may become the first president in two decades to have left Washington's children with fewer chances
for a good school than when he started.
Obama's exclusionary Easter Egg Roll.
The Obama administration announced on Tuesday it has reserved 3,000 free tickets to the annual White House
Easter Egg Roll for students in D.C.-area public and charter schools, but not for children who attend private
or parochial schools.
With 'Social Justice'
You Don't Get Egg Roll. President Obama claims that the Catholic Church's tradition of social
justice has had a "profound influence" on him. He should try telling that to kids in private and
parochial schools who were intentionally excluded from the official invitation list for the 2010 White House
Easter Egg Roll today [4/5/2010].
'Fire
Them All' At Central Falls High. [Scroll down] The long-term solution to the disasters of
our "educational" system, which functions as little more than tax-supported propaganda-camp day-care centers, is
to remove the government from its operations completely through the "transformation" of privatization.
Then, and only then, will you see the free interplay and accountability of free competition on a free market
work its wonders, just as it does with shoes, refrigerators and a million other sectors of our economy.
Upward
Bound Is Down... Radical Sexual Indoctrination of Kids Is In. Recently the Obama Administration
cut funding to Upward Bound, a successful educational program with a proven track record. Upward Bound
provides support to participating students in their preparation for college entrance. Upward Bound serves
high school students from low-income families and high school students from families in which neither parent
holds a bachelor's degree. 95% of Upward Bound graduates have entered post-secondary education and are
four times more likely to earn a college degree than students from similar backgrounds who do not participate
in the program. The Obama Administration will cut funding for this successful educational program.
Obama the Racist? Blacks
recognize almost universally that education is the key to escaping the cycle of poverty and other ills plaguing the
black community. Obama's first racist act as president was to remove the voucher program that Bush had established
in D.C., a program that Democrats vote against overwhelmingly. This program was producing proven positive results,
but it was eliminated — and black children in D.C. were relegated to socialized schools in crime and
drug-infested neighborhoods. ... Obama thinks so highly of the public schools in D.C. (and Chicago) that he put
his children in private school.
Administration Again Cuts Funding for Scholarship
Program That Helps Low-Income D.C. Kids. In his fiscal 2011 budget, President Barack Obama
makes further cuts in funding for the District of Columbia's Opportunity Scholarship Program for low-income,
mostly minority students. Obama stopped funding altogether for the OSP in his 2010 fiscal year budget,
but after protests from parents and school choice advocates, the administration decided to let children
already receiving scholarships continue to do so until they graduate from high school.
There is no hope in Obama.
In the last election, unions spent $450 million to elect candidates who favor their agenda. They have succeeded
beyond the dreams of avarice. The federal government is now virtually the empire of Big Labor. Especially
gleeful are the teachers' unions, who helped elect a president explicitly and vociferously opposed to vouchers.
Obama,
Democrats deny D.C. kids option they exercise themselves. Few national images are more shameful
than those of innocent, low-income kids milling through decrepit public schools, uncared for, unsafe and barely
educated. In Washington, D.C., alone, 173 schools — 67% — fail to meet federal
standards of learning. So it was curious that when President Obama recently allowed 1,716 of Washington's
neediest schoolchildren to keep, until graduation, the vouchers they use to escape their failed public schools
for higher-quality private ones, he also closed the program to new applicants.
Congress putting
D.C. kids in danger. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program saves lives. The fate of the nonprofit
outfit, which takes poor children out of failing schools and gives them scholarships to private institutions, is currently
up in the air — in the hands of Congress and, ultimately, the president. Supporters of the program cite
its strong record of academic improvement, but its value goes beyond grades. It quite literally saves lives.
Children enrolled in the DCOSP, now in its fifth year, are physically safer than they were in District public schools,
some of the most violent in the nation.
D.C. Council Wants Vouchers.
The life and death saga of the D.C. voucher program for low-income families continues. A majority of the
members of the D.C. Council recently sent a letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan expressing solid support
for continuing the program. ... The D.C. Council's letter shows that support for these vouchers is real at the
local level and that the opposition exists mainly at the level of the national Democratic Party.
One Last
Hope for DC Voucher Program. In early May, President Obama presented a revised 2010 budget
that included $12.2 million for the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. The proposal represented
a "compromise" solution to DC's embattled voucher program, but is hardly a gain for low-income students and
their parents.
Would you have a
personal computer without free markets? Obamanista is marked by Leftist dogmatism, determined on
making the American people obey its predetermined agenda. It is amazingly arrogant, but people who are
mentally stuck often are that way; they don't know how they look to others. And they are awfully eager to
use and abuse power far beyond their Constitutional role. Look at the way Obama just trashed one of the
few new and good ideas in education reform: School choice in Washington, D.C. It's one of the few
escapes for kids stuck in the inner city ghetto, and one of the first thing O did on arriving in Washington
is to crush it. Courtesy of the teacher unions.
Obama Stance Against School
Vouchers Fuels Close-to-Home Debate. A new law cutting off taxpayer- funded private education for
poor children in Washington is shutting five-year-old Marquis Greene out of a school where his sisters have
thrived. It's also providing a challenge to President Barack Obama's education policies that's as close
to home as his daughters' classrooms.
Obama Administration Stifles Favorable DC Voucher
Study. Last January 21, his first full day in office, President Obama declared, "My Administration is
committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government." Just 10 weeks later, Obama has
broken both these promises. And poor-but-promising minority kids suffer the consequences. These 1,714
children — 90 percent black and 9 percent Hispanic — enjoy the DC Opportunity
Scholarship Program.
D.C. parents
to push to keep vouchers. D.C. parents said Thursday that they are prepared to rally against a Capitol
Hill proposal to end a voucher program that helps 1,700 students from low-income families attend private schools.
"With all the programs that don't work, we're frustrated that this — one that does work — is
being proposed to end," said Virginia Walden Ford, executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice. "Right
now, we're preparing to fight and we're hoping not to fail."
Charter
Schools Get a Big Fat Zero in Spending Plan. Despite a state budget that includes $405 million
more in school funding than last year, charter schools aren't slated to get an extra dime in state aid come
July, critics charge. Advocates yesterday [3/30/2009] said a provision that freezes the next fiscal
year's charter funds at this year's levels would slice as much as $30 million from city charters —
akin to an 8.5 percent cut. And that would translate to a loss of nearly $1,000 per student,
according to charter officials.
The
Civil Rights Challenge of Our Time. We've got all kinds of flowery rhetoric from our president
about the education crisis and the need to do everything to educate our kids. But, as is unfortunately
often the case, Mr Obama's deeds are less inspiring than his words. Most recently, and flagrantly, was
the announcement that Obama would sit by and allow Congress to pull the plug on the five-year old voucher
program enabling 1700 kids in Washington, DC to attend private schools. This despite a new study from
Obama's own Department of Education saying that these kids outperformed their peers in DC public schools in
reading. And that the vouchers, valued up to $7500 per scholarship, cost less than half the $17,000 per
student that DC spends to maintain one of the worst public school systems in the country.
Obama's shameful
silence. [Scroll down] When congressional Democrats recently doomed the Opportunity
Scholarship Program for poor children in the District [of Columbia], the education president didn't say
a word. Of the 1,700 students, starting in kindergarten, in this private-school voucher program,
90 percent are black and 9 percent are Hispanic.
Cruelty, Thy Name is Obama. The Obama
administration is making it easier than usual to mine the depths of liberal cruelty. For all of their endless
jactitations of compassion for the less fortunate, the current crop of liberals in charge wasted no time setting
about to destroy the futures of disadvantaged minority schoolchildren in Washington, DC. Finally finding one
government program they could do without, liberals passed the omnibus spending bill which included express language
killing the successful Washington, DC school vouchers program.
Will Someone Ask Obama About
Voucher Kids? There are many disgraceful aspects to the $410 billion 0mnibus spending bill
that is working its way to passage in Congress. But amid the many porky earmarks and boondoggles that
are part of this travesty there is one provision worth singling out: the killing of the experimental school
choice program that was giving 1,700 D.C. children a chance to get out of their failed public school system
and attend a quality private or religious school. The Senate vote on Tuesday [3/10/2009] ensured that
the program will be effectively killed after the 2009-10 fiscal year.
Obama's
Charter-School Challenge: Fresh evidence of charter schools' success should put President
Obama on the spot: Will he put his muscle where his mouth is? This month, Obama issued a direct
challenge to the more than two dozen states like New York that have arbitrary, teachers-union-imposed "caps"
on the number of charter schools they allow to operate. But if he's serious, he's going to have to
put force behind his words.
Cincinnati Public Schools Lose Students to
Choice. Cincinnati Public Schools lost 510 students this year to vouchers. The remaining
voucher recipients are kindergartners or charter students who would have been assigned to the poor-performing
schools. District Superintendent Rosa Blackwell declined to be interviewed about vouchers because of a
scheduling issue, district spokeswoman Janet Walsh said. The student losses could cost the system about
$3.3 million in state aid, according to the Ohio Department of Education.
Forget
seats on political panels, give families more school choice. When I grew up in Harlem, my mother
didn't know she had a choice in where to send me to school. She thought her only option was to enroll me
in a failing District 5 school and hope I turned out all right. I guess things wound up
okay — but not really because of the public education I received. I did well in school, even
graduated first in my class at the city public school I attended. But I wasn't prepared for the world.
Hope in All
the Wrong Places. If ever there were a case of mixed-up priorities in Washington, this is it.
Tucked into the $410 billion "omnibus" spending bill passed by the House of Representatives on
February 25 is a provision designed to terminate the Washington Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP),
the school choice program established with bipartisan support in 2004 that is providing a glimmer of hope to
thousands of students and families in the District of Columbia.
A cruel school move.
We wrote last week about Democratic efforts to strip 1,900 low-income Washington children of $7,500 "opportunity
scholarships" to attend private schools. It's an experiment in school vouchers, an experiment with
little potential downside. But it's an experiment that was launched in 2004 by a Republican-controlled
Congress. Today it's on the verge of extinction because the Democratic-controlled Congress wants to do
the bidding of public-school teachers unions. The unions see vouchers that let poor kids go to
private schools as aiding the enemy.
Public School System, Not Vouchers, Is What's
Unfair. A recent op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution unfairly claims vouchers are
cheating poor students out of quality schools, but the evidence shows exactly the opposite is true.
School choice opponents sometimes characterize vouchers as tuition subsidies for the wealthy. Claiming
public schools are vastly underfunded, they say the only solution is a dramatic increase in taxpayer funding.
They claim voucher programs lead government money away from these schools, leaving poorer students behind.
The facts say otherwise.
Why
Dogs, Not Liberals, Are Man's Best Friend. [Scroll down] Finally, I have never heard a liberal speak
out in favor of school vouchers. Instead, they wave the flag for public schools, even though everybody in his right
mind knows that, in spite of the No Child Left Behind program, a majority of public schools in America are a disgrace.
The system has routinely passed along youngsters who wound up graduating from high school lacking self-discipline and even
rudimentary math and reading skills. Yet, every liberal in Congress can be counted on to pay lip service to public
education, although not one of them has a child enrolled in the Washington, D.C., school system!
A
Trojan Horse Made of Charter-School Money. Should charter-school advocates ignore the mythology
lesson and jubilantly drag the proposed cash inside their schools, they will surely awaken wishing that reality
were only a drunken stupor. In the aftermath, they will realize too late that the NEA and bureaucrats
have already toppled them. By then, administrators and the NEA will have charter schools mired in the
same muck of central control, worthless regulations, and bureaucratic red tape that plagues so many traditional
schools.
The "Problem Profiteers":
In one survey, 83% of black respondents who knew about school vouchers said they were in favor of choice programs
"where parents can send their children to any public or private school that will accept them." Yet in a floor
vote at the 1993 NAACP convention, delegates passed a resolution opposing voucher programs that would provide
low-income children with the means to attend private schools.
School Choice Could Help Lower Latino
Dropout Rate. Latino students are leading the pack when it comes to dropping out
of high school, according to a study by the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), and
two leading researchers say school choice could help solve the problem.
The
Greatest Scandal: The profound failure of inner-city public schools to teach children may be
the nation's greatest scandal. The differences between the two Presidential candidates on this could
hardly be more stark. John McCain is calling for alternatives to the system; Barack Obama wants the
kids to stay within that system. We think the facts support Senator McCain.
Is Obama Another Elitist Limousine
Leftist? The left in America pretends to care about poor people, but many of them seem more interested
in serving the interests of powerful lobbies such as trial lawyers and teacher unions. The education issue
is a great example. Leftists such as Ted Kennedy and Al Gore have been fierce opponents of school
choice and other proposals to reduce the power of the government education monopoly. Yet they send their
children to private schools.
Kentucky's quest for school choice: America's
schools were locally controlled and funded for more than 200 years. However, that rich legacy
ended in 1839 when Horace Mann, the first Secretary of Education, organized state-mandated, publicly funded
schools. Since then, local control of our schools has weakened considerably. As a result, little
or no accountability exists to ensure our children receive the quality public education necessary to enable
them to compete effectively in the evolving global marketplace.
Black Flight: Something momentous is
happening here in [Minneapolis] the home of prairie populism: black flight. African-American
families from the poorest neighborhoods are rapidly abandoning the district public schools, going to charter
schools, and taking advantage of open enrollment at suburban public schools.
New Orleans Parents Shop for Public
Schools. More than 100 parents, some with children in tow, browsed dozens of booths at the New
Orleans Arena on August 5 in an exercise only an upheaval such as Hurricane Katrina might have
created. They were shopping for public schools, viewing various schools' offerings as a
grocery shopper might inspect melons.
Want
to Help the Middle Class? Embrace School Choice. Promises to help the middle class are as
common in campaigns as yard signs. Both political parties claim their agenda will benefit the middle
class the most. Democrats typically see more government — new regulations and services — as
the solution. They push for a higher minimum wage, more government provided healthcare, more
government funding for daycare, subsidies for college costs, and other government programs.
School Choice for Students in
Underperforming Public Schools. Millions of students across the United States are
enrolled in persistently failing public schools. … In addition, failing schools serve a
disproportionately high number of low-income children. In the large school districts
of New York City and Los Angeles, for example, as many as 300,000 children are attending the
most persistently underperforming public schools.
Competition
works. It works because it gives people the chance to be creative. Educational
experts, freed from the massive regulations that snarl the public schools, can come up with new and
better ideas for teaching.
Open education to innovation.
The last thing we need, contrary to what the American Federation of Teachers seems to be
saying, is to preserve our disastrous status quo. We need innovation. The U.S. has
shown mankind that that nothing unleashes innovation and creativity like free markets.
Time for
choice and competition. From the uproar the governor's plan generated, you would think
that South Carolina had a great school system in place and that the governor wanted to demolish
it. But it doesn't, and he didn't.
The lessons
of school choice: Choosing how your children are educated should be as routine in America
as the ability to choose your neighborhood, your church, and your place of employment.
School choice
threatened: Thanks to an active school-choice movement, funded and staffed by
dedicated and principled private citizens, an increasing number of American parents have the
quintessentially American opportunity of choosing where to send their child to school.
"The behavior of young people in society is of particular importance; it should, above all things,
be marked with propriety in the presence of superiors and elders: the youth who does not learn
betimes a seemly behavior in company will scarcely know how to conduct himself judiciously on
any future occasion."
– George Crabb (1778-1851).
Milwaukee Begins to Ration School
Choice. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction officially announced on
December 27 its plan for rationing seats in the 15-year-old Milwaukee Parental Choice
Program in the 2006-07 school year. The plan, required by state law, means hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of students will not be able to return to the schools they now attend.
Apply "ownership society"
to government schools. President Bush has become, quite rightly, an
evangelist for the virtues of private property, speaking about an "ownership society" just
about everywhere he goes. Just about everywhere, that is, except when he visits a
government-owned school. Then he is a big-government man.
Educational
Freedom In Urban America: In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregated
public schools unconstitutional. The ruling in Brown v. Board of Education set
public education on a course toward equality. Yet, five decades later, schools are not
equal. Minority children living in America's inner cities suffer disproportionately
from a failing education system, with black and Hispanic students dropping out of public
high schools at much higher rates than whites. There is, however, reason for
hope. The expansion of school choice offers new opportunities for children
struggling in failing schools.
A
Choice Future for Students: The big winners on Election Day weren't politicians. They were students. That's
because many of the politicians who won — Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida and Senator-elect
James Talent of Missouri, to name just two — are vocal supporters of school choice.
To Improve, Public Schools Need Competition, Not
More Money: According to the U.S. Department of Education, public education spending in Illinois
jumped 26 percent in the five years through school year 2001-02, with spending per student up almost
22 percent. Spending per student in 2001-02 was $7,600, above the national average of $7,525.
Revenues per student were over $8,000. If 61 percent of Illinois school districts are operating at a
deficit, then taxpayers certainly aren't to blame.
More than
a Lifeboat: an interview with John D. Merrifield: We don't need school
choice as a lifeboat; we need it as a reform catalyst. We have a low-performing educational
system where some schools are better than others, but few are good. In the suburban
districts, the schools are better, but not necessarily good.
Ten Principles of School
Choice. Since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled school vouchers are constitutional
in 2002, grassroots activists around the country have been organizing to support pasage of
school choice programs. Legislatures passed statewide programs in Florida and Colorado,
and other states are expected to follow their lead. Some 35 cities have privately
funded voucher programs.
Trapped in the wrong
government school. If you're a public-school student, your chances in life may be largely
dependent on where you live — not just which country, not just which state, but which little
bureaucratic zone. In San Jose, Calif., many parents want to get their kids in Fremont Union schools
because they're so much better than neighboring schools. So parents sometimes cheat to get their
kids in. At least cheating is what local officials call it.
Separating school
and state: It's time to put an end to government control of the schools. There
is nothing indispensable about a state role in education. Parents don't expect the government
to provide their children's food or clothing or medical care; there is no reason why it must
provide their schooling.
Polls Show Vouchers Are Popular and
Would Be Widely Used … But negative wording results in under-reporting of voucher
support. Only 42 percent of Americans polled in the latest Phi Delta Kappa
International/Gallup Poll say they are in favor of vouchers. Yet the same poll reports
57 percent of Americans say they would use full-tuition vouchers, if they were available,
to enroll their children in private schools. A new national study conducted by leading
research firm WirthlinWorldwide suggests an explanation for the discrepancy: The use of negative
wording in a key poll question reduces the reported support for vouchers by more than 20 percentage
points.
Three Objections to
School Vouchers … Answered. Every time a student uses a voucher to
move from a government school to a private one, the budgets of government schools
shrink. In this way, vouchers gradually defund government schools. If
vouchers were adopted by cities and states nationwide, millions of jobs and hundreds of
billions of dollars would move from the government to the private sector. This
is a critical point in the case for vouchers that critics fail to address.
National Study Raises Question
of Bias in Annual Phi Delta Kappa Poll. The study, sponsored by the
Friedman Foundation, set out to determine, using a sound methodology of split sampling,
if the annual Phi Delta Kappa poll, to be released on August 24, used wording that
could artificially lower support for school choice.
$5,000 Voucher Would Open Most School
Doors. There are already many affordable high-quality private schools on the market, and, once they
are allowed to compete on a level playing field with government schools, many more will come into operation.
Uneducated Youth Threaten America's
Future. Despite an increasing awareness that the U.S. public education system offers widely
differing educational opportunities to different ethnic and income groups, the system will change for
the better only when it is exposed to competition from charter schools or vouchers, says former U.S.
Representative Reverend Floyd H. Flake.
What Is Capitalism? Many criticisms
of school vouchers are actually thinly veiled criticisms of capitalism, the way the economy in the U.S. (and
most of the rest of the world) is organized.
DC Vouchers Return to Front Burner:
Representative Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) is quoted as saying, "The best thing we can do to improve education is to
expand parental choice and increase competition…."
Vouchers Within Reason: A
Trojan Horse to Control Private Schools. Finally, someone on the left has presented a thoughtful
rationale for why leftists should favor vouchers: They can use vouchers to push religion out of private
schools and further reduce the ability of parents to inculcate their values into their children.
The Voucher Trap: In the 1941 case of
Wickard vs. Filburn, the Supreme Court said that "It is hardly lack of due process for the government to
regulate that which it subsidizes." When the trap springs, and the victims scream out their anguish, the
truly private schools' owners will receive their vindication.
Canada's
experience shows that school choice works: Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court early this summer
gave school choice a green light, anti-choicers have asserted that vouchers are chancy because they've only been
tested on a small scale so far. Canadians know that's not true -- 92 percent of the people
to the north of us live in areas with school choice.
Educational
Vouchers: Saving public education is not the same as, and may indeed be exactly the opposite to,
saving children.
Ten benefits of School Liberation:
When government involvement with education is ended, we can prudently predict at least ten changes in America's
schooling systems.
Conservative
Education Scholars Say School Choice is Working: School choice initiatives are showing promise,
conservative education scholars believe. A school choice scholar, who spoke at the Heritage Foundation
press conference in Washington, D.C., indicates that the fears of school choice opponents are unfounded.
A Tale
of Senate Obstructionism Courtesy of Senator Edward Kennedy: Unlike Senator Kennedy and the NAACP
leaders who pose as champions of the underprivileged, Gerald Reynolds supports school choice scholarship
programs for poor black kids cheated by rotten public schools. He calls it the great "civil rights
issue" of our time. No wonder Ted Kennedy hates him.
A
Minority View: Educational Vouchers: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Cleveland school
voucher case, Zelman vs. Simmons-Harris, that taxpayer funds that go to parents who might use the money to
enroll their children in religious schools was constitutional. One need not be a rocket scientist to
understand why.
School Choice Works: Private
high-school graduates are more likely to be professionals, technicians, managers, proprietors and salesmen.
Their public-school counterparts more likely are craftsmen, laborers, farmers and service workers.
Vouchers
vindicated: If there has actually been harm done to the public schools by
vouchers, there ought to be evidence of it by now. But voucher critics have none, after
all these years, and rely on scary but unsubstantiated theories instead. What we are
really talking about are the teachers' unions wanting to keep a captive audience, for
the sake of their members' jobs, and social engineers wanting to control low-income
children and their parents, as they themselves would never want to be controlled.
Vouchers: Neither
Panacea Nor Poison: Would education vouchers solve all of America's
education problems? No, but we can't "fix" education until we "fix" who makes the
decisions about education. The people who make the decisions are those who control
the money.
Southern Baptist Subsection:
Are Southern Baptists about to
Abandon Government Schools? A resolution recently submitted to the Southern
Baptist Convention for its annual meeting to be held in Indianapolis on June 15-16 calls
on parents in this country's largest Protestant denomination to pull their children out
of government schools, and either homeschool them or send them to private Christian schools.
Simply Rearing
Pagans: Between 12 and 15 million evangelical Christian children
attend public schools. If the mass majority of these students were to leave public
education, it would cripple the one system that is doing more harm to our nation than any
single thing except perhaps the popular media.
On the "sin" of sending kids to
public school: The man who helped push the issue of public education onto the national agenda of
the Southern Baptist Convention has written a new book that blows the lid off government schools, showing
parents the kind of worldview and values their children are influenced by 180 days a year. … "The
truth is that the public school policy and curriculum decisions that matter to Christians are not made
locally. They are largely dictated by federal and state court decisions, federal and state legislation and
regulations, and the teachers' union and other professional associations connected with the public schools."
What happens then?
Will the transition hurt some children? We can go
in one of two directions: a) continue down the present road of bringing more and more families into
dependency with such notions as school breakfast, school clinics, longer day, and longer year, or b) we
can reverse the 160-year slide into parental dependency and move toward more family responsibility for education.
Baptists: Plan exit from government
schools. A group of Baptists activists who two years ago tried to get the Southern Baptist
Convention to approve a resolution urging the faithful to pull their children out of government schools
announced they are proposing a similar measure this year.
However... SBC Official Questions Wisdom of Public
School 'Exit Strategy' Proposal. The chairman of the Resolutions Committee for next month's
Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is being careful not to throw his support behind
the idea of developing a plan to remove Baptist children from public schools.
Books and Internet Resources
Book review: The
Harsh Truth About Public Schools: [Bruce Shortt's] advice is to parents: Get your children
out of the system! Home school them if you can. If that's not possible, find a private school where
the textbooks, teachers, and other parents will be reinforcing what you and your spouse are teaching your
children.
Book review: Let
My Children Go. I have read many books on home education, but never one that touched on sensitive
issues such as socialist indoctrination through "group-think". Government schools are not broken —
they are performing exactly as planned. Christian parents of infants, toddlers and preschoolers work
diligently "to train up a child in the way he should go". Then, at the tender age of five, pack the child
off to government school, to have everything planted in their child's heart completely destroyed.
Web site: The Exodus Mandate: Don't simply ask what kind of
education you want for your children. Ask what kind of people do you want them to become!
Web site: Alliance for the Separation of School and State:
The goal of separation is best achieved one family at a time. The brightest future for education begins
with you. If you're a parent, we offer not only the chance to learn how the government came to control
education, but also ideas, resources and encouragement to help you on your road to educational freedom, as
well as true stories of others who have already chosen educational freedom.
Personal anecdotes
This is a subject with which I have personal experience. Our son was homeschooled from
the third grade all the way through high school. He has a math degree and is now working full-time, but hopes to finish
his master's degree soon.
One factor that really helped our homeschooling experience is that my wife is a state-certified teacher.
Very recently, she went to work as a full-time math teacher at the local high school (in a Dallas
suburb), and confirmed right away that every bad thing we've heard or suspected about public schools is
true. Many high school kids in public schools appear to have vocabularies of 500 words or less, much of
which is unfit for publication on this web site. Thanks to television, they have a maximum attention
span of about ten seconds. Audacity, arrogance and aggressively bad taste are on display everywhere.
High school kids are totally dependent on calculators to do the simplest math problems, because the availability
of electronic calculators is guaranteed throughout the school. Some of them can't tell time on an
analog clock, because digital clocks are the only kind they ever see. Recently one "student" (using
the term loosely) asked a security guard for the time of day, and was told "It's a quarter to five." Then
the kid got indignant because the security guard wouldn't tell her the time! This is a high school student,
mind you, who was unable to figure out what a quarter of an hour would be, because she has not learned how to work
with fractions. My wife asked an eleventh grade girl, "What is zero minus seven?" The poor girl
had to admit that she had no inkling of the answer — not even a guess. Many of the kids who are taking
Algebra II don't know anything about how to solve an equation, which they should have
learned in the eighth grade, or about fractions, which they should have learned in elementary
school. Public school kids almost seem to take pride in their ignorance
and anti-intellectualism, and are quick to blame everything and
everyone but themselves for their failures.
When politicians tell you "we need more money for education", that is a lie. This high school is
as big as most colleges, and it looks like an airport terminal with hallway after spacious hallway of
first-rate classrooms. The facilities are second to none. There is a huge new auditorium, a natatorium,
and a new football stadium as well. (Earlier I had said they had an olympic-size pool, but as it
turns out, this pool is half that size — a mere 25 meters by 25 yards.) The taxpayers have poured millions of dollars into the
physical facilities and it hasn't helped academics at all.
The school's top priorities are the football team, the band, and
the TAKS test at the
end of the year. Discipline, decorum, and the dress code are secondary concerns at best. As a result, the kids
won't keep quiet in class, they cheat, they lie, they'll steal anything that isn't bolted down, they send text
messages to each other via cell phones, they throw paper wads at the teachers, and they don't care about
learning.
You might get the idea that I'm engaging in harmful stereotypes, or at least painting an unflattering picture
with a very broad brush. And yet the overwhelming majority of the kids enrolled in this
school — I hesitate to call them "students" — have a great deal in common. There
seems to be no stigma associated with
illegitimacy, promiscuity
or fatherlessness. Anti-intellectualism
makes it fashionable to be ignorant. Overexposure to television (and Hollywood) gets them
accustomed to destructive behavior and corrosive communication. And despite decades of
better-than-equal opportunity, they
still think of themselves as victims of
someone else's prejudice.
Of course they aren't all hopeless. There are a few kids who want to learn, who want
to go to college, and who want to do better than their parents mothers. But most
of the kids who graduate from this school will be ill prepared for a life that does not involve
flipping burgers, selling drugs, or welfare dependency. If these kids are "America's
future", we're going to need more prisons.
Updated 9/16/2006:
My wife lasted five weeks as a public school teacher. That was enough. No amount of money
could get her to teach there for an entire semester.
One California judge says parents have no legal right to home school their children. [2/28/2008]
The latest: Court backs off ruling
that restricted home schooling. A state appellate court Friday morning [8/8/2008] backed off a
never-enforced February ruling that severely restricted home schooling in California. The new decision
from the 2nd District Court of Appeal says California law permits home schooling, although it is particularly
lax in ensuring children are properly educated in such a setting.
Homeschool
Victory. Hold on to your hats. Common sense and constitutionalism have prevailed in the
California judiciary. Last week, the Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles declared that parents
who homeschool don't need teaching credentials in order to educate their own children. Amazingly,
the three judges were overturning their own February decision.
California Court to Reconsider Homeschooling.
California's Second Appellate District Court of Appeals touched off a firestorm when it issued an opinion that
parents have no right to homeschool their own children — a firestorm so great that on March 25,
a full month after issuing its decision, the court agreed to rehear the case, with a decision expected in June.
According to the February 28 decision, neither the U.S. nor the California constitution gives parents without
teaching credentials the right to homeschool their children, and nothing in California law permits unregulated
homeschooling.
California Decision Has Roots in Age-Old Bias against
Homeschooling. Though California's constitution guarantees citizens freedom, independence, and
privacy, the state regularly invades those rights — albeit with the consent of the governed.
But don't tread on homeschoolers. That's what a California appellate court did with a February 28
ruling that parents have no federal or state constitutional right to homeschool their children and that they
risk criminal prosecution if they do. The uproar was immediate and widespread.
Court to reconsider home-school
ruling. A state appeals court will reconsider last month's controversial decision that said
parents who home-school their children must have a teaching credential. The 2nd District Court of
Appeal in Los Angeles granted a rehearing Tuesday [3/25/2008], essentially voiding the 3-0 decision until it
rules again. The decision will now allow home-schooling organizations that had blasted the decision to
weigh in. "Wow!" said Diane Flynn Keith of Redwood City, who edits Homefires, an online home-schooling
journal. "I think the judge recognized that he hadn't done his homework."
Threat to Homeschooling:
The cat is finally out of the bag. A California appellate court, ruling that parents have no constitutional
right to homeschool their children, pinned its decision on this ominous quotation from a 47-year-old case, "A
primary purpose of the educational system is to train schoolchildren in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty
to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare." There you have it; a primary
purpose of government schools is to train schoolchildren "in loyalty to the state."
Home schooling unlawful, says California
court. A three-judge panel of the California Court of Appeal has determined parents in that state
have no legal right to home school. A Christian attorney in Sacramento says unless the ruling is reversed,
literally thousands of students in the Golden State will be subject to criminal sanctions.
Homeschoolers'
setback sends shock waves through state. A California appeals court ruling clamping down on
homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an
estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution. The
homeschooling movement never saw the case coming.
Court: Teaching
Credential Required To Home School. California parents without teaching
credentials cannot legally home school their children, according to a recent state appellate
court ruling. "Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,"
Justice H. Walter Croskey wrote in a Feb. 28 opinion for the 2nd District Court of
Appeal. Noncompliance could lead to criminal complaints against the parents, Croskey said.
The immediate impact of the ruling was not clear. Opponents said they will appeal.
Do Homeschoolers Need Teaching Credentials?
One way or another, this ruling will not stand. It's not just that the homeschoolers have lawyers and political savvy,
which they do. They also have the support of the majority of parents who want a full range of choices, even if they'd
never choose homeschooling for themselves. Mom needs a credential to teach her kids? Not going to happen.
Governor vows to protect
homeschooling. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger denounced a state appeals court ruling that severely
restricts homeschooling and promised Friday [3/7/2008] to change the law if necessary to guarantee that parents
are able to educate their children at home. "Every California child deserves a quality education, and
parents should have the right to decide what's best for their children," Schwarzenegger said in response to the
ruling, which said children educated at home must be taught by a credentialed teacher.
A threat
to home schooling: In a blow to parents everywhere, the Los Angeles 2nd District Court of Appeals
ruled last week that under provisions in the state's education code, parents do not have a constitutional right
to home school their children and in fact criminalizes efforts to do so since they are not certified teachers.
Perhaps more disturbing than the ruling is how some "education experts" are classifying it. One National
Education Association (NEA) official has referred to home-school parents as "gullible, amateurs" who don't
have the skills to teach their own children. Sound a little condescending?
Home
Schooling Poses a Threat to The State. Socialism, of which liberal-progressivism is the American sect, is
more than control of the economy. Most importantly it is mind-control through the public education system. … Why
the animus of liberal courts and teachers' unions against home schooling? The obvious answer is that home
schooling does a better job, revealing the poor quality of public education. Less obvious is the desire of
home-schooling parents to teach Judeo-Christian moral principles, which directly conflicts with the public school
aim of teaching the secular religion of liberal-progressive-socialism.
Saying No to the Nanny
State: While I bemoan the liberal goings-on in my once liberty-loving state, I only have that much more
empathy for the many good people of California, who also have a RINO governor, but labor under the "leadership" of a
much worse regime. This week's outrage concerns the ruling of an appellate court that "parents do not have a
constitutional right to homeschool their children" and that those who do so might be subject to severe penalties.
California: Giving Home-Schoolers
the Shaft. Teachers' unions are pro-choice on abortion, but not on education. They use their enormous political
capital with the Democrat Party to block voucher initiatives in whatever state or municipality proposes them, including in
California. Consequently, many parents home-school their children at their own expense, even though they still have to
pay local property taxes which are spent mostly on public schools their children do not attend.
Homeschoolers
in the Crosshairs of the NEA. Recently a landmark ruling that stunned many parents and could have
legal repercussions for families across the country was handed down by a California state appellate court.
Judge H. Walter Croskey wrote a court opinion that declared California children were only allowed to be
taught by teachers credentialed by the state. Such a decision was a stark about-face from the previous
California policy that provided parents with options in determining how best to educate their children. A
decision such as this has profound ramifications that stretch beyond educational choice, from parental rights
to privacy laws.
Your Child Is Not State Property.
California legislators were entitled to enact this blanket prohibition, according to the judge, because they
feared the supposed social disorder that would result from "allowing every person to make his own standards on
matters of conduct in which society as a whole has important interests." "Allowing"? By what right
does government presume to "allow" (or, in this case, forbid) you to make your own standards concerning your
child's education? Government has no such right.
California Appeals Court Clears the
Way for Homeschooling. There's been an important decision released by a California appeals
court — a decision that overturns a previous ruling — and now clears the way
for parents to homeschool their children.
Victory for a Judge and for
California Home Schoolers. Today we are pleased to announce that a U.S. District
Court sitting in Cleveland has formally dismissed a motion brought by the ACLU of Ohio to hold in
contempt of court Richland County Judge James DeWeese for displaying a poster entitled "Philosophies
of Law in Conflict" in his Mansfield courtroom. The ACLU charged that Judge DeWeese's display
of the poster — which graphically compares and contrasts the Ten Commandments with Seven
Humanist Principles — violated a 2002 injunction barring him from displaying a poster
consisting solely of the Ten Commandments under the caption "Rule of Law."
Parents rights to direct kids'
education affirmed. Homeschool supporters and pro-family advocates spent
today [8/8/2008] praising a California court ruling that affirmed the right of parents
to direct their children's education. The upbeat reaction was triggered by the
decision announced early today by the 2nd Appellate District in Los Angeles that
affirmed the right of California parents to homeschool.
The Editor says...