"Tracking student progress from birth through college helps teachers in the classroom, helps principals manage and improve their schools, and helps parents better understand the unique educational needs of their child,"
“Revenue for education should be local. Once you allow the federal government in, you lose control."And specifically in regards to parental rights and homeschooling Paul writes,
“There is no Constitutional enumeration for federal education. The Constitution allows states and cities to participate in education; period.”
As the Federal Government has increased the size and budget of the Department of Education, test scores and scholastic performance have markedly dropped. More money, more bureaucracy, and more government intervention are eroding this nation’s educational standards. Meanwhile, home-schooled children continue to excel as evidenced by their test scores and rapidly growing admission rate into some of the nation’s most prestigious educational institutions.Rand proposes to restore the parental right to be responsible in educating children. He supports reduced taxes so that parents can allocate more of their own funds to homeschooling, if they so desire. He seeks to prevent the Department of Education from regulating homeschooling and will fight to keep the Federal Government’s hands out of this promising alternative to conventional education. Rand recognizes the potential and scholarly prowess of homeschooling and will ensure that homeschoolers are allowed the freedom to compete alongside those who attend public and private schools.
His views don't sound extreme, they sound like someone who has actually read the Constitution! If I were in Kentucky he'd probably be getting my vote.
Seniors are being asked to provide their birthdates, Social Security numbers and citizen status to the Secret Service so background checks could be performed. Such a check is required for anyone who gets within an arm’s length of the president, students were told at their senior breakfast Friday.I'm not a birther but golly gee whiz, don't you think the POTUS would at least be humble enough to do what he requires of those who are blessed to be in his presence?
"that they have to make sure people living in the United States have the proper citizenship papers."Everybody except President Barack Obama that is.
“This administration’s education vision is a very activist, expansive role for the federal government,” said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education, who has watched education policies evolve in Washington for nearly 30 years. “We’re never going to be like France, where the education minister can look at his watch and tell you what every fourth grader is doing. But inevitably, with more federal education initiatives, more federal money, comes more strings, more federal control.”And according to Duncan no one is opposing this massive takeover of our child's mind.
“Zero,” he said. “And as hard as we’re pushing everybody else to change, we’re pushing the department to change even more. There’s just an outpouring of support for the common-sense changes and the unprecedented investments we’re making.”And just what "common-sense" changes are they making with their "unprecedented investments"? Along with national standards and tracking children from cradle-to-career (including their weight), how about a plan to tie education at all levels to "voluntary" community service.
The Departments of Treasury and Education are currently studying the requirement to tie 100 hours of community service to a $4,000 tax credit, thanks to a provision in the stimulus package passed by Obama last year. And we don't have to guess as to what their findings will be.
"I am running to be that President. And that's why I'm proposing a comprehensive plan to give every American child the chance to receive the best education America has to offer - from the moment they're born to the day they graduate college. As President, I will put the full resources of the federal government behind this plan."And in another speech said,
"So when I'm President, I will set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year. This means that by the time you graduate college, you'll have done 17 weeks of service."Now, with "zero" opposition Obama's making good on his promise. We may never become exactly like Germany or France but it's looking less and less like America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, every day.
"College and career ready?" asked Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.). "Or do you mean college or career ready? Do you mean every student goes to college?"It's an advantage, all right...but not for the students. Children deciding at an early age what they want to be when they grow up is solely for the benefit of DC bureaucrats whose goal is to "track" our children from preschool through career (p-16). And the bogus"state-led" Common Core standards is the vehicle to make German style education a reality here in the US.
The issue goes back to a U.S. reluctance to "track" students, as European countries do, said Whitehurst, former director of the Institute of Education Sciences at the Education Department. German students, for instance, can decide at a relatively early age whether they're headed for academia or a trade school. That gives them an advantage, he said.
"With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation," he told a class of more than 1,000 graduates. "All of this is not only putting new pressures on you. It is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy."His point isn't unique. Long before Al Gore invented the internet, Neil Postman made the same observation in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death. And like most parents today, Obama might be wondering how to get a handle on the status of technology in his daughters' lives.
In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, to be published this Friday, the Illinois senator said he had "pretty eclectic tastes".The list of bands reads like the acts at a summer music festival, with the Rolling Stones, Sheryl Crow and Ludacris all in the mix.
Maybe Obama and his speechwriters think we're too distracted with our iPods or Xbox to actually Google his assertion but Obama is NOT dumb when it comes to modern technology. Before the election, Obama chastised Americans for clinging to their guns all the while he was clinging to his Blackberry. Shortly before the inauguration he told the New York Times, "They’re going to pry it out of my hands.”
His handlers even created an Obama app for the iPod Touch and the iPhone!
So what's up? Is Obama trying to gin up another "crisis" to control? He's put Michelle in charge of obesity so maybe this will be Biden's new gig? I don't know.
But I do know that I'm already emancipated and my freedom allows me to use an iPod for entertainment and empowerment or any other "ment" I want. Enough with the fatherly lectures. President Obama was elected to run the country not dictate our playlist.
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My workshop iHelp for the eHome will be presented today at The SchoolHouse Expo which is sold out. But you can buy all the workshops for only $19.95 here. Or if you're in for a road trip, I'll be speaking at the INCH convention in Lansing, Michigan this weekend.
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Texas' lax documentation and hands-off practices make it impossible to know how many of these students are actually being taught at home. It also opens the door to abuse of the designation, which could help school districts avoid the sanctions that come with high dropout rates, experts said.I've seen the similar dropout arguments made by legislators and educators in Michigan as well as in other states with "lax" regulation on homeschooling. But no matter what the claim or who's to blame, the proposed solution is always the same and results in increasing regulation or scrutiny of all homeschoolers.
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"If my end game is to educate my children, be with them, teach them our values, allow them to learn at their own pace, protect them and prepare them to be in a world with an eternal view rather than temporal, than I don't see the damage in allowing the state to foot the bill for some materials. Afterall, taxpayers certainly pay for them."My rebuttal was in part,
"Because just like you, the government has an "end game" as well. And they're willing to throw out a few freebies to some for the eventual control of all homeschoolers.This isn't just hyperbolic speculation either. Federal money equals federal control.
Tim Rutherford, Senior Citizens Inc. vice president, said some of his staff recently visited the center and noticed people praying shortly before lunch was served. Rutherford said his company provides meals like baked chicken, steak tips and rice and salads at a cost of about $6 a plate. Seniors taking the meals pay 55 cents and federal money foots the rest of the bill, Rutherford said.
“We can’t scoff at their rules,” he said of federal authorities. “It’s a part of the operational guidelines.”
I guess it's time not only to get kids out of the schools but granny out of the nursing home. Oh and by the way, Uncle Sam now wants to buy your kids dinner after school. Any takers?
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Forget "angry white men." In the male-dominated world of conservative politics, the tea party stands out as a movement of energized and organized women. In particular, moms....I agree with Loesch, motherhood has become a political act. And like the future of our children, we're also about protecting the future of motherhood. We're smart, active, and perhaps a little angry when someone invades our territory.
Dana Loesch, talk host and co-founder of the St. Louis tea party, believes the tea party movement is the modern conservative version of "the personal is political."
"Motherhood itself has become a political act," says Ms. Loesch. "And the tea parties are an extension of our need as moms to protect the future for our children."
Galli says he and his friends were sitting at a table during brunch break when the vice principal asked two of the boys to remove American flag bandannas that they wearing on their heads and for the others to turn their American flag T-shirts inside out.but school administrators can exclude white students from participating in a field trip to hear an African American rocket scientist in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
When they refused, the boys were ordered to go to the principal's office.They said we could wear it on any other day," Daniel Galli said, "but today is sensitive to Mexican-Americans because it's supposed to be their holiday so we were not allowed to wear it today."
According the elementary school principal, “The intent of our field trip was not to segregate or exclude students as has been reported, but rather to address the societal issues, roadblocks and challenges that our African American children will face as they pursue a successful academic education here in our community.”Apparently, racial profiling is okay only when you're a white American student in an American public school. Welcome to Obama's post-racial America where discrimination against whites is social justice and an educational opportunity.
While Obama supporters and University of Michigan graduates are getting soaked in Ann Arbor, I'm comfortably waiting indoors for Sarah Palin to arrive at the Americans for Prosperity Defending the Dream Summit.
