http://www.businessinsider.com/why-kids-should-get-homeschooled-2016-8

Homeschooling is the smartest way to teach kids in the 21st century

Matthew Hauck/Flickr

Alison Davis doesn't see homeschooling as some strange alternative to traditional school.

If anything, says the mom from Williamstown, New Jersey, when it comes to raising her two children, she's doing the sensible thing.

"You're not going to be put in a work environment where everybody came from the same school and everybody is the same age," she tells Business Insider. "In my opinion, the traditional school atmosphere is not the real world at all."

Homeschooling, she says, that's the real world.

Davis' satisfaction with keeping her kids out of local public and private schools is one shared by a growing pool of parents around the US. Recent data   collected by the Department of Education reveals homeschooling has grown by 61.8% over the last 10 years to the point where two million kids - 4% of the total youth population - now learn from   the comfort of their own home.

Contrary to the belief that homeschooling produces anti-social outcasts, the truth is that some of the most high-achieving, well-adjusted students are poring over math problems at their kitchen table, not a desk in a classroom. According to leading pedagogical research, at-home instruction may just be the most relevant, responsible, and effective way to educate children in the 21st century.

Personalization is key

In his 2015 book "Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That's Transforming Education," veteran teacher and beloved TED speaker Ken Robinson emphasizes that students learn best at their preferred speeds and in their preferred manner. "All students are unique individuals with their own hopes, talents, anxieties, fears, passions, and aspirations," he writes. "Engaging them as individuals is the heart of raising achievement."

Robinson wasn't referring to homeschooling directly, but he might as well have been. No form of education is designed to foster more personalized tutelage.

While traditional schools try their best to tailor lesson plans to individual students, teachers often still end up teaching to the middle. There are simply too many kids learning at different speeds for teachers to give each of them exactly what they need. Homeschooling, meanwhile, is personal by design.

Kelly Sikkema/flickr

Davis says her son Luke struggled early on with reading. Even into the second grade, he didn't enjoy it and found it overwhelming. In any other school, teachers may not have been able to spend the necessary time helping Luke become a stronger reader because they had 20 other kids to worry about. That's not the case in the Davis household.

"I could take that extra time with him," Davis says. Plus,   reading time became more than just a push toward literacy; it was Mommy-Luke bonding time - something no school could compete with. "Now he devours books in like a week's time or less," she says.

The long-term effects of personalization are equally massive. According to a 2009 study of standardized testing, homeschoolers scored in the 86th percentile. The results held true even when controlling for parents' income level, amount of education, teaching credentials, and level of state regulation. Research also suggests that homeschooled kids get into college more often and do better once they're enrolled.

No, homeschooling doesn't create recluses

The biggest stereotype surrounding homeschooling is that constant one-on-one teaching deprives kids of the socialization they need to thrive. Not so. Homeschooled kids are just as likely to play soccer and do group projects as any other students.

Davis' family is heavily involved in their local church, so Luke and his older sister Amanda both have friends in the choir. They both play an instrument, so they have friends in a homeschooler orchestra. They hang with kids on their block. Amanda has a pen pal who lives in Arizona. As far as childhood goes, theirs is pretty run-of-the-mill.

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division. Dr. Alice S. Kandell Collection of Sikkim Photographs

It's not just that homeschooled kids enjoy the upside of normal school, though; they also get to enjoy the absence of its many drawbacks - namely peer pressure and cliques. On several occasions, Alison says, other kids have expressed jealousy that Luke and Amanda get to learn at home, away from the social hierarchies of normal school.

"They're like, Aw man, I wish I got be homeschooled," she says. "I've been very surprised by it."

Of course, some parents do struggle to help their kids make friends.

Earlier this year, I interviewed an extremely bright 7-year-old named Akash who lives in San Angelo, Texas. He's homeschooled because a child psychologist who studied him when he was a toddler told his parents it was probably the smartest option.

Akash's best friend - maybe his only friend - is his big sister, Amrita. Most of the kids in his nearby homeschoolers' association are either too old or too dissimilar in personality for his parents to schedule regular playdates, even though Akash is silly and outgoing. 

But even for kids who do struggle, trends suggest the Internet is making it easier. A Pew survey from last year revealed that 55% of all teens say they regularly spend time with friends online or through social media, and 45% say they meet through extracurriculars, sports, or hobbies, which suggests classrooms aren't the only way to make friends.

Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

Schools are even more over-worked than students

As stressed-out as students may be, schools may be under even more pressure to perform. We expect schools to help kids become smart but not anti-social, physically fit but not dumb jocks, self-reliant yet cooperative, and creative while also college-ready.

Whether we accomplish that goal is debatable - a recent survey of 165,000 high school students, for instance, found fewer than half felt prepared for college and beyond.

Maybe that's because a lot of the responsibilities we heap onto schools are jobs better suited for parents. Perhaps Alison has found such success with Luke and Amanda because she can hack through the busy work and red tape and just focus on what her kids need.

"Schools have to bring in all these extra testing and courses and electives to try to make it resemble the real world," she says. "But that can never happen unless you're actually living in it."

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https://whatiscommoncore.wordpress.com/2017/03/27/rep-massie-department-of-education-shall-terminate-on-december-31-2018/

Rep. Massie: “Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2018.”

Here’s hopeful news for freedom lovers.

Eight congressmen have banded together to try to restore the constitution by deleting the federal Department of Education.

President Ronald Reagan, while in office, aimed to make this happen. Recently, parent and educator groups have been pleading for this to happen. Campaigners have often spoken about this idea, since it guaranteed applause from voters.  However, last month, in a clear, one-sentence-long bill, eight congressmen actually wrote the bill to take down the Fed-Ed monster.

It says only this: “The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2018.”  That’s it.  That’s the whole bill.

It’s short, but it’s powerful.  H.R. 899 (if it gets a hearing and a vote) ends the reign of the unconstitutional, federal department, and aims to restore money and power to the states. –Remember, the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment states: ” The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Original H.R. 899 sponsors are: Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky (twitter:  @RepThomasMassie ) Rep.  Jason Chaffetz of Utah,  Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona,  Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia, Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina, and Rep. Raul Labrador of Idaho.

Rep. Massie said in his press release, “Neither Congress nor the President, through his appointees, has the constitutional authority to dictate how and what our children must learn… Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. should not be in charge of our children’s intellectual and moral development. States and local communities are best positioned to shape curricula that meet the needs of their students. Schools should be accountable. Parents have the right to choose the most appropriate educational opportunity for their children, including home school, public school, or private school.”

Original co-sponsor Rep. Walter Jones agreed: “For years, I have advocated returning education policy to where it belongs – the state and local level. D.C. bureaucrats cannot begin to understand the needs of schools and its students on an individual basis. It is time that we get the feds out of the classroom, and terminate the Department of Education.”

Co-sponsor Rep. Raul Labrador added: “I’ve always been a proponent of empowering parents, teachers and local school boards who best know our children and their needs. Eliminating the U.S. Department of Education is the most important step we in Congress can take in returning decision making to the local level.”

Co-sponsor Rep. Andy Biggs noted: “Education of our students should lie primarily with parents, teachers, and state and local officials who know how to meet their individual needs best. Since its inception, the Department of Education has grown into an unrecognizable federal beast, and its policies have helped foster Common Core across the country. It is time the one-size-fits-all approach by the federal government is ended and authority is returned to the local level.”

Rep. Massie also pointed out that President Ronald Reagan would have cosponsored this bill.  In September 1981, about a year after the federal Department of Education began operating (1980) President Ronald Reagan said:

“…[W]e propose to dismantle two Cabinet Departments, Energy and Education… [E]ducation is the principal responsibility of local school systems, teachers, parents, citizen boards, and State governments. By eliminating the Department of Education less than 2 years after it was created, we cannot only reduce the budget but ensure that local needs and preferences, rather than the wishes of Washington, determine the education of our children.”

Learn more about the bill in the video interview with Rep. Massie below. In the video, when answering a question about who now opposed his bill,  Massie said that there are opposers who believe that D.C. has cornered the market on genius, who feel that the rest of America should rely on those situated in D.C.; but most people want to keep educational decision-making and education money local; opposers are few.

Please remember that the bill, H.R. 899, newborn last month, has yet to have a hearing or a vote.  Please contact your congressional representatives  to add momentum to this bill.

How will the Department of Education be dismantled?

Rep. Massie envisions three ways in which the bill could be implemented.

1.  Get rid of federal education.  Return all power and all money to the states.

2.  Block grant federal education money to the states.

3.  Have different federal departments oversee federal education programs that are still active due to federal law.

Massie favors the option that gets rid of fed-ed altogether, and so do I.

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http://www.learnliberty.org/blog/5-types-of-school-choice-which-has-the-least-government-involvement/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_content=blog+17%2C+LL+Blog%2C+5+Types+of+School+Choice%2C+2%2F1%2F2017&utm_campaign=blog+17

5 types of school choice: Which has the least government involvement?

iStock/fernandogarciaesteban

School choice is all about giving consumers variety. But lo and behold, there are actually varieties of school choice.

In some types of school choice (like open enrollment programs and charter schools) the government plays a big role. And in others (like voucher programs and education savings accounts) not so much.

Here are the 5 common types of school choice, in order from most to least government involvement, with a description of how each works.

#1

First, there are open enrollment programs, sometimes known as “public school choice.” This means that families can choose from many different public schools, as opposed to being assigned a public school based only on zip code. In certain states, there is “mandatory” open enrollment for students in areas the state considers low performing, where students in those underperforming areas can transfer to other districts (pending state approval).

Several states also allow for “voluntary” open enrollment, meaning that districts who agree to participate can allow students from other districts to choose into that district, or students from that district to choose into another participating district. (For instance, if I am a student in one district who allows open enrollment, I could choose to attend a school in another district as long as they allow open enrollments too.)

While this is certainly a kind of school choice, it is limited in several ways. First, this choice is limited to public schools. Second, those wanting to take advantage of it generally have to fill out an application that the state must approve, and the state can regulate who may and may not apply as well as who gets priority.

#2

Next, there are charter schools. Charters are privately run schools that agree to be part of the public school system in order to provide students some choice. Since these schools are privately run, they are often exempt from some of the constraints of traditional public schools (they can structure their daily schedules and teacher contracts any way they like). But since they are part of the public system, they receive tax money (rather than tuition) and generally their students must take the same standardized tests and follow the same curricular standards as other public schools.

Each state government also controls how many charters will be allowed in it, which organizations gain a charter, and when a charter should close. So, while charters do offer choice, technically that choice is still within the public system, and there is a sizable government role.

#3

Voucher programs provide more choice and less role for the state. In a voucher system, the state gives vouchers to families in proportion to their number of school-age children. The families can use those vouchers to purchase schooling from any private school eligible to receive voucher money (including many religiously themed schools).

Most voucher programs are targeted, either only available for students in certain (generally poor urban) regions, or to families below a certain income level. Unlike with charters, schools that accept vouchers are private schools who accept tuition money directly from the parents. The government still has a role, though, in determining which private schools may be eligible for voucher money.

#4

Scholarship tax credits function in a similar way to vouchers, but with a more convoluted accounting method. The main difference is that the money is not dispensed to families or schools by the government. Instead, the family generally gives money to a “scholarship fund” for their child, then receives an equivalent tax credit from the government. (Corporations can also donate money to scholarship funds that students in general are eligible for.)

These scholarships then pay tuition at eligible private schools. The state’s role is similar to what it is in a voucher system, as the state determines the rules for scholarship-granting organizations and for what schools are eligible to receive scholarship money.

#5

Probably the least government-heavy system of school choice that currently exists is the education savings account. ESAs allow families to use money designated by the government for their child’s education for private educational services. (Parents can generally contribute additional money to the child’s educational savings account.)

They can use this money not only for school tuition but also for other educational services like online courses, tutoring, private lessons, or educational technologies (for instance, technologies that aid students with disabilities to access educational services). Also, any money the family doesn’t use one year rolls over to the next. While the state oversees how the money is spent in order to guard against fraud, this is a much less active role than in a voucher or tax-credit system.

This system gives families very wide choice and keeps government decision-making to a minimum.

In my view, any school choice is better than no school choice. But not all school choice is structured the same way. It is important that we keep in mind the differences in types of school choice, and that some of these models require much more government involvement than others.

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Please read this info-article in its entirety and share it widely. It confirms exactly what I have found while mentoring the "new" GED materials. David Coleman, President of the College Board that oversees the SAT, was a champion of and contributor to the Common Core curriculum which aligns itself with the premier college aptitude test. The alignment of these two academic mandates has created a financial monopoly that is genius, but toxic. Blatant liberal ideology is being injected into every crevice of academia and it is all directly aligned with any hopes of scoring well on the current college aptitude tests, primarily the SAT. No one escapes this higher education shackle, not the private, Christian, or the Charter school. All must rely on college ready testing to get into what is advertised as the only hope for a promising future. It is diabolical. 

The writer of the following article states, "As I began to immerse myself in the SAT, I was shocked to discover how much the test had changed since I graduated from high school in 2000. The most salient aspects of the SAT that I remembered had disappeared. The infamous analogies had been replaced with reading passages that were often politically charged and almost always championed the views of the political left." 

http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2017/03/classic-learning-test-jeremy-tate.html

Not Another Test… The Right Test

Jeremy Tate

The Classic Learning Test (CLT) is a new alternative to the SAT and ACT. By creating a new standard that is distinctly Western and drawn from the richness of our intellectual heritage, the CLT hopes to encourage secondary schools to return to teaching the great classics…

The Classic Learning Test (CLT) is a new alternative to the SAT and ACT.  In a test-saturated educational environment, one might ask: why is another college admissions test needed? The best way I can answer this question is to tell you the story of how the CLT came to exist.

In 2014, after graduating from seminary and spending a few years in the public school system, I accepted a job as a college counselor at Mount de Sales Academy in Catonsville, Maryland. At the same time, to supplement my income for a growing family of six, I began a SAT Prep company.

As I began to immerse myself in the SAT, I was shocked to discover how much the test had changed since I graduated from high school in 2000. The most salient aspects of the SAT that I remembered had disappeared. The infamous analogies had been replaced with reading passages that were often politically charged and almost always championed the views of the political left. For example, I came across one reading passage from a 2013-14 SAT practice test which featured a passage from Susan Glaspell’s novel, The Glory of the Conquered. In the novel, Glaspell, an early feminist, presents marriage and family life as simply the total loss of freedom. I would have found no reason to complain if this passage had been countered by other reading passages that reflected on the sacredness, beauty, and wonder of marriage and family life. However, every passage that touched on the subject reflected a similar perspective to Glaspell’s. As a former teacher, I understood that tests don’t just evaluate – they teach. Tests are inherently pedagogical. In using this passage (and many similar passages), what was the SAT teaching our students about the reality of truth, the beauty of family life, and the dignity of the human person?

At the same time, my role as a college counselor opened my eyes to another major role that the SAT and ACT play in higher education. Not only are they college entrance exams, they are also college match-makers. As a college counselor, I had several experiences working with students who initially wanted to attend a small liberal arts college. However, after taking the PSAT, SAT, or ACT, these students would get flooded with junk mail from large state universities. Their names and contact information had been sold on the open market, and the colleges with the best marketing machines would end up getting the students. Sometimes the junk mail would include a personal letter from a college admissions representative, and often the student would end up committing to a large research university instead of a small liberal arts college.

These students’ decisions not to attend a liberal arts college was often compounded by input from parents who would tell me, “my son (or daughter) will need a job after college – and the future is in STEM.” STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) has been a buzz word in education for the past several years. The CLT loves math and science, but serious people recognize that STEM is not simply about math and science. David Wagner, co-founder and CEO of the Classic Learning Test, spent more than a decade in the health care industry before co-founding the CLT. Mr. Wagner has drawn attention to the lobbying efforts of big pharmaceutical companies who seek to undercut their own product development costs by having research universities do it for them. This is one of the origins of the STEM propaganda narrative, which is now being pushed by both the SAT and ACT. The STEM narrative asserts that most of the good jobs in the future will come from STEM majors. This claim contradicts the consistent insight of many of America’s top business leaders who see the liberal arts as the future. Steve Jobs once said that “It is in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.” In a recent interview, billionaire Mark Cuban echoed the same viewpoint, stating his belief that in a decade, there will be a greater job market demand for students with liberal arts majors than students with programming or engineering majors.

Nonetheless, many liberal arts colleges are suffering a downturn in enrollment as students continue to flock to large research universities. The CLT hopes to change this reality. Just as the SAT and ACT play in the arena of college match-making, the CLT endeavors to do the same. However, we at the CLT believe that the best colleges are the colleges that have held onto a traditional understanding of education. In the West, education has historically been focused on the cultivation of virtue and wisdom and not on the nebulous idea of making someone “career ready.” Paradoxically, when colleges focus on cultivating true character and virtue in young people, they end up graduating students who are far more “career ready” than students coming from universities that fail to educate the whole person.

To date, CLT has been adopted by forty colleges, all of which offer a strong liberal arts program. However, for the CLT to truly compete against College Board (SAT) and the ACT, we will need widespread adoption of the new test from like-minded parents and students. Every college to date that has taken the time to do a thorough review of the CLT has adopted it as a third option. It is the only college admissions test offered which is not aligned with common core standards and it is the only test that has retained elements of a true aptitude test. In fact, Hillsdale College, after an extensive six-month review of the CLT, noted that as an aptitude test, the CLT was “superior.” To the extent that the CLT is an achievement test, it measures mastery of better content. Rather than relying on meaningless texts that nobody would read if he or she was not taking a standardized test, the CLT puts students in front of the greatest thinkers in the history of Western thought. By creating a new standard that is distinctly Western and drawn from the richness of our intellectual heritage, the CLT hopes to encourage secondary schools to return to teaching the great classics.

To answer my initial question of why another college admissions test is needed, we at the CLT respond thus: another test isn’t needed. The right test is needed: a test that embraces the values inherent in our intellectual heritage, is free from common core political agendas, and remains committed to testing aptitude.

View a full-length practice CLT here and consider sending this essay and this link to a young person who may benefit from this new test. Unlike the SAT and ACT, the CLT allows students to send unlimited scores to colleges for free. The test is online and students who test receive their scores on the same day. The deadline to register for the March 18th CLT is March 14. We believe that the CLT is part of a movement to reconnect knowledge and virtue.

Please consider joining us.

Books on the topic of this essay may be found in The Imaginative Conservative Bookstore.

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http://www.georgiapolicy.org/2017/03/giving-perspective-scholarship-programs/

Giving Perspective to Scholarship Programs

By Benjamin Scafidi

Benjamin Scafidi

A recent opinion piece in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked, “Are vouchers a failure?” Any answer requires examining the best evidence on the topic and placing research results into a reasonable policy context.

First, the best evidence: Eighteen “gold-standard” studies followed students who were randomly offered a voucher to attend a private school and compared their outcomes with students who wanted a voucher, but were randomly denied one.

Fourteen of these studies reported positive effects from vouchers for some or all students. Two studies found no real effects, and two studies – both from Louisiana – found negative effects.

Interestingly, the Louisiana voucher program is the most regulated voucher program in the country, with significant “safeguards” and regulation of private schools. Consequently, not many children were offered choice and a large majority of private schools refused to participate in the program because they did not want to change their curriculum or other offerings in order to meet state government mandates.

The academic gains from school choice appear to be concentrated in making high school graduation more likely and further success in college, especially for disadvantaged students.

But there are social benefits from school choice programs as well, as parents who exercised choice believe their children were safer and exposed to good values in their new schools. In addition, studies find students who have received vouchers or scholarships have better virtues in terms of tolerance and civic participation.

Programs that allow parents to choose private schools also benefit public school students. Thirty-one out of 33 empirical studies find that school choice programs provide modest benefits for students who remain in public schools, according to EdChoice. (See pages 14 and 19 for a list of all studies referenced above.)

Other good surveys of the evidence regarding expanding parental choice in K-12 education have been released by the National Bureau of Economic Research and Brigham Young University Law Review.

Of the 18 “gold-standard” studies, two studies found that vouchers or scholarships did not seem to improve student test scores. What was the policy context of these findings?

 The two studies analyzed scholarship programs in New York City and Toledo, Ohio, in the late 1990s. The average scholarship award in the New York program was 87 percent less than the taxpayer cost of NYC public schools: $1,400 versus $10,788.

For the Toledo program, the study authors did not report the average scholarship amounts, but today – 19 years later – awards average a mere $1,700 per student, 78 percent less than the taxpayer cost of Toledo public schools. At the time of the study, spending was $7,708, according to the ELSI tool at www.nces.ed.gov. A program that achieves the same results at 78 or even 87 percent lower cost would be deemed a smashing success, by any reasonable standard. The 14 other “gold-standard” studies, using results from five different cities, found positive effects of vouchers on students’ academic outcomes.

Parental choice programs also provide savings to state and local taxpayers. For example, the average cost of a scholarship under Georgia’s tax credit scholarship program is just under $3,900, while Georgia public schools spend over $11,200 per student. The $3,900 scholarship cost is even 22 percent less than state funding for Georgia public schools. The $11,200 figure includes federal, state and local funding.

All told, what’s the worst that can be said about expanding school choice? That it will lead to modest academic and social gains for students at a lower taxpayer cost.

---

Dr. Benjamin Scafidi is a Senior Fellow at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation and a professor of economics and director of the Education Economics Center at Kennesaw State University. The Foundation is an independent think tank that proposes market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the view of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature.

© Georgia Public Policy Foundation (March 3, 2017). Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided the author and his affiliations are cited.

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http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-gates-education-20160601-snap-story.html

Gates Foundation failures show philanthropists shouldn’t be setting America's public school agenda

The Times Editorial Board

Tucked away in a letter from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation last week, along with proud notes about the foundation’s efforts to fight smoking and tropical diseases and its other accomplishments, was a section on education. Its tone was unmistakably chastened.

“We’re facing the fact that it is a real struggle to make systemwide change,” wrote the foundation’s CEO, Sue Desmond-Hellman. And a few lines later: “It is really tough to create more great public schools.”

The Gates Foundation’s first significant foray into education reform, in 1999, revolved around Bill Gates’ conviction that the big problem with high schools was their size. Students would be better off in smaller schools of no more than 500, he believed. The foundation funded the creation of smaller schools, until its own study found that the size of the school didn’t make much difference in student performance. When the foundation moved on, school districts were left with costlier-to-run small schools.

Then the foundation set its sights on improving teaching, specifically through evaluating and rewarding good teaching. But it was not always successful. In 2009, it pledged a gift of up to $100 million to the Hillsborough County, Fla., schools to fund bonuses for high-performing teachers, to revamp teacher evaluations and to fire the lowest-performing 5%. In return, the school district promised to match the funds. But, according to reports in the Tampa Bay Times, the Gates Foundation changed its mind about the value of bonuses and stopped short of giving the last $20 million; costs ballooned beyond expectations, the schools were left with too big a tab and the least-experienced teachers still ended up at low-income schools. The program, evaluation system and all, was dumped.

The Gates Foundation strongly supported the proposed Common Core curriculum standards, helping to bankroll not just their development, but the political effort to have them quickly adopted and implemented by states. Here, Desmond-Hellmann wrote in her May letter, the foundation also stumbled. The too-quick introduction of Common Core, and attempts in many states to hold schools and teachers immediately accountable for a very different form of teaching, led to a public backlash.

“Unfortunately, our foundation underestimated the level of resources and support required for our public education systems to be well-equipped to implement the standards,” Desmond-Hellmann wrote. “We missed an early opportunity to sufficiently engage educators — particularly teachers — but also parents and communities, so that the benefits of the standards could take flight from the beginning.

“This has been a challenging lesson for us to absorb, but we take it to heart. The mission of improving education in America is both vast and complicated, and the Gates Foundation doesn’t have all the answers.”

It was a remarkable admission for a foundation that had often acted as though it did have all the answers. Today, the Gates Foundation is clearly rethinking its bust-the-walls-down strategy on education — as it should. And so should the politicians and policymakers, from the federal level to the local, who have given the educational wishes of Bill and Melinda Gates and other well-meaning  philanthropists and foundations too much sway in recent years over how schools are run.

That’s not to say wealthy reformers have nothing to offer public schools. They’ve funded some outstanding charter schools for low-income students. They’ve helped bring healthcare to schools. They’ve funded arts programs.

The Gates Foundation, according to Desmond-Hellmann’s letter, is now working more on providing Common Core-aligned materials to classrooms, including free digital content that could replace costly textbooks, and a website where teachers can review educational materials. That’s great: Financial support for Common Core isn’t a bad thing. When the standards are implemented well, which isn’t easy, they ought to develop better reading, writing and thinking skills.

And foundation money has often been used to fund experimental programs and pilot projects of the sort that regular school districts might not have the time or extra funds to put into place. Those can be extremely informative and even groundbreaking.

But the Gates Foundation has spent so much money — more than $3 billion since 1999 — that it took on an unhealthy amount of power in the setting of education policy. Former foundation staff members ended up in high positions in the U.S. Department of Education — and, in the case of John Deasy, at the head of the Los Angeles Unified School District. The foundation’s teacher-evaluation push led to an overemphasis on counting student test scores as a major portion of teachers’ performance ratings — even though Gates himself eventually warned against moving too hastily or carelessly in that direction. Now several of the states that quickly embraced that method of evaluating teachers are backing away from it.

Philanthropists are not generally education experts, and even if they hire scholars and experts, public officials shouldn’t be allowing them to set the policy agenda for the nation’s public schools. The Gates experience teaches once again that educational silver bullets are in short supply and that some educational trends live only a little longer than mayflies.

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http://mobile.wnd.com/2017/03/leftist-hate-group-meets-weekly-reader/

Leftist hate group meets 'Weekly Reader'

Online teachers' resources gives progressives open door to school children

Published: 8 hours ago

WND EXCLUSIVE

Bob Unruh 
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Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially. 

Remember the Southern Poverty Law Center?

The nonprofit started out fighting the KKK. But now, it’s advocating homosexuality and transgenderism, and going even further to condemn and label as “haters” those who don’t support that agenda because of their faith.

It’s the group that put Dr. Ben Carson, one of the most respected men in America, on a list of “haters.”

It’s the group formally linked in a federal court case to domestic terror after describing an ordinary Christian organization, the Family Research Council, as a “hate” group, inspiring a man who intended mass murder to launch an attack.

Now SPLC is being used as an online resource for school teachers and children across America by Newsela.

The company describes itself as “an education technology startup dedicated to transforming the way students access the world through words.”

Get the Whistleblower Magazine’s revelations about the SPLC, in its March 2015 edition of “The Hate Racket,” the complete story of how one group fools government into equating Christians and conservatives with Klansmen and Nazis – and rakes in millions doing it.

“Our team combines powerful technological know-how with real-world experience earned in the classroom, the newsroom, and the boardroom. We publish high-interest news and nonfiction articles daily at five levels of complexity for grades 2-12 using a proprietary, rapid text-leveling process. By combining relevant and interesting nonfiction content with standards-aligned assessments, Newsela gives educators the primary solution to dramatically improve students’ literacy skills for the 21st century.”

Essentially, Newslea offers online lessons to teachers, who can use then as an ongoing resource much like the “Weekly Reader,” the Scholastic publication for school children that dates to about 1928.

It offers library resources “news” on a variety of topics and various “text sets” for teachers to use.

An announcement from Newslea explains it is offering a “new program” to “teach empathy and diversity.”

“This coming at a time when our country is seeing an uptick in bullying and hate-crimes in schools, and an increasingly divisive tone when it comes to the ‘other.’ The program entitled ‘A Mile in Our Shoes’ is designed to help kids across the country begin to soften their tone and broaden their horizons.”

For that effort, Newslea says it is “is partnering with Teaching Tolerance (a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center).”

“Newsela will feature text sets, quizzes, webinars and more designed to help educators better teach empathy and the value of diversity. The text sets will feature important articles and essays relating to veterans, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, refugees, enslaved Americans, women’s rights/groundbreaking women, people with disabilities, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latino/Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and more,” the group explains.

Under its “Text set: A mile in our shoes: Supporting articles,” Newslea reveals its agenda, with titles including “Children start believing gender stereotypes as young as 6,” “Opponents of affirmative action are using a flawed theory” and “Implicit racial bias often begins as early as preschool.”

Under SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance instructional materials, which it posts not on the SPLC site, but on the Tolerance.org site, SPLC boasts of “webinars [that] offer helpful guidance and great ideas, from our highly experienced teaching and learning specialists and from other educators in the Teaching Tolerance community.”

For example, one seminar talks about “extreme prejudice” and warns of “anti-Muslim rhetoric” following the Muslim terror attacks in Paris, San Bernardino and other cities.

“The truth is, even before the Paris attacks, the California chapter of CAIR, released survey results showing more than half of California’s Muslim students endure bullying based on their religion,” it states.

But SPLC’s source has been rejected by the FBI “due to questions about the Hamas ties of its top leaders” and was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest terror-financing case in American history.

The United Arab Emirates classifies CAIR as a terrorist organization.

Also among the SPLC teaching tools recommended by Newsela, which boasts of being used in three-quarters of U.S. schools and by over 10 million students and 1 million teachers, are titles such as “Confronting implicit bias,” “Teaching Black Lives Matter,” “Developing Empathy,” “Understanding Equity Literacy” and “Engaging Families Through Home Visits,” which instructs school teachers how to set up times to go to students’ homes, “sit down on a couch, have a normal conversation, [get] tours of the home, check out the kiddos’ selection of toys.”

Despite WND’s response to Newsela’s invitation for an “interview with our CEO,” the organization declined to respond to WND’s request for comment by publication.

‘Reckless labeling‘

WND has reported extensively on the SPLC agenda, including when in 2016 SPLC President Richard Cohen, who is paid more than $300,000 a year to run the nonprofit, was named in an Alabama Bar Association complaint for allegedly making “unethical statements” about two conservative justices on the Alabama Supreme Court, including Chief Justice Roy Moore, who have been in the organization’s crosshairs.

The complaint alleged Cohen repeatedly violated Rule 8.2 of the Rules of Professional Conduct, which states, “A lawyer shall not make a statement that the lawyer knows to be false or with reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity concerning the qualifications or integrity of a judge, adjudicatory officer or public legal officer, or of a candidate for election or appointment to judicial or legal office.”

Get the Whistleblower Magazine’s revelations about the SPLC, in its March 2015 edition of “The Hate Racket,” the complete story of how one group fools government into equating Christians and conservatives with Klansmen and Nazis – and rakes in millions doing it.

SPLC has a history of applying a “hate” label to those who disagree with its politics, including Carson.

Liberty Counsel, which also has been targeted by SPLC, said in a report last fall that by “falsely and recklessly labeling Christian ministries as ‘hate groups,’ SPLC is directly responsible for the first conviction of a man who intended to commit mass murder targeted against a policy organization in Washington, D.C.”

“On August 15, 2012, Floyd Corkins went to the Family Research Council with a gun and a bag filled with ammunition and Chick-fil-A sandwiches. His stated purpose was to kill as many employees of the Family Research Council as possible and then to smear Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their faces (because the founder of the food chain said he believed in marriage as a man and a woman). Fortunately, Mr. Corkins was stopped by the security guard, who was shot in the process. Corkins is now serving time in prison. Mr. Corkins admitted to the court that he learned of the Family Research Council by reading the SPLC’s hate map.”

WND reported a video showed Corkins entering the FRC offices and confronting Leo Johnson.

Corkins later was sentenced to prison for domestic terrorism. It was during an interview with FBI officers when Corkins named the Southern Poverty Law Center as his source of information.

Central to the case, according to the government’s document, was that Corkins “had identified the FRC as an anti-gay organization on the Southern Poverty Law Center website.”

FRC officials repeatedly have explained that they adhere to a biblical perspective on homosexuality but are not “anti-gay.”

Liberty Counsel also has sued on behalf of Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker over the speech restrictions included in the Alabama Canons of Judicial Ethics as well as a procedure that automatically suspends a judge if there has been an accusation against him.

“These provisions are being used by the Southern Poverty Law Center and its allies on the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission in an attempt to intimidate, silence, and punish Justice Parker for his originalist judicial philosophy and protected speech,” the legal organization explained.

WND reported Liberty Counsel has pointed out that under the standard SPLC uses to call group’s “hate” organizations, the Catholic Church would qualify, as well as virtually every major Christian group in the world.

The SPLC’s “hate” label also would have applied to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton before they “evolved” to become ardent supporters of “same-sex marriage,” noted Liberty Counsel Chairman Mathew Staver.

Get the Whistleblower Magazine’s revelations about the SPLC, in its March 2015 edition of “The Hate Racket,” the complete story of how one group fools government into equating Christians and conservatives with Klansmen and Nazis – and rakes in millions doing it.

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