Why is the administration wanting states to file a waiver to NCLB? Because there will be their kind of strings attached.
Read this link http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/education/163927-incentives-should-not-be-used-to-advance-national-curriculum
Come on parents get wind of what they're really trying to do while you can still do something about it. "By their fruits you shall know them." Matthew 7:16
Obama’s pick for Education secretary Arne Duncan, was head of Chicago Public Schools. He pushed for Chicago to start their first gay high school. Not kidding...
The Chicago Public Schools' first high school designed for gay, lesbian and transgender teens was recommended to the school board by CPS Chief Arne Duncan...
"If you look at national studies, you see gay and lesbian students with high dropout rates...Studies show they are disproportionately homeless," Duncan said. "I think there is a niche there we need to fill."
...Opponents have called the move a misuse of public funds--but he's used to taking advantage of public funds:
-----------------------Obama's Sec. of Ed Arne Duncan's speech at 2009 Governors Education Symposium June 14, 2009 Cary, North Carolina
He states the following:
Perfect Storm for Reform
• Obama effect
• Leadership on the Hill and the Unions
• Proven strategies for success
• The Recovery Act -- $100B
"But if all we do is save jobs, we will miss this opportunity – which is why we are also using this recovery money to drive reform"..."There has never been this much money on the table and there may never be again"
Indeeed!!!
***************Department of Education (DOE) got $4.35 billion to be used at its discretion – essentially an earmark – and used it to fund the Race to the Top competition in which part of application was requirement to agree to common core (national) standards. And in a cash strapped economy most states gave away their control for the money bait and most parents never knew.
------------------------The Plan For Parental Input Through Local School Boards? Abolish
Mr. Lou Gerstner's suggestions:
Wall Street Journal article Nov 23, 2008-- See Mr. Lou Gerstner suggestion to the president elect Obama:
..."I’m going to suggest is that he convene the 50 governors, and the first thing they do is they abolish the 16,000 school districts we have in the United States. Sixteen thousand school districts are what we’re trying to cram this reform through...
These organizations stand in the way of what we want to do.
Now, the governors could decide, we’ll keep them as advisory, we can keep them as community support, but they will not be involved in the fundamental direction of public education in America.
...They will within one year develop a national set of standards for math, science, reading and social studies. Twelve months after that they will develop a national testing regime, so that there’ll be one day in America where every third, sixth, ninth and twelfth grader will take a national test against a national curriculum."
----------------------------So They Steer Slowly But Surely
Bait and Switch on Common Standards?
By Rick Hess on February 19, 2010 7:05 AM
We've been told time and again that the current common standards push is guided by the mantra "fewer, clearer, and higher" standards...
So, imagine my surprise when I read this interview with Secretary Duncan's anti-bullying chief Kevin Jennings in the February Phi Delta Kappan magazine.
Jennings, who directs the Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, first tells PDK editor Joan Richardson that no student should worry about "find[ing] something written on your locker or if you're going to be called names in the hallway...Then we also need to make sure that all kids feel like they belong." Fair enough. Jennings elaborates, "Just as we have standards around academic goals, we need standards around school climate...And we need a data system so parents know what kind of environment a kid will encounter in a school." Well, okay.
And then it gets weird. Phi Delta Kappan asks, "So, you want to include this in the Common Core standards?"
Jennings says, "Yes. If we don't get this one right, the other ones don't matter. Right now, they're really focused on the academic standards. This one is much newer. We have to build understanding of the concept first." He went on: "We're not first up to bat, and I'm not troubled by that. The Common Core movement is right to start on the things where there's already widespread agreement. We're way down the road."
Seriously? A high-ranking administration official is telling us that the common standards being financed by $350 million in Race to the Top funds "start" with academics but will eventually encompass "school climate" standards too? Jennings raises further red flags when he concedes that we have not determined "the definition of school climate," though he says it "does not include air conditioning" but does include kids feeling "emotionally safe." Maybe it's my cynical streak, but that sounds like a summons to social agendas, culture clashes, and political fisticuffs. In other words, the stuff that sinks standards.
Mr. Jennings' remarks raise concerns about the old bait-and-switch. If he is speaking for Secretary Duncan and the President, they seem to have been less than truthful so far when discussing their vision for common standards.
---------------------------Enter Making A Tool Out of Title IX
“Bullying -- an Agenda”
by Donna Garner
10.26.10 Excerpts:
For some time, many of us have been warning America about Kevin Jennings who was Obama and Arne Duncan’s choice at the U. S. Department of Education for the position of Assistant Deputy Secretary for Safe and Drug-Free Schools.
Jennings is the founder of Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and was the director until 2008. GLSEN is the organization that was responsible for transporting public school students during the school day (March 25, 2000) to a conference where they were taught about “fisting.” (To find out what this disgusting term means, please go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisting .) GLSEN is also the organization behind the Day of Silence in the public schools.
Kevin Jennings promotes homosexuality in K-12 and is doing so under the guise of the “bullying” curriculum that is permeating our public schools.
The Obama administration is deliberately taking the Title IX federal law and distorting the verbiage to include gender identity.
Title IX does not include gender identity; it says that harassment based on race, color, national origin, sex, or disability violates the federal civil rights laws. The Obama administration, however, has taken it upon themselves to include lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender under the word “sex.”
Now the Obama administration is threatening public school educators with the USDOE’s misinterpretation of the Title IX law and making educators fear prosecution unless they promote the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) lifestyle as normal.
Yes, all students should be taught to treat others with dignity; and bullying is a terrible problem. But forcing students to accept a perverse lifestyle that leads students into sexually transmitted diseases and early death is not something that schools should be advocating.
Tolerance is a good thing to teach students, but educators should not be intimidated into forcing students to accept perversity.
From 2005-2008…Most (74%) diagnoses of HIV infection in adults and adolescents were in males. Among males diagnosed with HIV infection from 2005-2008, 70% were attributed to male-to-male sexual contact. The percentage of diagnosed HIV infections attributed to male-to-male sexual contact was even larger (85%) among males aged 13 to 24 years. http://www.educationnews.org/breaking_news/health/101841.html )
Can America afford to deny the facts on the numbers killed by this lifestyle that is being promoted?
----------------Extending the greatest level of protection to who?
Two bills that seeks to promote and protect this lifestyle:
Two bills in Congress, however, seek to provide greater protection for LGBT students, beyond bullying that is based on sexual harassment or gender stereotyping. The Student Nondiscrimination Act (SNDA) would prohibit discrimination—including harassment—on the basis of real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity in any program receiving federal funds. The Safe Schools Improvement Act (SSIA) would require schools receiving federal funds to implement and report on LGBT-inclusive anti-bullying programs. Versions of both bills are still pending in House and Senate committees.
Federal departments and their employees are prohibited by law from lobbying Congress about specific legislation, but Ali said Monday that the Department supports the goals of both bills. She said that, as the Department works to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the major act guiding educational policy, “we will certainly use all of the policy tools within our disposal to try and prevent this kind of harassment from occurring.”
Jennings said the new guidance was the first step to letting people know that, “in this administration, we plan to apply the letter of the law to the fullest extent of the law in order to extend the greatest level of protections humanly possible to LGBT students.”
------------------School Boards Group Questions U.S. Guidance on Bullying--Changing the Wording of The Standard
By Mark Walsh on December 15, 2010 10:02 AM
In the October guidance from the Office for Civil Rights, Ali said certain peer harassment in schools based on sex-role stereotyping or religious differences may amount to violations of existing federal civil rights laws. (Education Week had this story.)
Negron said the OCR letter "significantly expands" the standard of liability for schools over peer harassment beyond the standard established by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 1999 case, Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education. In that case, the court said schools could only be held liable for peer sexual harassment when they had "actual knowledge" of the harassment, and the activity was so "severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive" that it effectively barred the victim's access to an educational program or benefit.
By contrast, the OCR letter, Negron asserts, potentially would hold a school district liable for harassment about which "it knows or should have known," and covers harassment that is "severe, pervasive, or persistent" and that merely "interferes" with or limits participation in an educational program. Each prong of OCR's guidance softens the Davis standard, Negron said.
Negron raises several other concerns about the OCR letter. The letter states that school districts are required to eliminate harassment and the hostile environment it creates, and to prevent it from recurring. But the Supreme Court's Davis decision explicitly rejected the idea that schools must "remedy" peer harassment, Negron said.
Negron also says the OCR letter only "minimally" recognizes the First Amendment free speech rights of students and fails to recognize the constitutional limitations on school districts' ability to discipline students for protected speech.
Hence they get the results they want :
--------------Fort Worth school district expands anti-bullying policy to protect 'gender identity and expression'
Posted Wednesday, Jun. 29, 2011
By Eva-Marie Ayala
eayala@star-telegram.com
FORT WORTH -- The Fort Worth school district has expanded its anti-bullying policy to protect students who express themselves -- including their sexuality -- in nontraditional ways, a move that gay-rights advocates say is positive and progressive.
The amended anti-harassment policy now includes "gender identity and expression" protection for students and was approved without discussion by trustees Tuesday. The school district is believed to be the first in the state to adopt such a policy.
Published : Wednesday, 21 Sep 2011, 4:48 PM CD
Lari Barager
FOX 4 News
Adapted for Web by Tracy DeLatte | myFOXdfw.com
FORT WORTH, Texas
Fourteen-year-old Dakota Ary spent most of the day Tuesday serving an in-school suspension. It was punishment for discussion in his German class at Fort Worth’s Western Hills High School.
“We were talking about religions in Germany. I said, ‘I’m a Christian. I think being a homosexual is wrong,’” he said. “It wasn’t directed to anyone except my friend who was sitting behind me. I guess [the teacher] heard me. He started yelling. He told me he was going to write me an infraction and send me to the office.”
“At first I was in disbelief. My son is on the honor roll with great grades. I don’t have any problems out of him,” Holly Pope said...“He was stating an opinion. He has a right to do that. They punished him for it,” she said.
Attorney Matt Krause joined Ary and his mom at a Wednesday morning meeting with the principal. They asked for the blemish to be taken off his record and reassurance there would be no retaliation.
“Students don’t lose their first amendment rights just because they go in the schoolhouse door,” Krause said.
Kevin Jennings has said he looks forward to the day when “promoting homosexuality” in schools will be seen in a positive light --his dream is being realized through public education--but wake up parents--the ugly reality is this lifestyle kills.
No one should be bullied and indeed there are states that have done a good job at dealing with this across the board without raising one group over all--please call Congress and stop the insanity--our children are helpless--you have to stand in the gap.
Call your Congress and tell them to Defund Common Core Standards which is being used as part of the requirement to get a waiver out of No Child Left Behind. Get your legislator to vote to Defund in the House and get the nation's eyes on this as not enough parents know the plans the administration has for their children and if the people calls-the Senators who want to win in the next election may consider the cost.
Wake up America lack of knowledge and apathy on common core standards is dangerous for your family!
Visit http://truthinamericaneducation.com/
http://www.avert.org/worldstats.htm
People living with HIV/AIDS in 2009 33.3 million 31.4-35.3 million
Adults living with HIV/AIDS in 2009 30.8 million 29.2-32.6 million
Women living with HIV/AIDS in 2009 15.9 million 14.8-17.2 million
Children living with HIV/AIDS in 2009 2.5 million 1.6-3.4 million
People newly infected with HIV in 2009 2.6 million 2.3-2.8 million
Adults newly infected with HIV in 2009 2.2 million 2.0-2.4 million
AIDS deaths in 2009 1.8 million 1.6-2.1 million
Orphans (0-17) due to AIDS in 2009 16.6 million 14.4-18.8 million
The cumulative estimated number of deaths of persons with an AIDS diagnosis in the United States and dependent areas, through 2008, was 617,025. In the 50 states and the District of Columbia, this included 589,547 adults and adolescents, and 4,949 children under age 13 years at death.http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/basic.htm#ddaids