Agenda 21 For Dummies

They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools

12-year-old girl banned from wearing rosary necklace at school

Rosary necklace banned for being a

'gang symbol' at Nebraska school

by Michael Zennie

School administrators in a Nebraska town of 26,000 told a middle school girl to take off her cross necklace because it looks too much like a rosary, which they say is being used by gang members.

Twelve-year-old Elizabeth Cary says her necklace is a reminder of her faith. And she vowed to stand up for what she believes in and fight the Fremont, Neb., school district, where she is a sixth grader.

The local Catholic archdioceses has condemned the decision to ban rosaries from schools and says administrators should be smart enough to tell which students are at risk for gang activity.

Taphorn told KETV-7 in Omaha, Neb., that the ban on rosaries is an infringement on Elizabeth's rights to freely practice her religion.

'It makes me feel like I want to scream really bad,' Elizabeth told the TV station.

Little Elizabeth said she doesn't even know what a gang is and doesn't understand why the school won't let her wear her necklace any more.

'I’m deciding to stand up for Jesus and do whatever I can to stop this,' she said.

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Obama Exempting Schools From Testing Mandate

by Donna Gordon Blankinship

(AP) - State and local education officials have been begging the federal government for relief from student testing mandates in the federal No Child Left Behind law, but school starts soon and Congress still hasn't answered the call.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he will announce a new waiver system Monday to give schools a break.

The plan to offer waivers to all 50 states, as long as they meet other school reform requirements, comes at the request of President Barack Obama, Duncan said. More details on the waivers will come in September, he said.

The goal of the No Child Left Behind law is to have every student proficient in math and reading by 2014. States have been required to bring more students up to the math and reading standards each year, based on tests that usually take place each spring. The step-by-step ramping up of the 9-year-old law has caused heartburn in states and most school districts, because more and more schools are labeled as failures as too few of their students meet testing goals.

Critics say the benchmarks are unrealistic and brands schools as failures even if they make progress. Schools and districts where too few kids pass the tests for several years are subject to sanctions that can include firing teachers or closing the school entirely.

Through the waivers, schools will get some relief from looming deadlines to meet testing goals as long as they agree to embrace other kinds of education reforms such as raising standards, helping teachers and principals improve, and focusing on fixing the lowest performing schools.

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ACLU Attacks God and Children, Again

by Mark Baisley

Last Tuesday, June 21, 2011, the ACLU filed its latest lawsuit against an American school district for violating their “separation between church and state” mantra. The specific offense is allowing parents to spend vouchers for their children at schools that have a religious foundation.

The famous words, “wall of separation between church and state” came from a letter of assurance from President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Church. That same letter from Jefferson also includes the sentiments, “I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and Creator of man.”

And yet, there is no insistence by the courts nor the ACLU that public schools recognize the Father and Creator of man.

Thomas Jefferson was not a fan of having a Bill of Rights in the Constitution.

Yet his unofficial words that were never debated, voted on, nor ratified have become the phrase used to hammer school districts who would dare allow voluntary attendance to schools that acknowledge an intelligent design behind the science that they teach.

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California to Require Gay Agenda in School Textbooks

California to require homosexual/transgender

Americans added to school textbooks

Study Finds Glaring Bloopers in Texas Science Curricula

by Discovery Institute

Austin, TX—According to a study released today by the non-profit Discovery Institute, bogus embryo drawings, long-debunked claims about tonsils, and outdated information from a 1950s lab experiment highlight the glaring bloopers found in proposed science curricula currently being considered by the Texas State Board of Education.

“Retro-science must be in, because the proposed curricula are filled with outdated scientific claims,” said Casey Luskin, a policy and education analyst with Discovery Institute. “It’s truly amazing how much discredited information keeps getting recycled year after year.”

In order to satisfy state educational standards set in 2009 (TEKS), the Board of Education asked publishers to submit supplementary curricula that would enable students to “analyze and evaluate” core aspects of evolutionary theory, and to “examin[e] all sides of scientific evidence of those scientific explanations, so as to encourage critical thinking.” But according to Discovery Institute‘s 70-page study, only one curriculum out of the 10 evaluated managed to comply with the TEKS as well as avoid glaring scientific errors.

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Marine Not Allowed To Wear Uniform For High School Graduation

Federal Judge Lifts Ban on Prayer in Valedictorian Speech

Schools arrange secret abortions

Schools are helping teenage girls

keep abortions secret from their parents

Imogen Neale

A MOTHER is angry her 16-year-old daughter had a secret abortion arranged by a school counsellor.

Helen, not her real name, found out about the termination four days after it had happened. "I was horrified. Horrified that she'd had to go through that on her own, and horrified her friends and counsellors had felt that she shouldn't talk to us," she said.

She had suspected something was wrong, but her daughter insisted her tears were over everyday teenage dramas.

But Helen confronted her daughter's friends, who said the counsellor had taken the girl for a scan and to doctors. "I didn't know that they could do that."

Helen said teachers could discuss how a student was doing in school or phone parents when their child misbehaved, but would then keep life-changing situations such as abortions secret.

Her daughter had since told her the counsellor "wasn't very forthcoming" with advice. The counsellor did ask the girl if she had talked to her parents, but never pursued it.

Helen said follow-up counselling for her daughter was "nonexistent".

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Remembering Our Defenders

Glenn Beck talks with Teachers about education problems

Teacher Watches as Student Beats Classmate in Head

Mexican-American Propaganda in the Tucson School District

Tennessee elementary students sing “Boycott big business”

Mississippi judge demands homeschool student IDs

by Bob Unruh

A Mississippi state judge has issued an order to public school attendance officers in his judicial district to provide the names of all homeschoolers there, prompting alarm at the Home School Legal Defense Association, which fights for the rights of homeschooling worldwide.

The order apparently is because the judge himself wants the information, as there appeared to be no case, motion or dispute prompting the request.

The HSLDA, which was alerted by its members in the 13th Chancery Court district in Mississippi, where Judge Joe Dale Walker issued the order, immediately sought and obtained a stay of the order from the state Supreme Court.

The judge's order noted that the "cause" for the order "came on for hearing on the court's own motion," but the HSLDA said apparently no hearing ever was held – and the order is the only document in the court file.

It also has no case number, the organization said.

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Homeschooled Girl Forced Into Public School

NH Supreme Court: homeschooled girl must

go to public school against mom’s wishes

by John-Henry Westen

CONCORD, NH, March 17, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The New Hampshire Supreme Court upheld a lower court order Wednesday that sided with the father of a homeschooled student and forced her into a government-run school against her Christian mother’s wishes.

Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) attorney John Anthony Simmons, who represented the mother, who is divorced from the father, argued that the burden of proof was on the father to prove harm in order to change the schooling arrangement. Because no harm was demonstrated and the girl was acknowledged to be academically superior and socially interactive, even by the court, Simmons argued that the homeschooling arrangement should not have been changed.

However, in the original order issued in July 2009, Judge Lucinda V. Sadler reasoned that the girl’s “vigorous defense of her religious beliefs to [her] counselor suggests strongly that she has not had the opportunity to seriously consider any other point of view.”

“Parents have a fundamental right to make educational choices for their children,” responded Simmons. “Courts can settle disputes, but they cannot legitimately order a child into a government-run school on the basis that her religious views need to be mixed with other views. That’s precisely what the lower court admitted it was doing.”

“The lower court held the Christian faith of this mother and daughter against them,” Simmons said. “Unfortunately, the Supreme Court bypassed this issue and wrote this off as a ‘parent versus parent’ issue without recognizing the very real underlying threat to religious liberty.”

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Students Score Better With Teachers Paid for Performance

by Ludger Woessmann

Countries with performance pay for teachers score higher on PISA tests

American 15-year-olds continue to perform no better than at the industrial-world average in reading and science, and below that in mathematics. According to the results of the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests, released in December 2010 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United States performed only at the international average in reading, and trailed 18 and 23 other countries in science and math, respectively. Students in China’s Shanghai province outscored everyone.

But is there anything in the data the OECD has accumulated to give policymakers reason to believe that merit pay works? Do the countries that pay teachers based on their performance score higher on PISA tests? Based on my new analysis, the answer is yes. A little-used survey conducted by the OECD in 2005 makes it possible to identify the developed countries participating in PISA that appear to have some kind of performance pay plan. Linking that information to a country’s test performance, one finds that students in countries with performance pay perform at higher levels in math, science, and reading. Specifically, students in countries that permit teacher salaries to be adjusted for outstanding performance score approximately one-quarter of a standard deviation higher on the international math and reading tests, and about 15 percent higher on the science test, than students in countries without performance pay.

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Letter from Teacher: 'Americans Stole Our Land'

New York City schools get one teacher for the price of two

by Susan Edelman

In the city's funny math, you get only one teacher for the price of two.

The Department of Education pays about 1,500 teachers for time they spend on union activities -- and pays other teachers to replace them in the classroom.

It's a sweetheart deal that costs taxpayers an extra $9 million a year to pay fill-ins for instructors who are sprung -- at full pay -- to carry out responsibilities for the United Federation of Teachers.

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