The material calls for lawmakers to amend state laws governing school curriculums, and for textbook selection criteria to say that “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”

Fayette County attorney Hal Rounds, the group’s lead spokesman during the news conference, said the group wants to address “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.

So what does this really mean–besides the obvious implication that history in school is not about facts but propoganda? Before students figure out the truth, it means that only perfect people can serve their country and achieve great things. Any eight year old who has told a lie to his mom may as well give up the idea of becoming president.

However, sooner or later the students will figure out the truth and then what? Do something important enough, particularly in public service, and it doesn’t matter what you do in your personal life? We already have plenty of examples of supporters of “family values” who have had affairs and have been caught with prostitutes. And there are a few who have taken the next step and don’t believe certain laws don’t apply to them that they have broken any laws. Do you think it’s any coincidence that most of these people are also the one’s who support changing the laws as demanded by the Tea Party?

One final thought, the use of the word “majority” is disturbing. It suggests that we it’s okay to whitewash the inconsistencies of Thomas Jefferson but Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, or Caesar Chavez. How convenient…

The Washington Monthly

The assumption is based on an idea — Congress operates by majority rule — that should be true but isn’t. For much of the country, procedures like “filibusters,” “secret holds,” and “cloture votes” are completely foreign. Indeed, it’s very likely this contributes to public disgust with Congress — when majorities can’t even vote on their own priorities, a lot of folks throw up their arms in frustration and assume the Democratic majority is incompetent. Pointing to procedural abuses — which are the actual heart of the problem — only sounds like excuses to those who have little patience for legislative tactics.

This, in turn, creates an added motivation for Republicans to keep up their obstructionism.

What really bothers me is that the founder of an organization that seems to lobby for the group is unaware of how the senate actually works.

Dishes Still Dirty? Blame Phosphate-Free Detergent : NPR

But dirty and damaged dishes are turning many people into skeptics, including Wright.

“I’m angry at the people who decided that phosphate was growing algae. I’m not sure that I believe that,” Wright adds.

Ultimately, she’s mixing in her own phosphates.

This really got me thinking. Here’s a person who is being inconvenienced by science so she simply decides not to believe it. She doesn’t even go through the motions of finding some pseudo science to back up her belief. Furthermore, she could test this herself very easily with the phosphates she has bought. I guess she figures that she’ll believe the science that put phosphates in the detergent to begin with but not the science that takes it out.

So is this the ultimate failure of the education system? Science is okay as long as it doesn’t negatively affect me? Let’s go beyond science education and into the citizenship aspect that is oh so important to our State Board of Education. The hell with the people who make their living fishing or who need clean water to drink because I’ll have dirty dishes?

I’m sure you can make a libertarian case for this but I don’t think it’s appropriate. After all, most people agree that your freedom to swing your fist stops at my face. And most people would agree that you need to stop at the red light to have a safe traffic system. But none of this seems to apply when science is the critical element. I suspect unless phosphates start coming out of this person’s faucet with negative consequences for her health (I have no idea if this is true), this person will have problems with the science of the issue. But should that happen, she’ll want to government to take care of it will reducing her taxes….

There are roughly 2.3 million people in jails and prisons in America, more than any country in the world.

The United States has 756 people in jail per 100,000 people. No other country has more than 700, and only two are over 600 Russia (629) and Rwanda (604).

AFP: US falls to average in education ranking

The three-yearly OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, which compares the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in 70 countries around the world, ranked the United States 14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading skills, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics.

AFP: US falls to average in education ranking

The OECD report also noted that investment in education is paid back many times over.

Boosting US scores for reading, math and science by 25 points over the next 20 years would result in a gain of 41 trillion dollars for the United States economy over the lifetime of the generation born in 2010, the OECD said.

I’m not talking just about the obvious relationship that the better educated you are, the less likely you are to end up in jail. I think this reflects our attitudes towards education and criminal punishment. We can’t find a better to handle crime than to put people in jail and we can’t figure out a better way to educate our citizens than using a patched-up system developed for the factory system. It’s the origins of the “can’t” that is common to both problems.

In her book, One Nation Under God, Dunbar argues that the country’s founding fathers created “an emphatically Christian government” and believed that government should be guided by a “biblical litmus test.”

Dunbar endorses a belief system requiring “any person desiring to govern have a sincere knowledge and appreciation for the Word of God in order to rightly govern.”

She calls public education a “subtly deceptive tool of perversion.” The establishment of public schools is unconstitutional and even “tyrannical,” she writes in the book, because it threatens the authority of families, granted by God through Scripture, to direct the instruction of their children.

So who gets to decide the “biblical litmus test?” What qualifies as “sincere knowledge?” Did she really tell the voters that she thinks that public schools are unconstitutional or just say that she was for more school choice?

I’m always amazed at the calls for a more “Christian” government. Oh sure, it’s easy to exclude the Jews and Muslims but have these people actually stopped to think about how they would define legitimate “Christians” and worship from those who aren’t? Mormons in or out? After all, this is a religion that was founded in the United States. Catholics? They had an entire colony. Would it be Christians for or against torture? And which version of the Bible would we be using?

Pew Research Center: The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey Reveals a Fluid and Diverse Pattern of Faith

The Landscape Survey confirms that the United States is on the verge of becoming a minority Protestant country; the number of Americans who report that they are members of Protestant denominations now stands at barely 51%. Moreover, the Protestant population is characterized by significant internal diversity and fragmentation, encompassing hundreds of different denominations loosely grouped around three fairly distinct religious traditions — evangelical Protestant churches (26.3% of the overall adult population), mainline Protestant churches (18.1%) and historically black Protestant churches (6.9%).

Don’t they realize that probably the best reason to keep religion out of government is so that government does pick and define the religion? Of course, I’m sure she assumes that she’ll be part of the group doing the defining…

Cyhthia Dunbar, Texas State Board of Education, SBOE

No charges will be brought against New Braunfels Middle School Principal John Burks for allegedly threatening to kill a group of science teachers if their students’ standardized test scores failed to improve, although all four teachers at the meeting told police investigators Burks made the statement.

Now imagine if some student at the school had said something along the same lines in a writing assignment. We would be hearing about zero tolerance all over the place. The student would be out of the regular classroom so fast it would make your head spin.

The sad part about this is that I bet if a mere, ordinary teacher were to have made some similar statement, he or she would be treated more like the student rather than the principle.

Students at Medina Valley High School in Castroville say more of them spent the day in in-school suspension than in class because they chose to wear the color green to school after being told not to.

So now we know what’s important to students and that the school administration is more than capable of making a mountain out of a molehill.

Education | MySanAntonio.com

“I wore green because they told me, ‘well, you can’t wear green’ and seeing as how wearing green is not against the rules, I’m gonna do it just to make you mad,” Holloway said.

Some suggested links for the students and administration:

Illinois First Amendment Center

First Amendment Center

Constitutional Rights Foundation

MySA.com: KENS 5: Education

Catherine takes mostly AP courses, and under the district’s system those courses earn more points than regular classes. But for three years of soccer, she earned no points at all.

North East adopted its rank point system in 2003 because district officials said under the GPA-based system, students could make it to the top of their class simply by doing well in basic courses. They wanted the top-ranked students to be those who were most prepared for college, so they devised a system intended to encourage students to challenge themselves.

I’m astounded at this incredibly bizarre system. Apparently, the district thought it was better for students to accumulate points for the various classes rather than do a weighted average for gpa. I can see where they might go down this path. Theoretically, a senior could just take one AP class and no other classes and have a higher weighted gpa than someone who took six AP classes as a senior. But by giving absolutely no points for certain classes, the student who takes PE, Art, and Theater Arts (I’m just guessing at what might be no point classes here) is no better off point wise than the student who didn’t take any classes. Who came up with that system?

Did anyone stop to think which system, a weighted GPA system or an accumulated point system had more “non-deserving” students in the top ten percent? Given the importance of class rank, would it have been that difficult for the district to apply the various systems to past classes to see who it would sort out?

Apparently, it was so obvious to some decision makers that a weighted gpa would be more unfair than a point system that there was no question of which way to go. I just wonder how many other school districts in Texas thought it was obvious to use such system?

Technorati Tags: Class rankings, calculating class rank, Texas, gpa

UT sued for considering race in admissions

“But for her race and ethnicity, it is our belief she would have been admitted to the University of Texas,” said Edward Blum, director of the Project on Fair Representation, a legal-defense group that fights the use of race and ethnicity in public policy.

What exactly is this “belief” based on? Do Hispanics and African-Americans make up a larger percentage of the non-top ten percentage admits than Anglos (excepting athletes in money making sports, of course)? Are individuals from these groups being admitted with lower SAT scores than Anglos? How about those with a lower class rank? Is playing the cello supposed to be considered part of the admission process? If so, how does that compare to getting merely decent SAT scores at a poorly funded and poorly performing high school?

I have to admit that this is a change from the usual “my child scored 1400 on the SAT but can’t get into UT because she’s not in the top ten percent” complaint. Fisher’s SAT scores would put her in the bottom of the middle 50% for UT. It would be nice to know why they think she would be admitted under “race neutral” conditions.

Technorati Tags: UT Austin, admissions policy, racial preferences

So, yes progressives can support homeschooling.

But apparently with quite a few “ifs”. I really can’t bring myself to read through all the comments. I’m sure there is the usual education as the foundation for democracy and so on. I’m sure there are plenty of anti-homeschoolers who are certain we are isolating our children although the number of homeschoolers they personally know they probably can count on one hand. It’s just tiring.

For some reason, people think that public schools and education are the same thing. And progressives are for mandatory school attendance if the schools are teaching the “right” information just as conservatives would have no problem with requiring everyone attend public school if they were teaching the “right” conservative information.

It’s not about the quality of the schools, it’s about parental choice. And if you can’t trust parents to ensure that their children will be educated well enough to function in the “real” world, why stop with education? Why not regulate the clothing parents may buy children or how about inspecting every family’s kitchen? Why not require every two-year-old in the nation to be inspected for parental quality?

Granted, it’s a gray area and difficult to draw the line but if nothing else, consider homeschooling an escape valve for parents who don’t want their children in school for whatever reasons–too conservative, too liberal, too regimented, too dangerous, etc. If everyone grows up learning only the public school group think, who will be around to challenge it?

Technorati Tags: Progressive Homeschooling