Deceptions - History of Education

THE SPECTER OF federal intervention in education has been a contentious issue since the American founding and remains so today. Nowhere does the word education appear in the Constitution. In fact, "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," according to the Tenth Amendment. Certainly, the Framers of the US Constitution never spoke of any traditional or historical partnership between the federal government and the states with regard to schooling in fact, they were entirely silent on a federal role in education, placing it among those unenumerated powers. Speaking for his colleagues at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania argued that congressional action to advance education "is not necessary."

More than 200 years later, however, the US Congress decided in 1979 to establish the US Department of Education, with considerable powers that interface with state and local policy-making. By institutionalizing the federal role in education, they seemingly validated the right of the US government to have a voice in how a student should be educated. In a time when the Constitution is under duress from many quarters, that role has been widely accepted and rarely challenged, but many opponents have spoken against the federal role over the two centuries that it has been steadily growing.

The first step took place in 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Land Grant Act, which provided federal land grants to the states for the support and expansion of agricultural colleges. When it was being debated in 1859, US Sen. James M. Mason of Virginia worried about the long-term effects of "substituting the wisdom of Congress and the discretion of Congress in the management of domestic affairs of the States " All this to be done for what? That the States may be bribed by Federal power to conform their domestic policy to Federal will.

A century later Sen. Barry Goldwater objected to the National Defense Education Act of 1958, which included twelve federal mandates on the states a regulatory pittance by twenty-first-century standards. Speaking in opposition, Senator Goldwater said that the federal government has no funds except those it extracts from the taxpayers who reside in the various States. The money that the federal government pays to State X for education has been taken from the citizens of State X in federal taxes and comes back to them, minus the Washington brokerage fee.

The legislation was adopted, foreshadowing the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which distributed nearly $ 25 billion in federal dollars by 2010, each dollar laden with strings mandating state and local educational policy. Andrew J. Rotherham, a former education adviser to President Bill Clinton during the passage of Goals 2000, which mandated various student achievement outcomes, noted that any reform you want to accomplish in Washington has to be accompanied by some sugar, some money, to buy people off [it's] essentially a bribe to the states.

On the heels of the ESEA came calls for a US Department of Education, intended to manage and streamline the increasing federal efforts' and investment in education. Again, this was not without opposition. Some believed the advent of the Department of Education amounted to a swan song for constitutionally limited government. Others saw it as a necessary concentration of power to enforce and improve education nationwide. Both views are mistaken.

As citizens, we have a responsibility to scrutinize our government institutions' in this case, the US Department of Education taking candid note of their successes and failures. How did proponents of federal intervention in education overcome the constitutional challenges? Has the Department of Education fulfilled its many promises? Is it worthy of continued existence? And if it were abolished, what would be the impact on the young people who are our future? This book hopes to answer those questions.

This thanks to Failure: The Federal Miseducation of America's Children Alger, Vicki. (Kindle Locations 173-252). Independent Institute. Kindle Edition.

Fault belongs to no one; the deck was stacked for sure;

Fault belongs to everyone, they followed the education lure!

Hopefully I can make you understand the manipulation, fraud and corruption and the people associated with our children's education that has been in place for a very long time.

James Buchanan's historical warning that inventing federal jurisdiction over educational matters would confer upon Congress a vast and irresponsible authority was ignored in 1862 during the early period of the southern insurrection.

One of the biggest charmers who has been behind everything being their way and not for the benefit of the children has been the National Education Assoc. (NEA). Just last April they wrote a blog piece accusing everyone else of being responsible for problems with the charter schools and education in general tracing it back to their advocacy and deep pockets.

Naming the Koch Brothers, Michelle Rhee and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and others as being those ahead of the "corporate education reform", I can add Chester Finn, Jr., Gerard Robinson, Eric Smith, Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Bush Cabal, Eva Moskowitz and so many, many others.

Would it surprise you to learn that the NEA almost from its inception has been working behind the scenes not for our children and not necessarily for the teachers? In 2009, Bob Chanin the retiring General Council for the NEA, at their yearly convention issued these words:

"The NEA and its affiliates are such effective advocates. Despite what some among us might like to believe, it is NOT because of our creative ideas; it is NOT because of the merit of our positions; IT IS NOT BECAUSE WE CARE ABOUT CHILDREN; and it is NOT because of a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have POWER and we have POWER because there are more than 3.2 Million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in DUES each year because they believe that we are the unions that can most effectively represent them. The unions that can best protect the rights and advance of their interests as education employees." [Link]

When in the 80's they created the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, the chairman, former North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt (who is now working along-side of Jeb Bush) described the board as the "linchpin of a larger strategy to effect the transformation of our nation"s schools. Teachers would be certified nationally (read starting at page 8 Marc Tucker's "Tough Choices or Tough Times ")

From the beginning, a majority of the board members were also members of the NEA or AFT. One would do well to remember the words of past NEA Presidents:

• Catherine Barrett "We are determined to control the direction of education"
• George Fischer -- To determine who will enter, who will stay, and who will leave the profession
• Helen Wise - "We must defeat those who oppose our goals"
• John Ryor - "We will become the foremost political power in the nation"

Every time there is a conference of some sort on how to solve our educational problems, most of the participants seem to be the very people who have been in leadership positions for the past 10-25 years while education has been going downhill. These people should be the very last that we look to for answers, but yet like a bad penny, they seem to continually end up in some position to give us their 2 cents and people listen.

If you go back to the 60-s our schools were pretty good, but then the progressive change agents told us we needed to experiment on ways to improve learning and we were already at the top of the heap.

This from this great article: THE NEA AND OTHERS PLAYING WITH OUR CHILDREN'S FUTURES.