The Missouri General Assembly is back in session, and at the top of the legislative agenda is education reform. Republican, House Majority Floor Leader, Tim Jones, confirmed this lineup in a newsletter to his constituents on January 4, 2012.
With attention being drawn to the now unaccredited Kansas City School District (joining the decades long unaccredited City of St. Louis School District), there will be free market legislation advanced regarding tuition tax credits in unaccredited districts and expanding charter schools. Other topics regarding improving Missouri’s public schools, which are funded by your tax dollars and should be accountable to every taxpayer in the State, will include the Turner Fix, the Teacher Quality Act and a Foundation Formula Fix. My goal is to make control of school districts as local as possible and the only way to accomplish that is to truly give parents the power and choice to control the tax dollars that fund the education of their children in Missouri’s public schools.
The story not conveyed to tax payers is most of the legislation proposed, so far, early into this session, promotes the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program for educational reform, and the drivers of the educational reform school bus are republicans.
The state department of Elementary and Secondary Education had already adopted common core standards, one component of RTTT implementation. Much of last year’s legislation promoted attendance across school district boarders to encourage the expansion of charter schools, the parent trigger, and teacher performance evaluation programs, all of which were elements of RTTT, and much of it was introduced by republicans.
Because none of the more than 130 education bills introduce in the House and Senate last year, passed, republican education committee leaders have invited high profile lobbyists to Missouri to help sell the Obama administration’s brand of education reform.
Many conservatives are scratching their heads at the republican support of the democrat party’s educational agenda and the media’s vast under-reporting on the issue. Doug Lasken, a retired 25 year veteran of the Los Angeles Unified School District, a current private school debate coach and language arts specialist who has consulted for the California Department of Education, WestEd and the Fordham and Pioneer Instituteshas decided to take action against their brazen deviation from republican standards.
Lasken, dedicated to his profession, says he has been
“… continually amazed at the misguided meddling of government, starting in the 80’s with bilingual education, Whole Language and “constructivist” pedagogies in science and math, and culminating now in Obama’s unnecessary and wildly expensive Common Core Standards (CCS). As our public schools sink into bankruptcy, CCS carries a price tag of $30 billion, but the Republican party and its front running candidates, supposedly opposed to reckless spending, refuse to take a stand on CCS or for that matter any educational issue, a particularly galling refusal since the republican party bills itself as the opposition, which, at least in education, it definitely is not. Compounding the GOP’s dereliction of duty is the media’s failure to treat education as a national issue.”
Because he believes he is not alone in his frustration with the GOP and the media, concerning education reform, Lasken has created the following petition. He is circulating it across the country and intends to compile signatures to raise awareness among other concerned citizens in hopes of sending a strong message to elected leadership.
We the undersigned do not agree on all things, but we are in close agreement on education, and in particular these five propositions:
1. The federal government is barred by the United States Constitution from imposing academic standards and public school curriculum on the states, the very thing it is attempting to do through the Obama administration programs Race to the Top (RttT) and the Common Core Standards (CCS).
2. In addition to imposing standards and curriculum on the states, RttT mandates that states collect extensive and detailed personal information on students, and that this information be submitted to the federal Department of Education, from which it will be available to other agencies. We oppose this on Constitutional grounds.
3. The national price tag for CCS is estimated at $30 billion (and perhaps as much as $210 billion) most of which cost is to be borne by the states. This money will enrich special interests- the publishing and testing empires- but will do very little to save America's bankrupted public schools. The undersigned believe that spending $30 billion on standards is like painting a car before junking it- good for the painters, a useless expense for the car owner.
4. The news media has decided that since conservatives object to spending money, and since conservative views are represented in the Republican party, then people who object to RttT and CCS must be represented by the Republican party. The undersigned have found, however, that the Republican party, as distinct from individual candidates, does not represent those seeking sound education policy. Time and again, at all levels from local to federal, the undersigned have encountered ignorance and indifference regarding RttT and CCS from the Republican party and the people it has helped to achieve office. Republicans as much as Democrats have been seduced by the $30 billion and slick sales talk into acquiescence to RttT and CCS.
5. Therefore, we the undersigned here state that the Republican party does not represent our views on American education, that the Republican party is in fact aligned with the Democratic party in pushing through wasteful and highly problematical Democratic programs, and that we therefore disavow allegiance to and support of the Republican party in its policies towards education, and we ask that the media acknowledge that this diminution of Republican support has occurred.
If you would like to join Lasken’s effort raise awareness about the current state of affairs regarding educational reform in America, send him an email at dlasken514@aol.com so he can add your name to the list of compiled signatures.
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