• More Globaloney
• School-to-Work in Texas
• Goals 2000 - Silent Takeover
• Return Competition to Classroom
• Gag Order for Chaplains
• Work vs. Welfare
• Cliff Notes
• Quotes

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      We have a habit of picking up a phrase and repeating it until it becomes a cliché and then elevating it to the status of a mantra with the power to paralyze a journalist's brain.
      Here's an example: "We must prepare our children to compete in the global economy."
      How many times have you heard or read that? The trouble is, it's nonsense.
      #1 It implies that the global economy is something new that Americans have never had to cope with. That's just ignorance. Americans have been participating in a global economy since the days they called themselves loyal subjects of his majesty, King George.
      #2 So far as their work is concerned, the overwhelming majority of Americans will not compete in the global economy. The bulk of the American economy is domestic.
      #3 Individuals rarely compete in the global economy. Offhand, the only people I can think of would be entertainers, lawyers and mercenaries. Mostly, it's a few American corporations that compete in foreign markets, and many of them compete by building plants overseas staffed by nationals of the country where the plant is located. In 1991, U.S. direct investment abroad was $450 billion.
      In 1994, American exports accounted for $513 billion. That year, like most years, we imported more than we exported, so the net effect of foreign trade was a minus $151 billion.
      Thus, unless your child plans to operate in the overseas sales and marketing division of a large corporation, the global economy, as far as his education is concerned, is just another example of globaloney.
      You will notice that people who say we must prepare American children to compete in the global economy never get around to saying just how they propose to do that. How do you prepare a carpenter, plumber, bricklayer, machinist, librarian or truck driver to compete in the global economy?
      Suppose you are a machinist who works for Boeing, which competes in the global economy. It makes no difference. The machinist's skills are the same whether the plane he's working on is going to be sold domestically or overseas.
      Actually, all the globaloney is just propaganda to mask some bad trade policies and some unconscionable practices of American corporations that prefer cheap foreign labor to American workers.
      The more important point is that the people laboring in schools to convert little savages into competent human beings have enough problems without being showered by political journalistic fertilizer.
      American children need to learn today what they have always needed to learn: how to read, write and speak their own language; how to use math; the history and philosophy of their own country and its institutions; geography; something about the basic sciences; literature; art; music; and a skill that will be marketable in the great American domestic economy.
      If we fund the schools, reduce class sizes, cut the crap out of the curricula added by politicians and bureaucrats and enforce iron discipline, our education system's problems will vanish.
      Let us prepare American children to be strong Americans, and they will handle any competition that comes along.
      Toss the globaloney into the trash, where it belongs.

Source: Conservative Chronicle, 10/9/96

       In 1995, the Texas Legislature merged 28 employment, training and education initiatives, including School-to-Work, from several state agencies into the New Texas Workforce Commission (TWC). This move was spearheaded by the Texas Council on Workforce and Economic Competitiveness (TCWEC), and a legislatively mandated Design Committee. Also, in 1995, the Legislature rewrote the entire public education code for grades K-12.
       Now Texas is aligning all its federal funds for education and training into a workforce development system. The system is spelled out in the state application, recently signed by Governor George W. Bush, for $61 million dollars over five years under the federal School-to-Work Opportunities (STW) Act. The application aligns STW, workforce and education. The following are components of the grant:

• HB 1863, passed during the 1995 Legislative Session, required a Skills Standard Board which parallels the National Skills Standards Board set up under Goals 2000. This Board will attempt to identify the skills and certification necessary for every major industry by "validating" national skill standards.
• The grant states that employer needs and skill standards must drive the STW system. Business will be asked to set the knowledge and skills, prepare students through work experience and assess and certify the student's skills. Schools will become "market-driven" by linking curriculum to employer needs, targeting job markets that will hopefully exist when students graduate. Schools must please businesses; parental input will be replaced by the job market.
• Curriculum and instructional programs will be based on the new skill standards. The STW Act, under which this grant is submitted, and Goals 2000 require state proposals to integrate academic and career curricula. The grant cites the fact that the new Education Code mandates a curriculum that prepares youth with "skills and knowledge needed in a globally competitive work environment." The newly revised and highly controversial Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) will promote non-academic results (outcomes). Local school districts will have NO choice; they will be required to use the new outcome-based TEKS, which according to a Houston lawyer who reviewed the 2,000 page document, "...promote(s) a social agenda, not education; they are generic, standardless, lack accountability, dwell upon emotions and feelings, eschew knowledge and skills, and are a disaster for the classroom teacher and the student."
• The Texas Master Plan for Career and Technical Education is listed as a supporting document to the grant proposal. The Plan calls for the total elimination of ability grouping of students by developing "career pathways," which it recommends for all students. Grades K-7 will incorporate career awareness and counseling into regular classroom activities, so that by grade 7, kids can make "informed" career decisions. By grade 9, all students will chose a "career pathway" that must contain a paid work experience opportunity (students will leave school during the day to work). There is little flexibility; at this point a student will be locked into a career. Considerable time and money will be required if he ever changes his mind.
• The skill standards will be adopted by the state and integrated into the TAAS test in order to assess workforce skills.
• Texas schools will issue skill certificates called Certificates of Initial Mastery (CIM) and Advanced Master (CAM), which will eventually replace high school diplomas. Bottom line: no certificate, no job. Will graduates of private schools be required to obtain CIM/CAM?
• The Texas Education Agency will administer a contract for $1.9 million over five years for professional development. The state will implement the professional development plan developed previously for STW in Texas. The plan calls for teacher training in the U.S. Labor Department's SCANS skills, the integration of academic and technical education, authentic assessment (measures student performances which demonstrate what student think, do, and have become), cooperative learning, OBE, and Total Quality Management (federal gov't sets the standard for business and education) as key training topics.
• Texas will deploy STW systems in 28 regions, 20 regions have already drawn up plans. Local Workforce Development Boards must be certified and receive training from the state and prove, with documentation, that they are familiar with the components of the federal STW program. Ultimately, local workforce boards will work with local school boards to make STW a reality. Appointed local workforce boards will form a shadow government which could usurp authority from elected school board members.
• Federal funds for STW are only "venture capital" and slated to last five years. The grant states that "non-federal support is mandated" and gives several methods of financing the system. Funds now used for education must be "redirected" to serve the goals of STW. Local areas will be required to raise private funds by "partnerships through private and local government contributions" (i.e. putting the arm on businesses to contribute and/or a citizen tax "contribution"). Experts will be hired to raise funds from foundations.
• Texas will hire expensive out-of-state experts to implement the Texas system.
• The state will begin a five year marketing strategy directed at businesses, students, schools and homeschoolers, using billboards, radio/TV infomercials and brochures. All students, in and out of public schools, will have access to STW opportunities through identification of potential barriers and effective ways of overcoming them. Homeschoolers are identified as a barrier and a marketing plan will be directed at them.
• Information on all citizens and labor markets will be collected on a data base and tracked. According to the grant, Texas has one of the two best automated follow-up systems in the nation and plans to expand this system.
• The heads of key Texas agencies have signed an agreement committing their agency, staff and resources to support and implement this plan. Governor Bush's office has committed to provide leadership and direction (bureaucracy) to the overall efforts of the state's STW, which will bring a full scale STW system into reality within five years. The state's Education Code that mandates compliance with federal legislation will force schools into the program. What happened to the promised local control?

WHAT YOU CAN D0: Since 1995, when the Texas Workforce Commission was established by an amendment to the welfare reform bill, we have written extensively about its scheme which mirrors the German educational system. That system is being debated even in Germany, because it has failed to prepare their children for the workforce. Many of their "career tracks" are outdated by the time a student finishes school. The system's lack of flexibility has left them behind while America has outdistanced them with innovation. What Americans invent, the Germans and Japanese try to improve upon. Today, their economies are almost entirely dependent upon marketing American ideas and inventions. Their over-regulated, over-taxed industries are moving in mass to Third World countries where they hire slave laborers. Workforce training stifles creativity by funneling our children into government-laid tracks. Why should Texas ditto a failed system?
      Everyone agrees that schools must teach the basics first, that students entering the business world are not proficient in them. But this plan raises serious questions about freedom and academics.
      Texans believed Governor Bush's campaign promise that "What Texans can dream, Texans can do." Let's stand together against the federal takeover of our schools, freedoms and our children's futures. Call Gov. Bush at 1-800-252-9600.

      Virginia Governor George Allen is going after Goals 2000 like a defensive lineman with a plodding quarterback in his sights. And with the help of Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, a fellow Republican, Mr. Allen could succeed before month's end in sacking this bloated 1994 enactment to restructure education.
      Fans of Big Government are not pleased.
      Last week, Democratic Rep. James Moran of Virginia's 8th District and U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley made a big show of Virginia's unused $6.7 million portion of Goals 2000 being dished in McNugget nibbles to other states. The reallocation resulted from Gov. Allen's refusal to sign on or to allow local school boards to take the federal bait.
      But there is another way to look at the supposed "cost" to Virginia of non-participation: This is a price of freedom, which is precious and gravely endangered by federal steps toward establishment of official knowledge.
      Because of Mr. Allen's stand, Virginia's independently developed Standards of Learning (SOL)--widely hailed as the best academic benchmarks in the country--do not have to be submitted to Washington for any watering down to placate the self-esteem cultists.
      Furthermore, because Mr. Allen hung tougher than any other governor, Virginia's Board of Education now is free to develop Standards of Accreditation holding schools accountable for teaching SOL content in English, math, science, and history--again without having to ask the Goals 2000 mod squads, if this comports with their idea of assessing students according to how they feel about their inner selves or how meekly they work in groups.
      Now Mr. Gregg, who long has shared Mr. Allen's concern about federalized education, is sponsoring a rider to the 1997 Labor/HHS Education appropriations bill that would permit Virginia (and presumably other states) to use Goals 2000 dollars strictly to buy classroom technology, free of any supervision by Washington. And Tuesday, Rep. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), introduced a bill with 44 co-sponsors to repeal Goals 2000.
      That is what Congress supposedly intended with a round of budget amendments last April that trimmed a little of the prescriptive bureaucracy from Goals 2000, along with opportunity-to-learn (per-pupil spending) standards. Another change permitted localities in non-participating states to apply directly to Washington for Goals 2000 dollars, if their state education boards flashed the green light.
      Republican congressional leaders right to Bob Dole sent word to governors that it looked safe to take the bucks; Goals 2000 had been turned, de facto, into a block grant.
      Ah, but the Allen administration thought to ask the U.S. Department of Education for assurances that it, in fact, would butt out. And Mr. Riley replied that no, Virginia would not be free from his agency's insistence on development of a comprehensive plan with Goals 2000 components (which cover parent training, multicultural textbooks, school-based health clinics, teacher seminars in "gender equality"--the whole waterfront of political correctness--as well as co-called performance standards, which are integral to Outcome-Based Education).
      At one time, six states--Virginia, New Hampshire, Alabama, Montana, Oklahoma, and California--were spurning Goals 2000. But after the round of April's Fool's "compromise," the wails of Big Education lobbyists grew louder. It became easy to demagogue the issue by ignoring the federal dictates still embedded in Goals 2000 and simply screaming about children being "shortchanged" a few cents per day in federal aid.
      So one by one, the holdout states either signed on or let their local school boards join the juggernaut. Virginia now is the last holdout.
      Alabama's Board of Education was the most recent to capitulate. Acting August 22 after supposed pledges on noninterference from Mr. Riley, it will distribute $7.3 million to its localities to be used for technology.
      An examination of the correspondence between Mr. Riley and a member of the Alabama board, however, shows that the secretary ceded none of his meddling prerogatives.
      Mr. Riley wrote on Aug. 2 that states and localities have "considerable flexibility" in spending Goals 2000 funds "as they develop and carry out the education improvement plans described in the Act." That says there still must be a plan pleasing to the federal lords and is must be executed. He added that "within this context," Alabama could spend all its money on local technology grants...but wait there was more..."and on comprehensive state education improvement plan." Clearly, this leaves Alabamans on the hook. They've been snookered.
      Mr. Gregg wants his rider to remove Mr. Riley's wiggle room. Mr. Moran has groused that this would render Goals 2000 "little more than a technology block grant." Well, yes, Sherlock, that's precisely the point.
      The key question is whether Mr. Gregg's rider will emerge as tamper-proof after negotiations among staffers in the Senate appropriations subcommittee headed by Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter.
      A semantic trap could be set that would draw in the final holdout and make Goals 2000 participation universal. That's always been the intent because, despite all the prattle about the program's being "voluntary," this is a plan--dovetailing with nation workforce development ("school-to-work")--to nationalize schooling. The extreme pressure from the Clinton administration to bring everyone on board indicates as much.
      Allen administration insiders say if the rider is ambiguous, the governor will continue to keep Virginia outside the Goals 2000 web. Standing on principle, with few staunch political supporters, is difficult. But freedom would be more secure for all Americans if Goals 2000 were eliminated, root and branch. Someday George Allen may get the credit he deserves for daring to challenge the hushed takeover of American education.

WHAT YOU CAN D0: To further understand the "education reforms" that would radically transform America through the public schools, Phyllis Schlafy has produced an excellent video entitled "Crisis in the Classroom." The video contains interviews with those on the frontlines of the education battle and documents the dramatic changes in American education in the past 50 years. It exposes both the hidden agendas of the education establishments and the growing grassroots opposition to their plans. To order, please send a $25 check to Eagle Forum, Box 618, Alton, IL 62002 or call toll-free 1-888-500-5262. Also, you may want to contact Gov. Bush at 1-800-252-9600 and ask him to return Texas schools to Texas by joining Virginia's Gov. Allen in refusing future Goals 2000 money.

      When it comes to the Olympic Games, everyone seems to understand that competition produces the winners and the record-breakers. It's unlikely that the athletes could reach such heights of achievement and endurance of they were not competing against other athletes who are closely matched in skills and putting forth their best.
      Some people, however, are at war against the whole concept of competition. They think it is undemocratic, unfair and elitist. It's a sign of the times that, in Cecil County, MD, basketball is now played by some very unusual rules.
      If one basketball team is 10 points ahead of the other, additional baskets don't count until the underdog team catches up. No record is kept of who scores how many baskets, so no player can ever be recognized as the star of the team.
      This system should be called Outcome-Based Basketball because it's just like Outcome-Based Education (OBE) that has spread through our public schools like a contagious disease. OBE is sometimes called Performance-Based Education.
      OBE's advocates mouth the mantra "self-esteem." Since the lack of self-esteem is postulated to be the cause of all social ills (crime, illegal drugs, teen-age pregnancies, AIDS, and low SAT scores), OBE's primary goal is to inculcate self-esteem.
      There is no evidence that lack of self-esteem causes those problems, nor is there any evidence that having self-esteem causes students to score better in academic subjects. At best, teaching self-esteem is a waste of precious classroom time, and, at worst, it's teaching the wrong lesson, that it's OK to feel good about doing poorly in school.
      Self-esteem should be the reward that comes from achievement and hard work. It should be earned. But lack of evidence doesn't slow down the self-esteem peddlers because this mantra advances their goal of eliminating all competition from the school experience.
      OBE has been properly labeled a dumbing-down of public school education. But it's even worse than reducing the amount of knowledge covered and failing to teach essential skills such as reading.
      The combination of OBE and self-esteem eliminates competition as a learning mechanism. This destroys the students' incentive to be the best they can be, and it destroys the school's accountability because parents have no way to measure what their children are doing.
      In an OBE school, the traditional A, B, C, D, and F are replaced by letters that are meaningless in terms of specific academic achievement, such as S for Satisfactory (sometimes it just means Sometimes) or G for Growth. William Glasser's 1969 book, Schools Without Failure led the charge against traditional grades.
      Mr. Glasser also argued that giving homework is unfair and elitist because A and B students usually do their homework, whereas poor students don't, thus widening the gap between those who succeed and those who fail in school. He even opposed objective tests because they require students to give correct answers, in contrast to tests that ask questions for which there are no right answers.
      The anti-competition movement is galloping across America. Schools are getting rid of their honor roll, honors courses, class rankings, academic prizes, and even valedictorians. Spelling bees are out. In fact, even correct spelling is out; it's replaced by inventive spelling (so students can spell words any way they want).
      Ability grouping, or tracking, is forbidden as elitist, undemocratic, or even racist. Pity the poor teacher who has to present a single course of study to eighth graders whose reading ability ranges from the second to the 12th grades. This problem is getting worse with the mainstreaming of the learning disabled.
      OBE does not allow any student to progress faster or farther than the slowest child in the class. This system conceals the fact that some children aren't learning much of anything.
      What is the teacher to do with the faster learners after they complete the assigned material? They are required to do peer tutoring (trying to tutor the slower pupils) or "horizontal enrichment." The former is a frustration for all students, and the latter is busywork.
      Cooperative Learning, in which students receive a group grade, is another means of concealing who does the assignment accurately and who goofs off. The brighter students soon learn that their effort is not rewarded, and the slower students learn that there's no reason to try because someone will give them answers.
      The testing system has been corrupted. Not only do all students score "above average" (a marvel of statistical fakery), but many tests are peppered with questions that ask for non-objective responses about feelings, attitudes or predictions, or which have a built-in bias toward political correctness.
      The response to the dramatic decline in SAT scores over the last two decades has resulted, not in toughening the curriculum, but in raising every student's score 100 points, so now students get perfect scores even if they have some wrong answers. This is one more way of concealing the distinction between average and above-average students.
      Competition needs to be restored if schools are to prepare students for life. Children should learn early that life is competition, and the rewards go to those who work hard, persevere and achieve.

      The President has slapped a gag order on armed-services holy men who oppose partial-birth abortions. The prohibition applies to all official pastoral duties; including sermons, confessions, counseling and teaching.
      The controversy erupted in May, when Catholic officials urged chaplains to decry the evils of partial-birth abortion and join a post-card crusade to hector the president and members of Congress.
      Myrna Wolcott of the U.S. Air Force headquarters warned in a memo that any support for the anti-abortion campaign would violate Pentagon directives against political activism. She also enclosed an opinion by the Air Force judge advocate general, who said Air Force members "may not participate in political activities while on duty, while wearing a uniform, badge, insignia or other similar item that identifies his position." He went on to explain that religious service "carries with it unique responsibilities and limitations that have been imposed by Congress to insure the separation of our military forces from political issues."
      The edict covers not just partial-birth abortion but any issue that may come before Congress. If clergymen talk about any actual political controversy, they could wind up sharing a federal prison cell with drug kingpins, cop killers or former senior Clinton aides.
      Kevin Hasson of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty complains that "for the first time in American history, priests, ministers, rabbis and imams are being told under threat of criminal prosecution how they must preach."
      In trying to shut up prelates and preachers under the guise of honoring the separation of church and state, this administration has forgotten where Caesar's sovereignty ends--and God's begins.

      Evidence indicates that the best way to move welfare recipients from dependency to work is to put them in jobs as quickly as possible--in welfare worker terms, "labor force attachment." In contrast, programs to educate and train recipients to qualify for better jobs--called "human capital development" (i.e. workforce development)--accomplish little more than traditional welfare.
      A 1994 national evaluation of state-run employment and training programs by Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation shows that compared to control groups receiving welfare as usual:

• After two years, individuals in programs to put them in jobs (labor force attachment) significantly increased rates of employment and earning and significantly decreased their use of AFDC and food stamps.
• The employment rate for participants in programs that stressed education and training (workforce development ) was less than one-third the rate achieved by the other approach and was not significantly better than traditional welfare.
• Earnings were actually lower for participants in human capital development (workforce) programs than for those on traditional welfare.
• Individuals in education and training programs utilized AFDC and food stamps less than those on traditional welfare but more than those in job placement.

FOUNDING FATHER QUOTE
      "He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man...."
      Samuel Adams, known as the "Father of the Revolution" and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH
      "The bottom line is it is not the job of the FBI or the Secret Service or the permanent White House staff to police the Executive Branch. It is Congress that has that oversight authority. It is time they used it. And perhaps it is time, too, for we, the people, to understand the full consequences of what we do when we vote."
      Gary Aldrich, former 30-year FBI agent, and author of Unlimited Access, which gives a candid look inside the Clinton White House.