7/24/98 World Net Daily Joseph Farah "Do you wonder about the public opinion polls? Do you doubt they are an accurate gauge of the way people think -- or, more aptly, feel? I don't anymore. America is changing in fundamental ways. America's moral foundation is crumbling as fast as its government educational system. And the Clinton presidency has given our already troubled culture a swift kick in the rear as it plummets down the slippery slope of moral relativism.."

Nevada Appeal 1/21/99 Dale McFeatters - Scripps Howard News Service ".An even greater break with American tradition is Clinton's plan for "account-ability" in the public schools. His briefing paper correctly called his education proposal "a sea change in national education policy," and indeed it is: a massive step toward federalization of the public schools, traditionally a local responsibility. The government, with $20 billion in federal aid as a club, would set the standards for teacher qualifications, classroom behavior, student promotion and by extension, curriculum. The states would be required to issue "report cards" on their schools and also track, in a bit of multicultural mischief, the "academic achievement of ethnic and racial sub-groups" ."

New York Post 2/16/99 Marc Berley ".The ethnicity-minded Bilingual Ed crowd is wrong. A report based on the survey, ''A Lot to Be Thankful For: What Parents Want Children to Learn About America,'' confirms that minority parents want precisely what schools have increasingly failed to provide: the ''heroes and traditions of America,'' and ''the common values of American society.'' This means American History 101 and, most important, the teaching of English. Parents ''express fears about taking the country for granted.'' They also worry that ''there's too much emphasis on 'the things that divide us.'''. The Clinton administration, most notably, strongly supports faulty bilingual-education and diversity programs that undermine the teaching of English and traditional American values. Clinton's 1999 budget proposes $387 million for bilingual education, up from $261 million in 1997. Last year, Clinton opposed Proposition 227, a successful ballot measure to end bilingual education in California. Proposition 227 chair Fernando Vega called Clinton ''the most misinformed citizen in the United States.'' Vega, like the parents interviewed for the Public Agenda survey, understands the problem: ''We are losing generations and generations of Latino kids to this program called bilingual education.''."

Wired News 3/10/99 Declan McCullagh "…The US Senate on Friday took the first step toward derailing a controversial government regulation that will require banks to monitor every transaction their customers make. By an 88 to 0 vote, the Senate approved a change to an education bill being debated. The amendment blocks banking regulators from proceeding with the so-called Know Your Customer plan. "If you ever wondered whatever happened to the people in the former Soviet Union who used to run things there and now are permanently out of work, the answer is they're all in the Clinton administration, and they're running the banking authorities of this country," said Phil Gramm, a Texas Republican who chairs the Banking Committee, in a speech on the Senate floor. Senate Democrats first blocked Gramm's standalone bill that would have repealed Know Your Customer, but then joined their GOP counterparts in a unanimous vote to add the amendment to the education bill. Under Know Your Customer, banks will be required to tell the Feds about transactions that aren't "normal and expected" for a particular customer, based on a profile of that person. Over 140,000 irate Americans have complained about the proposal in a comment period that ends Monday…."

Eagleforum 3/10/99 Phyllis Schlafly Freeper DonMorgan "…Are the American people willing to allow government agents to come into their homes to "advise" them how to care for their babies? What if the announced purpose of these home visits is to look for child abuse under the assumption that all parents are suspects? The plan to place "home visitors" into the homes of all first-time parents is one more example of the pervasive liberal push to monitor law-abiding citizens under the pretext of catching criminals. The model for universal home visitation is Healthy Families America (HFA), a program developed by the National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse (NCPCA), now known as Prevent Child Abuse America. The HFA program calls for 50+ in-home visits annually per family for those considered most "at risk." The home visitors are paraprofessionals and volunteers who are called "trained," but may have only a high school education. These recruits are supposed to educate parents on "proper parenting practices" and to monitor child development…"

Rueters 5/10/99 AP Freeper helms "...As the White House targeted violence in public entertainment, the WB television network said Monday it would show a two-part ``Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' that depicts students arming themselves...."

Augusta Chronicle 5/12/99 Editorial Freeper newsman "...After public schools, as well as parents and students, became gravely concerned about discipline following the Littleton, Colo., murder spree, it wasn't long before the American Civil Liberties Union jumped into the fray. . . . One key reason for slippage in school discipline since the 1960s is the rise of ``students' rights'' as promulgated by the permissive ACLU. This is the doctrine which sharply curtails schools' authority to deal with troublemaking children...."

Ayn Rand Institute 11/98 Dr. Gary Hull, PhD ".To accommodate the slowest learners, the entire K-12 curriculum has been "dumbed down." And high schools on both coasts are dispensing with awards honoring top seniors. They don't select "the most likely to succeed" or the "most talented." These schools no longer offer class rankings, nor do they select a class valedictorian. In today's age of achievement-hatred, it is okay to spend millions on playground psychopaths. But it is considered morally low to honor a bright student.."

Washington Times 10/20/98 Cheryl Wetzstein ".Many of the nation's schoolchildren admit to shoplifting, cheating and lying, according to a survey taken by a group that works to promote good character in schools. "People who develop the habit of cheating or stealing are going to continue to cheat and steal later in life," said Michael Josephson, president of the Josephson Institute of Ethics in Marina Del Ray, Calif. And many of these same students who admit to unethical behavior say they are "satisfied" with their ethics and character, he said. Mr. Josephson founded the institute in 1985 in honor of his parents, Joseph and Edna Josephson, with the goal of improving the ethical quality of American society.."

Wall St Journal 10/27/98 Kay Hymowitz "."The 12- to 14-year-olds of yesterday are the 10- to 12-'s of today," says Bruce Friend, a vice president of the kids' cable channel Nickelodeon. The Nickelodeon-Yankelovich Youth Monitor found that by the time they are 12, children describe themselves as "flirtatious, sexy, trendy, athletic, cool." Among the products targeted at this age group is the Sweet Georgia Brown line from AM Cosmetics. It includes body paints and scented body oils with names like Vanilla Vibe and Follow Me Boy. Soon, thanks to the Cincinnati design firm Libby Peszyk Kattiman, your little darling will be able to slip into some tween-sized bikini panties.The tweening of childhood is more than just a matter of fashion. Tweens are demonstrating many of the deviant behaviors we usually associate with adolescence. "Ninth and 10th grade used to be the starting point for a lot of what we call risk behaviors," says Henry Trevor, who heads a middle school in Brooklyn, N.Y. "Fifteen years ago they moved into the eighth grade. Now it's seventh grade."."

OP NEWS & VIEWS 5/16/99 Charles Muth Freeper GrandmaC "...About That High School Proficiency Test... I haven't taken anything more than a blood test in over 20 years - and never spent a day in college - so I was a bit nervous about taking the Nevada high school math proficiency test that 1,501 high school seniors have been unable to pass - in FOUR tries! I admit that I DID rush through the test in just over 30 minutes, did NOT use the formula page and did NOT bother to double-check my answers. Still, I got 47 of the 58 questions correct (81%). The simplicity of this multiple-guess test should be a no-brainer for students who are still in school, studying for the test, taking their time and checking their answers. Any student who can't scratch out at least 61% on this test hasn't earned a high school education - regardless of who's fault it is. Democrat Assembly Education Committee Chairman Wendell Williams and the seven Democrat committee members who voted to further LOWER the passing grade to 57% (heck, why grade them at all, huh?) should be ashamed of themselves for cheating our kids out of their futures...."

Associated Press 12/9/98 ". An elementary school teacher gave children altered lyrics to ``Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer'' in which Santa asks a gunman to shoot his wife. The lyrics were included in a packet of Christmas songs given out by an unidentified teacher at Devens Elementary School last week. The song, renamed ``Deadeye the Two-Gun Slinger,'' included the lyric: ``Then one foggy Christmas Eve, Santa came to say, ``Deadeye with your gun so bright, won't you shoot my wife tonight?'' Theresa Schuesler complained to school officials after her husband heard their 8-year-old son singing the song last week, and was shocked to find out the boy got it in class. ``This song is wrong,'' she said. ``This song is so bad it should never have gone out.'' School Superintendent Frederick Foresteire said the teacher would be ``written up'' by the principal, but he did not think an apology or explanation to the children was necessary.."

GOP NEWS & VIEWS 5/16/99 Charles Muth Freeper GrandmaC "...About That High School Proficiency Test... I haven't taken anything more than a blood test in over 20 years - and never spent a day in college - so I was a bit nervous about taking the Nevada high school math proficiency test that 1,501 high school seniors have been unable to pass - in FOUR tries! I admit that I DID rush through the test in just over 30 minutes, did NOT use the formula page and did NOT bother to double-check my answers. Still, I got 47 of the 58 questions correct (81%). The simplicity of this multiple-guess test should be a no-brainer for students who are still in school, studying for the test, taking their time and checking their answers. Any student who can't scratch out at least 61% on this test hasn't earned a high school education - regardless of who's fault it is. Democrat Assembly Education Committee Chairman Wendell Williams and the seven Democrat committee members who voted to further LOWER the passing grade to 57% (heck, why grade them at all, huh?) should be ashamed of themselves for cheating our kids out of their futures...."

New York Post 5/24/99 ANDREA PEYSER Freeper laz "...ANOTHER possible reason why so many schoolkids can't read and their teachers can't write: the abysmal quality of teacher education in this city. Two weeks ago, this column presented the illiterate writings of Queens middle-school students - teens of 13 and 14 who can barely construct a simple sentence as they prepare to enter high school. Last week, in a rare and alarming peek into who's in charge of instructing public schoolkids in the basics, this column published barely intelligible notes penned by teachers at a Brooklyn elementary school. "Why is he not learning or learning so but so little with my help?" wrote one teacher, unintentionally answering the question..."

New York Post 5/26/99 MARIA ALVAREZ, GREGG BIRNBAUM and SUSAN EDELMAN Freeper laz "...Two out of three city fourth-graders failed to meet strict new reading and writing standards, startling new test results show. Sixty-seven percent of the city's 75,400 kids who took the state's new English Language Arts exam in January fell short or performed abysmally...."

New York Post 5/26/99 HERMAN BADILLO "...YESTERDAY, with great fanfare, the Board of Education announced the results of the fourth-grade English Language Arts Tests. As might be expected, Chancellor Rudy Crew and the board sought out every ray of sunshine, and presented the scores with the best possible spin. A close look at the results, however, shows that our grade schools are perpetuating practices to virtually guarantee that by the fourth grade many students, particularly those in predominately African-American and Hispanic districts, will be performing at unacceptable levels. For many years I have been urging the Board of Education to abolish social promotions - the practice of automatically promoting students from one grade to another. Beginning in first grade, students advance without regard to academic performance...."

U.S.News & World Report 5/31/99 JOHN LEO "...Non-Asian minorities tend to score lower on standardized tests used for college admissions than do Asian-Americans and whites. The obvious answer to this gap is better schools in minority neighborhoods and better study habits. But the Clinton administration has a quicker fix: Let's just declare the tests invalid. The draft of a new "resource guide" by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights says that "the use of any educational test which has a significant disparate impact on members of any particular race, national origin, or sex is discriminatory" unless the school using the test can prove otherwise. That makes almost all educational tests suspect. Specifically, the department is warning that the SAT and ACT tests are presumed to be invalid if they are a significant basis for college admissions and financial-aid decisions that fail to produce proportional representation by race and gender...."

WorldNetDaily 6/16/99 Walter Williams "….The May 14 Chronicle of Higher Education ran a story by Robin Wilson titled "Ph.D. Programs Face a Paucity of Americans." Wilson says that if you visited just about any physics laboratory at U.S. research universities, you'd find as many foreigners as Americans. The American Institute of Physics estimates that this year, for the first time, the majority of first-year doctoral students in physics at our universities is foreign. In the academic year 1997 to 1998, China alone supplied 20 percent of all international physics students. At Penn State University, as is typical at other universities, half the students in its graduate physics program are foreigners. In 1997, foreign students earned 37 percent of all science and engineering doctorates at American universities. By contrast, at most American universities, there are few to no foreigners getting Ph.D.s in education, cultural studies and history. The evidence clearly demonstrates that the more intellectually challenging a field of study is, the fewer American students…."

Washington Post 7/8/99 Laura Sessions Stepp "…"The mother of an Arlington teenager will never forget the phone call she received from Williamsburg Middle School, where her daughter was in the eighth grade. "I'd like to invite you to a meeting about girls at risk," said Latanja Thomas, the eighth-grade school counselor. "What risk?" the mother asked. "Eating disorders?" "No." "Drugs?" "No." "Well, what is it?" "Oral sex." "I about dropped the phone," the mother recalled. "I was stunned." So were other parents of girls at Williamsburg who took similar calls that evening and showed up for a meeting in the school library a few nights later. ..."

USA Today 6/8/99 Editorial "...If it's not OK for your high school student to get a "D" on a math test, why should it be OK for your child's teacher? That's the case in Oregon, where would-be teachers must score only 65% on a commonly used national exam required for teaching math in middle and high school. And compared to the rest of the country, that's tough grading. The lowest cutoff score on the test is set by Georgia, where prospective teachers can score less than 50% and still qualify...... The nation's poorest schools are the very schools stocked with an overabundance of underqualified teachers. And the notion that minority students can't pass tougher teacher certification tests is based on the insulting assumption that minorities can't meet high standards...."

Dallas Morning News 6/11/99 Linda K. Wertheimer "....Most Dallas high school students this year once again bombed on the state's end-of-course Algebra I exam. Just 15 percent passed. Still, they did better than last year, when only 11 percent passed. Students now can graduate even though they haven't proved their prowess in algebra. But by 2003, they'll have to master algebraic equations or risk not getting diplomas because of new state testing rules...."A lot of teachers don't teach higher-order thinking skills because they don't understand them that well," said Robert Mendro, the school district's interim assistant superintendent over testing. ..."

New York Post 6/11/99Andrea Peyser "....THIS is a fine time in America to be a drug addict. Not convinced? Perhaps you will be in a moment. This news item reads like some kind of futuristic fiction. It's not: At Columbia University, heroin junkies are being paid. To take heroin. Free drugs are served up to a select handful of addicts as part of a federally funded study. This study involves giving users drugs meant to induce them to stop using other drugs - namely, heroin. Still with me? The researchers believe that they must administer pure heroin to the test subjects in order to test an anti-heroin drug. This is meant to cure addiction. Too bad it doesn't work. To sign up for the study, the 14 test subjects, men and women ages 21 to 45, need to meet two qualifications: They must have no violent criminal history. And, most important, they must exhibit absolutely no desire to quit using heroin....."

Associated Press 6/11/99 Hal Spencer "...Several students walked out of their college commencement Friday and some stood with their backs to the stage to protest the inclusion of convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal as a speaker. Protesters, including police officers in dress uniforms, walked out of the Evergreen State College commencement when Abu-Jamal's audiotaped remarks were played. A handful of about 800 graduating seniors wearing blue armbands also walked out, while two dozen others stood and turned their backs during the 13-minute speech....."

Florida Times-Union 4/29/99 Jim Saunders "...A deeply divided Florida House yesterday approved a plan that would use taxpayer-funded vouchers to send thousands of children to private schools. The plan, which House and Senate negotiators hammered out this week, could go to the Senate for a vote today. If approved in the Senate, it will head to Gov. Jeb Bush, who has made vouchers one of his top priorities. Supporters said the plan will help students escape failing public schools and allow parents to choose the best schools for their children. ''This is a threat to the status quo,'' said Rep. Tom Warner, R-Stuart. ''Thank goodness.'' Opponents, however, likened the debate to a ''funeral'' for public schools. They say public schools will be hurt by sending children and tax dollars to private schools...."

Investors Business Daily, Inc. 7/19/99 Anna Bray Duff "...It has been a long time since California residents got any good news about their public schools. But statewide scores on a standardized test are headed up in almost all grades. Why? You'd be hard-pressed to think of a school reform -other than school choice - that hasn't been launched there over the past few years. Class-size reduction, back-to- basics math and reading, English immersion. Just name the reform, and you can find a backer crediting it for higher test scores. California schools do have far to go. On tests that measured students' skills relative to a set standard, rather than to other students, scores were dismal. The gap between poor students and others is shockingly wide. And some experts caution that higher test scores may mean nothing at all. It's the second year students have had to take this test, so they could be doing better just because they're better prepared for it...."

Association of American Educators, & Wash. Times 7/17/99 Donna Garner, & Marian Kester Cooms "…Project Follow Through by Association of American Educators July 17, 1999 …. What does Project Follow Through conclude is the best method of teaching students? "The teacher in a face to face, reasonably formal manner, tells, shows, models, demonstrates, and teaches the skill to be learned. The key word is teacher, for it is the teacher who is in command...There was a general finding that highly structured classes focused on basic skills produced better results on basic skills tests." Based on the research results of Project Follow Through, the writers of the Texas Alternative Document (TAD -- http://www.htcomp.net/tad) for English / Language Arts / Reading stated in the Introduction to their standards document, "...the classroom [should be] both teacher-directed and student-centered." …."

Fox News 7/21/99 Jim Abrams AP "...President Clinton says he will veto a House-passed teacher improvement bill that Republicans say will give schools more choice but the president says would trample on his goal to put 100,000 new teachers in the nation's elementary schools. The legislation, passed 239-185 Tuesday with support from 24 Democrats, carries forth the longtime Republican priority of moving control over education dollars from Washington to the states and local school districts..... Under the bill, local school districts would be held accountable for raising student achievement but could decide how best to use the money to improve teacher quality, whether that be by hiring more teachers, teacher training or expanding special education...."

American Spectator 7/22/99 Kyle Harper "... The sound had a familiar ring to it. Something was wrong. The program wasn't working. It was failing because of a lack of funding. It was failing because of sexism. No, the program isn't welfare, government-subsidized child care, or any other social program. It's the Women's Studies program at the University of Oklahoma....As the Washington Times pointed out in a front-page story earlier this spring, college students nationwide are becoming more conservative. That certainly holds true in Oklahoma -- one of the most socially conservative states in the Union. Oklahoma has the largest all-Republican congressional delegation and prides itself on being the buckle of the Bible Belt. There's little question, as on so many campuses across America, the faculty here is more liberal than the student population...."

American Spectator 7/22/99 Kyle Harper "... Like a social program, the problem with Women's Studies is inherent. At the University of Oklahoma you won't find many students interested in the type of classes this major offers. A look at the course descriptions alone tells why.... For example, one of the options for a student majoring in women's studies is "Rethinking Gender Roles in Counter Cinema," where students can "explore psychoanalytic film theory as the critical tool for examining gender construction ... including heterosexual, gay, and lesbian films." No matter how much funding the program had, it most likely couldn't generate widespread interest in another course, "Sexism and Homophobia." Students who take this course can "familiarize themselves with the history of homosexuals, gay men and lesbians in the United States, to recognize homophobia and heterosexism in themselves..." And these are just a few examples. The usual "sex roles," "sexism in curricula," and "alternative arrangements to marriage and family institutions," are all there. Perhaps the vast majority of students aren't ready to give up on traditional values like family...."

New York Times 7/23/99 Alan Chodos "...The most important lesson of the recent suspected Chinese spy case is not that we must guard against foreign nationals who are conspiring to infiltrate our national laboratories. Rather, it's that American scientific pre-eminence is at risk because there are so few good young American physicists and labs must fill their ranks instead with foreign-born scientists. The golden age for physics in this country was the 1960's, when university budgets were ample and young people considered physics to be a challenging and worthwhile career. Today, even though American graduate schools still provide the world's best education in physics, the classes are half their former size and are filled mostly with foreign students. Only 3,826 bachelor's degrees in physics were awarded in 1997 (the last year for which statistics are available), the lowest figure in 40 years. And half the entering graduate student class in 1998 was foreign, compared with 42 percent 10 years ago...."

Conservative News Service 7/26/99 Justin Torres "...After winning a recent legal battle on narrow grounds, the National Education Association (NEA) and several other advocacy groups have filed a new lawsuit against a school voucher program in Cleveland, Ohio. The NEA - joined by its Ohio affiliate, the American Civil Liberties Union, People for the American Way, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State - filed a lawsuit in federal district court last week, seeking a temporary injunction to close the program down. The suit charges that the program violating the First Amendment of the Constitution, and alleges that financial abuse and safety code violations are rampant throughout schools participating in the program...."

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 7/27/99 Ernie Suggs "...With a judge's recent ruling, the University of Georgia has joined a growing number of large state institutions of higher learning that are facing a question with no easy answer. Their dilemma: how to provide blacks a fair opportunity to attend publicly funded universities without employing admission policies that elevate black candidates over whites solely on the basis of race. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge B. Avant Edenfield dismissed a lawsuit against UGA and the Board of Regents that claimed a white student had been unfairly denied admission because of a policy favoring blacks. But the ruling was based on a technicality: The student lacked standing to challenge the policy because it hadn't clearly affected his failure to gain admission. The judge used the rest of his decision to declare that UGA's policy allowing racial preference in admissions amounts to reverse discrimination. It was a warning to the university that, had the student been found qualified to challenge the ruling, UGA would have lost the case...."

latimes.com 7/28/99 Louis Sahagun, Kenneth Weiss "...Tens of thousands of black and Latino high school students are deprived of equal access to California's most prestigious public universities because their schools do not offer as many Advanced Placement courses as schools with predominantly white students, according to a class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday. The American Civil Liberties Union, acting on behalf of four Inglewood High School students, charges that as a result of this disparity blacks and Latinos are being disproportionately rejected from top universities such as UCLA and UC Berkeley...."

Los Angeles Daily News 7/28/99 K Lloyd Billingsley "...A federal court has handed a mixed victory to California's children but at the same time revealed why the state's education levels remain among the worst--teachers who barely know as much as the students they teach. Last week the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the California Basic Education Skills Test, used since 1983 to test prospective teachers. Though the knowledge level of the test reaches only that of a high school sophomore, a group of eight unsuccessful test takers and three groups sued, claiming that the test was discriminatory and the standards "too high." ..."

WorldNetDaily 7/28/99 Walter Williams "...I've discovered what might be the root cause of many of the nation's problems. It hurts me to my heart to own up to it; but a large percentage of Americans are either misinformed, stupid or both.... Fox News Opinion Dynamics conducted a survey. On July 16, the results were reported on its website by Fox News reporter Dana Blanton. One question asked, "Some people say the government has plenty of money of its own and it should be spent on programs. Other people say that the government has no money except that which it takes from citizens in taxes. Which do you believe?" Thirty-nine percent of the respondents said the government has no money except what it takes from citizens in taxes. Eleven percent said neither or they weren't sure. But get this: 50 percent said the government has plenty of money of its own. Since government can't spend what it doesn't first take, the correct answer is government has no money except what it takes from its citizens in taxes. But what about that 50 percent of the American people who believe that government has plenty of money of its own? These are the people big-spending politicians love.....I wouldn't be surprised at all if teacher lesson plans promoted the idea that government has plenty of its own money. Otherwise, how is it possible for a person to have a high-school diploma or college degree and have a Santa Claus vision of government? ...."

Associated Press 7/30/99 Robert Jablon ".... At $175 million, the Belmont Learning Center would be the most expensive high school in the United States. But it may never open. The 35-acre site school officials chose is a former oil field with high levels of potentially explosive methane gas and lesser amounts of hydrogen sulfide, a highly toxic gas...."

Houston Chronicle 4/25/99 Charles Miller "...IN spite of the constant complaints of those who are unwilling to accept the fact that public school performance is improving, the Texas public school system and our students continue to garner local and national acclaim. Let's review the facts: · The National Education Goals Panel, which is overseen by a board of directors that includes eight governors and four members of Congress, found that students in Texas and North Carolina made greater combined achievement gains in reading and math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress between 1992 and 1996 than any other of the states....· When compared to their peers, Texas students perform above the national average in reading and mathematics. In some instances, Texas scores are at or near the top on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. In the "State of State Standards" published by the Fordham Foundation, Texas received the highest grades for its academic standards. The American Federation of Teachers in its 1998 Annual Standards Report praised the Texas system standards, measurement and consequences...."

New Times 7/22/99 Jill Stewart "...The 100 really awful lemon principals in Los Angeles who have long been allowed to ruin the city's schools got a rare moment of attention last week, when the reform group LEARN released a report decrying the outrageous system that protects incompetent principals from dismissal. It was a nice, but ineffective, gesture. LEARN has never accepted the fact that the only way to reform Los Angeles schools is to take off the gloves. Classroom reform will not happen unless those in power accept the philosophy that reform is behavior modification for adults – especially the principals and teachers who control what happens inside the classrooms..."

Reuters CNETnews.com 8/2/99 "...A U.S. Appeals Court upheld a $2 billion annual federal program to subsidize Internet connections for schools and libraries. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Friday backed the Federal Communications Commission's decisions to allow the subsidies to be used to pay directly for Internet access as well as needed internal wiring at schools and libraries. Major telephone carriers such as GTE had argued the money could only be spent on telecommunications services. Thousands of schools and libraries around the country connected to the Internet thanks in part to the program created in the 1996 Telecommunications Act and known as the education rate or e-rate...."

8/3/99 Education Week Jeff Archer "...Efforts to bring teacher testing back to Alabama have kicked up a storm of criticism in the Heart of Dixie this summer, even prompting a gag order against officials involved in the negotiations.... "We believe our reputation rests on our allegiance to some very high technical standards and on some very sound advice to our clients," said Mari Pearlman, an ETS vice president. "And we believed we were going to be jeopardizing that." At the same time, The Birmingham News reported that much of the PRAXIS I exam's content is geared toward a middle school level, making it an easier test than the high school graduation exam Alabama recently adopted. State board members and Gov. Don. Siegelman, a Democrat, excoriated the education department. Tempers were stoked by state schools Superintendent Edward R. Richardson's admission that he didn't realize the relatively low level of the PRAXIS I. "I was surprised," he said. "It's used in 25 states, so we assumed that would be what we would use." ...."

Baltimore Sun 8/2/99 Neal Peirce "...From New Jersey to Baltimore to Oakland, Calif., mayors and governors have been seizing control of public schools from failing school boards. Parents are being offered more choices for their children. Charter-school laws have passed in 37 states; this fall such schools will enroll 350,000 children. Voucher programs are increasingly being adopted. ....What changes might the next 10 years bring? The Education Commission of the States (ECS) in Denver, an interstate compact of governors and legislators, appointed a school governance panel to ask just those questions. The panel (of which this writer is a member) isn't supposed to come up with a single, governance formula -- just raise ideas. But the ideas surfacing are already causing jitters among school boards and teachers' unions. They include: Decentralize school systems so even the hiring of staff is done by individual schools. Parents would choose schools for their children, schools would get to hire the faculty they prefer and teachers would be are free to shop around for jobs. Make all schools charter schools, leaving each free to define its own mission and compete for students. School boards would simply let contracts for services? ...."

Lexington Institute 8/8/99 "...One of the greatest challenges facing charter schools is a general inability to obtain start-up financing. In many cases, charter schools are housed in ramshackle facilities with little prospect for improvement. How serious are these problems for the charter-school movement? How might they be solved? Are there institutions that might be willing to lend money to charter schools and/or obtain an equity stake in them> Are there other solutions that are compatible with the charter school mission of innovating and providing families choices in education?...."

ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE 8/7/99 Kenneth Heard "...Federal Emergency Management Agency officials will help develop a national program to combat school violence in the aftermath of shootings at Westside Middle School near Jonesboro and other schools around the country, an agency official said Friday. "We didn't have school violence before," said Kay Goss, associate director of the agency and a native of Northwest Arkansas who was appointed to her post six years ago. "But the definition of emergencies in school has to be changed to include school violence." ..."

http://www.eagleforum.org/column/1999/aug99/99-08-04.html 8/4/99 Phyllis Schlafly "...President Bill Clinton's earliest and most steadfast supporters, the members of the National Education Association (NEA), met in Orlando over the Fourth of July to pass their usual list of radical resolutions. Unlike Party platforms, which are often consigned to the circular file or even repudiated by the candidates, NEA resolutions spell out the lobbying orders for the well-paid NEA staff. To no one's surprise, the NEA passed strong resolutions demanding that federal funding for public schools be "substantially increased" and that all proposals for tuition tax credits or vouchers be vehemently opposed. The NEA is so vindictively against private schools that one resolution even opposes ever renting or selling a closed public school building to a private school. The NEA's hostility to nonpublic education is also manifest in its demand that parents be licensed in order to homeschool and be permitted to use only curricula approved by the state. And, when their convention headliner, Hillary Clinton, included a kind word for charter schools in her speech, she was greeted by stony silence....."

St. Petersburg Times 8/8/99 Stephen Hegarty "...The test results can determine which public schools will have to grant students private tuition vouchers, and which will get increased state money. But despite its importance to the state, when the announcement was made in February ordering 10th-graders at Pinellas County's Dixie Hollins High School to report to take the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, dozens of sophomores ignored it. Some figured they already took the test once (they were repeating 10th grade), and didn't have to take it again. They were wrong. But 44 students didn't even have that excuse. Though they apparently were in school, they simply skipped the two-day test.

"It is obvious these students skipped or dodged the test," Dixie Hollins Principal Jeff Haynes wrote to the Departmen of Education when asked to explain why fewer than 80 percent of his 10th-graders took the FCAT. Dixie, in Pinellas County, wasn't alone. Across the state, 52 schools received an "incomplete" grade from the state because they didn't have enough students take the test. That includes three high schools in Pasco County. The phenomenon has reminded school officials of a simple truth: If you're going to give students a truly challenging test -- a test that requires hours and days of concentration -- you had better give them a clear incentive to show up. Otherwise, they might just say no -- and suffer no consequences. ..."

Washington Post 8/8/99 Hanna Rosin "...For biology teacher Al Frisby, teaching evolution to the many students who take the Bible literally is like "banging his face against a brick wall." More than a third of the students at his suburban high school in Shawnee Mission, Kan., wrote in a final evaluation last year that they did not believe a thing their teacher had to say on the subject. The challenge Frisby faces is apt to get tougher next year. On Wednesday, a majority of the Kansas Board of Education may vote to pass a new statewide science curriculum for kindergarten through 12th grade that wipes out virtually all mention of evolution and related concepts: natural selection, common ancestors and the origins of the universe..... If the conservative majority on the school board prevails as expected, it will mark the most decisive victory in recent years for the creationist movement: Christians who read the book of Genesis literally and believe that God created human beings and animals fully formed. "This is the most explicit censorship of evolution I have ever seen," said Molleen Matsumura of the National Center for Science Education. ...."

Washington Post 8/8/99 Hanna Rosin "... The century-old debate erupted again, ironically, in part out of a push to improve science education. About five years ago, a craze for national standards and accountability in every subject swept American classrooms. In response, national groups of science educators wrote benchmarks for scientific literacy to serve as models for states. The idea was to replace blind memorization of facts and figures with broad central concepts. With evolution, the results were not what scientists had predicted. Religious conservatives tapped into skepticism from inside and outside the scientific community to discredit evolution, seizing on routine disagreements among scientists to disparage it as nothing more than a theory...."

WorldNet Daily 8/12/99 "..."... believe them not, though they speak fair words unto thee." --Jeremiah 12:6 We live in a world built upon deceit. Ours is an age that cannot know truth, for its professional wise men -- those who inhabit our halls of learning -- deny that truth exists. Our fate as individuals under their tutelage is to stumble from one passionate, lying embrace to the next, fueling our pain and alienating our souls, engaged in a blind search for that which we have been warned we cannot have..... These colorful balloon-beasts they send forth to slay the demons of our collective guilt, selfishness and ambition, so that we may all together appear wise, just, and righteous in our own eyes. It is now an accepted fact that the perks of high political office in the United States include sex with campaign contributors' children; that there is no accountability -- not from the courts, the people, or the Congress -- for lies so voluminous that they can no longer be properly counted and catalogued; that treason in the form of leaving our nation naked and defenseless before its enemies is an acceptable means of campaign fundraising -- provided that it helps you to win the next election; and that God is an absentee landlord, doesn't bother to vote, and neither sees nor hears our multitudinous affronts to His character, perhaps because He is too busy blessing us with His patience and grace.

WorldNet Daily 8/12/99 "..."... Our society has accepted the notion that "guns kill people," while excusing the murderous madmen who wield them.... The "evil influences" of Jesus Christ and the Bible, which gave us the foundations upon which our freedoms, our government and our unimaginable prosperity were built -- must, at all costs -- be kept out of our schools. Let us instead worship evil under the guise of tolerance -- and invite in the demonic "spirit guides" of the "new age" to teach our children how to listen to these lying voices and follow them "wherever they lead."....Science, once the proud god of this age, has been profaned by her own worshipers: in her very temple researchers fabricate evidence to get the politically-correct answer that yields their next fix of government money....The destruction of colleagues' lives is of no concern if it enhances their imagined "infallibility." Our children have accepted these lies as their own, and are busy building their lives upon them...."

MSNBC 8/11/99 Reuters "...The Kansas Board of Education rejected evolution as a scientific principle Wednesday, dealing a victory to religious conservatives who are increasingly challenging science education in U.S. schools. The 10-member board, ignoring pleas by educators and established scientists, voted six to four to embrace new standards for science curricula that eliminate evolution as an underlying principle of biology and other sciences.... "

Associated Press 8/11/99 Kimberly Hefling "...With essentially no community opposition, volunteers placed the Ten Commandments in every classroom in a rural eastern Kentucky school district before classes began on Wednesday. The Jackson County school board and superintendent made the decision as part of ``an effort to start having good morals in school ... because of all the violent issues that have been showing up,'' said Betty Bond, principal of Jackson County High School. Timothy Crawford, the district's attorney, said he's concerned about lawsuits, but believes the Ten Commandment plaques in the district's five schools are allowed by law because they were paid for and posted by local volunteers. Robert Lakes, a business teacher at Jackson County High School, said the Ten Commandments were posted in the classroom when he was growing up. ``It's like the flag,'' Lakes said. ``We've been tearing down symbols that have been in this country'' for a long time....."

The New Australian 8/99 Phyllis Schlafly Report "... A federal district judge in White Plains, NY, ruled last month that the Bedford Central School District must stop requiring schoolchildren to create paper images of a Hindu god, to make toothpick and yarn "worry dolls" to ward off anxiety, and to take part in Earth Day worship services. Third graders had been required to make clay and construction paper cutouts of the elephant-headed Hindu god, Ganesha.

Judge Charles Brieant ordered the school district to (1) "prevent school sponsorship of worship of the Earth" and North American Indian animism or nature worship, (2) "remove the worry dolls from the school system" and "refrain from suggesting that (such) tangibles have supernatural powers," (3) prohibit "any direction to a student to make a likeness or graven image of a god or religious symbol," and (4) "direct the adoption of a published policy containing clear instructions (about religion) to teachers and others." The school was engaging in what the judge called "truly bizarre" Earth Day celebrations. He said that these events "take on (many) of the attributes of the ceremonies of worship by organized religions." According to the parents who filed the lawsuit, "student and senior citizens, who have also become part of earth worship services, sit in concentric circles around a giant inflated globe placed atop a bamboo tripod. The elderly people form the inside circle, symbolizing that they are closer to the earth and will return to it to nourish it." A chorus of tom-tom drums plays throughout the ceremony, while teachers and school officials read speeches. The ceremony pretends that the earth is deified, and students are urged to "do something to make Mother Earth smile." Evidence submitted in this case included an audiotape (Exhibit 62) entitled "Listening to Nature," which intersperses prayers and invocations sonorously uttered along with background sounds of forest and ocean. The plaintiff parents particularly objected to the fact that the tape, which they characterized as "nature worship and guided imagery," was played in science classes. The accompanying book contains this creed: "This is what we believe. The Mother of us all is the Earth. The Father is the Sun. The Grandfather is the Creator who bathed us with his mind and gave life to all things. The Brother is the beasts and trees. The Sister is that with wings."..."

The New Australian 8/99 Phyllis Schlafly Report "...The school district is expected to appeal the decision in this case, Altman et al. v. Bedford Central School District. If it does, the parents should appeal the failure of the court to throw out the offensive classroom activities involved in the use of the card game called "Magic: The Gathering." It was this card game that alerted the plaintiffs to contest the peculiar classroom activities. They objected to the "Magic" card game because it is steeped in satanic imagery, signs, and rituals such as human sacrifice and the casting of spells. The object of the game is to accumulate "mana," which is "power that comes from the earth." The plaintiffs contend that the card game "initiates children into satanism using perversion of actual Bible verses." One card, depicting a man about to be sacrificed with a knife about to plunge into his heart, carries this strange message: "Sacrifice one of your creatures to add to your mana pool a number of black mana equal to that creature's casting cost." Another card shows a terrified woman with a hand holding her head down and a huge knife at her throat. The parents charged that the card game is part of a New Age curriculum that includes yoga lessons, cult worship, and religious activities. "The cards represent a billion dollar industry," attorney Mary Ann DiBari said, "and our children are paying the price with indoctrination in the occult."...."

Education Week 8/12/99 "...Volunteer effort in rural district is unopposed With essentially no community opposition, volunteers placed the Ten Commandments in every classroom in a rural eastern Kentucky school district before classes began on Wednesday. The Jackson County school board and superintendent made the decision as part of ``an effort to start having good morals in school because of all the violent issues that have been showing up,'' said Betty Bond, principal of Jackson County High School...."

Education Week 8/12/99 "...With essentially no community opposition, volunteers placed the Ten Commandments in every classroom in a rural eastern Kentucky school district before classes began on Wednesday. The Jackson County school board and superintendent made the decision as part of ``an effort to start having good morals in school because of all the violent issues that have been showing up,'' said Betty Bond, principal of Jackson County High School.

Timothy Crawford, the district's attorney, said he's concerned about lawsuits, but believes the Ten Commandment plaques in the district's five schools are allowed by law because they were paid for and posted by local volunteers. Robert Lakes, a business teacher at Jackson County High School, said the Ten Commandments were posted in the classroom when he was growing up. ``It's like the flag,'' Lakes said. ``We've been tearing down symbols that have been in this country'' for a long time. Jackson County isn't the only school district in Kentucky or the country where the Ten Commandments are on display in schools. Tonya Adams, principal of Union Chapel Elementary School in Russell County, which has had the Ten Commandments posted for years, said she's never received any complaints about it..."

Wall Street Journal 8/13/99 "...And on the seventh day, He rested. Whoa, no way! "Adam" evolved many millennia ago from a series of random mutations. Whatever. It is not our purpose today to throw in with either the Kansas Board of Education, which voted this week to drop biological evolution from its curriculum guidelines, or with the biologists now screaming that the creationism movement is driving out serious science. We do, however, very much want to discuss driving important things out of public life. Specifically, we have in mind the Supreme Court decisions way back in the early 1960s that led over the years not merely to banning prayer from the schools but to wiping God and religion out of textbooks, graduation ceremonies and anywhere else the ACLU and its ilk could find Him hiding inside a public school. This is what we think is the message these Kansans are sending into the world: "About 35 years ago, you folks banned our religion from the public schools. So we've just voted to drop your religions from the public schools. Now maybe you'd like to sit down and negotiate a deal."..."

Associated Press 8/14/99 "...Gov. Bill Graves and some legislators are talking about abolishing the State Board of Education or stripping it of authority because of its vote to de-emphasize the teaching of evolution. "It's going to be an issue in the legislative session," Mr. Graves, a moderate Republican, said Friday of the board's 6-4 vote this week. On Thursday, Mr. Graves said the decision was "so out of sync with reality" that it minimized the board's credibility. Legislators say the controversy over evolution could create support for changes that have been sought for years by lawmakers in both parties. ..."

Fox News 8/14/99 John Hanna AP "...The American Civil Liberties Union says school districts could face lawsuits if they attempt to teach creationism in wake of the state school board's recent decision to de-emphasize the teaching of evolution. The ACLU, in a letter Friday to school superintendents, warned the districts about adopting "religiously-based standards'' in teaching science. The ACLU also noted U.S. Supreme Court decisions that forbid the teaching of creationism, the belief that a higher power created the universe, because of its religious foundation. People for the American Way and Americans United for the Separation of Church and States also said they would consider lawsuits if religion-based standards were implemented....."

New York Times 8/15/99 George Johnson "...Whenever setbacks like the one in Kansas occur, scientists leap forth to point out the fallacy of the reationist position: There is no compelling reason to single out the evolution of life or the cosmos as being less than absolute. It would be just as sensible for school boards to affix a warning inside physics books: "No one has directly observed the detailed substructure of matter. Therefore, any statement about it being made of atoms should be considered as theory, not fact." The problem is that the dynamic view of science doesn't come across strongly enough in the classroom. For reasons of expediency, scientific theories are presented as done deals. Little appreciation is conveyed for the intellectual struggle that went into interpreting the data or examining the assumptions -- always open to question -- that lurk behind the experiments. Lost from most explications is the exhilarating possibility that a theory that seems undeniable today could be overturned tomorrow. With science presented almost as though it were received wisdom, it's little wonder that some legislators and school board members confuse it with a competing religion, and misconstrue a religious belief like creationism as an alternate scientific theory. They're encouraged to do so by a new wave of creationists who, in an act of intellectual jujitsu, promote their belief in absolute knowledge by invoking the relativistic arguments of post-modern philosophy: While creationism is built on belief in a caring, all-powerful, constantly intervening creator, who completed his work thousands of years ago, evolution has its own tenets of faith. The most fundamental is the belief that the world consists of insentient matter unfolding on its own over vast eons of time -- eons that can only be inferred from indirect evidence. One is still free to believe in a deity, but it's not a necessary part of the equations..... For something to be called a theory, it has to be falsifiable, capable of being overthrown. Students could also be taught the dangers that come when a scientist mistakes a theory for eternal truth, shoring up flimsy hypotheses by contorting the data. They could learn of cases in which a religion flexibly adjusted its doctrines because of new social realities, allowing, for example, homosexuals into the ministry. But slowly, by giving creationism equal time with evolution, the class would see a powerfully subtle difference. Science is, foremost, a method of interrogating reality: proposing hypotheses that seem true and then testing them -- trying, almost erversely, to negate them, elevating only the handful that survive to the status of a theory. Creationism is a doctrine, whose adherents are interested only in seeking out data that support it. In making sense of the world, one is always free to start from different assumptions. But part of a good education is learning what you are trading off in the bargain...."

The Washington Times 8/9/99 Zhengyuan Fu "...President Clinton has renominated Bill Lann Lee as head of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department and pressured the Senate to confirm his nomination. In 1997, the Senate refused to confirm the appointment of Bill Lann Lee because of his support of racial preference policies. But Mr. Clinton installed Mr. Lee on an acting basis. Since then, Bill Lann Lee has been holding illegally the post for more than 18 months in blatant violation of federal law that limits the tenure of acting officials to 120 days. One of the purposes of Mr. Clinton's nomination of Bill Lann Lee is to portray his opponents as bigoted against racial minorities of Asian descent. Another purpose is to portray himself as a supporter of the Asian-American community. In reality, as the former director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's Western office, Bill Lann Lee is renowned for his support of the racial preference programs that openly discriminate against Asian-Americans and violate the fundamental principle of equal treatment under the Constitution. Under the pressure of Bill Lann Lee's former organization, the NAACP, the San Francisco Unified School District imposed different standards of admission based on race and outright racial quotas, which brazenly discriminated against Asians in general and Chinese in particular...."

Florida Times-Union 8/11/99 "...Georgia state School Superintendent Linda Schrenko wants to bring the Bible into high school classrooms as an elective history course. The chairman of the state school board wants a legal opinion first. Both are on the right track. Schrenko is proposing to sanction elective high school social studies courses on the Old and New Testaments. The idea, she says, is to teach students about the Bible's influence on law, history, culture and community life. Schrenko's office reports more than 2,000 comments on the idea, with 90 percent approving of the courses, which would be called History of the Old Testament I and II and History of the New Testament I and II. ''It's a pretty cut and dried syllabus,'' she said. ''It discusses the Bible in the context of history, and it has value in that context.'' ..."

The American Enterprise, a National Magazine of Politics, Business, and Culture 9/10 1999 "...Ithaca, New York is a typical college town. A hotbed, in other words, of left-wing Big Brotherism. At Ithaca's Boynton public middle school, all students were recently indoctrinated in a day-long "celebration" of homosexuality. For four school periods there were videos, lectures, and panels featuring gay teachers, parents, and students. "I did not know that I was a lesbian in the seventh grade, but I have since learned to like 'doing it' with a girl," explained one student panelist. "Now that I have 'done it' with both boys and girls I find I like both." At one point, all students were asked to stand in solidarity with homosexuals. When roughly one-third of the 11- and 12-year-olds did so, parents in attendance observed adults and student peers putting pressure on the rest to conform. After lunch, all students returned to their rooms for the remainder of the day for small group discussions led by teachers who organized the presentations. When a number of aprents registered concerns about the all-day seminar with Ithaca School Board President Steve Shiffrin (who is a Cornell law school professor in his day job), he told them that if they didn't like the district's "multicultural" policy they should put their children in private schools. The same school district has just proposed banning the Boy Scouts (and other single-sex groups) from distributing any literature on school property, on the grounds that they are intolerant organizations...."

Wall Street Journal 8/15/99 Phillip Johnson "...A Chinese paleontologist lectures around the world saying that recent fossil finds in his country are inconsistent with the Darwinian theory of evolution. His reason: The major animal groups appear abruptly in the rocks over a relatively short time, rather than evolving gradually from a common ancestor as Darwin's theory predicts. When this conclusion upsets American scientists, he wryly comments: "In China we can criticize Darwin but not the government. In America you can criticize the government but not Darwin." That point was illustrated last week by the media firestorm that followed the Kansas Board of Education's vote to omit macro-evolution from the list of science topics which all students are expected to master. Frantic scientists and educators warned that Kansas students would no longer be able to succeed in college or graduate school, and that the future of science itself was in danger....The root of the problem is that "science" has two distinct definitions in our culture. On the one hand, science refers to a method of investigation involving things like careful measurements, repeatable experiments, and especially a skeptical, open-minded attitude that insists that all claims be carefully tested. Science also has become identified with a philosophy known as materialism or scientific naturalism. This philosophy insists that nature is all there is, or at least the only thing about which we can have any knowledge. It follows that nature had to do its own creating, and that the means of creation must not have included any role for God. Students are not supposed to approach this philosophy with open-minded skepticism, but to believe it on faith. The reason the theory of evolution is so controversial is that it is the main scientific prop for scientific naturalism. Students first learn that "evolution is a fact," and then they gradually learn more and more about what that "fact" means. It means that all living things are the product of mindless material forces such as chemical laws, natural selection, and random variation. So God is totally out of the picture, and humans (like everything else) are the accidental product of a purposeless universe..... All the most prominent Darwinists proclaim naturalistic philosophy when they think it safe to do so. Carl Sagan had nothing but contempt for those who deny that humans and all other species "arose by blind physical and chemical forces over eons from slime." Richard Dawkins exults that Darwin "made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist," and Richard Lewontin has written that scientists must stick to philosophical materialism regardless of the evidence, because "we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." Stephen Jay Gould condescendingly offers to allow religious people to express their subjective opinions about morals, provided they don't interfere with the authority of scientists to determine the "facts" -- one of the facts being that God is merely a comforting myth.....So one reason the science educators panic at the first sign of public rebellion is that they fear exposure of the implicit religious content in what they are teaching. An even more compelling reason for keeping the lid on public discussion is that the official neo-Darwinian theory is having serious trouble with the evidence..... "

World In Review 4/99 Dr John Coleman "...One of the reasons why there has been such a marked decline in the morals of this nation may have to do with the type of education which has prevailed long enough to produce a people who sheltered President Bill Clinton from being removed from office, and which now seems unwilling to face that what is happening in Serbia, is indefensible.... This is the curriculum of the New World Order known by the Aquarians as "Outcome-Based Education."--OBE.....Thanks to funding by Carnegie Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, OBE has supplanted what education should be and replaced it with what is taught by the priests of the National Education Association. (NEA).....It was this approach that enabled Tavistock to gain control over so many school teachers who were turned from teaching traditional education, to New Age education, which included deviant sexual behavior, under the guise of "sex education," in school rooms all across the 50 states. "How to use a condom properly" was given more classroom time than teaching the United States Constitution. Silently, a cultural war was unleashed against the Founding Fathers of America, against the Christian religion, until today we have reached the point of no return. We either realize that we are in a spiritual battle to keep what is left of the United States and join in that battle or, we stand aside and take no part in it..... "

Eagle Forum/Education Reporter 8/99 Phyllis Schlafly on the N.E.A. - excerpted from some of the 1999 NEA Convention resolutions "….

A-2. Educational Opportunity for All. The National Education Association believes that each student has the right to a free public education that should be suited to the needs of the individual and guaranteed by state constitutions and the United States Constitution. Education is a lifelong process, and public schools serve a constituency that embraces all age groups. Access and opportunities for postsecondary education should be widely available, and no qualified student should be denied such opportunities because of the cost of tuition and fees. The Association also believes that all schools must be accredited under uniform standards established by the appropriate agencies in collaboration with the Association and its affiliates.

A-15. Financial Support of Public Education. Funds must be provided for programs to alleviate race, gender, and sexual orientation discrimination and to eliminate portrayal of race, gender, and sexual orientation stereotypes in the public schools. The Association opposes the use of public revenues for private, parochial, or other nonpublic pre-K through 12 schools

A-27. Deleterious Programs. The National Education Association believes that the following programs and practices are detrimental to public education and must be eliminated: privatization, performance contracting, tax credits for tuition to private and parochial schools, voucher plans (or funding formulas that have the same effect as vouchers), planned program budgeting systems (PPBS), and evaluations by private, profit-making groups

B-7. Diversity. The National Education Association believes that a diverse society enriches all individuals. Similarities and differences among races, ethnicity, color, national origin, language, geographic location, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical ability, size, occupation, and marital, parental, or economic status form the fabric of a society. The Association also believes that education should increase acceptance and foster an appreciation of the various qualities that pertain to people as individuals or members of a group. The Association further believes in the importance of observances, programs and curricula that accurately portray and recognize the roles, contributions, cultures, and history of these diverse groups and individuals.

B-8. Racism, Sexism, and Sexual Orientation Discrimination. The National Education Association believes in the equality of all individuals. Discrimination and stereotyping based on such factors as race, gender, immigration status, physical disabilities, ethnicity, occupation, and sexual orientation must be eliminated. The Association also believes that plans, activities, and programs for education employees, students, parents/guardians/caregivers, and the community should be developed to identify and eliminate discrimination and stereotyping in all educational settings.

B-37. Sex Education. The Association recognizes that the public school must assume an increasingly important role in providing the instruction. Teachers and health professionals must be qualified to teach in this area and must be legally protected from censorship and lawsuits. The Association also believes that to facilitate the realization of human potential, it is the right of every individual to live in an environment of freely available information and knowledge about sexuality and encourages affiliates and members to support appropriately established sex education programs. Such programs should include information on sexual abstinence, birth control and family planning, diversity of culture, diversity of sexual orientation, parenting skills, prenatal care, sexually transmitted diseases, incest, sexual abuse, sexual harassment.

B-40. Environmental Education. The Association supports educational programs that promote - The concept of the interdependence of humanity and nature -An awareness of the effects of past, present, and future population growth patterns on world civilization, human survival, and the environment -The protection of endangered, threatened, and rare species -Protection of the earth's finite resources -Solutions to such problems as pollution, global warming, ozone depletion, and acid precipitation and deposition -The recognition of and participation in such activities as Earth Day, Arbor Day, and Energy Education Day.

B-65. Home Schooling. The National Education Association believes that home schooling programs cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience. When a home schooling occurs, students enrolled must meet all state requirements. Home schooling should be limited to the children of the immediate family, with all expenses being borne by the parents/guardians/caregivers. Instruction should be by persons who are licensed by the appropriate state education licensure agency, and a curriculum approved by the state department of education should be used. The Association also believes that home-schooled students should not participate in any extracurricular activities in the public schools.

I-13. Family Planning. The National Education Association supports family planning, including the right to reproductive freedom. The Association further urges the implementation of community-operated, school-based family planning clinics that will provide intensive counseling by trained personnel.

I-27. Freedom of Religion. The Association opposes the imposition of sectarian practices in the public school. The Association also opposes any federal legislation or mandate that would require school districts to schedule a moment of silence.

I-47. English as the Official Language. The Association believes that efforts to legislate English as the official language disregard cultural pluralism; deprive those in need of education, social services, and employment; and must be challenged.

I-50. Equal Opportunity for Women. The Association supports an amendment to the U.S. Constitution (such as the Equal Rights Amendment) that guarantees that equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state because of gender.

Philadelphia Inquirer 8/17/99 David Boldt "….As the hysteria over the sequence of school shootings slowly begins to subside, an answer to the question of what we should do about youth violence is beginning to emerge. In short, we should keep on doing what we've been doing in recent years, because it's working. Despite the now-indelible pictures we all have in our minds of terrified children running for their lives to escape fellow students turned mass murderers, it is now clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that juvenile violence has actually been plummeting. The Department of Education has reported that the number of school shootings dropped sharply over the last five years and may continue downward in 1998-1999, even with the carnage at Columbine High School last spring.

School shootings have always been extraordinarily rare. (There were only 40 in 1997-98.) What's truly remarkable is the decline in teen violence generally. The overall rate for murders by 14-to-17-year-olds dropped from 30.2 per 100,000 in 1993 to 16.5 in 1997. …"

Los Angeles Times 8/18/99 Marian Bergeson "…For thousands of California children who are falling through the cracks--who live in poverty, who attend crumbling school campuses or who are taught by improperly trained teachers--education reform isn't coming fast enough. Indeed, the National Assessment of Education Progress, the nation's report card on schools, placed California pretty much at the bottom of the barrel among the participating states. Even when compared with just the large states that have diverse populations, California's scores were alarmingly low. ..."

Students Schooled at Home Ace ACT 8/18/99 Andrea Billups "…Home-schooled students scored well above their traditionally educated peers on a national assessment test used by colleges for admission. Home schoolers posted an average score of 22.7 out of a possible 36, tying with students in Rhode Island, who had the highest American College Testing (ACT) marks of teens in any state. "Once again, we can clearly and undeniably tell you that home schooling works," said Michael Farris, president and founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association in Purcellville, Va. "We’re doing quite well as a movement. We should be rewarded with more freedom and not more regulation." …"

Jewish World Review 8/19/99 Thomas Sowell "…NOW THAT THERE HAS BEEN yet another vicious shooting spree, the familiar cry of "gun control" is ringing out from people in politics and the media, along with the equally familiar question: How could anyone do such a thing? It may seem almost utopian to expect rational thinking in the wake of tragic and appalling events. But we can try. In fact, we have a duty to try, if we want to do what we can to understand what has happened and reduce the chances of its continuing to happen. First of all, these are not "senseless" shootings. They are expressions of hatred that disregard morality and common decency, but they are very rationally planned and executed…. That is why there have always been evil and dangerous individuals. The big question is: What have we been doing over the past two generations that has led to there being so many more of them? Since the 1960s especially, we have systematically undermined personal responsibility. It has seemed as if everything that went wrong in our lives was the fault of somebody else, if only "society." Morality has been seen as just a bunch of arbitrary hassles imposed on us by the "power structure." Most people have no idea what an all-out war against morality has been conducted in our public schools from coast to coast over the past generation. "Values clarification" programs under a variety of names encourage children to create their own personal rules of conduct, independent of the traditional morality taught to them by their families, churches and other social institutions. That is what the young murderers at Columbine High School did. That is what was done by the Unabomber and by those who bombed the government building in Oklahoma City and those who are now shooting up all sorts of people they don't like…."

Conservative News Service 8/20/99 Bruce Sullivan "…New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said that Mildred Rosario's firing from a Bronx middle school earlier this month for discussing heaven, death and God with her students "astounded" him. In a statement released to CNS, the mayor allowed that he had not seen all the documentation on the incident, but added, "She (Rosario) seems to have received very little representation, so I was astounded by the procedure." Giuliani said that New York City schools have had teachers accused of theft, sex crimes and even pedophilia who "remained hanging around for two, three or four years with very vigorous representation." Rosario, 43, was fired from her teaching job at IS-74 on June 12 for discussing God and heaven with her sixth graders and praying with them as the children attempted to come to grips with the death of a classmate, who died earlier this month in an accidental drowning….. "

Judicial Watch 8/20/99 Judicial Watch, Inc., the Washington, D.C.-based public interest law firm that fights government corruption, today announced that it will seek to participate in a lawsuit to be filed against the Harrison County School District in Mississippi. Monday, the school board unanimously prohibited Ryan Green, a 15 year old Jewish student, from wearing a Star of David pin given him by his grandmother. The school board feared that the Star of David was a gang symbol. "This is a case of the government’s hostility to religious expression, and the school board’s decision must not stand," stated Judicial Watch General Counsel Larry Klayman. "Our public schools are going down the tubes, they are graduating illiterates, and they spend their time and energy picking on an innocent boy who wishes to express his faith. And then they wonder why more and more parents are pulling their children out of government-run schools. Clearly, we need more God in school, not less," Klayman continued. Judicial Watch joins the American Civil Liberties Union and the Christian Coalition in support of the case. With the court’s permission, Judicial Watch, Inc. will seek to file an amicus curiae or similar legal brief on behalf of Ryan and his fundamental right to free exercise of religion and freedom of expression. …"

Conservative News Service 8/18/99 Tom DeWeese "…Parents looking to the beginning of the new school year may fear a repeat of the violence that has occurred, but the real House of Horrors, says the American Policy Center is just as frightening. Here's what the Center says awaits returning students: 1. Social promotion into grades where they are unable to compete, having failed to acquire the basic skills in the previous year. 2. Math courses in which the memorization of multiplication tables is neither required, nor encouraged. Teachers who believe math, an absolute science, can be absorbed by osmosis. 3. Being in classrooms where the teacher is now a "facilitator" and students are expected to learn from each other. 4. School books of every description in which children are taught to worship the earth or "Gaia", the earth as God. 5. Deceptive permission slips sent home where "physical examinations" do not mention the inclusion of genital examinations for young girls. School health centers that provide information about sexual behavior contrary to the beliefs or wishes of parents. 6. Geography courses where students are asked to make a "Me Map" that has nothing to do with the nations of the world, locations of oceans, rivers or mountain ranges, but rather becomes a device to shape the student's social values. 7. English classes where students are posed ethical questions including those requiring decisions as to who should die and who should live. 8. Science courses that falsely teach that the earth is running out of energy resources, that forests are disappearing, that the provision of abundant food crops is bad because of the use of agricultural chemicals that have been safely applied for decades, and barely hidden advertisements for environmental groups such as the Sierra Club. 9. The widespread administration of mind altering drugs to students, often without the parent's permission or knowledge, for alleged disorders such as Attention Deficit Disorder. 10. The intrusion of often poorly trained "social workers" conducting unsolicited home visits with the power to remove a child they deem to be "at risk."…."
Original Sources (www.originalsources.com) 8/26/99 Mary Mostert "…Yesterday's New York Times lead story was titled "Evolution Struggle Shifts to Kansas School Districts. Earlier this month the Kansas Board of Education deleted any mention of evolution in its state 7th-12th grade science tests…. "'They'll get evolution here,' said Elaine Pardee, who teaches at Washburn Rural High, where the science classroom walls are lined with various animal skeletons that, by their very appearance, testify of the evolutionary theory of a common ancestor among mammals. 'We're not going to cheat our kids.'…. " 'I don't think it's relegated to Sunday School,' Mrs. Mills said. 'If you present the material to students with critical thinking and they come to you with a paper supporting creationism, or arguing against the evolutionary theory from a creationist point of view, you should accept that.'" ….It doesn't bother me that either of them believe what they believe. It DOES bother me that evolutionists claim their belief system is not "religion." They dub it "science" and expect the rest of the world to swallow it hook, line and sinker. And, strangely, much of the world DOES swallow it if it's called "science" regardless of how absurd it actually is on examination….What really bothers me is that so much religion is being taught in school, religion that I once taught as an agnostic humanist in Sunday School. Just because agnostics don't believe in God doesn't mean their beliefs are not "religion." Satanism is a religion and it isn't God that they worship. Atheism is a belief system and, when forced on public school students in the guise of "science" it's still a belief system, it's still a "theory" and not a fact. Agnostic Humanism is a religion and it is rampant in public schools…."

UPI 8/27/99 "…The White House said (Friday) that President Clinton, while generally favoring the right of school boards to set curriculum, accepts the 1987 Supreme Court ruling that schools are not free to teach creationism. White House press secretary Joe Lockhart was asked for Clinton's position one day after Vice President Al Gore refused to take a clear stand on whether public schools should be required to teach evolution rather than creationism…."

Associated Press 8/27/99 "…Hoping to avoid a fight over a proposal to post the Ten Commandments in schools, a committee proposed on Friday that officials create an elective in comparative religion and allow student Ten Commandment Clubs instead. ``I'm confident that what we have before you today is something that can withstand any challenge,'' said the school district's attorney, David Andrews. A Baptist pastor had suggested posting the Ten Commandments in every school in the district as a counterbalance to the use of metal detectors and guards in the 9,400-student district that spends about $300,000 a year on security…."

Washington Times 8/27/99 "…"Is there no limit to the mind-numbing hostility toward religion displayed by America's courts? Apparently not," the Wall Street Journal says. "On the very day before school was set to start, U.S. District Court Judge Solomon Oliver Jr., a Clinton appointee, thought nothing of throwing the lives of 3,800 Cleveland children into disarray by blocking the city's landmark voucher program. Whatever the ultimate resolution of the issue, the timing appears calculated to unnerve parents and hang a heavy cloud of uncertainty over the fledgling program," the newspaper said in an editorial. "To Judge Oliver and his friends at the teachers unions, apparently anything is better than the thought that public money might end up reaching a parochial school." …"

Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 8/26/99 Mark Vosburgh "…Even with Ohio's tuition-voucher program remaining in legal limbo, Cleveland's private and public schools resumed classes yesterday without disruption. Faced with the possible loss of their vouchers, just two of 4,000 voucher students left their private schools for city schools. Thousands of others returned to private schools despite uncertainty as to who will pay their tuition. "Business as usual," said Carol Sperry, principal of Westside Baptist Christian School, where one of 46 voucher students withdrew. "It's not going to be a problem. We are looking for this to pass." Voucher supporters had predicted a chaotic opening for the city's public and private schools after a federal judge Tuesday ordered an immediate halt to the tuition-assistance program because of constitutional challenges…."

Chattanooga Free Press 8/27/99 Editorial "…Some of the schools in Cleveland, Ohio, many agree, are really bad. Parents with schoolchildren and the means to do so may flee the public schools and pay tuition to private schools. But poor children had been denied escape and thus had been doomed to a denial of good educational opportunity. Then a commendable plan was devised to offer help for those children to get a foot up on the ladder to success in life. Four thousand students -- from families with a median income of only $7,000 -- were given tuition "vouchers" to let them attend better schools of their choice! In many cases, these were church schools that have good records for student achievement. But after the youngsters had registered, gotten their school uniforms and supplies and were just 18 hours from beginning what had every prospect of being a happy opportunity, U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. said an emphatic "No." Responding to complaints from such 'liberal" organizations as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the so-called People for the American Way, the Ohio Education Association and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Judge Oliver blocked the voucher program for later determination as to whether he thinks it violates the Constitution's First Amendment -- an amendment that says simply: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ..." …"

CNSNews.com 8/27/99 "…A radio talk show host who's unhappy about the recent court decision to suspend a school voucher program in Cleveland is putting up his own money to send a child to the school of their choice. Talk show host Michael Reagan is also challenging other people and organizations who support school voucher programs to pay the estimated $2,200 per student cost to let as many Cleveland children as possible attend the school they were planning to attend before the voucher program was suddenly placed in limbo by an August 24 court ruling..."

Associated Press 8/27/99 "…A federal judge who created turmoil by holding up a state-funded voucher program just as the school year began reversed himself Friday, allowing some students to attend private schools with vouchers this year. U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. ruled that students who participated in the program for elementary school students in Cleveland last year may receive tuition vouchers again this year. But those children who are new to the program this year will not be allowed to get the tuition grants. About 4,000 students from kindergarten through sixth grade were to receive up to $2,500 in tuition vouchers so they can attend private or religious schools at taxpayer expense…."

TIME 8/23/99 Jack E White "…Many civil rights lawyers agree that the University of Michigan could be the Alamo of affirmative action, the place where they make their last stand. Michigan's affirmative-action programs, especially at its prestigious law school, are among the best in the country--designed not only to produce diverse student bodies but also to withstand the sort of right-wing onslaughts, in the courts or at the polls, that have outlawed the use of racial preferences in California, Washington and other states. That's why so much is riding on two lawsuits filed by whites who claim that they were denied admission to Michigan because of their race, pointing out that some black applicants with lower test scores and grade-point averages were admitted. If affirmative action at Michigan can't survive these assaults, it's probably doomed at every other state campus in the nation…."

U.S. News & World Report 8/25/99 John Leo "…Many universities offer courses on television shows and the University of Wisconsin even has one devoted to soap operas. Columbia University courses include one on "Issues in Rock Music and Rock Culture," while students at Duke can take a course in "Juggling." The University of Pennsylvania offers "Vampires: The Undead," not to be confused with the University of Chicago's "The Slavic Vampire." Some course titles on other campuses include "Horror and the Historicity of Monstrosity," "The Look of the Perverse" and "The Literature of Sports." Hot subjects on the modern campus range from food and cooking, to witchcraft, magic, extraterrestrial life, pornography and how disability illuminates society and culture. Under the last category, debates are underway as to whether to include the cultural contributions of the mentally disabled…."

UPI 8/21/99 "…The publisher of a Kansas history textbook is removing a chapter on state geology and paleontology after the State Board of Education voted to allow schools to stop teaching evolution. The non-profit Grace Dangberg Foundation in Nevada says it didn't want to limit the marketability of the middle-school book, tentatively titled ``Kansas -- The Prairie Spirit Lives.'' Publishers tell the Wichita Eagle the book, scheduled for publication this fall, will eliminate reference to fossils, an inland sea that once covered Kansas and an extinct sea lizard whose fossilized remains are in the natural history museum in Hays, Kan…."

Wall St. Journal 8/25/99 D Ockser "…A federal judge in Cleveland blocked a program allowing students to attend private and parochial schools using taxpayer money. U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. issued an injunction that stops the four-year-old school-voucher program from continuing while he considers its constitutionality. His decision came one day before the start of school for 3,801 students who attend 56 mainly parochial schools in the Cleveland area using the program, whose use is limited to low-income families in the city. In his decision, Judge Oliver said the overwhelming majority of schools participating in the voucher program are sectarian and therefore "the Cleveland program ..."

Colorado Springs Gazette 8/13/99 Robert Holland "…It wasn't one of the South's proudest moments. By the late 1950s, the movement to end officially enforced racial segregation in public schools had gathered moral force. Most Americans realized that education freedom was inevitable and just. However, Southern politicos mounted an ugly resistance that was doomed to fail. History repeats itself. In 1999 the movement to enable all American families to send their children to the schools of their choice is on an unmistakable roll. Majorities of all groups, blacks most of all, recognize the rightness of this cause. Yet there are bitter-end resisters who are trying to block the schoolhouse door as pitifully as did Alabama's George Wallace. Consider two examples: * With fall opening just a few weeks away, a coalition led by the National Education Association, the nation's largest teacher union, has filed for an injunction to block 4,000 low-income Cleveland children from using vouchers to attend private schools….* The NEA, along with its trusty lapdog, the national PTA, is among the plaintiffs in Florida seeking to strangle in the crib Governor Jeb Bush's A-Plus reform, which features vouchers for students who wish to escape public schools that have consistently flunked basic tests. Never mind that fewer than 100 Pensacola students will receive "opportunity scholarships" the first go-round. Never mind that Bush's bold plan gives the education establishment the power to kill the vouchers they so detest - by simply teaching children to read so that there are no failing schools. The NEA would rather squelch competition than do right by children….. Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young has likened those who refuse to accept consignment to ghetto schools to Rosa Parks' refusing to sit at the back of the bus. When an amazing 1.25 million low-income families (upwards of a third of all those eligible in several major cities) applied for the first round of scholarships created by philanthropists Ted Forstmann and John T. Walton, Young said those who had applied for "educational emancipation" will go down in history "not as victims" but as "heroes with whom a great awakening was born."…"

AP 8/24/99 Amy Beth Graves "… A 4-year-old program that lets Cleveland students attend private or parochial school at taxpayer expense was blocked from continuing by a federal judge Tuesday, just one day before the start of the school year. U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. issued an injunction halting the school voucher program until a trial determines whether it violates the constitutional separation of church and state. Oliver indicated that it is unconstitutional. ``The participating schools are overwhelmingly sectarian,'' Oliver wrote. ``Therefore, the Cleveland program has the primary effect of advancing religion.'' Civil liberties and public education groups had sued to stop the program, which was one of the first in the nation when it began in 1995. Milwaukee has had vouchers since 1990, and this year Florida began a statewide voucher program. The state-funded program, which covers up to $2,500 in tuition costs per child for poor families so they can attend private schools, is being conducted only in Cleveland on an experimental basis. This year, 4,000 students from kindergarten through fifth grade have signed up. Nearly all of the 56 Cleveland schools that accept the vouchers are religious…."

Investor's Business Daily 8/20/99 Robert Holland "…The education establishment cannot abide fresh ideas or competition. The way to eliminate charter schools is to put them back in the box of sameness -- same curriculum, same bureaucratic and union strictures. Thereby they lose their reason for being. ("Charter Schools in Choke Hold," Anna Bray Duff, IBD, August 13.) The bogus cry of the regulators is that charter schools are public schools, so they must be "accountable." For basic health and safety, that's fair enough. But as schools of choice, charter schools are accountable to their customers, the parents, for academic performance. Besides, they must answer to the public authorities that charter them. They can lose their charters and be forced to shut down if they fail to deliver promised results. That's marketplace discipline. How many non-chartered public schools must rise to that level of accountability?…"
New York Daily News 8/23/99 John leo "…The U.S. News & World Report college guide is a fine bit of work, but there is one thing it is not yet set up to do: Explain what is actually being taught on the campuses. It's easy to see why the guide never got into the business of kicking tires or looking under the hood. Collecting that kind of information is expensive and labor-intensive. Besides, until recently, it wasn't necessary. The components of a basic college education were well known and agreed upon. Now they aren't…. The University of Wisconsin has one on soap operas, and Purdue offers one called "The Biology of 'ER.'" Other current or recent courses include "Issues in Rock Music and Rock Culture" (Columbia University), "Star Trek" (California State at Chico), "Film Noir/Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction" (Georgetown) and "Vampires: The Undead" (University of Pennsylvania), not to be confused with "The Slavic Vampire" (University of Chicago)….Hot subjects on the modern campus include witchcraft, magic and extraterrestrial life. An even hotter craze is food studies, which appeal strongly to students who like to eat and chat about it in classes that are hard to flunk. Another hot subject is porn studies. At colleges great and small, students now read pornography and watch porn movies for credit. "The pedagogic enshrinement of porn is by now an established fact," literary critic James Atlas noted in The New Yorker magazine. Students listen to lectures from porn stars, write porn fiction, film their own sex scenes and take part in little inhibition-lowering classroom dramas, like donning S&M outfits and having themselves tied up and lightly whipped. …."

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 8/23/99 Shannon Hemann "…Dawn McFeeters was nervous at first about home- schooling her first-grade son, but a desire to give him individualized attention and a Christian education compelled her to take the plunge. Now, she's starting her third year and is home-schooling her youngest son as well. "I'm the teacher and my husband is the principal," she said with a laugh….. Marsha Beck, who handles home-schooling for the Bentonville School District, said the growth in home-schooling may be traced to Northwest Arkansas' rise in population, but it's also easier for parents to home-school than it has ever been. Beck said there is an abundance of resources available -- including the Internet, home-schooling associations and bookstores. In Bentonville, 128 parents filed the Notice of Intent to Home School forms by a state-set August deadline, compared with 109 this time last year. The 1999 General Assembly amended the home-schooling law this year, requiring parents or guardians to give written notice to schools at the beginning of each school year no later than Aug. 15 and by Dec. 15 for the spring semester. Because of the change, the numbers last year would not necessarily reflect the total who started home-schooling during the year. …"There is no home-schooling police." However, students who are considered truant may come before Washington County juvenile court Judge Stacey Zimmerman. Since taking office, Zimmerman has been cracking down on students who come into her courtroom for various reasons and are not really being home-schooled. She said 80 percent of the students she sees in the courtroom who say they are home-schooled are actually not. She's been sending them back to public school, she said. She acknowledged that the ones who are truly being home-schooled don't show up in her court. Some parents claim to home-school to avoid paying a fine for their child being truant, Zimmerman said. She usually uncovers the truth when she asks to see lesson plans and home-schooling materials and parents can't produce them. …"

KC STAR 8/22/99 Jack Cashill "…. They [fundamentalists] and their Catholic and even orthodox Jewish allies showed up spontaneously in Topeka to make their final case before the board. Many seemed well schooled in the sophisticated arguments raised against evolution by what's called the "intelligent design," or ID movement. They posed question after question that the educators could not or would not answer. The opposition, mostly science teachers and university professors, was not so sure. "Thank you for the democratic process," noted one teacher, before adding the deeply ironic, "I think." Indeed, he proved not to be very thankful at all as he ended up denouncing the event as "just another state board shenanigan." Although 90 percent of Americans believe in God, "no divine intervention" is what their kids have been learning in public schools. As late as 1995, before yielding to anti-Darwinian pressure, the National Association of Biology Teachers made this clear when it described evolution as "impersonal, unsupervised, unpredictable." At the state board meeting, no evolution proponent acknowledged the inescapably atheistic thrust of Darwinism and neo-Darwinism, nor did they counter the many challenges thrown up to Darwinian theory. The only rationale offered for this silence was one prof's remark that "intelligent design theory has roots in Christian creationism" and is thus beneath an educator's dignity to refute. As happens often, some educators accused their opposition of rejecting "evolution" in favor of Christian beliefs. Not true. ID partisans across the board believe in micro-evolution: that is, evolution within a species. Some believe in evolution between species, macro-evolution, if guided. What the ID movement challenges is Darwinian mechanics, random variation and natural selection, an elegant idea in 1859 but in 1999 still just an idea. Neo-Darwinians have as much trouble explaining how complex organs like a wing or an eye -- or even a single cell within an eye -- could be the result of unguided, incremental change as Darwin did. Darwin could only hope that the fossil record would one day prove him right. It hasn't. No evidence has surfaced of a transformation from one species to the next. Nor has anyone offered a satisfactory explanation for the rash of new animal life that inexplicably entered the fossil record during the so-called Cambrian explosion. More and more scientists, particularly in the fields of physics and astronomy, have come to accept the possibility of design in the universe. Four decades of modern research into the cell have led biochemists either to similar conclusion or to stubborn silence. One would think that an unresolved issue of this magnitude would be worth teaching, at least worth exploring. As one woman at the hearing argued, students should be allowed the same debate that the board was enjoying. The board agreed. The science educators did not. As to the ACLU, they are apparently threatening to do what they have done now for 75 years, take democracy to court…."

ACLU - KANSAS – EDUCATION 8/13/99 "…Dear Superintendent , On August 11, 1999, the Kansas Board of Education approved changes in the standards for teaching science in Kansas public schools. In short, the Board deleted any requirements that scientific macro-evolutionary theory be taught in Kansas schools. These changes effectively allow school districts to develop their own standards in this area of science curricula. The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and Western Missouri is concerned that these changes permit school districts the latitude to now adopt religious theories of macro-evolution as science standards. Such theories include so-called "creation science" and theories of "intelligent design." ….States and school districts may not adopt religious theories as standards in school curricula, nor may they restructure their curricula for the purpose of omitting accepted scientific theories which may conflict with particular religious beliefs.... Adopting such religiously based standards would place the district at risk of facing legal action by district residents who are opposed to a religiously based science curricula…."

Reuters 8/26/99 "….Vice President Al Gore shocked scientists Thursday with a statement from his office that local school boards had the right to teach creationism, although he personally favored the teaching of evolution. "The vice president favors the teaching of evolution in public schools. Obviously, that decision should and will be made at the local level and localities should be free to decide to teach creationism as well," said Alejandro Cabrera, a spokesman in the vice president's office. The statement, in response to an inquiry from Reuters, came a week after Republican presidential front-runner George W. Bush supported the teaching of creationism in public schools alongside the theory of evolution. When told of Gore's statement, Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, responded: "My God, that's appalling!" "I understand politicians like to compromise and that faced with one group who say two plus two equals four and another group that says two plus two equals six, will tend to arrive at a position that says two plus two equals five. Unfortunately, sometimes the answer has to be four and this is one of those times," she said….."

The Wanderer Press 8/26/99 Joseph Sobran "…Science took it on the chin this week, and liberals are howling. The Kansas state board of education has dropped the requirement that the theory of evolution be taught in public schools. Even such "conservative" pundits as George Will, Charles Krauthammer, and Mona Charen have deplored the board's decision as benighted. Time magazine has already devoted a cover story to reaffirming Darwinism. Not that Kansas has banned Darwin; only that other views of human origins may be discussed in its schools, including so-called creationist theories. Aren't we all in favor of "diversity" in education? Not when it comes to the sacred doctrine of Darwinism! In other words, Darwinism has hitherto enjoyed the status of an established religion. It has been taught as dogma to children in public schools who are incapable of assessing it for themselves. It would be one thing if children were taught the scientific method and shown how it applies to biology. But they are not taught a method; they are taught a conclusion. And the conclusion, not the scientific method, is what stays with them after they leave school. This conclusion is presented as beyond rational doubt, contradicts religious teachings of man's origin, and smuggles into young minds a philosophy of atheistic materialism…."

Reuters 8/28/99 "…The U.S. Department of Education will distribute nearly $100 million in grants for charter schools, which are meant to be centers of excellence for students, President Clinton announced Saturday. Speaking as a federal judge weighed whether rival ''voucher'' programs violate the Constitutional separation of church and state, Clinton urged strong support for charter schools, which are privately run but publicly funded, and said the Republican's "risky tax cut plan'' threatened such schemes…."

Oakland Tribune 9/8/99 Stefan Gleason "....Most parents like to think that politics doesn't enter the classroom, that their children are protected from the political agenda of the nation's teacher unions. But life isn't that simple any more. In 1996, for example, 15 percent of all delegates to the Democrat National Convention were teacher union activists. That's fine and dandy as long as the unions' political activities are totally voluntary and done on their own nickel. But that's never the case. Classroom teachers are forced to pay hundreds of dollars each year out of their own pockets to teacher unions just to keep their jobs. And a large portion of these compulsory union dues is used to support political candidates and causes they oppose. That's not exactly what the founding fathers had in mind. In fact, Thomas Jefferson wrote that it is both "sinful and tyrannical" to be forced to financially support a cause with which you disagree. Teachers all across the country are fed up with the way their profession is being politicized and are demanding help. From Alaska to California to Michigan to Massachusetts, Right to Work Foundation attorneys are now providing free legal aid to thousands of classroom teachers in more than 100 separate cases. ... The end result is plummeting education quality while union officials exercise sweeping control over schools systems; they wield their special legislatively granted privileges and political clout to dictate who's hired and fired, how school dollars are spent, and even what's taught through radical union-approved text books and "study guides." The classroom teachers who are fighting Big Labor's compulsory dues-driven political machine are good people who care deeply about their profession and about the kids in their classrooms: There's Dianne Foster, a dedicated math teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area. In December 1997, Foster and several of her colleagues from eight Northern California school districts sued their unions when the unions refused to provide detailed information on how their dues were being spent.....AND there's Cindy Omlin, a former speech pathologist in Spokane, Wash. who was sued by union officials for doing the unthinkable in many school districts -- educating her co-workers about their constitutional right to refrain from paying for the teacher union's political activities..."

Washington Times 9/8/99 Mike Farris ".... Jill Floyd, a social worker for the Yolo County (Calif.) Department of Social Services (DSS), had the "goods" on the Calabretta family. An anonymous tipster had heard a child's voice yelling "No, Daddy, no" late at night. Another time, the tipster had heard a child's voice yelling "No, no, no" from the back yard. Additionally, the tipster knew that the Calabrettas home-schooled their children and were very religious. . . . . Ms. Floyd went to the home four days after DSS received this report. She demanded entry. Shirley Calabretta, a member of Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) who had been instructed in her rights under the Fourth Amendment, graciously said "No." The Calabretta children were observed by the social worker when Shirley opened the door. Later that day, the social worker wrote that the children "did not appear to be abused or neglected." . . . . Officer Nicholas Schwall knew nothing more than that children had been heard crying in the home when he coerced Mrs. Calabretta to open her door with the threatening words, "We will get into your home one way or another.". . . . Once inside, Ms. Floyd insisted on segregating the two girls, then-aged 12 and 3. She asked the 12-year-old whether the children were spanked. The girl gave a remarkably mature description of biblical discipline and said that they were sometimes spanked with a short, thin dowel and other times with a Lincoln Log roofing piece. The girl denied any abuse or bruises.. . . . Nonetheless, Ms. Floyd insisted on strip-searching the 3-year-old. She demanded that the 12-year-old remove the younger sister's pants. The older girl refused, and the little girl began to scream in the tug of war that ensued. Mrs. Calabretta came into the bedroom, despite having been told to stay out. . . . . When she found out what the social worker was demanding, Mrs. Calabretta removed the little girl's pants to show the social worker a perfectly normal child's bottom without a hint of bruising. . . . . HSLDA filed a civil rights lawsuit for the Calabretta family in the federal district court in Sacramento... . . . The federal trial court ruled in favor of the Calabrettas on all points. Unsurprisingly, the government agents appealed this decision to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.. . . . On Aug. 26, the 9th Circuit issued an extraordinarily strong decision affirming parental rights and the right of privacy of the family home. The court held that neither social workers nor police officers can coerce their way into a home unless they have a warrant or probable cause that there is an emergency situation. Anonymous tips such as the one here simply do not qualify....."

The Economist 9/4-10/99 "…Calling the teaching of evolution of life on earth a massive fraud, Steve Forbes, the second most popular Republican candidate, asserts that A lot of what we thought was true [about evolution]...is not true. Al Gore, the vice-president, who had previously argued that science has a place in schools, has backed away from that view, saying localities should be free to teach creationism as well. George W. Bush, the Republican front-runner, is also unwilling to make judgments about what children should be taught. I believe [they] ought to be exposed to different theories about how the world started. Gary Bauer, the standard-bearer of Reaganite Republicanism, refuses to teach his children that they are descendants from apes and says that I just reject the basic tenet of that theory [evolution]...and so do most Americans. He is right. According to Gallup polls, only 10% of Americans say they hold a secular evolutionist view of the world, while 44% believe in strict biblical creationism. Four million also believe they have been abducted by aliens…."

The Weekly Standard 9/13/99 "…In 1995, the Ohio legislature enacted its Pilot Project Scholarship Program for disadvantaged elementary school students in Cleveland. Under PPSP, low-income families became eligible for state grants covering up to 90 percent of tuition costs at any Cleveland private school or nearby suburban public school prepared to accept their sons and daughters. By this past spring, at the end of the program's third full year, it was helping send 3,674 students-by far the largest number of them African-American and most from families living at or below the official poverty line-to upwards of 50 local private schools. And PPSP continued to grow. Until a few weeks ago, its vouchers were expected to defray 1999-2000 tuition expenses for more than 3,800 of Cleveland's poorest schoolchildren. But now things will not work out so happily. On August 24, several days after at least two participating private schools had already begun classes, federal district judge Solomon Oliver Jr. issued a sweeping injunction against the program. Oliver noted that the Constitution commands Congress and the states to "make no law respecting an establishment of religion." …..Three days later, confronted by shocked and weeping PPSP parents and bitterly condemned throughout the city (the Cleveland Plain Dealer called Oliver a "vulture"), the judge modified his order. Nearly 600 students who would have been new to the program this fall will still lose their state grants forthwith. To minimize "disruption," Oliver will allow roughly 3,200 other students, enrolled in PPSP last year, to continue their voucher-funded private educations. But only for a single semester more. The judge has scheduled an expedited trial in the case for December. And he has left little doubt what his permanent ruling then will be. "There is no substantial possibility," Oliver warns the Ohio state government and Cleveland's neediest schoolchildren, that his court "will ultimately conclude in their favor." …."

Fox News Wire 9/7/99 Brigitte Greenberg AP "…Much like the FBI developing psychological profiles to track terrorists and serial killers, school psychologists are putting together checklists of characteristics common among students prone to violence. With the pain of the deadly shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., still fresh, Wallingford Superintendent of Schools Joseph Cirasuolo said he would be remiss not to adopt "student profiling'' in his district of 7,000 pupils. "Our purpose in doing that is to intervene well before they ever decide to go out and buy a gun and do some damage,'' he said. The profile of a potentially violent student will be given to staff throughout the district's 12 schools. If someone fits the description, the student's parents will be notified, Cirasuolo said. ….The guide has 16 features that may distinguish violence-prone children, including social withdrawal, feelings of rejection, and poor academic performance. But association spokeswoman Elizabeth Kuffner warned that the guide should not be used to predict which students will go on a rampage….."

San Francisco Examiner 9/1/99 Julian Guthrie "…Nearly all 7,000 Oakland kids who skipped mandatory remedial classes move up Thousands of Oakland students who ignored the threat of being held back a grade and blew off mandatory summer school will still be promoted to the next grade, showing just how tricky it will be for California schools to retain failing kids. Of the more than 7,000 kindergarten through 12th-grade kids who didn't show up for summer school, only 145 will be held back a grade, the district said. ..."

Eagle-Tribune 8/26/99 Nancy Rodriguez "…Teachers have always been the arbitrator of grades, but soon they will be able to confer something else on their students -- race and ethnicity. Starting this school year, parents who refuse to give ethnic information about their children will forfeit that right to teachers, principals and other school officials. School officials will then be expected to use ''their good faith determination'' to figure out what race a student is and provide that information to the state, according to the Massachusetts Department of Education (DOE). Schools cannot require parents or students to identify themselves on the basis of race, ethnicity or national origin. However, it is not illegal for school officials to ''fill in the blank.'' …."

Washington Times 8/30/99 Martin Gross "...Excerpts from Martin Gross' new book, "The Conspiracy of Ignorance: The Failure of American Public Schools.". . . . When the full results came in, the Americans were shocked. We came in last while the South Koreans won. But paradoxically, the losing Americans did vanquish the Koreans in one category: self-esteem. .... . . The American education establishment is equally self-confident, but their self-esteem is also challenged by the results. In 1998, American students did very poorly in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). "U.S. 12th graders performed . . . among the lowest of the 21 TIMSS countries on the assessment of mathematical general knowledge," reported the Department of Education, which pointed out that our high schoolers only outperformed students from Cyprus and South Africa. ..... . . . The federal National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test results show an appalling ignorance across the academic spectrum. Two out of three 17-year-olds did not know the meaning of the Emancipation Proclamation. Even fewer had heard of the War of 1812, the Marshall Plan that saved Europe, or Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. . . . . In science, the majority could not figure out that a shadow cast by the rising sun would fall to the west. On a map of the world most could not locate Southeast Asia. ...."

Chicago Tribune 8/26/99 Eric Zorn "…The clever campaign started by several Chicago-area churches to slip the 10 Commandments into public schools on protective dust jackets for textbooks stands ultimately to expose the true agenda of one of the powerful organizations endorsing the effort. You probably saw the story. Because courts have forbidden public schools from posting scriptural passages in classrooms and hallways, the Ashburn Baptist Church in Orland Park, in conjunction with three other area Baptist churches, last Sunday distributed some 8,000 glossy, wraparound book covers emblazoned with the Decalogue from the biblical Book of Exodus. Ashburn's pastor, Rev. Vernon Lyons, said Wednesday that heavy media coverage of the jackets has resulted in calls to his church from other interested churches and youth groups, suggesting such displays will spread. But there's something here you ought to be aware of. A national advocacy group that has lent support, approval and even offers of legal assistance to this action is one that has long promoted the idea that public school students should: …..The name of this organization that's so zealous about the rights of students to express their religious beliefs and incorporate historical religious themes in education? The American Civil Liberties Union. "Amazingly enough, for a change, the ACLU is not upset with us," said Lyons…… "A TV news crew that came to me (for comment on the book jackets) was very deflated," said ACLU of Illinois spokesman Edwin Yohnka. "They asked me, `Would you say you're the other side?' I said, `No, we would defend any student who was told he couldn't display the Commandments.' "…."

USA Today 8/30/99 Gregg Zoroya Kristen Hartzell "…This is a strange time in America's education of its children. As schools reopen across the country, administrators from central Florida to Seattle are scrambling feverishly to find teachers. Last year, a physical education teacher who couldn't spell "strenuous" on the blackboard (he wrote "strenous") taught English in rural Georgia. About 2,600 students in New Orleans wasted a year on algebra, earning no credit because teachers were not credentialed for the class. In Orlando, special-ed students are taught by people with no training in the field because there's no one else to do the job. Yet experts say there are plenty of teachers coming out of universities across the country. Not since the altruistic '60s and early '70s have freshmen - one in 10 - shown such interest in education, they say. The number of graduates prepared to be teachers this year (190,000) nearly reaches the all-time peak of 1972. Teach for America, a nonprofit organization that funnels seniors into two-year teaching commitments at urban and rural schools lacking resources, has seen applications rise 36% in four years…."

SOBRANS - MAGAZINE - WWW,SOBRAN.COM A "Talk" by Joe "… The modern American educational system no longer teaches us the political language of our ancestors. In fact our schooling helps widen the gulf of time between our ancestors and ourselves, because much of what we are taught in the name of civics, political science, or American history is really modern liberal propaganda. Sometimes this is deliberate. Worse yet, sometimes it isn't. Our ancestral voices have come to sound alien to us, and therefore our own moral and political language is impoverished. It's as if the people of England could no longer understand Shakespeare, or Germans couldn't comprehend Mozart and Beethoven….."

CNSNews.com 8/31/99 Bruce Sullivan "…Clothing giant Levi Strauss is sponsoring a program to bring young people to a homosexual, bisexual and transgendered conference in Atlanta that focuses on school-related homosexual issues in grades as low as kindergarten, and at least one former homosexual says the San Francisco-based company is being duped by the homosexual-rights movement. "I have no idea why Levi's would do this," Jim Hanes of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality told CNSNews.com. He added that when it comes to the homosexual agenda "Most corporations have no idea what they are sponsoring." …."

WorldNetDaily 8/31/99 Linda Bowles "…Everyone has been agreeing for decades, but we are apparently helpless to bring about necessary and obvious changes and reforms. Why? There are two primary reasons: First, the federal government has progressively increased its control over the education of American children. There are several problems with this: It is unconstitutional, that is, if one assumes the 10th Amendment to the Constitution is still in place and Supreme Court justices know how to read…. The second reason is government unions, in particular teacher's unions. The growth of educational unions correlates almost perfectly with the decline in the quality and increase in the cost of public education. In a nutshell, there is absolutely no way to avoid the conclusion that the children of America have been sold out. The largest and most powerful union in America, the National Education Association (NEA), has struck a Faustian deal with liberal politicians in Congress and in the White House. The deal is this: In exchange for millions of dollars of campaign contributions, across-the-board support for all their candidates and propagation of all their policies and agendas inside and outside the classroom, Democrats have agreed to protect the union's educational monopoly from competition, insulate it from reform, and reward its failures with increased funding….."

Original Sources 8/31/99 Mary Mostert "…In my travels to the Chicago area I find that the video "It's Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School" has been backed by Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, through Mary Morten, identified as "Daley's liaison on gay and lesbian issues." It appears that the video, which is being shown on many Public Service TV channels, is being slipped into the public school system throughout the nation without the knowledge of most parents. Chicago school officials - who stress that 'It's Elementary' will not be shown to students - are a tad skittish about talking about their plan." the Associated Press reported yesterday. "They confirm that the district's 589 principals will view the film beginning in September and receive a copy of the video for their schools - a plan funded by lesbian tennis star Billie Jean King. But several teachers who've already viewed the film on their own declined to be interviewed out of fear of criticism. …. Death is the real face of homosexuality - a face never mentioned in "It's Elementary." A recent report entitled: Homosexuality-A public Health Problem" by Raphael Kazmann states that the average age of homosexuals who die with AIDS is 39. The average age of homosexuals who die of other causes is only 41. The study, accomplished over five years, shows the homosexual conduct reduces life expectancy by at least 30 years. Other studies puts the reduction of life expectancy at 40 years. In the Kazmann report a review of thousands of cases, found that only one percent of homosexuals lived to he 65 or older. The report indicated five things contribute to early death for homosexuals: Suicide is epidemic among homosexuals. Their suicide rate is 60 times as high as the general population…. Drug abuse is 3 times higher among male sodomites than in the general populace….. Auto accidents kill them. Highway fatalities claim the lives of homosexuals at a rate 45 times higher than the heterosexual community…..Disease takes its toll. Homosexuals are 14 times more like to have Syphilis; 23 times more likely to contract some venereal disease; thousands of times more likely lo contract AIDS. Lesbians are twice as likely to suffer from genital warts; four times as likely to have scabies. Murder claims lives. The ratio of homosexual men murdered was found to be 50 times that of the general population. None of these facts are mentioned in "Its Elementary." That is outrageous….."

Associated Press 8/31/99 Martha Irvine "…Third-graders in New York are seen debating the idea of gay marriage. Eighth-graders in San Francisco are heard firing questions at a gay man and a lesbian who visit their classroom. Storytime for first- and second-graders at a school in Cambridge, Mass., is shown to include the book ``Asha's Mums'' about a little girl who has two lesbian mothers. All are excerpts from a controversial documentary, ``It's Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School,'' which first caused a stir when several public television stations decided to air it this summer. Now it's being used by many school districts nationwide as a training tool for teachers -- unifying what some say is a growing move to incorporate gay and lesbian issues into school curriculums. Critics say talk about such issues belongs at home. But others argue it's a matter of dealing with issues that students already see every day in newspapers, on television, in movies -- and maybe even in their own communities or classrooms…."

ABCNEWS.COM 8/31/99 Amy Sinatra "…Critics of the SATs have for years complained that standardized tests are unfair because they don't take the student's background into consideration. ABCNEWS' Barry Serafin reports on new criteria for Now the test's designers say they may have a solution. The Educational Testing Service today unveiled the "Strivers" score, something they say will help even the playing field. ETS says it can predict a student's score on the Scholastic Assessment Tests by looking at different variables, such as race, family income and parents' educational level. Students who score 200 points higher than expected are considered to be strivers. …"

Eagle Forum 9/1/99 Phyllis Schlafly "…Over the past decades of declining public school excellence and increasing public school crime, many parents have chosen the expensive option of transferring to private schools or the time-consuming option of homeschooling. Many more have remained in public schools, where they face a constant battle against inferior curricula that fail to teach the basics but indoctrinate children in beliefs and attitudes that the parents find contrary to their faith and values. Despite public school hostility to parental supervision, parents are beginning to win some battles against the entrenched establishment. We can report a variety of remarkable victories. 1.Illinois Governor George Ryan has just signed a law that prohibits the public schools from forcing students to participate in School-to-Work….. 2..The Kansas State Board of Education voted a couple of weeks ago to remove evolution from public school science tests. This action frees up local schools and school boards to make their own decisions in regard to teaching hypotheses about evolution, which are all too often presented in a way that is offensive to students of religious faith….. 3.Debra Gaudette of East Hartford, Connecticut, has just triumphed in her five-year effort to see the results of her daughter's Connecticut Mastery Test given in the sixth grade….. Mrs. Gaudette pursued her long and lonely battle in the face of refusal, stonewalling, and hostility from the school establishment. Since the tests, which may be filled with leading, privacy-invading, and even ridiculous questions, play a large role in determining the child's future, she believes that she, as parent, is entitled to know which questions her child missed and how they were graded. FERPA was her winning weapon. While it is an outrage that it took the Connecticut school system five years to obey the law, her victory is a win for all parents who want to know how their children answer test questions and what criteria the school uses to grade them. 4.Abstinence education has suddenly become trendy rather than old-fashioned. The new Miss Wisconsin, Mary Louise Kurey, stood on an abstinence education platform throughout her beauty pageant competition, despite warnings from contest officials that this would handicap her chances. At least 19 contestants in other state beauty pageants, including three young women competing for the title of Miss Illinois, also used abstinence education as their platform. Beautiful girls are standing in open defiance of the explicit sex education (with demonstrations of sex devices) that has been forced on public school children for the last 20 years under guidelines from three special-interest groups: the National Education Association, Planned Parenthood, and SIECUS (Sex Information Education Council of the U.S.). 5.Student-initiated prayer in Alabama was upheld in a new U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision overturning a portion of a 1997 ruling by U.S. District Judge Ira DeMent. Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor called the ruling "a victory for all the children in the public schools of our state, that they do not surrender their constitutional rights when they attend a public school in Alabama." …"

CNSNews.com 9/1/99 Justin Torres "…In a move that critics are calling a backdoor attempt to introduce affirmative action into the nationwide college entrance exam, the company that scores the SAT will give extra credit to "strivers" - lower than average scorers from historically disadvantaged backgrounds. The Education Testing Service has developed a formula to add points to the scores of SAT takers whose lower performance it says belies their ability to perform well in college. …"

Chicago Sun-Times 9/1/99 Fran Spielman Rosalind Rossi "…Mayor Daley on Tuesday supported possible Chicago public school use of a controversial film documentary on how to teach gay issues, saying, "there's nothing wrong with it." "It's an education tool," Daley said of "It's Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in Schools." Daley's liaison on gay and lesbian issues, Mary Morten, has been lobbying to bring the training film for teachers into Chicago schools, Chicago school officials said. A $10,000 donation from tennis great Billie Jean King is helping fund its distribution in Chicago schools. The film shows New York third-graders debating the idea of gay marriage and Massachusetts first- and second-graders using a book about a little girl with two lesbian mothers as a storytime tale. …."

World Magazine 9/3/99 Timothy Lamer "…But the suburban element isn't all that's counter-intuitive about the Kansas vote. It's also surprising that what the Kansas board did became a national controversy at all. The board did not outlaw nor even discourage the teaching of evolution. It did not mandate nor even encourage the teaching of creationism. The board simply left the matter up to local districts. …..As part of a periodic revision of standards for statewide tests, a committee of science educators appointed by the state commissioner of education rewrote standards that had been in place since 1995, subject to the approval of the 10-member state Board of Education. The proposed standards significantly added to the evolution language of the previous standards, emphasizing that macro-evolution by natural selection-the theory that unguided gradual changes over billions of years led to the creation of new species-is "a broad, unifying theoretical framework in biology." The proposed standards left out any reference to evidence against the theory. That proposal was unacceptable to the board, as well as to many Kansas communities that held public forums about the document. The board and the science teachers attempted to negotiate a compromise and when that failed, the board simply removed mentions of macro-evolution from the standards. The board's action wasn't nearly as aggressive as Alabama's decision a few years ago to include an anti-Darwinian insert in biology textbooks. "I don't really think we did that much," John W. Bacon, a board member from southern Johnson County, told WORLD. "I would be frankly surprised if any district throws out evolution," says Mrs. Holloway. But that didn't stop the national press from going berserk..."

World Magazine 9/3/99 Timothy Lamer "…For the members of the Kansas board, an equally important matter was who would decide what is taught. On an issue this controversial, board members decided, parents and school districts should make the call. Mr. Bacon didn't want parents concerned about Darwinian teaching to be told by local school boards: "Sorry, we can't help you because our hands are tied by the state." Mrs. Holloway objected to what she saw as the attitude of the state science committee: "Give us your kids and get out of the way." …. But nationwide, the sound and fury generated by the Kansas decision may be sparking movement toward compromise on the issue of evolution education. Most of the major presidential candidates-including Al Gore-said the decision about how to teach evolution should be made at the local level, an implicit endorsement of the Kansas board's vote. …..Even some science educators may be willing to give some ground. The Science Education Commission of the American Scientific Affiliation put together a statement about the teaching of evolution that it advises governing bodies to adopt. "The State Board of Education and the local boards of education shall ensure that evolution is taught as science, not as ideology," the statement reads. "The State Board of Education and the local boards of education shall encourage teachers to make distinctions between the multiple meaning of 'evolution,' to distinguish between philosophical materialism and authentic science, and to include unanswered questions and unresolved problems in their presentations."

Fox News 9/1/99 Sonja Barisic AP "…Doctors may be overdiagnosing some groups of children with attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder and overprescribing drugs to treat the condition, according to a new study published Wednesday. Researchers examined about 30,000 grade-school children in two districts in southeastern Virginia and found that pupils took drugs for ADHD in school at two to three times the expected rate, according to the study in the American Journal of Public Health ADHD is characterized by impulsive behavior and difficulty in paying attention and keeping still. About 90 percent of patients take Ritalin, a mild central nervous system stimulant believed to calm hyperactivity by helping the brain disregard distracting stimuli…."

World Magazine 9/3/99 Lynn Vincent "…When National Education Association delegates gathered in Orlando over the July 4th weekend, a congregation of 10,000 educators united against one evil: school vouchers. For four days, from a pulpit raised above a carnival of banners, buttons, and balloons, a succession of anti-voucher orators hurled down fire and brimstone designed to rally weary soldiers and cause slackers to repent. Vouchers are like "applying leeches and bleeding a patient to death," preached NEA president Bob Chase in his keynote address. "The most able students-the few that private schools are willing to accept-will leave the school.... So will many teachers who resent being stigmatized with that scarlet F." …..Then came a moment of almost spiritual unity among the anti-voucher faithful: After the last rally speaker had denounced the threat posed by allowing parents the freedom to choose their children's education, 10,000 NEA delegates held hands, raised them above their heads and sang "We Shall Not Be Moved." …"

CNSNews.com 9/2/99 Bruce Sullivan "…Eloise Anderson is a mother, a grandmother, a former middle school teacher, and now the director of the Project for the American Family at the Claremont Institute. She is also black and has a visceral dislike for proposals such as a recent one from the Educational Testing Service that would designate students from inferior school systems who perform better than expected on their Scholastic Aptitude Test as "strivers." "Kids will do mostly what you expect of them. They will perform up to expectations," Anderson told CNSNews.com. Anderson said that she thinks it is wrong to expect less of students because they are minorities or come from poor backgrounds. "Who decides what should be expected or not expected from black students?" asked Anderson. "I remember when it was expected that blacks were not mentally qualified to play professional basketball and football," said Anderson. She added that blacks earned the right to play those, and other, sports professionally by competing with white athletes on the same playing fields. In sports, blacks neither received nor asked for special favors from their white counterparts, why should academics be different wonders Anderson? "Why change the rules in the education arena?" she asked…."

Daily Mirror 9/3/99 "… I'VE HAD 5 LOVERS - Says 14-year-old who fathered 12-year-old's baby THE boy of 14 whose 12-year-old girlfriend is pregnant boasted yesterday that he'd had five lovers. The freckle-faced tearaway said: "I feel no shame. I might regret it happening but this girl is not the first one I've slept with. I first had sex at the age of nine. "I've been out with about 10 girls. I've slept with five of them. We had sex education lessons at school but I was just interested in the sex part." …"

The Goldberg File 8/31/99 Jonah Goldberg "…So a judge in Ohio says that giving vouchers (read scholarships) to parents is unconstitutional because the parents have tried to get the most value for their money. You see, for the money these poor, mostly black, people received, parochial schools are by far the best bet. So the voucher system, Judge Oliver ruled, "advanced religion," and was therefore unconstitutional (for more, see today's Six Questions with Heritage Analyst Nina Shokraii). The judge's decision was great, except for the fact that it was stupid - on historical, political, and moral grounds. …. The current myth - one most Americans seem to believe - is that the Founding Fathers did not want American public institutions to be stained in anyway by the muck of religion. Some clever liberals will even quote some bit of Jeffersonian twaddle as if it represented the thinking of all the founders - when in reality it probably only represented what Jefferson was thinking between breakfast and lunch on a hot Tuesday in July. A Know-Nothing candidate for Congress once commented that Jefferson's statements can be employed "every which-a-way; he writ so much." ….The Founding Fathers did not consider religion alien from good government. In fact they considered it to be essential to it…. But what the Founders were afraid of was that the Federal government might establish a State Church along the lines of the Church of England. A State Church would have certain powers and privileges that other religious institutions would not. Indeed Madison's original amendment dealing with this issue read : "The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief, nor shall any national religion be established...." The key word there is "national." Madison et. al. wanted to protect smaller churches from being crowded out by big national ones. Nobody was talking about sanitizing the public square of all religion….."

Wall St. Journal 9/9/99 Ted Forstmann "….Recently a federal judge in Cleveland snatched tuition vouchers away from 3,600 children the day before school started--only to restore the funding three days later in response to a public uproar. This reinforces what John Walton and I learned earlier this year when we gave 40,000 scholarships to low-income children: The demand for choice is overwhelming. The parents of 1.25 million low-income children applied for the scholarships, meaning that they were willing to pay an average of $1,000 annually for four years to participate in our program. That adds up to $5 billion that families of modest means were willing to spend to escape the education system in which they are trapped. As the pressure for school choice continues to grow, we are bound to hear four categories of arguments in favor of the status quo. First there is the policy argument: Since 90% of children are in the public education system, we must "fix" that system--and fight choice, which will "destroy" the public schools……. The second category of arguments against competition is historical: The U.S., we are led to believe, was founded upon a system of government-provided education; tinker with it, and you tinker with the underpinnings of our democracy…… the opponents of competition will move on to their third major argument: civics. The free-market approach may have worked in a more homogeneous society, they argue, but in today's diverse culture we need the government system to promote social harmony and teach civic values…… Today parents are divided over creationism, sex education, school prayer, religious holidays and values education. So why not simply enable parents to pick the education they want for their children? Because, according to the fourth argument against choice, it is against the law. The same people who insist that the First Amendment prevents children from exercising their faith within the public system argue that it also prevents families from using a fraction of their own tax money in order to leave it. Since some children might flee to the inexpensive option of parochial schools, we're told that this would represent an unconstitutional establishment of state religion. But of course the state isn't establishing any religion; parents are simply choosing which school should get their money.

The irony is that so long as the current monopoly continues to shut out competition, religious schools will be the only option many families will be able to afford. A truly open, competitive environment would witness all kinds of new suppliers coming to the fore, which would result in the establishment of many secular schools. The possibilities are endless. Schools might be established by profit-making corporations, by cultural institutions such as fine arts or science museums, or by universities. To refuse to let such potential suppliers compete with a government monopoly on a level playing field is not only wrong, it is senseless…."

USA Today 9/8/99 Tamara Henry "….Nearly 25% of students no longer attend a neighborhood school but travel sometimes great distances for alternatives, a study out today shows. In all, 14 million students are involved in some type of "choice" program such as vouchers or charter schools, says Bruce Fuller of the University of California, Berkeley. He and Luis Huerta of Stanford used Department of Education data for their analysis which shows that this year: ---7 million are entering alternative programs that did not exist a generation ago. --- 5 million are bound for private or parochial schools. --- 2 million new families are participating in programs that allow their children to attend any public school in surrounding school districts…… But the report does say parents are happier with the new schools, and attendance, graduation rates and college enrollement have improved….."

Minneapolis Star-Tribune 9/8/99 Katherine Kersten "…Where would you expect to hear a statement like the following: "Race is an invented system, . . . an arbitrary classification created by Europeans using themselves as the model of humanity for the purpose of establishing their power and privilege"? Would it be a cultural anthropology class at an elite East Coast university? Perhaps a rally of Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam? Think again. Welcome to "Building Cultural Connections," a curriculum for licensed child care workers brought to you by the state of Minnesota. "Building Cultural Connections" is the state's response to a 1990 law requiring cultural dynamics training for all licensed child care workers -- from staff at large centers to moms caring for a few kids in their living rooms. After passing the law, the Legislature handed off responsibility for designing a training curriculum to a public/ private group called the Cultural Dynamics Education Project, which spent five years in the effort….It's up to Minnesota's child care providers to save the day. Here's how Building Cultural Connections instructs them to do it: Child care workers should strive to provide "culturally appropriate care." In other words, they should treat children differently, based on the color of their skin or their ancestors' country of origin. …… Providers should attempt to protect minority children from the ravenous "non-disabled European American culture." In many cases, this may mean promoting racial and ethnic separatism…… Providers should routinely assess their day care environment and materials to eliminate bias and counter stereotype. Thankfully, Building Cultural Connections provides a handout entitled "Ten Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Sexism, Racism and Ableism." (Are minority characters held to European-American behavior standards? Thumbs down.) Books published before 1970 should be viewed with particular suspicion. Children guilty of stereotypes -- a sin apparently limited to European-Americans -- should be quickly admonished……."

9/8/99 Linda A. Prussen-Razzano "….After listening for just a few moments to the tired, youthful voice on the other end of the phone, it was obvious to me Karen Maple had experienced her share of tough times. It was equally obvious that she loved her children deeply, feared the authorities would take them away from her, and would do anything to keep them safe. While I do not have the entire story, I obtained snippets from news articles, court documents, and conversations held between Karen, her supporters, and myself. …… Karen did pull her children from Bakersfield Elementary School. The older boy is now 18 and out of the system. Her younger son, Trevor, was also removed from Bakersfield. His last official date at the school was October 30, 1995. He was enrolled in Camel’s Hump Middle School till 1996, when Karen decided homeschooling would be the better choice for him. Testing revealed that Trevor was far below grade-level in many subjects. Karen was adamant that her son needed an alternative learning environment. There was only one problem: Bakersfield special educators had already determined that Trevor was in need of special education. According to the IEP (Individualized Education Program) performed at Bakersfield on May 25, 1995, the amount of special education planned for Trevor amounted to 40 minutes a week, or 2% of his average class time. According to court documents, "the Vermont Department of Education’s Home Study Consultant, Natalie Casco, approved the basic curriculum for Trevor’s home-schooling, but did not approve the home study enrollment due to issues surrounding the IEP." In other words, Karen had everything in place to legally home-school her child, except she couldn’t obtain approval because she wasn’t qualified to handle her son’s special education needs. What were those needs? According to his IEP, Trevor needed to "read orally to a staff member" three or four times a week, he needed "articulation training" twice a week to work on his "conversation skills," and he needed a "behavior plan" to help him control his reactions when he got angry.

That’s it. …."

9/8/99 Linda A. Prussen-Razzano "….Nevertheless, the fact remains that IEP involvement is voluntary…… Bakersfield offered mediation services to Karen and Trevor on August 23, 1996, to address his IEP needs. Karen declined, as was her right. Trevor’s name was on the enrollment lists for Bakersfield during the school year of 1997, even though Karen had been home-schooling him since 1996. According to Karen, the whole situation came to a head when she received a call from a substitute secretary at the school’s attendance desk. The secretary allegedly called Karen to find out why Trevor wasn’t present at school that day. Karen advised the secretary that Trevor was being home-schooled and shouldn’t be on the list at all…… During the various legal wranglings in the court, the school continued to exert pressure on Karen. They insisted Trevor either enroll at the school or have a qualified special education teacher come to their home for supplemental lessons. Karen advised that she was given limited options: allow the school into her home or have her children removed from it. Karen adamantly refused. According to one news report, Superintendent Sherrer advised that "when we began to put pressure on [Karen], she filed an administrative complaint with the Commissioner of Education."….. Every threat against her and her children only reinforced her determination to fight the system and keep her family whole in the process. According to Superintendent Sherrer, "[Karen] later threatened to bring harm to the truant officer or anyone else [the school] sent to her home." (Country Courier, August 19, 1999, Page 28).

9/8/99 Linda A. Prussen-Razzano "….Things came to a boil when friends and supporters of Karen posted details of her circumstance on the popular Conservative web-site, freerepublic.com. Karen had just come from a closed door meeting with the Judge, her counsel, representatives of the School, and SRS (Social and Rehabilitative Services). The Judge advised that if Karen and her son did not appear, her son would be remanded into the custody of SRS. Members of Free Republic, long known for being a politically active in pro-Constitutional fights, responded with a flood of e-mails and telephone calls to Vermont papers, the school district, and the Family Court judge supervising the case, Judge Kupersmith. Karen made the appearance but refused to bring her son. She was hoping to obtain alternate council because of a disagreement with the way her existing council was handling the case. During that appearance, Karen alleges that the Judge lambasted her, scathingly advising "I got e-mail." Presumably, that mail came from various internet supporters. The Judge turned custodianship of Trevor over to SRS, although he was allowed to remain at Karen’s house pending a later hearing. Karen called me several times, acutely upset and mortified that her attempts to obtain justice through the appropriate channels were denied. According to Karen, evidence that supported her parenting skills and Trevor's accomplishments were ignored, but letters (sometimes anonymous) that criticized her parenting skills were entered into the record as evidence…."

9/8/99 Linda A. Prussen-Razzano "….She also sought out continued support and was approached by Libertarians in her area to make a video. The video ran several times on the local cable access station. During her last scheduled court appearance, her dilapidated car finally failed her. She called the court to advise that it wasn’t working and that she was in the process of securing alternate legal representation, but the court was not interested. As of this date, Karen is now in jail without bail for refusing to turn over her children. I received the bad news via e-mail before it hit the internet…."

9/8/99 Linda A. Prussen-Razzano "….Karen is considered "anti-government" and the folks who support her are "anti-government/white supremacists." …..As part of the group that responded to calls for help for Karen Maple, I was amazed to learn that she and we were being branded as racists, supremacists, and the like. Obviously, the "reporters" at these newspapers and their readers are unaware that a large majority of Free Republic, myself included, actively supports the only African-American Republican candidate for President, Dr. Alan Keyes. They are obviously unaware that Connie Hair, Spokesperson for Free Republic, is staff member of the Keyes Campaign and also works for Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch. They are unaware that the reason so many folks at Free Republic responded to the call stemmed solely from their desire to see a return to a Constitutional form of government, instead of the pervasive, Socialist form of government we presently live under….."

9/8/99 Linda A. Prussen-Razzano "….Young Trevor summed up the situation best in his letter to the Courier in July of 1999: "It’s like a constant nightmare. I worry all the time of these people stealing me away from my family and home. Enough is enough. I did not commit a crime. I’m only fighting for my rights to a better education than what Bakersfield School could offer me."…."

The January 1979 corporate Annual Report for Playboy magazine boasted that "Playboy Foundation provide(d) the first of several major grants to The Sex Information and Education Council of the United States to support its nationwide educational programs." Hugh Hefner's daughter, Christie, who now rides atop the Playboy "Entertainment for Men" Empire, writes more specifically that Playboy provided original outreach money for SIECUS: Through the Playboy Foundation, Hefner put his money where his mouth was. It made the initial grant to establish an Office of Research Services of the Sex Information and Education Council of the U.S. (SIECUS) in the late 60s. (1)…… Considering its "initial grant" should it surprise that SIECUS promotes educational value in "sexually explicit material?" Since 1991 the SIECUS Position Statement has marketed "sexually explicit materials" to children, inclusive of elementary and secondary school children: When sensitively used in a manner appropriate to the viewer's age and developmental level, sexually explicit visual, printed, or on-line materials can be valuable educational or personal aids helping to reduce ignorance and confusion and contributing to a wholesome concept of sexuality (emphasis added). (2) ….."

Wall Street Journal 9/10/99 "….Picture this: A high-school teacher hands out tests to a classroom full of seniors. To the rich white students, she nods approvingly and says she expects great things. But to the poor black students, she says not to worry, because she really can't expect them ever to amount to much. That's what will happen to millions of American students when they sit down to take the SAT next month. Of course, it won't be put to them exactly this way. As the Journal's Amy Dockser Marcus reported last week, the Educational Testing Service--the group that devises the SAT college-entrance exams--has come up with a way to target a new category of students it calls "Strivers." Whether or not a student is deemed a "Striver" is determined by weighing a student's test results against what the ETS thinks that score should be based on 14 categories of personal information: race, family income, the socio-economic mix of a student's high school, whether his or her mother works (if she doesn't, it may be considered a handicap), etc. In other words, a Striver is someone who scores beyond what the ETS thinks should be the natural level for that race and class. The idea here is that a Hispanic who comes from what the ETS would consider an unfavorable background and scores 1000 is really equal to a student from a more favorable background who scores 1200. …."

NewsMax.com 9/10/99 Oliver North "….America’s next generation of leaders has gone back to school. Classes have resumed throughout our nation’s elementary schools, high schools and colleges. The ostensible purpose of their matriculation: to master the tools they will need to "pursue happiness." And at some schools, that may actually happen. ……. At Princeton University, the place where James Madison went to study theology, the class of 2003 will have a chance to study something much different: how and why we should be killing "defective" children. That unthinkable concept springs from the mind, the pen and the lessons of one professor Peter Singer, one of Princeton’s newest "academic acquisitions." The Oxford educated Dr. Singer, the author of "Animal Liberation," is now a tenured member of the prestigious university's faculty in of all places, Princeton's "University Center for Human Values." He believes that parents should have the right to kill their children up to 28 days after birth if the child has "severe disabilities." In another of his books, the horrifically mis-named tome, "Practical Ethics," Singer rationalizes this horrific idea: "Killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often, it is not wrong at all." Not wrong? Where, when and how could infanticide not be wrong? Singer defends his position by saying that at a mere 28 days, a child doesn't "understand" what it is like to be alive……Singer’s staunchest champion is the man who hired him, Princeton’s president, Harold Shapiro, who also serves as the chairman of President Clinton’s National Bio-ethics Advisory Commission. Shapiro cites the need to offer "a forum for the free and open consideration of ideas, even when some of these ideas make some, or even most of us uncomfortable." Uncomfortable? How about repugnant! How about unconscionable? …."

Fox News Online 9/13/99 Anjetta McQueen "….Poor students are not getting the same challenging schoolwork as other children, despite a federal law designed to bridge the learning gap between the haves and have-nots, a civil rights panel contended Monday. The Clinton administration gives states too much latitude in adopting standards of learning for all children, resulting in "disturbing echoes of the old racially dual systems of education'' that existed before school segregation ended, the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights — a coalition of civil rights groups — concluded in its report on Title I. Title I, created more than 30 years ago to narrow the gap in academic achievement between low-income students and their peers, was revised in 1994 to make sure states getting federal money adopted the same high standards for all children……."

Town Hall / Pacific Research Institute 9/13/99 "….Expanding the Charter Idea - Executive Summary - America’s system of government education, operated by the states, has for decades functioned as a public utility, with guaranteed clients and funding. That funding has continued despite poor performance and widespread dissatisfaction among parents, students, and politicians alike. In 1983, the federal Department of Education saw the problem as sufficiently serious to release the self-explanatory book, A Nation at Risk. Since that time there has been little change, as American students continue to fall behind their foreign counterparts. But America’s education establishment, despite its record of resisting and co-opting reform, has not been able to contain a powerful new movement that is expanding the options of parents and students. Despite much opposition, charter schools—deregulated public schools run by community groups, including parents and teachers—are mounting a challenge from within the government system ….. In return for meeting the educational goals of their charter, these schools receive freedom from burdensome education codes that stifle innovation. While they remain part of the government (public) school system, charter schools enjoy great latitude in designing curricula, hiring staff, and contracting for services. From zero charter schools in 1991, the movement has exploded to include more than 1,100 schools in 36 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico by 1999, serving 250,000 of the nation’s 52 million school-age children. This astonishing growth has surged from the grassroots, without support from foundations or major corporations. The Clinton Administration and federal Department of Education offer qualified support. ….. Charter schools arose in tandem with pressure to allow parents to choose the education they believe best suits their children. The desire for choice has prevailed despite the defeat of various voucher plans, including California’s Proposition 174 in 1993……. A study covering 8,400 charter school students found that 63 percent were minorities and that the number of boys and girls was almost equal. Charter schools now teach the learning disabled, the deaf, pregnant teens, and low-income children. There are on-line, bilingual, and core-curriculum charter schools. While many states would bar Bill Gates or Wynton Marsalis from teaching since they lack a credential, charter arrangements allow experts to pass on their knowledge in the classroom. At the Renaissance Charter School in Irving, Texas, former Navy pilot Fred McNabb teaches physics, usually a senior-year elective, to sophomores……. Charters are not granted in perpetuity. At the end of the charter’s term, from three to 15 years depending on the state, the school is assessed to see if it has met the educational goals the school founders set out to accomplish. If the goals were met, their charter may be renewed. If they failed, their charter may be withdrawn…."

Atlanta Journal-Constitution 9/14/99 Thomas Sowell "….. Most people are unaware how much time and effort the public schools --- and some private schools --- are putting into undermining the values and understanding that children were taught by their parents and re-orienting them toward the vision of the world that is fashionable in the educational establishment. Today's educators believe it is their job to introduce children like Sara and Benjamin to sex when and in whatever manner they see fit, regardless of what the children's parents might think.

Weaning children away from their parents' influence in general is a high priority in many schools. Children sit in what is called a ''magic circle'' and talk about all sorts of personal things, with the rule being that they are not to repeat any of these things to anyone outside this magic circle, including their parents Some handbooks for teachers warn against letting parents know the specifics of what is being done and provide strategies for side-stepping parental questions. Glowing generalities and high-sounding names like ''gifted and talented'' programs conceal what are nothing more than brainwashing operations to convert the children from their parents' values to the values preferred by educational gurus……... ''There is no 'right' way or 'right' age to have life experiences,'' one widely used textbook says. Another textbook tells children that they may listen to their parents ''if you are interested in their ideas.'' But, if there is a difference of opinion, parent and child alike should see the other's point of view ''as different, not wrong.'' ……. There is a textbook for children ranging from preschool to third grade that tells children about their rights and about asserting those rights to parents. Whenever ''things happen you don't like,'' you have ''the right to be angry without being afraid of being punished,'' it says. In other words, don't take any guff off Mommy and Daddy. As another textbook says, parents are just ''ordinary people with faults and weaknesses and insecurities and problems just like everyone else.'' In many of the textbooks, movies and other material used in schools, parents are depicted as out of touch and full of hang-ups. ……. What these smug underminers of parents fail to understand is that the relationship of a child to his or her parents is the most extraordinary relationship anyone is likely to have with another human being. No one else is likely to sacrifice so much for another person's well-being. If the avant-garde ideas taught to children in schools blow up in their faces, it is the parents who will be left to pick up the pieces, not the glib gurus….."

Associated Press 9/16/99 Christine Hanley "....Following pressure from the ACLU, a public elementary school has decided not to use Christian textbooks that describe other religions as cults and say God helped Columbus discover America. Belridge Elementary Principal Steven Wentland, who also serves as superintendent of the 60-student, one-school district, said Wednesday that "every last flashcard" would be delivered back to A Beka Books Inc., a Pensacola, Fla.-based Christian publishing company. "We'll pull them out. It's OK," he said, adding that he doesn't want to get into a courtroom battle or generate negative publicity. "We don't hold any grudges." The legal dispute began last month in this community in the oil fields northwest of Bakersfield, where the few housing tracts are virtually invisible among the hundreds of oil pumps. Wentland approved the use of the A Beka curriculum after holding public meetings about the contents over the summer. The school board also approved them, and all of the parents signed consent forms after they were shown samples and reassured that some material would be edited to avoid problems. An anonymous donor offered to pay for the books, so approval by state education officials was not mandatory. A Beka describes itself as "unashamedly Christian and traditional in its approach" and weaves fundamental Christian ideologies into daily exercises. ...."

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 9/16/99 David Eltz ".... A Steelers fan might expect humiliation at the hands of a Browns fan during a game in Cleveland. But in school? Eric Nutter, 11, found out the hard way that teachers don't always play fair. The fifth-grader wore a Kordell Stewart jersey to school on Cleveland Browns' spirit day - and spent half the day in a corner, on his teacher's orders. Eric, of Norwalk, Ohio, knew exactly what he was doing when he left for Western Reserve Middle School in nearby Collins one day last week dressed in black and gold. He expected ribbing from classmates but not punishment from his teacher, who ordered Eric to turn his desk around and push it into a corner. At first he thought it was a joke. But he soon tired of the game....."

USA Today 9/10/99 James Freeman "....If you're upset about the quality of your child's education, you should be. By any reasonable measurement, American schools are failing to educate our kids. In a 1998 international test, American high school students finished 18th out of 21 nations in math and science literacy, and the test didn't even include any Asian countries. In a separate test for those students taking advanced physics, our kids finished dead last. In a survey of American teenagers conducted by the National Constitution Center, only 21% of the kids were aware that there are 100 members of the U.S. Senate, but 81% knew that there are three brothers in the musical group Hanson. College admission is no guarantee that kids have learned basic skills. A full 36% of freshmen in New York's university system require remedial courses, while almost 40% of Georgia's freshmen need the extra help. In Kentucky, the figure is 48% - half of a university student body arrives on campus without the skills to complete high school successfully....... "

Investor's Business Daily 9/16/99 Anna Bray Duff "...Like your pants extra baggy? Good thing you're not going to school in Boone County, Ky., where one high school has banned students from wearing pants that drag on the floor. Not just because they're sloppy. Because someone could trip and get hurt. And then sue. Schools' fear of lawsuits is hardly confined to such trivial matters. In fact, actual lawsuits and the fear of them are remaking school policies on everything from school discipline to science lab, from what kids can eat for lunch to what they can do in gym class. Such lawsuits can cost school districts - and the taxpayers who pick up the bill - a good chunk of money. And a growing chorus of educators argues that it undermines what it takes to run a good school. Lawsuits against schools are hardly new, and many involve weighty constitutional questions. ...."

Charlotte Observer 9/15/99 "....N.C. public schools received a D-plus Tuesday in a report from a conservative think tank that said the schools' accountability system needs improvement. The John Locke Foundation based its grade on ABC of Public Education tests, the SAT and graduation rates for high school students. More than half the school systems received Ds or Fs. ``If North Carolina were a country, its math scores would be below that of Canada, France, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Russia, Sweden, Thailand and numerous other countries,'' said Doug Haynes, who analyzed the data. ``Only poor nations such as Colombia, Iran and South Africa are lower in math skills than is North Carolina.'' ....."

The New York Times 9/15/99 Jacques Steinberg "....For more than two years, the Educational Testing Service, the author of the nation's most widely used college entrance examination, has been working to devise a formula to help admissions officers identify disadvantaged students who score better than might have been predicted by racial, economic and other factors. Though their scores would stay the same, the students would be labeled as "strivers," perhaps increasing their chances of admission. But none are likely to be flagged any time soon, if ever, because recent reports describing the research touched off criticism from many universities and from the College Board, the association of colleges that contracts with the testing service to write the tests and score the results. Gaston Caperton, who was named president and chief executive of the College Board on July 1, said in an interview this week that he would work to block the testing service from ever offering such a formula to colleges as a tool to diversify their incoming classes. ...."

The New York Times 9/15/99 Marialisa Calta "...Last year, when reports of financial instability surfaced at Trinity College of Vermont, a small Roman Catholic liberal arts institution and the state's only women's college, people in the academic community gathered occasionally to pray for the welfare of the college. This year, the prayer meetings are held weekly. "I guess we've upped the ante," said Sister Jacqueline Marie Kieslich, Trinity's newly appointed president.. .....American colleges are "incredibly hardy," in the words of Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education in Washington. Yet every year, two to three of the country's estimated 3,500 two- and four-year colleges fall victim to demographics or cultural trends. "A school closing affects not only the students, faculty, staff and alumni, but the community as well," Hartle said. "Our diversity of choices is diminished. And the community loses an engine of economic and cultural vitality." ...."

Universal Press Syndicate 9/15/99 Joseph Sobran "... I've been watching the reaction to the decision of the Kansas state board of education to make the teaching of evolution optional in public schools. The liberal side has been furious to the verge of hysteria. It attacks the board and the Christian Right as if they had banned the teaching of science. But it doesn't address the merits of Darwinism itself; it merely assumes that Science Has Spoken and that we all have a duty to submit. The conservative side has concentrated on the difficulties posed by the theory: Where is the fossil record of intermediate species? How can a lower form of life beget a higher one? How can mutations -- understood as benign birth defects -- be genetically transmitted, to the point where a line of apes eventually produces a Mozart? The liberals seem less interested in teaching kids to think for themselves than in giving Darwinism a monopoly of authority..... Our liberal overseers have long since decided that religious teachings have no place in public education. While Darwinism is mandatory, religion is not even optional: It's "unconstitutional." ...."

Universal Press Syndicate 9/15/99 Joseph Sobran "...But in almost every known society, education has meant initiating the young into the heritage of their ancestors. The Jews taught their young the story of the Chosen People; Christians did the same, adding the story of Jesus; the Chinese taught the wisdom of Confucius; the Greeks and Romans taught the great myths of Olympus. Education has always meant more than instilling knowledge; it has also meant cultivating the moral habits necessary to continue a tradition. One of the marks of tyranny is its desire to cut the young off from their ancestors..... This is why the communists in Russia banned and persecuted Christianity, while rewriting the history books to impart the lesson that communism was the highest stage of history. The Chinese communists not only banned Confucius, but adopted the Roman alphabet so that the young would be unable to read the ancestral wisdom that was preserved in the old ideograms -- in effect making the heirs of an ancient civilization illiterate.....

Universal Press Syndicate 9/15/99 Joseph Sobran "... Our "liberal" regime is not so different from the communist regime..... They share communism's materialist philosophy, its hostility to religion, and its ambition to use the state to transform traditional society. Secularist education is part of the liberal agenda, and Kansas has given it a bloody nose by stripping the theory of evolution of its hitherto privileged position in the curriculum..... Christian parents have correctly intuited the hidden agenda behind so much state education. Their children have been weaned from Christian culture and taught a godless cosmology in the guise of biology. Through sex education, in which aggressive advocacy masquerades as knowledge, the public schools have also undermined Christian morality. They need not attack Christianity frontally; they merely have to keep the young ignorant of their Christian heritage. And they do this very well. ...."

Universal Press Syndicate 9/15/99 Joseph Sobran "... The battle over evolution and religion is really a battle between state and parental authority. The obvious way to resolve it is to cut the state out of education, making all schools private. Parents who really wanted their kids to absorb the Darwinian philosophy would be free to have their own schools; Christian parents would have their own schools too. What would be different? Obviously the statists would lose their privileged status and their huge captive audience. They would be forced to compete on equal terms with people they prefer to rule as intellectual serfs. It's odd that Darwinians should be so afraid of competition!..."

Wall Street Journal Ted Forstmann 9/14/99 ".... "As the pressure for school choice continues to grow, we are bound to hear...arguments in favor of the status quo. First there is the policy argument. Since 90% of children are in the public education system, we must 'fix' that system - and fight choice, which will destroy the public schools. It's true that 90% of children currently receive an education - or what passes for one - from the government. There is a word for a system that can command, indeed enforce, a 90% market share: monopoly. Monopolies invariably produce bad products at high prices, and the remedy in the U.S. has always been to encourage competition. ... A truly open, competitive environment would witness all kinds of new suppliers coming to the fore, which would result in the establishment of many secular schools. The possibilities are endless. Schools might be established by profit-making corporations, by cultural institutions such as fine arts or science museums, or by universities. To refuse to let such potential suppliers compete with a government monopoly on a level playing field is not only wrong, it is senseless. We have seen what state-sponsored monopolies have produced in terms of cars like the Yugo or airlines like Aeroflot....."

AP 9/14/99 David Gram "....A home-schooling mother was released from jail Tuesday after spending nearly two weeks behind bars in a dispute with public school officials over her son's special education needs. In a case watched closely by home-schooling advocates, Karen Maple was set free by the judge who had jailed her on contempt charges on Sept. 1. She had refused to follow an order to bring her 15-year-old son, Trevor, to Vermont's child protection agency so his education needs could be evaluated. In setting Ms. Maple free, Judge Michael Kupersmith threatened to fine her $100 a day if she doesn't take Trevor to the agency on Friday. Ms. Maple said she didn't know where her son was, although she believed he was staying with friends. "I don't want my son locked up and treated the way I've been treated for the last two weeks,'' the 36-year-old single mother said, weeping, outside court. "He's now considered a fugitive and he's just a child.'' State child-welfare and education officials said they couldn't comment because of confidentiality rules. The case has drawn wide attention and sympathy for Ms. Maple. About 30 people demonstrated in her support outside the courthouse Tuesday and then lined the spectators' gallery during her hearing. .....An editorial last Friday in The Wall Street Journal said cases like Ms. Maple's extend "beyond the issue of home schooling to the fundamental rights of families to raise their children the way they see fit.'' ...."

Fox News 9/15/99 Anjetta McQueen AP "...Every American student should pass a test to get out of high school whether college is planned or not, Education Secretary Richard Riley said Wednesday, reversing his past opposition to such win-or-lose measures. "Years ago, I opposed high-stakes exit exams because minority students really had less chance to succeed in the days immediately following integration,'' Riley said in his fifth annual back-to-school talk at the National Press Club. But the former South Carolina governor believes the nation is now ready to require all students to meet high educational standards. "Our schools need to give this growing number of young people both the capacity to do college-level work and the essential skills to prosper in our new economy,'' he said...."

Wall Street Journal 9/16/99 Shelby Steele ".... This season's affirmative-action debate seems to be shaping up as an argument over the meaning and relevance of merit. For decades racial preferences in college admissions have effectively preserved higher standards of merit for whites and Asians by lowering standards for blacks and Hispanics. Academic merit, as the quality most prized by universities, could go relatively undisturbed as long as it did not prevent schools from bringing in more blacks and Hispanics. But now that court decisions are making it clear that universities (and society in general) will have to move away from racial preferences, it is also clear that merit stands in the way of diversity. On average, black students from families earning $70,000 and up do worse on the SAT than whites from families in the lowest income bracket. Without a racial preference, blacks and Hispanics must compete unaided in an academic contest that can only be decided on merit. Thus, diversity suddenly requires a direct assault on merit. Merit must be weakened and relativized as a principle. Its decisiveness must be recast as unfairness. And, most of all, it must be smothered in sophistications. What is merit really? Isn't academic ability only "one kind" of merit? Should higher education "referee" opportunity? Today, the educational establishment finds itself devoted to an odd kind of innovation: schemes in which the mechanism of social inclusion is tolerance for academic mediocrity. One such scheme, the new "strivers" formula for the SAT developed by the Educational Testing Service, would effectively handicap students by race and social disadvantage. The more markers of disadvantage a student has--the number and kind of electrical appliances in the home is one such marker--the more points are deducted from a projected score. When a student scores 200 points over this obviously low concocted score, he is designated a "striver"--someone with more potential than his actual score reveals. If this formula errs by using dubious arithmetic to arrive at a judgment of human potential, its worse offense is to count being black, by itself, as a handicap. In fact, unless blackness is thrown into the calculation, this formula fails to bring in the desired number of blacks....."

CAMPAIGN FOR A COLORBLIND AMERICA 9/14/99 Press Release "...The Campaign for a Colorblind America Legal Defense and Educational Foundation released today a letter sent earlier this month to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Attorney General Bob Butterworth and others in which litigation challenging racially discriminatory admission practices by the Hillsborough County School District is promised if immediate actions are not taken to eradicate these policies. Hillsborough County is located in western Florida and includes the city of Tampa.....Mrs. Raylene Worley, whose daughter Stephanie is a student at the Hillsborough County School District, has been told by school officials that they are compelled to use different racial admissions standards because of mandates and policies promulgated by the Florida Department of Education. These policies would apply to virtually every school district in the state. More Edward Blum, chairman of the Campaign for a Colorblind America, stated, "It is tragic that 45 years after Brown v. Board of Education, Florida children are being denied admission to schools because of their skin color. Using race to admit or exclude children to a school was wrong then and it is Wrong today. There is never a good reason for these immoral policies."...."

WORLD Magazine 9/17/99 Gene Veith "....The ex-communist convert to conservatism David Horowitz has said that conservatives-and this would apply to Christians in particular-have a disadvantage in the culture wars. They still believe in concepts such as truth, fair play, and the worth of other human beings. Many of their opponents-for whom truth and morality are relative-operate under no such restrictions. That may be an overgeneralization about both parties, but Christians who become involved in politics and cultural issues need to realize that their opponents will play hardball. For those who believe truth is only a matter of interpretation, any inconvenient facts only need to be given the right "spin" until they can appear to mean anything they choose. For those who believe that moral beliefs are only the imposition of power, it is perfectly legitimate to use power to squelch their opposition, even if this means destroying their opponent's reputation by any means possible. Those whose backs are against the wall can be expected to fight dirty. One particularly threatening idea to today's educational establishment, the fountainhead of relativism, is the prospect of school-choice programs, in which state funding would go to private, usually Christian, schools in a last-ditch effort to educate the poor children who are the prime casualties of contemporary educational theory. Cleveland's school-voucher program was struck down by a federal judge, but a practically identical program, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, was upheld by the Supreme Court, which refused to hear a lawsuit against it. Now 40 states-not to mention presidential candidates-are considering or advocating school choice. The stakes are high in this controversy, not only because school choice threatens business-as-usual teachers' unions but because the nation's educational crisis demonstrates the failure of today's secularist ideologies, which have given us the relativism that minimizes educational content and that undermines classroom discipline. Secularists used to associate themselves with education, portraying Christians as backward and closed-minded. But now Christian schools are, in general, providing a better foundation for education than the alternatives....."

Arizona Republic and Gazette 9/18/99 Kelly Pearce Robbie Sherwood "...Mesa has closed the doors of a new 280-student charter school, saying the school repeatedly violated the city's building code and moved children into structures that may be unsafe. The city got tough after inspectors found the school had defied an order to stop construction on its building at 715 N. Country Club Drive and had moved students into other buildings not fit for school, said Orion Goff, Mesa's chief building inspector. City officials said Life School Legends continued to sign up students even after its original location and two alternates were deemed unsuitable......The problems for Life School Legends began Aug. 1, when a city inspector confronted school workers renovating a building without a construction permit. The troubles snowballed into a criminal citation Tuesday. When Goff found out that classes were being held in a basketball gymnasium owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one day after closing down classes at another church, he slapped Life School Principal Jim Mason with a citation that could lead to a $2,500 fine and up to six months in jail......"

Investor's Business Daily 9/18/99 Tyce Palmaffy "...School choice advocates soon may have a new, unlikely ally: the federal government. Under a proposal making its way through Congress, the federal government would join states and cities such as Florida, Cleveland and Milwaukee in endorsing the idea of choice in education. But it faces an uphill battle. Both the White House and congressional Democrats have vowed to fight any school-choice plan, arguing it would siphon funds from an already strapped public-school system. The bill, by Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., may be unveiled as soon as this week. It would let states or school districts use some federal education dollars under the government's Title I program for ''portable'' vouchers. Title I, which is up for renewal this year, is the largest federal education program, providing $8 billion a year to local schools. It seeks to bridge the achievement gap between poor and well-to-do students. Title I funds currently go straight to schools based on the number of low-income students who attend. States choosing to take part in the new program would give poor students a voucher to buy extra services - such as after-school help at any public school or private tutoring. ...."

The New Republic 9/99 Paul Peterson "....Perhaps you're familiar with the "skimming" argument against school vouchers. As this line of thinking goes, the parents most likely to opt for vouchers will be the ones who are already most involved with their children's education--which, on average, will mean the parents of the most motivated and gifted students. Once the best and the brightest flee to private schools, public schools will only get worse; this debilitating cycle will continue until the best students are skimmed off and the only kids left in public schools are those with the fewest skills and the least-involved parents--in other words, the students most in need of help. "Vouchers are like leeches," says North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt. "They drain the lifeblood--public support--from our schools." Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association, concurs: Establishing a system of vouchers, he says, would be like "bleeding a patient to death." We liberals are sensitive to this argument because we know that needy students are now getting the short end of the educational stick. Yet, while liberals are right to be concerned about these students, new data from a privately financed voucher program in Texas suggest that we should give vouchers a second, more serious look. Far from aggravating income and racial disparities in education, vouchers may actually help to ameliorate them. ...."

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 9/18/99 Tom Heinen "....Once viewed as oddities by an unfamiliar public, families who teach their children at home instead of sending them to a public or private school are rising in numbers, sophistication and acceptance in Wisconsin. The more than 800 people who have come to Elmbrook Church in the Town of Brookfield this weekend for the fall conference of the Wisconsin Christian Home Educators Association are browsing amid textbooks, curriculum plans, videos, and other materials that early pioneers could only dream about. Jan Gnacinski, the Racine-based executive director of the association, remembers having textbook manufacturers refusing to sell to her 15 years ago because she wasn't an institution. In 1984, when Wisconsin's home schooling law was enacted, UFO sightings weren't much more unusual than home-schooler encounters. There were 1,126 registered home schooled students then. Today, 19,808 children across Wisconsin - a 1,659% increase - are registered with the state as being schooled at home....."

Wall Street Journal 9/17/99 "...The head of the 800-member Colorado Springs, Colorado, branch of the NAACP is forced to resign in a scandal. His transgression? Writing an article in which he supported school choice, because the status quo leaves "the poorest kids who need the most help . . . trapped in our very worst schools." In an article last month for the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph, Willie Breazell, a 54-year old systems analyst, also said he'd been wrong to wrong to oppose an 1993 voucher initiative in the state. The NAACP, which has a strict anti-voucher policy, moved quickly against him. It didn't matter that the article made clear Mr. Breazell was speaking for himself and not the NAACP. Earlier this month, citing pressure from the national office, Mr. Breazell resigned his post , even though he says the overwhelming majority of his local membership wanted him to stay. "I was kind of lynched, so to speak," Mr. Breazell says. "If you join the NAACP, you sacrifice some of your liberties, and if you don't have the group-think mentality, you won't last." The NAACP national office did not return phone calls asking for its position. ...."

World Net Daily 9/23/99 Samuel Blumenfeld ".... And in a few months, some of the first graders will be labeled learning disabled, dyslexic, reading disabled, ADD, or ADHD. Parents will be told that their children need to be put on Ritalin. But, believe it or not, there is a solution to all of this, and it is called homeschooling. Granted, that many working parents wouldn't dream of homeschooling. Yet there is enough growing concern among some parents that is leading them to think of homeschooling as an alternative to the public school. And if you, dear reader, happen to be one of those parents, the best thing you can do to help you make that fateful decision is to read a new book about homeschooling, written by two veteran homeschoolers, Mary and Michael Leppert. The book's title is "The Homeschooling Almanac, 2000-2001." It provides the most cogent arguments in favor of homeschooling and the best picture of what it's like to homeschool I've read anywhere....."

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_dougherty/19990923_xnjdo_texas_scho.shtml 9/23/99 Jon Dougherty "...A high school student body president at a Texas public school told lawyers for a freedom of religion advocacy group that the school principal threatened to strip her of her powers if she didn't conform to his instructions regarding prayer on school property. The Texas Justice Foundation (TJF) told WorldNetDaily that the student, Beth Long, who attends Mission High School in Mission, Texas, contacted the organization in early September and reported the threat. According to TJF, the student was also told to "pledge allegiance" to the principal and the school district, adding that the principal's rules prohibiting school prayer exceeded those set forth by the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court in a February ruling on school prayer......"

WorldNetDaily 9/22/99 Jon Dougherty "....According to the Associated Press, the San Francisco Unified School District is ready to embark on another nonsensical policy to further integrate and "diversify" their public schools. The concept is called a "diversity index," and it is designed to make sure that an equal number of ethnic groups are represented at each school. Students are screened upon -- among other things -- their ethnicity, income, test scores and English proficiency..... And yet, the new rules -- if ordained by a High and un-Holy Federal Judge -- will force the school district to do precisely what these group leaders have said they wouldn't do, which is admit students based on a racial and ethnic set of realities. "Ethnicity, English proficiency, test scores, and income." Oh, heck no -- there's not going to be any bias in determining those factors, unless you're white or you speak English well. Flaming liberals have infested our government schools at every level of leadership. But that wasn't good enough because now some of their own are still challenging every damned thing they do. If it weren't so sad, it'd be funny...... "

MSNBC.com 9/22/99 Celest Fremon "....The idea that education favored one gender over another became a particularly hot topic in 1992, after the American Association of University Women released its much-publicized study, "How Schools Shortchange Girls." The AAUW report was dramatic in its contention that female students suffered in terms of both grades and self-esteem at the hands of an academic environment that was unfairly skewed toward males. Now, as the century draws to a close, it appears that the pendulum may have swung in the other direction. The feminist revolution of the 1970s is finally paying dividends for female students. Girls are beginning to thrive. Boys, however, seem to be drifting into ever deeper water when it comes to education....... Fewer boys than girls are going on to college. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, last year 69 percent of female high school graduates pursued higher degrees vs. 62 percent of male grads. This year, girls are expected to earn 57 percent of all bachelor's degrees. The number of boys seeking higher degrees has also dropped drastically. According to the U.S. Department of Education, in 1995-1996 56 percent of the nation's master's degrees went to girls. As early as 1992, the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) found that girls outnumbered boys in extracurricular academic activities, such as honor societies and student government. And in 1998-'99, boys took fewer Advanced Placement tests than girls, 45 percent to 55 percent, according to the NCES...... Boys are diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) nearly 10 times as often as girls, reports a 1997 article in American Psychologist. Boys outnumber girls in special education classes, 3 to 1, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Boys receive an overwhelming majority (71 percent, some research shows) of all school suspensions. And eighth-grade boys are 50 percent more likely to be held back a grade than girls, according to the U.S. Department of Education....... Kindlon suggests that the fact that 84 percent of elementary school teachers are women often affects the way male students are dealt with: Male teachers are more likely to understand boys' rambunctiousness, while female teachers and administrators tend to misinterpret boys' normal high-activity level as willful misbehavior. "So what you have is a situation in which even the most well-meaning teachers find themselves trying to control the boys instead of teach them," he says. ...."

Fort Worth Star Telegram 9/22/99 Michelle Melendez "...Unequal educational opportunities are more to blame for minorities' lower test scores than family income or lack of English skills, an educational testing expert testified in federal court yesterday. "Black and Hispanic students simply do not receive anywhere near the educational opportunities" of Anglo students, said Walter Haney of the Center for the Study of Testing, Evaluation and Educational Policy at Boston College. Minority students' scores are significantly better in suburban districts, he said, suggesting that all students get better instruction in smaller districts compared to larger urban districts.....Haney also addressed the relationship between students who pass their classes but fail the TAAS. He found that 49 percent of students with a B average and 26 percent of students with an A average in their math class failed the math portion of the TAAS, "suggesting the course material must not be covering the same material on the test," he said. He had similar findings for minority students who passed English courses. One in three African-American students and one in four Hispanic students who passed the course failed the reading section of the TAAS test compared with one in nine Anglo students....."

Teacher Magazine 8-9/99 "....California's legendary battle over reading dates to the late 1980s, when the state embraced whole language strategies in its curriculum frameworks. Whole language was in part an import from New Zealand; notable scholars such as Frank Smith and Kenneth Goodman promulgated its strategies in this country, arguing that children can best learn to read in a "literature rich" environment in which meaning is primarily "drawn out" as a student grapples with context. Though whole language proponents don't oppose teaching decoding strategies, many in California became anti-phonics zealots, says Bill Honig, the state's schools chief during the movement's ascendant years in the 1980s. "We made the mistake in the new language arts curriculum framework of not mentioning phonics, and a lot of people thought that meant it was eliminated," recalls Honig. "The professors and ed schools, many of whom were outright hostile to phonics, took over." .....Then, in 1992, California's reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress exam dropped-a decline that became even steeper in 1994-giving Joseph and others further evidence that whole language was failing...... Over time, Joseph had begun to see the state's reading problem as symptomatic of philosophical assumptions underlying instruction in other subjects, especially math and science. She felt that one of the chief culprits, set loose upon the schools by the colleges and professional educator organizations, was constructivism-the belief that children do not so much acquire knowledge as construct it from their own experiences. "Aren't there one or two things from science history that are worth knowing?" Joseph asks with rhetorical exasperation. "I noticed a number of years ago that no one teaches kids about photosynthesis anymore-they're supposed to discover it on their own. For goodness sake, there are sets of facts that are fundamental-once you have them you can begin to think, to theorize." ..... "

AP 9/21/99 "...Under a federal court order to change their admissions practices, school officials are proposing a ``diversity index'' -- ranking students by income, English proficiency, test scores and ethnicity -- to determine which campuses to allow students to attend. A student whose ``individual profile will contribute to increasing the diversity of (a) school will have priority for assignment/admission to that school,'' according to the plan, worked out over the summer by a 27-member committee of district employees. U.S. District Judge William Orrick will consider the proposal at a Nov. 5 hearing. ...... Under the 62,000-student district's previous admissions rules, a school was barred from having more than 45 percent of students from any one ethnic group and required to have at least four ethnic groups represented. That system, brought about by an NAACP lawsuit, was intended to remedy past discrimination against black and Latino students. But it also prompted another lawsuit, filed in 1994, in which several Chinese-American families claimed their children were being unfairly excluded from some schools -- including one of the city's most prestigious. ...."

Conservative News Service 9/20/99 Lawrence Morahan "....The push for the acceptance of bisexual behavior in schools and colleges through such activities as "Celebrate Bisexuality Day" are thinly-veiled attempts by radical homosexual activists to recruit young people into the gay lifestyle, conservative and Christian activists told CNSNews.com. "In between the lines of the homosexual agenda is the bisexual message: you don't really love a man or a woman, you love a person. You keep hearing that, especially on college campuses. And once people have planted that idea, whether it's in women's studies or a gender-deconstructionist class, people begin to open themselves up to all kinds of alternate sexualities," Linda Harvey, publisher of Mission: America, a national Christian newsletter that monitors social issues, told CNSNews.com. ...."

Education Reporter Dennis Cuddy 9/99 "... Television commentator Ted Koppel, on a recent Nightline segment, noted President Clinton's high job approval ratings, and then said: "But ask about his honesty, moral and ethical standards or the president as a role model for young people and Mr. Clinton's approval ratings are down around 20 percent." Koppel then asked several U.S. senators, "What does this say about our country and our values? What's the bottom line? Show me the money? If you're making money for me, what kind of a human being you are is sort of irrelevant?" Translated, this means as long as the situation (a good economy) is acceptable, you won't be held accountable for misbehavior. This is classic "situation ethics," which has become the new national morality. But from where did this come? In the 1960s, when God was removed from public schools, values continued to be taught. The student became the new authority for determining what is right and wrong - the autonomous moral decisionmaker - and decisions were made based upon particular situations. ...... In the 1980s, there was a conservative backlash against this humanistic moral relativism, but a co-founder of a four-million member humanist and ethical group, H.J. Blackham, wrote that if schools teach dependence (e.g., morals) upon one's self, they are "more revolutionary than any conspiracy to overthrow the government." He was right! "If it feels good, do it" was the philosophy of many young people when it came to illicit sex and illegal drugs. ....... The problem with situation ethics is that nearly all our laws are based on the imposition of a particular morality (e.g., the biblical admonition "Thou shalt not bear false witness . . .") with which some will disagree on occasion. For example, because some people want to lie under oath about sexual matters, society has "imposed its morality" against perjury in those situations. That is why some people in government positions have been impeached or even jailed for having committed perjury. Concerning allegations of perjury against Clinton, there should not be one law for the powerful and another for the poor. If courts cannot compel witnesses to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, then our government will have been "overthrown," as Blackham was quoted above. We can already see what situation ethics is doing to our teenagers today. According to a recent national poll of more than 20,000 middle and high school students conducted by the Josephson Institute of Ethics: 70% of high school students admitted cheated on an exam at least once in the last year, 78% said they had lied two or more times, and an amazing 47% acknowledged having stolen something from a store in the last 12 months. ...."

James Bovard 9/21/99 ".....Government schools are increasingly run by the unions and for the unions. Former U.S. Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander observed, "After the post office, schools are the most unionized activity in America. [Teachers unions] collect a lot of money in dues, they are often the largest lobby in the state, they are very, very powerful." Teachers unions are especially powerful in inner cities, where teacher pay is often highest and teacher performance is usually the worst. Mario Fantini, in his book What's Best for Children, declared, "For many black and Puerto Rican parents, the teachers unions now represent the 'enemy.'" Reverend Jesse Jackson has questioned teachers' "right to strike for more money when the employers taxpaying parent-holds tax receipts in one hand and test results in the other that prove he's paying more and more for less and less."...... Teacher monopoly-bargaining laws (laws that permit unions to claim to represent and speak for all teachers, and to force school boards to deal with unions) in 34 states cover 67 percent of the nation's teachers. Teachers unions have worked to destroy local control of education, subvert standards, prevent teacher accountability, and deny parents a significant voice in their children's education. Unions have launched strikes to prevent and restrict 'parental interference' in public education. Thanks to a strong union, New York school janitors are paid an average of $57,000 a year, yet are required to mop the schools' floors only three times a year. As a result, New York City public schools are sometimes filthier than New York City streets...."

James Bovard 9/21/99 ".....The New York Times noted last year that teachers unions have been "for decades the most conspicuous voice in American education." Teachers unions do not hesitate to use their clout blatantly. The NEA announced a boycott of Florida orange juice after the Florida citrus department advertised on the Rush Limbaugh radio show. As Barbara Phillips reported in the Wall Street Journal in January, the local teachers union in Jersey City, New Jersey, threatened a statewide boycott against Pepsi if PepsiCo did not withdraw from its support of Mayor Bret Schundler's school voucher proposal. .......In 1971 the NEA issued a 'Call to Action' that renewed its commitment to the Cardinal Principles. It declared, "We have overemphasized the intellectual development of students at the expense of other capacities." Thanks to the NEA's success in rewriting school curricula, student knowledge of history has nose-dived, student reading and comprehension have plummeted, and college remedial classes have thrived...."

Seattle Times 9/21/99 "...Black columnist Willaim Raspberry today praised Bill Gates's billion dollar scholarship fund for minority students, saying "last Thursday the heavens opened and minority students hit the number." According to Raspberry, the generally poor performance of black and other minority students (excepting Asians) is the fault of whites. Raspberry blames controversies surrounding "affirmative action" on the refusal of whites "to admit that it's their fault that minorities continue to face a variety of social, educational, and economic problems." Raspberry does not explain how Asians, many of them recent immigrants, have been able to outperform whites. If we accept Raspberry's premise that minority performance is totally determined by white attitudes and policies, then we must give whites credit for the success of Asian students. This is absurd, of course, but it follows from Raspberry's view of minorities as helpless pawns in a world controlled by whites. As for Bill Gates, he is playing the old "look at me, I'm not a racist" game that white liberals play so well. Such people endear themselves to minorities by discriminating against other, less advantaged whites....."

Accuracy in Academia 9/21/99 Eric Langborgh "....Educational benefits derived from a diverse student body highlight the need for race-based preference programs, concluded a just released study from Harvard University. According to the study, "89% of Harvard Law School students and 91% of Michigan Law School students reported a 'positive' impact-the large majority reporting a 'strongly positive' impact-of diversity on their total educational experience." ....."

Daily Oklahoman 9/21/99 Christy Watson Melissa Nelson "....The petition that NAACP President Roosevelt Milton used to call for an investigation of a high school principal contains false signatures, inaccurate addresses and the names of people who do not live within the Oklahoma City School District. The highly publicized petition, which contains 681 signatures, was obtained Monday from the school district in response to an open records request by The Oklahoman. Milton initially used the petition at a Sept. 8 news conference to accuse Douglass High School Principal Sally Cole of using profane language, changing grades, carrying a concealed weapon and financial mismanagement. He demanded she be fired if the allegations were found true.... A check of 35 signatures found 18 people who said they didn't sign the petition, including a handicapped woman, a minister and a woman who friends said lives in Georgia. At least two dozen other phone numbers registered to people who signed the petition are unpublished or have been disconnected. ...."

www.freedomforum.org 9/17/99 AP "...A new policy allowing high school students to use the school intercom to urge fellow students to join in prayer got its first use this week when a senior asked fellow students to join her in silent prayer. The school board approved the use of the intercom for prayer earlier this week in a move that could bring a legal challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union, among others. The policy appears to violate the First Amendment because it forces those who may not wish to pray to participate, says Dick Kurtenbach, executive director of the Kansas and Western Missouri ACLU. Amanda Garcia, 17, spoke through the intercom as classes began and asked the student body to join her in silent prayer. "I don't understand what people are afraid of," Garcia said. "In my mind, it may not be legal, but it's right." School Board attorney Ervin Grant said he advised board members that the policy was legal, as long as the board or the administration did not dictate what students say. "The Supreme Court never really intended to squelch the idea of students being able to pray," Grant said. Kurtenbach disagreed....."

Wichita Eagle 9/21/99 Nicole Hughes "....The school board Monday revoked a week-old policy allowing high school students to pray over the intercom, and asked its lawyer to develop a legally defensible policy allowing school prayer in some fashion. Twice last week, students used the intercom to ask classmates to say a silent prayer before the schoolday began. Civil liberties lawyers called the practice and the policy that allowed it unconstitutional. The vote to rescind the policy was 4-3. The board will consider the new policy Oct. 11. Roughly 100 students, parents and Augusta residents -- almost all of them pleading for school prayer -- crowded the high school library for the special meeting, offering "amens" and holding neon-colored signs reading "So sue me" and "We will pray in school." Kim Ivy, youth group leader at an Augusta church, silently raised a sign above her head, telling school board members to "get a spine." "I'm tired of legislative bodies telling me or anybody else that they can't pray to God anywhere," she said. "When the law of men goes against the law of God -- it's not the law anymore." Donna Sandifer echoed Ivy's thoughts. "The Christian kids -- it's time for them to stand," she said. "I can guarantee the kids of Columbine are standing. Why wait for the atrocity to happen?" ..."

Associated Press 9/25/99 Anjetta mcQueen "….Giving parents vouchers for private schools doesn't mean abandoning public education, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush told congressional leaders interested in replicating his state's program at the federal level. ``There should be zero tolerance for failure,'' said Bush, whose state is the first to give parents money that can be used for private and parochial schools. Parents whose children are in low-performing schools must be given options, but those schools must not be neglected, Bush told the House Budget Committee on Thursday. ….."

The Deccan Herald, via News Plus 9/25/99 V Sripriya "…..Good news seems to be winging its way in for all US-bound software professionals. Standing in long taxing queues under the sweltering sun may in the near future seem relatively more worthwhile with greater number of US visas coming up for takes. This has come in the form of a Bill introduced in the United States Congress recently, desiring an increase in the number of H1-B visas granted to two lakh a year [1 lakh = 100,000] for years 2000 through 2002. This temporary accomodation is in the wake of shortage in supply of skills that are currently required by companies in the US….."

The Tennessean (Nashville) 9/26/99 Charles Haynes "…. Censoring religious speech by students may be legal, but is it the right thing to do? ……. But I would argue that censoring student presentations only makes sense when they are clearly inappropriate for a public school. No administrator should allow obscene, hateful or defamatory speech. The religious reference at issue in this case is none of the above. …..Why do some administrators get out the red pencil when they spot God-talk in a student speech? Primarily for two reasons: First, some administrators are under the impression that permitting students to speak religiously at school-sponsored events violates the Establishment clause of the First Amendment because it imposes religion on a captive audience. But student speech isn't government speech……. And second, some administrators -- including the principal in Florida -- are concerned that religious references to one faith may offend people of other faiths (or of no faith). Sadly, that may be true. In these hypersensitive times, many Americans are offended all too easily. And often their first recourse is to call a lawyer. But isn't the whole point of education -- and of the First Amendment -- to encourage freedom of expression in the marketplace of ideas? …."

Washington Times Andrea Billups 9/24/99 "… About 2,000 home-school students and their families from around the nation are visiting Washington this week to lobby policy-makers for their rights to educational freedom and to hear speeches from several GOP presidential candidates, who will address a large gathering Friday. The three-day "Proclaim Liberty" conference, which began Thursday and continues through Saturday, is sponsored by the Home School Legal Defense Association. The Senate last week honored the efforts of the nation's 1.5 million home-schooled students and their parents by passing a resolution declaring Sept. 19-25 as National Home Education Week. "We really want to deliver a message to Congress to leave us alone," said HSLDA founder and president Mike Farris, who organized the conference. "Most people who come to Washington to have an event and to lobby come seeking federal aid, more programs or more regulations. We don't want any of that stuff. We just want to be left alone." …."

Associated Press 9/24/99 Sandra Sobieraj "…The growing home school movement commanded an audience Friday with five of the nine Republicans running for president, each proclaiming that if parents want to teach their children at home, the government should let them. `We view home schooling as something to be respected and something to be protected,'' Texas Gov. George W. Bush told a conference of the Home School Legal Defense Association. ``Respected for the energy and commitment of loving mothers and loving fathers. Protected -- protected --from the interference of government.'' The candidates, who appeared separately in the Daughters of the American Revolution auditorium, were unanimous in their salute of the movement's progress. An association-sponsored study last spring showed that home-schooled students, numbering an estimated 1.5 million, score well above the national median on standardized tests and often study above their normal grade level……His pitch rising to such shrillness that many in the audience put their fingers in the ears, Keyes said: ``It's time for courage to be restored -- not by leaders like G.W. Bush, but by people like you.'' Since the association was founded in 1983, when home schooling was not even legal in all 50 states as it is today, the number of children whose parents eschew schools for at-home lessons grew from a couple hundred to today's estimate of 1.5 million to 1.7 million, said HSLDA spokesman Richard Jefferson. ….."

CNN 9/24/99 Maria Hinojosa "….Nearly half of all gay and lesbian students don't feel safe at school, according to a first of its kind survey. Seventy percent of those polled said they had been taunted, sexually harassed, shoved, kicked, punched and even beaten. Most had frequent slurs hurled their way, and one third said some of the slurs came from their teachers…..Former teacher Kevin Jennings runs the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which conducted the survey. He also lectures at schools on tolerance. "A gay and lesbian student attempts suicide every 35 minutes," said Jennings. "Students are going to school and the best that they can hope for is that maybe I won't get beaten up today." At the Anti-Defamation League, Caryl Stern La Rosa counsels youth about prejudice. She said teens can often make progress against anti-Semitism and racism -- but losing their homophobia -- that bigotry is often the last to go. "If you resort to using an ethnic slur against someone who is a person of color -- they know that that is not generally acceptable in public. So they (the victims) can turn to a teacher, a principal, a parent, a church leader," said La Rosa. "There's not that same guarantee for a gay, lesbian or bisexual kid." …."

LA Times 9/2/99 Richard Lee Colvin "….A class-action lawsuit filed in Los Angeles this summer made some disturbing allegations. It said many African American and Latino students in California don't even have a shot at getting into the state's most prestigious public universities because their schools don't offer enough Advanced Placement classes. Those highly demanding courses are more crucial than ever these days. That's because they boost grade-point averages, an even more significant factor in college admissions since the end of affirmative action programs at the state's public universities in 1996. Given their importance, it's not surprising that AP classes have exploded in popularity in California in the past decade. In 1998, nearly 90,000 students took AP tests. Not all groups of students are participating equally in that boom, however. Fifty of every 1,000 white students took AP tests in 1998. But only 32 of every 1,000 Latinos and 16 of every 1,000 African Americans did so Those data might seem to provide strong support for the claims made in the lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of four Inglewood High School students. But the situation is not that clear cut. It turns out that even when African American and Latino students attend schools with large numbers of AP classes, they are less likely than their white and Asian American peers to take them…."

WORLD Magazine 10/2/99 Joel Belz "…..Huge changes are on the way for American education. Don't let anybody kid you into thinking otherwise. Admittedly, some of us have been harping on this subject for 10 years and more, and we may seem occasionally like the little boy crying "Wolf!" Around 90 percent of all American children still attend government schools-a figure not much smaller than a generation ago. So it's legitimate for skeptics to challenge us and say: Where's the proof? When are all these changes coming? Two big changes are coming soon-or are already on the way. Vouchers and the charter-school concept are making big inroads, challenging traditional approaches to the funding and control of schools. And educational technology is finally maturing, with educators learning that new efficiencies are indeed possible as they sort out what can and what can't be done over wires and with computers. …. In Grand Rapids, Mich., meanwhile, a good bit of attention has been focused recently on a new series of charter schools being established by a group called National Heritage Academies. Typically, charter schools over the last few years have been allowed to open in a number of states as alternatives to traditional public schools-and yet with sufficient public funding to make them tuition-free. In Michigan, those funds amount to over $6,000 annually per student, a figure significantly higher than is spent by typical private Christian schools. National Heritage Academies has parleyed that leverage over the last four years into the establishment of 22 schools with 8,600 students. In exchange for the public funds, the schools give up the privilege of calling themselves Christian, but hand-picked boards of directors can go a long way in establishing hiring policies, behavior codes, and curricula that make the schools highly attractive to many Christian parents. So about a fifth of NHA's enrollment now comes from Christian school backgrounds-but the other 80 percent are at the expense of traditional public schools. It's another example of the radical changes that are reshaping the landscape of American education. …"

The Florida Times-Union 9/2/99 James Salzer "....African-American parents with children in Georgia public schools are more likely than white parents to think private companies should run those facilities, a new study released yesterday suggests. A survey by Research Atlanta of more than 700 Georgia parents found that more than half of all AfricanAmerican parents with children in public schools support the idea of privatization, while only about one-third of white parents were willing to turn public campuses over to private companies. ''It looks like groups for whom public schools don't seem to work well are most open to new ideas,'' said Ben Scafidi, co-author of the study and an assistant professor in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University. ''It may be that African-American parents, whose children consistently lag behind white children in all measures of school performance . . . are ready to let someone else try their hand at improving public schools.'' ...."

Investors Business Daily 10/4/99 "....AVermont mother is on the run from the authorities. She's already been in jail. She doesn't want to go back. Though the government is after her, it's really more interested in something that belongs to her - her 15-year-old son. Karen Maple is not a desperate criminal who should be separated from her son. She hasn't been charged with abusing her children. Yet the government considers her dangerous enough to jail. Why? Because she teaches her only school-age child at home. Or at least she did until she went into hiding. In Vermont, parents who home school must provide the state Education Department with a planned curriculum and document the student's progress through test scores or a portfolio of work. That's not all. Parents must also have education plans administered by school officials or approved by a third-party tutor. When there's a child who is learning disabled, as is the case with Maple's son Trevor, the state requires another step. The child must get help from a state-approved tutor. That was too much for Maple. A Boston Globe reporter, who found the mother-in-hiding, said Maple believed various tutors were unable to help her son or were ''more interested in her mothering ability than her child's reading skills.'' Maple's act landed her in jail and led her to believe that the state was going to take her child. All for wanting to teach her son at home and outside the government school system....."

The Dallas Morning News 10/4/99 Mike Jackson "....Rose Mary Pena was skeptical about the sales pitch she got from the officials of Edison Schools when they took over operation of her 9-year-old daughter's elementary school. But her skepticism vanished when she saw her daughter's report cards. "My daughter, from one year to the next, increased grades from C's to A's," Ms. Pena said. "There was a difference." Her daughter Victoria attends Elm Creek Elementary, one of two public schools operated by Edison Schools, a private company that formed a partnership with the Southwest Independent School District. It's a partnership that Edison officials hope can be replicated in Dallas, where they are negotiating with school Superintendent Bill Rojas to operate up to 10 schools within the next year.. Parents, teachers and administrators in this southern San Antonio public school system praise the partnership and the benefits that they say have come as a result....."

Washington TIMES Frank Murray 10/5/99 "...The Supreme Court yesterday refused to hear challenges to Arizona's tax credit that helps finance religious schools, the second time in 11 months the justices have rejected an attack on a state "school voucher" plan. The decision leaves in place a dollar-for-dollar tax cut of up to $500 for donations to "school tuition organizations" and up to $200 in additional tax credits for direct gifts to extracurricular activities. It also gives a big boost to efforts in nearly half the states to provide more school choice with public funding. "Clearly, the momentum is on the side of school-choice supporters," said Clint Bolick of the Institute for Justice, a major national proponent of school vouchers, who argued the case in the Arizona Supreme Court on behalf of Lisa G. Keegan, Arizona's superintendent of public schools. ...."

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_dougherty/19991007_xnjdo_washington.shtml 10/7/99 Jon Dougherty "....A home schooling mom in Nine River Falls, Wash., said years of repeated harassment by local juveniles -- which started after her public opposition to a local school board official's preference for Outcome Based Education (OBE) initiatives -- has gone unpunished long enough. Lynn Stuter, who home schooled two daughters until they graduated to go on to college a few years ago, told WorldNetDaily that even after a bomb was thrown in the family's front yard, the "local sheriff has refused to follow up and make arrests." The harassment began in 1995, after the Stuters pulled their kids out of the Nine River Falls School District. Their treatment has included an annual parade of juveniles yelling obscenities from cars winding by the family's home during the local school district's homecoming celebration. Objects have been thrown at their home -- including a small explosive device -- and bottles have been broken in their driveway. Since the first bomb exploded in the Stuters' front yard -- leaving a one-foot-by-five-inch-deep crevice and "fifty feet of debris," two other explosive devices have "been found on our property or property neighboring ours," said Stuter. And, as late as Sept. 29, the Stuters were again forced to call sheriff's deputies to their home to disperse an estimated 120 kids "who were threatening to turn the situation into a full-blown riot." Stuter said she believes the harassment began as retaliation for her vocal efforts to attempt to reform the local school district's educational curriculum......"

Investor's Business Daily 10/7/99 "....Generations of Americans have been conditioned to believe in big government. The process begins in the public school system. How? Economic textbooks tend to be grossly biased toward government intrusion into the economy. A study published this summer by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan found that 10 of the 16 economic textbooks used in public and private schools across the state lean to the left. The problem isn't limited to Michigan. These are books used in schools across the country. Some of the texts are far more biased to the left than others. But overall, the study found that students are exposed to books that are ''consistently critical of free enterprise and private property, yet present government intervention with little or no scrutiny.'' .....One text goes as far as to proclaim, ''As societies become increasingly more complex, the need for government power tends to increase.'' There's no sense of balance that would have required the authors to include the views of a Leonard Read, who founded the Foundation for Economic Education. He pointed out how foolish it would be for an authority to try to control ''the countless human energy exchanges in a simple society, to say nothing of a complex one.'' ....."

Orlando Sentinel 10/7/99 Charley Reese ".....Eighty-one percent of the eighth-graders in Florida were rated "not proficient" on a federal writing test. And Florida's results were fairly typical. The scary thing about that is people don't seem to care. They ought to. If you figure about $6,000 a year per student and count kindergarten, then these kids have received about $54,000 worth of instruction during a nearly nine-year period and still cannot write a simple essay. Something is seriously wrong...... Well, folks, if 81 percent cannot write after nine years of instruction, you had better be alarmed. Writing is nothing more than thinking on paper, and if people can't write, that means that they can't think. We're not talking world-class literature or Shakespearean sonnets. Just a simple essay on a simple topic....... At a time when it ought to be the case that most of our children are becoming bilingual, too many of them are becoming nonlingual. They not only do not know another language, they do not even know how to use their own. There also seems to be a correlation between violence and communications skills. The poorer the communications skills, the more often people resort to physical violence. It's no accident that more laborers get into violent scrapes than college professors. If a person cannot articulate his emotions in moments of stress, he is more likely to express himself physically.......A nation of people whose language level is, "Duh, hey, man, ya know, be cool, like I'm cool" isn't going to last 50 years into the new millennium. The Asians and Latins will eat America's lunch. Like, ya know, there's a tough, no-mercy world coming. Be ready or be meat....."

WorldNetDaily 10/7/99 Craige McMillan "... People of faith often get tangled up in the details when arguing to expand their views outside the four walls of a building. Thus we are led into the opposition's forest, and get lost amongst the trees. We end up about arguing about their details, become entangled in separation doctrine and are silenced by our own First Amendment guarantee of free speech. In the passage above [Romans 1:18-20], God sweeps aside the details and gets right to the point. "In squelching the truth about Me they have conspired to get rid of Me." Perhaps that's the real reason intelligent creation can't be taught in schools alongside evolution? Because if it were -- people might recognize the message? And if they believed it, they might reason that such a Creator was worth listening to -- and maybe even following? The paternalistic, all-wise state has never been keen on competition for its self-appointed position as our god. The people who set up our government had a rather different view. They understood that their government operated at the pleasure of the Divine Sovereign of the Universe. Thus our "rights" didn't come from them; they came from Him. It was simply their job to protect those rights. But for governments that aspire to dominate and control people, God is a major problem. If He exists, then he would have to be listened to and obeyed. And if He had to be obeyed, that would limit the power of the self-appointed elites who had usurped His position. It would mean that in God's eyes, the governing elites were no more important than the people they were governing. It would also mean that they were accountable for their actions. It would, in short, be a disaster! ...."

CNSNews.com (Conservative News Service) 10/4/99 Justin Torres "....At the recent Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network national conference, entitled attendees and organizers used strong rhetoric in describing the "Religious Right," or "wingers, as one presenter termed religious conservatives. Steven K. Green, general counsel for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, distributed a factsheet on "Leading Religious Right Organizations," including the American Family Association, the Christian Coalition, Concerned Women for America, the Family Research Council, and the Eagle Forum.....Green laid out his views on the priorities of the Religious Right, including "watering down" sex education, school vouchers, the defeat of anti-harassment policies, and parental rights amendments, which he called "extremely pernicious. . . . They allow parents to interject their religious feelings and philosophies into school curriculum." Added Green, "[The Religious Right] is not about to admit that they just want to bash gays if they can. . . . You have to remember, Sunday after Sunday millions of people come to church to hear the diatribes."....."

KC Star 10/4/99 Karen Brownlee State Senator ".... Kansas sure has been in the national limelight recently due to the decision by the state Board of Education to omit evolution from the state assessment test and allow local school boards to wrestle with this topic on their own.....Sometimes on these tough topics my children provide me with good insight. My 15-year-old daughter told me her freshman biology book from last school year espoused the concept that the Earth has not been in an active evolutionary period for the past few thousand years ... but it could start again anytime! We both had a good laugh over this, but I wondered how we could expect our kids to believe such nonsense. As a parent, legislator and a scientist (my bachelor's degree is in microbiology), I am quite interested in the quality of these new science standards. Frankly, they far exceed the old standards in their detail, degree of difficulty and sheer volume of material students will be expected to learn. It's unfortunate these new standards have been categorically dismissed. Have the many critics even read these standards? The saddest outcome of this situation is that we adults have once again proven that we cannot or will not engage in civil debate over the tough issues of our day. Instead, we tend to label, attempt to bully the person with the other viewpoint or arrogantly shut them out. The critics of the standards have communicated clearly that their objective in education is not to teach the children how to think but what to think. The board should be commended for encouraging our students to use their minds in a more challenging curriculum and draw some conclusions on their own....."

KC Star 10/4/99 Karen Brownlee State Senator "....Much of our education time, money and effort centers around building our children's self-esteem. To teach them that they descended from amoebae or from monkeys and don't need to worry about acting any better than animals seems to communicate a message of little value. But for children to understand that a loving creator designed them and their world may give them a sense of self-worth, value and responsibility to care for this world. The idea of intelligent design of our universe would communicate a message of purpose and meaning rather than life merely being a purposeless accident. So for those who charge that this whole thing is about religion, they are exactly right. But whose religion? It's not about the religion of the so-called religious right who have tolerated this secret for decades. It's about the religion of the humanists and their disdain at being exposed for not having fact- or truth-based evidence for their theory or belief system. Now, the cat -- or should I say the monkey - is out of the bag......"

CNSNews.com 10/4/99 Justin Torres "....More than 700 teachers, administrators, high school and college students, and homosexual activists gathered in downtown Atlanta this weekend to strategize on how to make schools around the nation more homosexual-friendly. The third annual national conference of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) featured a keynote address by civil rights activist and Georgia Democrat Rep. John Lewis, comic relief by comedienne Margaret Cho, a "prom" for homosexual youth, and symposia on topics such as "Responding to the Religious Right" and "Addressing GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered) Issues in Middle School." ...... "The fear of the Religious Right is that the schools of today are the governments of tomorrow," said Deanna Duby of the National Education Association at a symposium. "And you know what, they're right." "If we do our jobs right," added James Anderson, director of communications for GLSEN, " we're going to raise a generation of kids who don't believe [the claims of] the Religious Right." ...."

AP 10/4/99 Randolph Schmid "....The most widely used middle school science textbooks flunked an evaluation by the nation's largest organization of scientists. Most of the books cover too many topics and don't do any of them well, said the report released Tuesday by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The analysis said the texts ``include many classroom activities that are either irrelevant to learning key science ideas or don't help students relate what they are doing to the underlying ideas.'' George Nelson, director of Project 2061, which evaluated the books, said: ``It's a credit to science teachers that their students are learning anything at all.'' ....."

Boston Globe 10/4/99 Terry Allen ".....Quietly tucked away in the hills of Vermont, Norwich University, the only private military college in the country, has continued to educate and train future members of the Indonesian army, even as President Clinton has effectively frozen all relations with that country's military in the wake of the violence in East Timor. According to Norwich records, 11 of the school's current crop of 13 Indonesian undergraduates list their billing address as the Jakarta headquarters of Kopassus, the Army's elite special forces. ''Kopassus played an especially brutal role in East Timor,'' Sidney Jones of Human Rights Watch said. ''They were unquestionably the most feared, most hated, and most abusive of all Indonesian units in East Timor.'' The US government blocked Indonesians from programs at federally funded military institutions such as West Point, citing human rights concerns. But Norwich, a private institution, has continued with its cooperative program, which brings in about $20,000 annually in tuition and fees for each student. According to Norwich spokesman Richard Greene, the Indonesian students in the two-year-old cooperative program were chosen and paid for by the Indonesian Embassy in Washington with funds wired ''by order of the military attache.'' ...."

AP 10/2/99 "....A high school student has been suspended from school for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance with the rest of his class. Craig Paternoster, 16, a sophomore at Meyers High School, was suspended Thursday morning after having refused to stand for the pledge for the last three weeks. "It's not that I don't respect America. I think this is the greatest country," Paternoster said. "I just don't believe in the flag, and I have a right to my silence." Principal Michael Gorham told Paternoster to write a 1,000-word essay on why he would not say the pledge. After that, he will be allowed to return to school, Gorham said. "He's been refusing to stand for the pledge for about three weeks now and without a reason. At this point, I felt I had to do something," Gorham said. "All I want is an explanation." ....."

Reuters 10/5/99 "....A change in Kentucky school curriculum guidelines eliminating the word ``evolution'' has touched off the second uproar over U.S. science education in less than two months. The Louisville Courier-Journal first reported the change in Tuesday's editions, saying the phrase ``change over time'' had been substituted for the word ``evolution'' in guidelines for middle school and high school science courses. The curriculum guidelines were posted on the state Education Department's Internet site. Under the heading ``Diversity and Adaptations of Organisms'' they state, for instance, ``Biological change over time accounts for the diversity of species developed through gradual processes over many generations.'' ..... "

AP 10/6/99 ".... There are no right or wrong answers for this test. No studying required. Students don't have to give their names. The results, however, could have serious implications. In all, 1,100 Holliston High School students are scheduled to take a depression survey Thursday, joining a a growing number of schools participating in National Depression Screening Day. Organizers hope the surveys will lead to help for the 5 percent to 8 percent of high school students estimated to be clinically depressed...."

AP 10/6/99 "...The word ``evolution'' has been deleted from guidelines of what Kentucky public school students should know and be tested on, the latest blow to a topic many scientists consider a cornerstone of biology. State Education Department officials substituted ``change over time'' for evolution during a last-minute editing session, said Associate Education Commissioner Linda Houghton, who oversees the department's curriculum work. She cited state ``testing sensitivity'' guidelines, designed to keep children from taking a position on subjects such as death, divorce and animal rights. The list also includes the theory of evolution, which holds that humans evolved from more primitive species. Deputy Commissioner Gene Wilhoit said he and other department officials saw no need to keep the word evolution in the guidelines for high school and middle school students. ``The word is a lightning rod that creates a diversion from what we're teaching, and we did not want to advocate a particular doctrine or a specific view,'' Wilhoit said......"

http://detnews.com/1999/nation/9910/06/10060149.htm 10/6/99 Judy Pasternak LA Times "....When Carol Moseley-Braun lost her U.S. Senate seat last fall, she didn't worry long about her next paycheck. Just before her term expired, the Illinois Democrat signed on as a consultant to the Department of Education at $453.84 per day. Her contract called for her to provide expertise on "school construction issues," although the agency has no money to build classrooms. When Carol H. Rasco wanted out of her influential post as White House domestic policy chief, she also found a lucrative berth at Education. Rasco, who is paid $125,900 annually, runs a skeletal reading program that Congress has refused to fund. Moseley-Braun and Rasco have plenty of well-connected company: The Clinton administration, which has made improving schools a top priority, is using the government's lead education agency to provide employment for assorted Democratic loyalists....."

Washington Post 10/14/99 Kenneth Cooper ".... Schools in Houston and Fort Worth have made significant progress in closing the gap in achievement between white and minority students, according to a survey of big-city school districts released yesterday. The preliminary report by the Council of Great City Schools showed the two Texas cities were the most successful of 11 school districts cited for their progress in closing achievement gaps, a persistent problem that is receiving greater attention nationwide as state after state has imposed stricter academic standards in the 1990s. Motivated in part by Texas's system of grading schools on how well students from different racial and ethnic groups perform on standardized tests, Houston and Fort Worth since 1994 have achieved gains in minority student achievement with a concerted focus on improving instruction in reading and mathematics. Based on results on state tests given in the elementary, middle and high school grades, Houston has closed the gap between whites and minorities by 40 percent in reading and math, while Fort Worth has reduced its gap in those two subjects as well as in writing by about 35 percent. ...."

AFP 10/14/99 "....U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Norman Anan today rejected an appeal filed by the parents of a student from the greater Los Angeles school district. The school board, in a unanimous decision two months ago, adopted a policy requiring that all students must wear a small blue button with the U.N. logo on the lapels of their school uniform. The school board adopted the requirement because of ongoing strife that was occurring on a daily basis between different ethnic groups. These conflicts were causing disciplinary problems and disruptions in the class almost on an hourly basis....."

LA Times 10/14/99 Louis Sahagun "....The big question at Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters on Wednesday was: "Who's in charge of this place?" Supt. Ruben Zacarias steadfastly refused to give up direct authority over the city public school system's chain of command, although a day earlier the Los Angeles Board of Education had appointed former board member Howard Miller as chief executive. The board's order was precise: "All other departments, divisions and units of every kind of the LAUSD will report to Mr. Miller as CEO and to no one else, and will be under his complete authority." But in an interview, Zacarias said, "The notion that [top district managers] no longer have direct access to me is unacceptable." ...."

Jewish World Review 10/14/99 Michelle Malkin "....WHAT IS WRONG with kids these days? College students seem more hostile, more humorless, and much blinder to their own ideological hypocrisy than I remember from my campus years. With age comes wisdom - or at least a swelling intolerance for the self-indulgent. I turn 29 next week, just discovered my first gray hair, and have now accepted an embarrassing truth: My generation is hopelessly plagued with mewling young people who treat all personal slights, off-color remarks, and ethnic jokes as signs of societal oppression. It's getting worse with time, not better. When will this multicultural megalomania end? Where have all the adults gone? Would that there were just one university official in America with the guts to utter three simple words: Oh, grow up........... "

The Nashville Tennessean, Page 1B 10/14/99 Monique Fields "....Mayor Bill Purcell was encouraged yesterday as he peeked into bright classrooms and met with equally bright students. But Nashville is still a long way from providing the same opportunities to all of its youngsters, he said...... Parents plan to pick up part of that tab at Mt. View, but Purcell isn't so sure they should have to. "I'm all for parent participation, but parents ought to be adding value to the basic education program -- instead of providing the basic education program." The lack of computers is a budget issue, said Metro Schools Director Bill Wise. "...."

The Birmingham News 10/13/99 Val Walton ".... Attorneys for an 11-year-old girl filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the Walker County school board, claiming the board's dress code violates the girl's right to wear her cross necklace as a sign of her Christian faith. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Birmingham, said that Kandice Smith, a sixth-grader at Curry Middle School, repeatedly has been told by school officials to hide her cross necklace inside her clothing because it violates the new dress code. Kandice faces discipline if she continues to wear her cross outside her clothes. The board adopted the dress code in August to lessen the effects of peer pressure and to keep students from wearing gang symbols. But the rule also keeps Kandice from spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, the suit contends. ....."

New York Daily News 10/14/99 Paul H.B. Shin, Tracey Tully and Alison Gendar "....Forty-five percent of New York City students who started high school as the Class of 2000 lack a key requirement to graduate, having failed the state Regents English exam or not bothered to take it yet, according to test results released yesterday. This is the first year that seniors must pass a rigorous set of Regents exams to earn a high school diploma. Previously, passing the Regents was considered a feather in the cap for college-bound students who wanted to prove their academic mettle..."

http://www.insightmag.com/articles/story2.html 10/8/99 Aimee Howd ".... Public-school officials are looking into the heads of their students for more than letters and numbers as they use behavioral modification to gain control in the classroom. Should teachers or other school administrators keep records about their opinions of a child's mental health from the time he or she enters kindergarten? What about analyzing playground habits? Or confronting the child with questions about discipline at home, how time is spent outside of school and what in life is "bugging" him or her? . . . . Called "screening," such measures are being recommended for use in schools nationwide as the federal government gives teachers and mental-health professionals the responsibility for assessing and supporting the mental, emotional and behavioral health of the 50 million students who attend the 110,000 U.S. public schools. With the Clinton-Gore administration stepping up support, organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Education and private donors such as the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation gradually are surfacing plans to use the nation's schools as mental-health clinics. . . . . But critics say bandaging a knee or providing a wholesome lunch, as schools have done for decades, is one thing and psychological explorations are another. They question the role of schools, governments and public-health authorities in an issue as sensitive and subjective as shaping behavior of children by psychological manipulation -- or even drugs....."

Reason 10/15/99 Nick Gillespie "....Although the strivers initiative is dead --the head of the College Board, the group that writes and scores the SAT for the Educational Testing Service, has said he will veto any such plan--it's worth reflecting on both the motives behind it and the arguments made in its support..... However high-minded its goals, the strivers tag would have punished the relatively advantaged children of yesterday's strivers. Its larger effect, then, would have been to undermine a system that is exceptionally open to those with ambition, initiative, and ability--and that relies upon one generation's making things easier for the next. For the past couple of years, researchers at the ETS had been devising a method to predict what a student "should" score, based on more than a dozen factors, including family income, parental education, the socioeconomic mix of the student's high school, and, in one version of the formula, the student's race and ethnicity. If the student scored at least 1,000 on the SAT and outperformed his "predicted" score, he would be labeled a "striver"--someone who exceeds his circumstances and, by implication, is likely to do better than his actual record might indicate. Conversely, the performance of students who scored well, but still within expectations, would be discounted as simply routine. ....."

Jewish World Review 10/15/99 Thomas Sowell "...."FAIR" IS ONE of those nice words that make us feel good -- no matter how much damage or dangers it leads to. The concept has sunk in so deeply that nothing causes such indignation as the charge that some person, policy or institution has been "unfair." Yet when I hear educational policies discussed in terms of fairness, my reaction is: Thank G-d my teachers were unfair to me when I was growing up in Harlem back in the 1940s! My seventh-grade English teacher, for example, used to require everyone who misspelled a word to write that word 50 times as part of his homework and bring it in the next morning. Misspell three or four words, on top of the rest of your homework, and you had quite an evening ahead of you. Was this fair? Of course not. Kids on Park Avenue probably heard those words at home far more often than I did. The magazines and books in their homes probably contained many of those words, while my family couldn't afford to subscribe to magazines or buy books....."

Jewish World Review 10/15/99 Linda Chavez ".....THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT has spent billions of dollars over the last 30 years encouraging -- in some cases, forcing -- school districts to teach Hispanic children to read and write in Spanish before teaching them English. Now, the government has decided to spend another $45 million over the next five years to learn whether this system makes any sense. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently announced that it will launch the most ambitious government study ever into the questions of how non-English-speaking Hispanic children can best learn to read English...."

Boston Herald 10/10/99 AP "......A retired school teacher has settled a libel lawsuit against a conservative Christian couple who accused her of recruiting students to become homosexuals. The attorney for former Brookfield High School teacher Veronica Berrill said the settlement was reached last week just before jury selection was to begin. He said the couple agreed to pay an undisclosed sum of money to Berrill. ``Ms. Berill considers this to be a complete victory, a vindication for her actions,'' her attorney, Henry Lyons, said in a statement. The lawyer for the couple claimed victory as well Sunday, saying his clients achieved what they set out to do by forcing a political agenda out of the classroom. Veronica Berrill filed the lawsuit in 1996, claiming Kathleen and Neal Houde defamed her when they complained to the school board and made public comments about her after she declared her Brookfield High School classroom a ``safe zone'' for gay students. The Houdes, who now live in Orange County, Calif., said that Berrill - the widow of ``Gil Thorp'' cartoonist John ``Jack'' Berrill - had marked her classroom with a pink triangle and was preaching a ``disgusting'' and ``illegal'' homosexual agenda. ....... The couple, whose daughter was in Berrill's class, began a public campaign against the teacher which included letters to local newspapers and a news conference in front of Brookfield Town Hall. The campaign was funded in part by the American Center for Law & Justice, an arm of the Rev. Pat Robertson's ministry. Houde, an airline pilot, and his wife asked that the pink triangle be removed from Berrill's door. The Nazis marked homosexual prisoners in concentration camps with a pink triangle, a symbol since appropriated as a badge of honor by the gay community. ....."

AP 10/10/99 ".....Charter schools are supposed to improve the education of their students. But in Kansas City, they may be changing the fortunes of the entire school district. District officials realize they have to do something fast. They already have lost more than 4,500 students and millions in state tax dollars to charter schools. "We have not inspired confidence in our patrons, our students, our parents,'' school board member Lance Loewenstein said. "This is the wake-up call to everybody from the superintendent on down that times have changed.'' Superintendent Benjamin Demps Jr. has told board members that the district might take a cue from the charter schools and advertise the positive changes in the district. ...... "Where the competition is really going to set in is around curriculum, instruction and assessment, and also in how the schools are led,'' said Tammy Blossom, director of strategic ventures for the Learning Exchange, which is tracking the local charter school movement. "The problem is, the school district, under its current bureaucratic structure, is too slow to react. It's not able to take action as quickly as these charter schools,'' she said. "Ultimately, it's going to come down to, 'Is my child going to learn more in a district school or in a charter school?' '' The 15 charter schools in Kansas City are publicly funded, but operate independently of the school district. They also are free from some state regulations. ....."

The Register Guard 10/10/99 James Glanz "....Nearly overlooked in the furor over the Kansas Board of Education's decision in August to remove evolution from its education standards was a decision on the much wider realm governed by the science of the cosmos. Influenced by a handful of scientists whose literal faith in the Bible has helped persuade them that the universe is only a few thousand years old, the board deleted from its standards a description of the Big Bang theory of cosmic origins, the central organizing principle of modern astronomy and cosmology. The Big Bang theory, based on decades of astronomical observations and physics research, suggests that the universe originated in a colossal explosion of matter and radiation some 15 billion years ago. But ``young Earth creationists,'' as they are generally known, have come up with their own theories to explain how cosmic history could be condensed into mere thousands of years. They are making this case in books, pamphlets and lectures, as well as on a number of Web sites. Mainstream scientists consider their theories to be wildly out of line with reality, even though books describing them are often liberally sprinkled with references to authorities such as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. As a result, physical scientists now find themselves in a fight in which they have seldom played a public role. They have responded with a mixture of disdain, disbelief and consternation, and the reactions have not been limited to physicists and cosmologists in Kansas........ But advocates of the creationist view say alarm over their theories is overblown. Steve Abrams, a member of the Kansas board and veterinarian in Arkansas City who was among the leaders of the push to make the changes, said there are legitimate scientific doubts about whether the universe is more than several thousand years old. ``There is sufficient data to lend credibility to the idea that we do not have all the answers for teaching the origin of our universe.'' ...... "

The Register Guard 10/10/99 James Glanz "....The biggest problem for the young Earth creationists is explaining the time that has apparently passed since the light we see from distant galaxies was emitted. Given the constancy of the speed of light and estimates of the distance between Earth and faraway galaxies it is difficult to explain how Earth and the cosmos could be young. But D. Russell Humphreys, a nuclear weapons engineer at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M., who is also an adjunct professor at the Institute for Creation Research near San Diego, thinks he has an answer. He said that Einstein's equations of relativity, the basis of the Big Bang theory, could be used to construct a universe in which the Earth is only a few thousand years old. Abrams said that in thinking about the Kansas standards he had been struck by Humphreys' book, ``Starlight and Time: Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe'' (Master Books, fifth printing in 1998). Humphreys' ideas ``seem to be right there on the cutting edge, so to speak,'' Abrams said. ...."

Newark (NJ) Star Ledger 10/12/99 Rebecca Goldsmith Andrea Orlando ".....In blue chip public school districts like Glen Ridge, Berkeley Heights, Sparta and Montville, teachers became students while security and law enforcement officials dispensed advice on how to avoid the terrors that hit Littleton, Colo., in April. ..... "People kill either themselves or others when they're hopeless. Hopelessness comes when they're the kid at the bus stop by themselves. They have no friends. They're commonly mocked," Gannon said in Glen Ridge, adding, "Even teachers don't support them." ...... Pacio advised the group to keep students talking until police arrive with phrases such as: "I don't know you. I'd like to know you better;" "I would like to hear your side of the story;" or, "That's interesting. I understand." ....."

New York Times 10/12/99 Anthony Lewis ".....The creationist position is certainly not a fringe belief nowadays. A Gallup poll taken in June for CNN and USA Today found that 68 percent of those surveyed favored teaching creationism along with evolution in public schools; 40 percent favored dropping evolution altogether and teaching children only the biblical version of creation........ Of course evolution is a theory. The whole ethos of science is that any explanation for the myriad mysteries in our universe is a theory, subject to challenge and experiment. That is the scientific method. Those who take the biblical account of creation literally reject the scientific method, offering instead a doctrine of faith. There are "creation scientists" who argue that the Bible can be squared with scientific observations of, for example, the age of the universe. But they are not taken seriously by most scientists. The interesting question is why a large body of opinion in the United States supports a view at such odds with contemporary scientific understanding. No other Western country has anything like it. Religious fundamentalists have played an important part in America from the earliest settlements. And religious belief is much stronger in the United States today than in other Western societies. But belief does not usually, elsewhere, lead to opposing the teaching of evolution....."

FOX News.com 10/12/99 David Miles "....Two months after voting to downplay the theory of evolution in its public schools, the Kansas Board of Education is still trying to figure out what its new science curriculum should say. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled more than a decade ago that states cannot teach creationism, the belief that a divine power created the universe. It's no simple task: Three national science groups are refusing to let the board use their copyrighted materials, which are part of the state's current testing standards, because of the board's stance....... Kansas' new standards omit much of evolution as a subject for statewide testing, including the theory that man and apes evolved from a common ancestor. Although teachers are not required omit evolution teaching in their classrooms, critics fear that many schools will adjust their lesson plans to avoid subjects that won't be part of the new tests, to be given first in spring 2001...... Last month, the National Research Council, the National Science Teachers Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science said the board couldn't use their materials because Kansas' new standards don't reflect their goal of advancing science education. ...."

WORLD Magazine 10/9/99 Timothy Lamer "..... At prestigious Duke University, Frederic Jameson, chairman of the Literature Program and one of its many Marxist professors, has said that preparing students for the "struggles of the future" is "the supreme mission of a Marxist pedagogy." According to one Duke professor, "The English department has invested a lot of appointments in gay and lesbian studies, and they are very politicized." English courses at Duke include "Unholy Passion? Fictional Representations of Illicit Desire" and "Adult Pleasures," a class in which, according to the course description, "queer politics will motivate this study of sexual arenas that society often dismisses as 'perverse.'" Should families know these facts before shelling out tens of thousands of dollars on a Duke education? Only one of the major guides to American colleges thinks so. The above information about Duke comes from Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth about America's 100 Top Schools, compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. The other guides (The Fiske Guide to Colleges, Barron's Guide to the Most Competitive Colleges, The Princeton Review's The Best 331 Colleges, and Yale Daily News' The Insider's Guide to the Colleges) ignore it. They ignore more than just Duke's Marxist and homosexual-activist professors as well. Readers of most of the major guides would never know that there is any nationwide controversy over radical trends in collegiate curricula. They would never know about the battles involving "gay and lesbian studies," "feminist studies," and other new majors, or the loss of higher education's historic emphasis on Western civilization. The only guide that gives them any clue is ISI's Choosing the Right College..... "

Investors Business Daily 10/13/99 ".... It's an old story: black children in a southern city barred from attending the school of their choice. But this time it has an ironic twist. Standing in their way is none other than the U.S. Department of Justice, the very agency that's supposed to be kicking down doors for them. Kids and parents looking for an alternative to the traditional public schools in Baton Rouge, La., have been forced to put their plans on hold because of a wrangle with the feds over the legality of new charter schools. Louisiana's state government wants to see more of these schools - which get public funds but are not controlled by school districts - established to expand the choices available to the state's low-income students. But plans to start a large charter school in Baton Rouge have brought the federal government into play, in the role of obstructionist. United Charter, as it's known, was to start with about 650 students in kindergarten to eighth grade and grow to 1,200 as grades were added. Its proposed site is a mostly empty inner-city shopping mall. And though it would be open to all, its location and recruiting focus are designed to serve the local low-income, mostly black community....... "

Orlando Sentinel 10/13/99 Charley Reese "..... But the man I quoted as saying that spontaneous generation of a living cell is as improbable as a tornado building a Boeing 747 was Sir Fred Hoyle, a renowned astronomer, mathematician and astrophysicist. I don't think that Sir Fred's math skills are in doubt by anyone smart enough to know the multiplication tables...."

Orlando Sentinel 10/13/99 Charley Reese ".....So, for the fun of it, here are a few more quotes showing that Darwin's theory of evolution is in tatters: "Through the use and abuse of hidden postulates, of bold, often ill-founded extrapolations, a pseudoscience has been created. It is taking root in the very heart of biology and is leading astray many biochemists and biologists who sincerely believe that the accuracy of fundamental concepts has been demonstrated which is not the case." (Italics mine.) Pierre Grasse, page 6, The Evolution of Living Organisms.

Orlando Sentinel 10/13/99 Charley Reese ".....T. Kemp, curator of the University Museum at Oxford, said, "Paleontology is now looking at what it actually finds, not what it is told that it is supposed to find. As is now well known, most fossil species appear instantaneously in the record, persist for some millions of years virtually unchanged, only to disappear abruptly . . . . Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwin's time and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record." "Ultimately the Darwinian theory of evolution is no more nor less than the great cosmological myth of the 20th century. Like the Genesis-based cosmology which it replaced, and like the creation myths of ancient man, it satisfies the same deep psychological need for an all-embracing explanation for the origin of the world . . . ." That's Michael Denton, a biologist and physician, in his book, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis...."

Orlando Sentinel 10/13/99 Charley Reese ".....David Raup, a paleontologist, stated in an article, "A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks, semi-popular articles and so on. Also there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found -- yet the optimism has died hard and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks." Now, not one of the scientists quoted above, is a creationist or advocate of the Genesis theory or, so far as I know, even religious. But evolution is a myth. This myth is pushed off on the public in popular articles and textbooks as if it were scientific fact. ...."

Creators Syndicate 10/14/99 Tony Snow "…Both political parties say education will top the list of priorities for next year's national elections. If so, here's the issue of the year: sex education…. Little did anyone suspect that schools eventually would be the ones encouraging kids to rut with abandon -- and that the federal government would dole out millions of bucks to subsidize what amounts to a Condom Cult. The Centers for Disease Control have begun cranking out "Programs That Work" manuals bearing such titles as, "Be Proud! Be Responsible!" "Becoming a Responsible Teen" and "Reducing the Risk." The texts claim to aim at cutting down on pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, but they also adopt methods that would do any brainwasher proud. Consider what cults do. First, they weaken family ties. The aforementioned programs require students to make written or spoken pledges of confidentiality: Youngsters are singled out for opprobrium if they tell their parents. Schools assiduously keep moms and dads in the dark….. The Programs That Work establish an elaborate system of idiocies, the first of which is that high-schoolers, beginning at age 13, spend an inordinate amount of time fondling condoms. "Becoming a Responsible Teen" promotes having kids serve as "personal trainers" for each other -- applauding dexterity with condoms and swapping suggestions about technique. "Be Proud! Be Responsible!" invites youngsters to "brainstorm ways to increase spontaneity ... store condoms under mattress, eroticize condom use with partner, use extra lubricant, use condoms as a method of foreplay, use different colors and types/textures ... think up a sexual fantasy ... hide them on your body and ask your partner to find it. ..." It tells young lovers to have fun by purchasing condoms together……"

The Wall Street Journal 10/20/99 "...."When I became president, there was one independent public charter school in all of America. With our support, there are 1,100 today. My budget assures that early in the next century, there will be 3,000." --President Clinton, 1999 State of the Union address. Another lie, it turns out. When it comes to actual treatment of the nation's fledgling charter schools, the Clinton Administration follows another policy: It tortures them. Consider what it is doing to Louisiana's United Charter school. Back in 1995, Louisiana lawmakers surveyed their failing schools. After decades of desegregation orders, mandatory busing and so on, Louisiana school kids, half of whom are black, ranked 49th in the nation in overall achievement. Distressed, legislators passed one of the nation's more far-reaching laws for charter schools--public schools that are given autonomy to try their own educational approach without bureaucratic oversight....This didn't sit well with Mr. Clinton's civil rights czar, Acting Assistant Attorney General Bill Lann Lee. To Mr. Lee and his fellow crusaders at Justice, it seems, the actual welfare of flesh-and-blood students ranks a distant second to abstract notions of "rights." Tucking a 43-year-old court desegregation decree under their collective arm, Mr. Lee's attorneys descended on Louisiana to block United Charter....."

Conservative News Service 10/19/99 Jim Burns "....Congressman Henry Bonilla (R-TX) along with Congressman Charles Stenholm (D-TX) have introduced a "sense of the Congress" resolution expressing the belief that prayers and invocations at public school sporting events are indeed constitutional. A federal court last April ruled that the "establishment clause of the First Amendment prohibits the Santa Fe (Texas) independent school district from conducting a school sponsored invocation before football games." The decision affects school districts in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Bonilla told a Capitol Hill news conference Tuesday, "High school football is a family tradition in many communities and especially in Texas. It's also a tradition to start the games with a prayer." Bonilla also said that the legislation "notes that prayer contributes to the moral foundation of America and is part of our heritage. Prayer contributes to the development of character and instilling sportsmanship." Bonilla then pulled a quarter out of his pocket and said, " If I can pull a quarter out of my pocket and read 'In God We Trust,' how the courts stop our children from asking God to watch over them as they play a little football on Friday night." ...."

WorldNetDaily 10/20/99 Jon Dougherty "....In an unbelievable act of hubris, Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United, declared, "This [Supreme Court] is an important victory for American taxpayers. Parents have the right to send their children to religious schools, but they don't have the right to make the rest of us pay the tuition." Is that so? Perhaps it slipped Mr. Lynn's empty mind that Americans of all religious stripes (or none at all) have, for nearly a century, been forced -- at gunpoint and under threat of imprisonment -- to "pay the tuition" of children attending public school through a confiscatory tax system. Having said that, I wonder if Mr. Lynn even pays his taxes -- if he did, he'd know that forced support of the public school system is the most expensive payment on annual tax bills, often amounting to more than two-thirds of the total. .....a parent who has chosen to send his child to a "religious school" because he doesn't want his son or daughter exposed to all the drugs, cops, metal detectors, guns, knives and mayhem, still has to pay public school "tuition" because if he doesn't, the tax Nazis will come arrest him, the courts will convict him, and the state will imprison him for years and years. Furthermore, a non-user of the public school system who has chosen to send his kid to a private school doesn't even get a tax break. Yeah, Mr. Lynn -- that's fair, isn't it?....."

WorldNetDaily 10/20/99 Samuel Blumenfeld "....I've just received the October 1999 issue of Educational Leadership, which is the official journal of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. It's the voice of the education establishment with all of its contradictions, controversies, educational disconnects and out-and-out lies. The theme of this issue is "Redefining Literacy." Which means that we will be told that literacy is not what we simple folk think it is. It's a much more complex matter, far beyond the ability of the layman to understand. First, there are now all sorts of literacies: there is numeracy literacy, science literacy, technological literacy, and information age literacy. As for the teaching of reading, contrary to all this talk about the return to phonics, Whole Language is about as entrenched as ever, and any hope of teachers being taught how to truly teach intensive, systematic phonics in the primary grades is wishful thinking. What we are getting is "a synthesis of reading approaches," which has now become the norm.......The only redeeming article in the entire magazine is an interview with Dr. Sally Shaywitz of the Yale Center for the Study of Learning and Attention. She has studied the brain mechanisms involved in reading. About learning to read, she says, The most comprehensive reading program explicitly teaches about the sounds of language. It teaches children that words can be broken up into these smaller units of language, that the letters represent these units of language -- phonics. ... All children can benefit from being taught directly how to break up spoken words into smaller units and how letters represent sounds. But on page 41 of this same magazine, we are told by whole-language experts to "avoid, whenever possible, a focus on isolated skills, isolated letters, and isolated sounds." There seems to be a serious educational disconnect between neuroscientists like Dr. Shaywitz and idiots wearing black T-shirts proclaiming they are being blacklisted for believing in whole language. Such is the confused state of reading instruction among our educational leadership....."

Reuters 10/20/99 "..... An animal rights group said on Tuesday teachers in Kansas should instruct pupils on vegetarianism, as it tried to take advantage of the state's recent controversy over the teaching of evolution to publicize its views on eating meat. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, known for its sometimes unorthodox protests for animal rights, made its statement two months after the state's board of education voted to downplay evolution teaching in Kansas schools. ....."

NewsMax.com 10/19/99 Kim Bonney "..... Sex in study hall? Sex on the school bus? Sound far-fetched. Not to a group of middle school parents in Northern, Virginia, who recently found out their middle schoolers were engaging in oral sex. Nationwide, educators says it's happening more than you think. Just ask your average middle schooler. "Definitely, I think that it's been done forever. I don't think that it's just now, oh my God, oral sex," says one girl. "A lot of people don't consider that having sex, so they still say they're a virgin but they will do that," adds another. Kids call it the "anything but intercourse" approach to sex. Oral sex is a growing trend among many of today's young people. Recently, officials at an Arlington, Virginia middle school found out a group of 13 and 14 year olds had been engaging in oral sex parties in parents' homes and local parks......"What we have lost and what is missing from virtually every sex education curriculum across the country is some notion that sexuality for everybody, for adults as well as kids, is not just a physical act. It is also a spiritual act and a moral act with enormous consequences," says cultural critic Michael Medved. Consequences like the highest rates of gonorrhea and chlamydia of any age group. Already, one out of four young people will acquire a sexually transmitted disease before the age of 20....... But this "anything goes" sex ed approach is nothing new -- and is even subsidized by taxpayer's money. Organizations like Planned Parenthood and SIECUS, the Sex Information and Education Council, in their literature encourage young people to experiment sexually. Planned Parenthood, which received $165-million federal tax dollars in 1998, recommends on its web site, Teenwire, "Outercourse with many partners can be safer than intercourse with only one." SIECUS, which was awarded a five-year grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to develop guidelines for sex education, among other things, says, "Starting at age nine, children should be taught that there are many ways -- such as mutual masturbation and oral sex -- to give and receive sexual pleasure." "Who writes something like that to children? Only someone who chooses to exploit them, or someone who just hates innocence for it's own sake," says Reisman. ....."

Associated Press 10/21/99 Anjetta McQueen "....Moderate Republicans today rejected a voucher plan for private schools that could have lead to the defeat of larger legislation on education programs for poor students. Overriding the wishes of the House leadership, more than 50 Republicans sided with Democrats today to reject the plan, which would have given poor students private school vouchers for $3,500 if their public schools were failing academically or deemed unsafe. The vote was 257-166. A separate Republican-backed bill was also floundering today. Conservatives joined moderates in backing away from a proposal that would give states more freedom in complying with Title I and other federal school programs....... Moderates who voted for the plan in committee now want it limited to 10 to 12 states in a pilot program. Such a compromise could siphon conservative votes; and Democrats won't support it either way. ....."

The Atlantic Monthly 10/99 Peter Beinart "....Preparing children for "the general American environment" meant public education as both practice and ideology. "The public school," says Alvin I. Schiff, the Irving I. Stone Distinguished Professor of Education at Yeshiva University, in New York, "was considered sacred, holy. It was the method and setting by which Jews could become Americans." Religious education, which had dominated the yeshivas of Eastern Europe, had to be reconciled with the new commitment, and so a peculiarly American institution was born: the supplementary school. First in the crowded apartments and storefronts of immigrant neighborhoods, later in the suburbs to which Jews moved after the Second World War, religious learning was consigned to Sundays and weekday afternoons. Even as the public schools fostered upward mobility, the supplementary schools would instill in Jewish children sufficient knowledge and group attachment to prevent integration from becoming assimilation. That model, which served for most of this century, is today coming apart at the seams. Since the early 1960s the number of children attending supplementary schools has fallen by half, to about 270,000. And the number in full-time Jewish schools -- the kind that many Jewish leaders once scorned as self-segregating -- has more than tripled, to about 200,000. Currently the population of Jewish school-age children numbers roughly a million. The proportion enrolled in public schools has declined from more than 90 percent in 1962 to about 65 percent today. The rise of institutions like the New Jewish High School represents something close to a renegotiation of the terms of American Jewish life. And for America's battered public school system it could not come at a worse time......"

WorldNetDaily 10/18/99 Father Vincent Fitzpatrick ".... I can remember the exact date, March 17, 1993, because while I was vesting for early-morning weekday Mass, I asked the 8-year-old altar boy about the saint of the day. "How about a quiz? Do you know who Saint Patrick was?" "No," he said, which didn't surprise me. After all, he was only eight, and German. "Well, if it weren't for Saint Patrick, I probably wouldn't be Catholic. He was a bishop and a missionary, and he brought the Catholic Faith to Ireland." The little boy's eyes grew, as they say, as big as saucers. "How could he be a saint?" he asked, with real amazement. "What do you mean? Why couldn't he?" "You said he was a missionary!" "Yeah, he was a missionary," I said, totally baffled. "I thought missionaries were bad." A couple of questions more, and I knew that this little Catholic child, whose own mother was an exemplary, active Catholic, a CCD teacher, had learned in public school that missionaries were violent, oppressive characters who fanned out from Europe for many centuries, in order to destroy people and cultures around the world. Public school. In a small, very small, North Dakota town, where the public school is probably as "accountable" to parents as a public school can be. The kind of "locally controlled" public school that parents would be the last to suspect is teaching their children that the Christian religion and its missionaries are just one among many evils spread around the world by an imperialistic, racist European culture....."

WorldNetDaily 10/18/99 Father Vincent Fitzpatrick "....How many Catholic parents would allow a newspaper published by the government into their homes, if it taught their children that God is not to be mentioned outside of home or church, if it contained pictures and articles describing natural and unnatural sex acts, if it taught them that Marilyn Monroe deserves 16 pages in a history of the United States, while George Washington deserves one? And if it told them that Christian "missionaries are bad"? Yet Catholic parents, who would throw such a government-owned newspaper in the trash, send their children to government-owned buildings for six or more hours a day, twelve years of their lives, to read government-prescribed books and be taught government-prescribed lessons......"

San Fancisco Chronicle 10/17/99 Debra Saunders ".....THIS MONTH, the U.S. Department of Education came out with a list of 10 ``exemplary'' or ``promising'' math education programs. Kings County fourth-grade teacher Doug Swords was shocked at the department's bad choices....... UC Berkeley math professor Hung-Hsi Wu couldn't believe the department described MathLand as ``promising.'' He'd describe MathLand as ``execrable.'' ...... Wu had problems with the other nine picks as well. While there were things he liked about the high school programs, they lacked what he called ``mathematical closure. You start something, you ought to finish it.'' He said almost all of his students took more traditional math classes not cited as ``exemplary'' or ``promising'' by the Department of Education. That wouldn't surprise Melissa Lynn, who got As in high-school math, then placed in the bottom 1 percent in the University of Michigan math placement test. She blames the Core-Plus program which the department rated as ``exemplary.'' ``It had very good intentions, and wanted you to apply real principles to real life scenarios,'' she explained this spring, ``but it was missing the crucial element of algebra.`` Wayne Bishop, a math professor at Cal State L.A. who is the Ralph Nader of math curricula, sees the department's move as a reaction against California's return to math sanity -- after a mad fling when state educrats embraced ``there is no right answer'' new-new math curricula. He's right. The selection panel appoint ed by the department had as a main criterion that the math series ascribe to trendy standards put out by the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). ....."

Orlando Sentinel 10/19/99 Charley Reese "....Well, you should never think that you've heard all of the cockamamie ideas liberals can come up with to "fix" public education. The latest one is a scheme to take the best teachers out of the best schools and put them into the worst schools. That way, this liberal genius thinks, the bad schools will improve and the best schools will remain the best. OK, what's wrong with this notion? First, it is predicated on the assumption that the worst schools are the worst because the teachers are bad teachers. Second, it assumes that good teachers can teach bad students to be good students. Third, it contradicts its own assumptions, by assuming that removing the best teachers will not affect the best schools. ...... What's wrong is society. Let's face facts. We have a materialistic and morally depraved culture. We have a two-tier economy, with the poor getting poorer. Among poverty, ignorance and moral depravity, many children show up for their first day at school with scarred psyches, undeveloped intellects and often poorly nourished bodies. And to make matters even worse, how the schools can cope with this flood of injured children is dictated by politicians and federal judges -- theorists dictating this and that without an ounce of experiential knowledge of education. I'm surprised, frankly, that there are still people willing to try to teach children....."

Associated Press 10/19/99 "....Trying to regain the clout they have lost to managed care, New York psychologists are forming an alliance with unionized teachers. The alliance between the 3,200-member New York State Psychological Association and the American Federation of Teachers was touted Tuesday as the first such agreement in the nation..... Like private physicians, psychologists in private practice cannot form a union on their own because of antitrust laws. Joining the teachers will not allow the teachers union to bargain for the psychologists, since most of them are considered "independent contractors." ....."

Intellectual Capital 10/14/99 Michael Farris ".....Patrick Henry College has a different vision -- so different that it has attracted what seems to be more media attention than any other start-up college in recent history. The idea of home-schooled students going to college to prepare for political leadership in an atmosphere that encourages private virtue is so different that many journalists seem utterly fascinated...... The Home School Legal Defense Association decided a few years ago to try to turn apprenticeship into an American reality by starting a college that blends high-level academic instruction with the on-the-job mentoring that is the essence of apprenticeship. That vision led to the founding of Patrick Henry College (PHC). PHC will open its doors in September 2000, with 100 students -- 50 freshmen, 50 juniors. An additional 100 will be added the following September, and our initial degree program, government, will be at full capacity. The first two years of instruction will offer a classical liberal-arts education, with an orientation toward great books, logic, rhetoric and Latin, plus a robust study of Western civilization. Unlike schools that aim to deconstruct Western civilization in general, and Christianity in particular (and that is the vast majority of the major institutions these days), PHC will take a positive, but not slavish, view of the roots of our civilization and our republic....."

Orange County Register/Liberty On-line 10/19/99 Alan Bonsteel "....Not content with having wrecked our public schools, the public school establishment is now making power grab for our preschools that could do untold damage to our children. Nationally, in more than 30 states efforts are under way to establish government-run preschools, modeled after our failed public schools, and both Al Gore and his challenger from the left, Bill Bradley, have endorsed variations of these schemes. Here in California, Sen. Barbara Boxer and Schools Superintendent Delaine Eastin are collaborating on a proposal for government-run preschools....... In stark contrast to our failed K-12 public schools, we now have successful school voucher programs in place in Milwaukee and Cleveland that have seen higher test scores, lower dropout rates and dramatically higher parental satisfaction - all at far lower per student spending rates than our public schools. ....."

The Wall Street Journal 10/20/99 ".... As we reported earlier, Mr. Breazell found himself sacked as head of the NAACP's Colorado Springs chapter after he wrote a column in favor of school choice..... Since his resignation last month, Mr. Breazell says he's heard from a number of people who "wonder why too many black and Hispanic leaders don't trust parents to make good decisions for their own children." Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, Mr. Breazell notes, has himself come out for school choice as well, recently telling an NAACP dinner that "if you're in an underachieving school, then you have a right to seek a voucher to go to a school where you can be guaranteed some level of achievement." And vouchers aren't the only problem. As we report nearby, the Justice Department has been harassing charter schools whose only crime appears to be that they might actually improve educational opportunities for minority students. ..."

The Wall Street Journal 10/20/99 ".... This may help explain the re-thinking we're seeing at the Urban League, which has also softened its opposition to choice. Indeed, the League's Greater Miami chapter now opposes a lawsuit filed by the Florida branch of the NAACP against the state's new voucher program. Hugh Price, the Urban League's president, recently warned public educators not to take the support of black parents for granted. Mr. Price suggested that "we can use public support for vouchers to flog teachers unions and public schools" to improve schools. As for Mr. Breazell, next month he will lead a delegation of Colorado parents to Milwaukee for a firsthand look at the success of that city's nine-year-old school choice program...... Indeed, "Not Yet Free At Last" accuses the American Left of "covertly pulling the strings" of many civil rights groups and being "quick to chastise and slander any black leader who veers from the party line." Mr. Holt recounts a conversation he had with Roger Quindel, a leftist Milwaukee County supervisor. "It's obvious you're confused, and you apparently don't know what you're involved in," Mr. Holt quotes Mr. Quindel as telling him. "You need to come aboard; we know what's best for y'all." "History has shown," Mr. Holt writes, "that when a black organization comes under the philosophical control of whites, the black voice is muted or misinterpreted."...."

World Net Daily 10/20/99 Walter Williams "....Having been invited to be the inaugural speaker for Valencia Community College's Millennium Lecture Series, I looked forward with considerable anticipation to my trip to Orlando, Fla. But en route to the airport, my secretary relayed a telephone message from Allen Byrd, a reporter for the Orlando Business Journal, that dampened some of my enthusiasm. The reporter, having just learned of my Sept. 29 lecture the previous day, was wondering why the college had not sent out its usual plethora of press releases and media faxes, especially considering that the lecture was the first of a major lecture series. According to Byrd's interviews, reported in the Oct. 4 edition of the Orlando Business Journal, there were two explanations. The first, from the college's public-relations department, said that, "Williams is so popular that to have publicized the visit would have created an overflow crowd." That led Byrd to conclude, "Indeed, the college was so concerned it did not even tell its own public-relations department that Williams was coming. Orlando Business Journal did." Byrd says, "The second, entirely unofficial and completely off-the-record reason came to our attention by way of a quote: 'We do not want to give the appearance that Valencia shares his (Williams) views and that we believe this is the way African-Americans should act.'" Valencia College staffers were acting under the instructions of college president Paul C. Gianini to keep a lid on my appearance. The president's response to his faculty electing me as guest lecturer is just another example of today's deceit, dishonesty and cowardice that has become part and parcel of America's institutions of higher learning. As such, it's more evidence that colleges and universities are undeserving of American trust and generosity......"

AP 10/22/99 "....Ohio has asked the Supreme Court to overturn a federal judge's order that temporarily bars new students from participating in Ohio's school voucher program. State Attorney General Betty Montgomery made the request Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. is presiding over a lawsuit brought by civil liberties groups and others who say the program violates the constitutional separation of church and state. In August, he said only previous recipients of vouchers could obtain financial help from the state until he rules on the program's constitutionality. Children new to the program could not get the tuition grant........More than 4,000 students from kindergarten through sixth grade have signed up for as much as $2,500 in tuition vouchers for private schools in Cleveland. Most of the 56 schools are religious institutions....."

Cato Institute 10/99 ".....School choice has hit the mainstream of presidential politics. Though both Democratic candidates oppose voucher programs, AP reports that all of the major Republican contenders are talking about reform in Iowa. Steve Forbes has offered a comprehensive plan that would convert the federal government's $7.7 billion Title 1 reading program for low-income students into a voucher program for parents looking to move their kids out of troubled schools. Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the current frontrunner, offers a hybrid plan on a federal level. Bush would measure local Title 1 programs against state-by-state standards to identify which schools are falling behind. After three years, if a below-par school is making no progress, Bush would turn its Title 1 funds over to parents......"

Newark (NJ) Star Ledger 10/24/99 Ana M Alaya ".... Proponents of tuition vouchers are "wolves in sheep's clothing" whose program would devastate public schools instead of making them more competitive, a leader of the nation's largest teachers union told a gathering in Newark Friday night. "If this voucher thing ever catches hold, we will take the best from the public schools and then be asked to compete, but the playing field won't be even," said Reg Weaver, vice president of the 2.5-million-member National Education Association and one of the top African-American labor leaders in America. Addressing nearly 500 people at the NAACP Newark branch's 85th Annual Freedom Fund Dinner, Weaver warned them to "watch the folks who are pushing these vouchers. "They have nothing to do with education," he bellowed as he wove around the banquet hall delivering the keynote speech. "It has everything to do with money."....... It is an issue that touches a nerve in minority communities, where some of the largest pilot voucher programs have begun in an effort to address struggling school systems. Proponents say such programs empower parents who otherwise must send their child to a low-performing school, and also infuse accountability into hidebound school administrations...... The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which has remained steadfastly against school choice that uses public dollars, recently lost a top official, Willie Breazell, president of the Colorado Springs branch, after he voiced support for vouchers. And that came only a month after longtime civil-rights leader and former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young endorsed tuition vouchers at an NAACP event in Tallahassee, Fla......"

USA Today 10/26/99 Alcestis "Cooky" Oberg "….As a Santa Fe parent with a front-row seat to this particular constitutional controversy, the turning point for me occurred last spring. All my life, I've been a stalwart supporter of "Jefferson's Wall" - the principle that government should not finance or undertake any form of religious education in secular public schools. I have sat on a number of school committees over the years and always felt that Santa Fe's religious debate seemed such an unnecessary distraction and strain on a struggling school district. But last spring, just before leaving for a Santa Fe school district Education Improvement Committee meeting, the Columbine shootings happened. The image of bloodied, crying kids fleeing from their school haunted me as I sat through the meeting that afternoon. On the way out, I overheard two committee members wonder whether the Feds were going to clamp down on us again for saying a prayer at our upcoming graduation. All my earlier views made an instant about-face…"

THE WASHINGTON TIMES 10/25/99 "….In Pittsburgh, an uproar over governmental intrusion has begun in connection with a project called the Pittsburgh School-wide Intervention Model, or PSWIM for short. The project, which is partly funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, asks teachers to record the behavior of their pupils on everything "from fidgeting and humming to stealing, starting fires and forcing others into sex," reports Insight magazine. "Other elements of the process include giving students a page of photos of classmates and instructing them to put an 'X' next to the three they disliked most." Chaperoning school playground activities is one thing. Turning teachers into behavioral analysts is another…..Truly disturbing as well is the fact that school systems around the country are considering similar projects as the Clinton administration pushes such invasive programs, programs funded by not just the Institute of Mental Health but also the U.S. Department of Education and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention….."

Boston Globe 10/25/99 Cindy Rodriguez "....Ratha Paul Yem, a Cambodian refugee who lives in Lowell, is angered that he is no longer considered a minority. He has lived with the ''model minority'' tag since he arrived in 1976, and suddenly, he has been stripped of even that. Last week, the College Board pulled Asian-Americans out of the minority category in a study on academic achievement. It placed whites in one category, Asians in another, and separated blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans as minorities, saying Asians outperform them. The move reflects an ongoing reassessment to determine which groups should receive special consideration in education and hiring and how they should be defined....."

The Philadelphia Inquirer 10/25/99 Jay Mathews - Washington Post ".....Home-schooled children score well above the national median on standardized tests, often study above their normal grade level, and have parents with better incomes and educations than do most American students, according to a national study. The Home School Legal Defense Association, which sponsored the study, embraced it as an endorsement of the quality of instruction received by the 700,000 to 1.2 million children nationwide who are being taught at home. ...."

AP 10/25/99 Franklin, Ohio "... A high school teacher was reprimanded for offering a list of possible topics for a writing assignment that included the question: ``If you had to assassinate one famous person who is alive right now, who would it be and how would you do it?'' .... The school's principal, Robert Leahy, told The Cincinnati Enquirer for a story Monday that he met with the teacher and told her the assassination question was inappropriate. Leahy did not return calls to his office for additional comment Monday....."

Boston Globe/Boston.com 11/2/99 Will Lester "....George W. Bush, challenging the ''moral chaos'' that he said is threatening America's schools, today called for legislation to protect teachers from lawsuits resulting from disciplinary actions against students and for a lifetime ban on gun ownership for juveniles found guilty of a serious gun offense. ''No child in America, regardless of background, should be forced to risk their lives in order to learn,'' the Republican presidential candidate said in remarks prepared for delivery today in Gorham, N.H...." Jewish World Review 11/2/99 Cal Thomas ".....THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS is sponsoring a television commercial that suggests concern over the quality of public schools once may have been legitimate, but conditions are better now. Are they? In Cleveland last week, four white students were arrested and seven others questioned in what authorities say was a racially motivated plan to shoot up a predominately black high school. Police say the planned assault was patterned after last spring's Columbine High School massacre in Colorado. In Detroit, as many as eight girls have been sexually assaulted over the past two months while walking to school. In Chicago, ABC News found that the public school system owns 24 cemetery plots to be used as needed when one of their students dies from gunshot wounds...."

Los Angeles Times 11/1/99 David Savage "….College campuses are a haven for free speech, and nowhere more so than at the University of Wisconsin. Students can join myriad groups, and the traditionally liberal campus even has two independent student newspapers, including one with a conservative bent. While many revel in this marketplace of ideas, some young conservatives say that campus activism is less a tribute to free speech than to a bureaucratic system of "fee speech." Many of the activist groups on campus are funded largely by mandatory student fees. Now the future of the fee-speech system--a feature of most university campuses today--is in doubt, thanks to a free-speech challenge coming before the Supreme Court this month……"

New York Times 8/31/99 James Traub "....Herman Badillo, former New York City Commissioner of Housing Relocation, Bronx Borough President and Congressman, current chairman of the City University of New York and perennial candidate for mayor, is one of those rare figures in public life with a genuine penchant for the harsh truth. For example, while it is almost obligatory for minority politicians to support the "open admissions" policy that has permitted tens of thousands of black and Hispanic students to attend a CUNY college, Badillo, who was born in Puerto Rico, has spent years criticizing the institution as a swamp of mediocrity. Along with his political patron, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, he subjected both a former CUNY chancellor, Ann Reynolds, and a former school chancellor, Ramon Cortines, to such a merciless and public battering that they left town. But nothing Badillo has said has aroused quite so much fury as some casual remarks he made after a speech to a school-reform group last month. "The biggest problem we have is that we are getting hundreds of students 12, 13, 14 years old from the hills of Mexico and the Dominican Republic who have never been to any school," Badillo said. "The problem is that in Mexico and Central America there has never been a tradition of education. They have education in some of the cities, but they don't in the hills."....."

AP 10/29/99 "…..A new government handbook allows administrators and law enforcement officials to analyze a school's vulnerability to violence and suggests technologies to deter problems. The guide, developed at the Energy Department's nuclear weapons laboratory in Sandia, N.M., will be available on the Internet beginning Monday. It provides practical tips on protecting buildings and grounds and gives advice on purchase of equipment for video surveillance, weapons detection, entry control and duress alarms….."

Fox News-AP 10/29/99 M R Kropko "…..Authorities ordered a high school closed today and arrested four students, saying they uncovered an apparent racist plot by students to stage "violent acts'' there. Several South High School students admitted planning an attack with guns and explosives, similar to the one carried out by two students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., last April, The Plain Dealer reported today. Mayor Michael R. White this afternoon said two guns were confiscated when police carried out four search warrants Thursday night, but no firearms or explosives were found at the school. White said four students had been arrested and were being held on charges of inciting to violence, false alarm, aggravated menacing and ethnic intimidation, and inducing panic. He called the plot racially motivated and said the suspects were white and the school has a majority black enrollment……"

AP 10/30/99 "….Republican lawmakers contend the Education Department has a half-billion-dollar ``slush fund'' that could be used to offset proposed GOP spending cuts. ``An organization that has unauditable books clearly is ripe for finding 1 percent savings across the board,'' Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., said Friday. He has asked the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to determine whether the department mismanaged at least $600 million and issued duplicate checks to grant winners...."

Bob Holland Articles 9/1/99 "…..Throughout 1999, the simple but profound idea that parents should be able to choose their children's schools spread like a prairie fire. Early in the new century, education finally may catch up with the rest of the U.S. economy in benefiting fully from the dynamics of choice and competition. The idea of government helping pay for education while standing aside to let the consumers actually call the shots has been percolating since the seminal writings of Nobel-Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman in the 1950's and '60s. In his 1962 book, Capitalism and Freedom, Dr. Friedman wrote that: "Governments could require a minimum level of schooling financed by giving parents vouchers redeemable for a specified maximum sum per child per year if spent on 'approved' educational services. Parents would then be free to spend this sum and any additional sum they themselves provided on purchasing educational services from an 'approved' institution of their own choice. The educational services could be rendered by private enterprises operated for profit, or by non-profit institutions."….."

Education Week (Bob Holland Articles) 10/18/99 "…Goals 2000 debuted as a movement in 1989 when President Bush and the nation's Governors met to agree on a bipartisan, nationally coordinated effort to improve public education. In 1994, Congress passed the Clinton Administration's Goals 2000: Educate America Act, which would provide the "framework" for all local school reform efforts and all federal K-12 programs. Now, President Clinton wants to spend another $491 million on Goals 2000 in Fiscal Year 2000, which means that as a new century and millennium begin, Washington will still be dispensing grants in the name of eight National Education Goals that were pegged to fulfillment by the year 2000….."

Jewish World Review 10/29/99 Thoma Sowell ".... http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- AMONG THE MANY clever and misleading defenses of our failing educational system is the assertion that our universities are among the highest rated in the world and Americans consistently win a disproportionate number of Nobel Prizes. Both these claims are accurate -- and irrelevant. While Americans won the lion's share of Nobel Prizes again this year, not one of these winners was actually born in the United States............"

The Indianapolis Star (Bob Holland Articles) 9/20/99 "….Just 18 hours before schools opened in Cleveland last month, a federal judge told a few thousand of that city's most impoverished parents that they couldn't use their public vouchers to continue sending their children to private schools of their choice. Because many of the schools are religiously affiliated, the judge thought there might be a constitutional violation, despite ample judicial precedents that conclude otherwise……. Besides this total disregard for those families' feelings, there's a bigger problem: It turns out that the NEA and AFT were using bad information on the Cleveland vouchers. Very early in the voucher experiment, which began in 1995, a team of state-commissioned Indiana University evaluators had reported that voucher students had not made academic progress. But when the IU team issued its three-year report the first of September - with data the NEA/AFT bosses surely could have had for the asking in late August - a much clearer and brighter picture emerged. These were the major findings: * Voucher students show "small but statistically significant" achievement gains in two of five areas (language and science). * The voucher program "effectively serves the population of {low-income} families and children for which it was intended and developed." * Voucher parents are "much more satisfied" with their children's schools than are other Cleveland parents with theirs. When they applied for the $2,250 per-child scholarships, they said the two most important concerns were school safety and the quality of their children's education….."

The Wall Street Journal (Bob Holland Articles) 9/26/99 "….When it comes to high schools, small is beautiful. That was the note Education Secretary Richard Riley struck in his annual back-to-school message. The music was a golden oldie but coming from the caverns of big government it sounded like a twang of bluegrass at the Metropolitan Opera. Safety being on many minds after the schoolhouse murders, the Secretary said that making schools smaller would be a surer cure for violence than metal detectors and draconian discipline. "We need to find ways to create small, supportive learning environments that give students a sense of connection to each other," he said. "That's hard to do when we're building high schools the size of shopping malls. Size matters." Riley was reflecting the new conventional wisdom of the education establishment; The National Association of Secondary School Principals now touts 600 students as the ideal size for a high school….."

Boston Globe 10/28/99 Kate Zernike "….The College Board, for decades associated mostly with the test that has held so much sway over college admissions, is redefining its mission, recognizing that it has focused too much on the SAT. Under a new leader, the board now says it wants to concentrate on preparing students for college, instead of simply measuring how well they are prepared. The move reflects the declining influence of the Scholastic Assessment Test, notwithstanding the dread the SAT still inspires in parents and students or the way it has shaped college admissions for the last half century. At the same time, the College Board's new mission has the potential to reshape education from kindergarten to high school. The College Board, which is based in New York City, has already announced plans to start an on-line college advising and preparation service, like Kaplan or the Princeton Review. Over the next few years it wants to drastically expand Advanced Placement courses, making sure they are in every school in the nation, with curriculum preparing for Advanced Placement tests starting in middle and junior high schools….."

FOX / AP newswire 10/28/99 Anjetta McQueen "…If an American family wants to send a child to preschool but can't afford it or get into a subsidized program, toddlers end up staying home until kindergarten. In France, preschool is available to everyone; and if the United States is going to compete globally, it should expand its own preschool access, a group of education advocates said Thursday. France pays the equivalent of $7 billion a year to send nearly all 3-to 5-year-olds to voluntary, all-day preschools that focus on learning and the arts. The United States - where only half of the same age group is served - spends about $11 billion on programs that are not mandatory and are targeted to poor families. Other families pay tuitions ranging from $1,200 to $8,000. …."

Washington Times 10/21/99 John Norquist "….Fifteen years ago, I shared the view that vouchers would cripple the public schools and that allowing city students with caring parents to attend the school of their choice would hurt those left behind. Over the years, any discussion about school choice ultimately resulted in a divisive debate over who would benefit -- private school children or public school children. . . . . But today, in Milwaukee at least, the debate about vouchers is over. And in response to the question "Does school choice help private schoolchildren or public school children," the answer is: yes…… . I evolved into an advocate of school choice when it became clear that under the traditional government monopoly in education, children from affluent families were leaving the public schools, and leaving children from less-affluent families behind. Instead of choosing an alternative school for their children, wealthy parents were choosing an alternative place to live. Our city, and too many other cities, were left behind. . . . . Vouchers equalized the power of choice. School choice put vouchers -- the power of money -- in the hands of the parents of low-income children. Schools wanting that money -- whether public or not --have to attract and keep the interest of our children and their parents. Schools have to compete for our children every day, all year. And they will attract money only by convincing parents they will teach the children well, and only by delivering on that promise will the schools be able to prosper. ….."

World Net Daily 10/27/99 Samuel Blumenfeld "…If any proof is needed that federal education programs don't work, and in fact make things worse, all one has to do is look at the sorry record that Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 has produced. Title I was supposed to provide "compensatory education" for the economically and socially deprived -- the minorities and the poor, but mainly the minority poor. Its goal was to help the inner-city poor reach the same academic level of achievement as those living in affluent suburbs. After an expenditure of over $118 billion during the last 30 years, the achievement gap between those who were supposed to be helped by Title I and everyone else is as great as ever. Why? Because Title I never addressed the problem of faulty reading instruction in the schools. Why? Because if children were taught to read by intensive, systematic phonics, there would be no need for Title I! Believe it or not, most of the $118 billion was used to hire more than 50,000 local Title I directors, plus thousands of school aides and teacher assistants. In fact, more than 132,000 classroom positions have been paid for by the billions put into the program. This is an example of how throwing money at a problem produces even more failure, because now 132,000 jobs are at stake, and the only way to keep those jobs alive is to keep producing enough learning disabled students to fill the Title I classrooms, and whole-language instruction does the job….."

Investors Business Daily 10/27/99 "....Just about everything that can go wrong with the Los Angeles Unified School District econd in size only to New York City) has. It's been through a disastrous busing plan, white flight, union power games and revolving- door administrations. Its test scores are abysmal. Its schools are overcrowded and short on basics such as textbooks and, in some cases, desks for the students. The district's school-building program is its latest fiasco - and a very costly one. For the past couple of years, the district has forged ahead with a $200 million high school project (the most expensive in U.S. history) against expert advice at the site of a methane-laced abandoned oil field. This month, the public learned that the district has been buying land for a high school and elementary school at a polluted industrial site in the suburb of South Gate (one of several cities in the L.A. school district). Reading the list of chemicals turned up there by soil analysts - arsenic, DDT, lead, chlordane, solvents, chloroform - is almost enough to make your skin peel. ....."

Los Angeles Times 10/26/99 Agustin Gurza "…. We're now into the second week of the Public Emasculation of Ruben Zacarias, L.A.'s besieged and beloved school superintendent….. Latinos have reacted with particular agony and outrage at the spectacle of a leader of his stature being ignominiously stripped of power by the new school board majority….. But instead of firing Zacarias , in some sort of misguided mercy they allowed the veteran Mexican American educator to keep his title and little else, turning him into a foolish figurehead. …."

Schenectady Daily Gazette 10/26/99 SHIRIN PARSAVAND "…..People in three area communities - Schenectady, Clifton Park and Troy - are hoping to open charter schools next September. Proposals for the three schools are among 90 applications the State University of New York received from people who want to open charter schools in the 2000-01 school year. SUNY's Charter Schools Institute released a list of the applicants Monday. …… the Clifton Park International Charter School and the International Charter School of Schenectady would use a standard, back-to-basics curriculum that includes foreign language instruction starting in kindergarten. Charter schools receive public money, but are free from most state and district regulations that govern public schools. They're seen as a chance to experiment and an alternative for parents who are dissatisfied with the public schools….."

World Magazine 11/13/99 Candi Cushman "….Defying school officials but supported by the governor and the U.S. House, Texas students continue tradition of prayer before football games In Stephenville, Tex. - Hidden from Dallas super-malls by more than 120 miles of windy hills and wind-swept fields, residents of Stephenville, Tex., boast of a different claim to fame-the Yellow Jackets high-school football team……As junior class president, Alan had eagerly anticipated giving the opening prayer before the first Yellow Jackets home game on Aug. 27. But at 10:00 a.m. that morning, school authorities had informed him that, for the first time in decades, there would be no prayer. isappointed but undeterred, Alan and his friends turned to creative options: Instead of using the stadium sound system, they led a crowd of 4,000 in prayer through cheerleading megaphones. At the next home game, they brought a donated sound system onto the track for a more amplified pre-game prayer. They tried to do the same thing at Stephenville's third home game, but an electrical outlet fueling their speaker system mysteriously switched off moments before prayer began. Things were worse on the night of the otherwise glorious victory over Cleburne. Before the game, school officials restricted access to the track and forbade the use of privately owned amplifiers there……. "Let's just pray about it," said one. And with bowed heads, they chose humility over rebellion……"

San Diego Union Tribune 11/4/99 Kathleen Parker The Orlando Sentinel "….Maybe you missed it. Maybe you have a life and don't hug your TV every night. In such event, you may not have seen a recent special TV program -- sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a California-based health care philanthropy, and MTV, the soft-porn purveyor preferred by teens -- aimed at teaching your children about healthy sex…… No thought is ever given these days to educating children about postponing sex, about not having intercourse for a few more years, about not putting themselves at risk for AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), pregnancy, abortion, not to mention the life-long emotional repercussions that can accompany all of the above. Instead, we effectively tell them: Do it. But do it like this. The Kaiser-MTV program was touted as an educational event to fill the informational gaps that surfaced in a survey: "The Kaiser Family Foundation National Survey of Secondary School Students about Sexual Health Issues and Services: the Facts and More." ……"

San Diego Union Tribune 11/4/99 Kathleen Parker The Orlando Sentinel "….The survey randomly interviewed 1,012 public school students in grades 9-12 and found, for example, that: 46 percent didn't know you can get birth control pills without parental permission; 21 percent didn't know you can get condoms without parental permission; 21 percent didn't know that kids under age 18 can get free or low-cost family planning services (read: abortion); in some states, again, without parental permission. If you're squirming right now, you're probably a parent. Consistently, the key message to children is, you don't have to tell your parents. You can have sex, get condoms, get birth control, get an abortion (excuse me, get "family-planning services") without ever having to tell Mom or Dad. ….."

The Dallas Morning News 11/4/99 Terrence Stutz "….Their battles over what is taught in classrooms are well-known. Human evolution. Sex education. Creeping federal programs. Flawed textbooks. Those have all been rallying points for such social conservative groups as the Christian Coalition and the Eagle Forum. Now they have embraced another cause with equal fervor - the use of phonics to teach young children to read. Christian radio stations across Texas and the nation are among the individuals and organizations who call frequently for a return to phonics - teaching students letters and their sounds to develop reading skills. Now, social conservatives on the State Board of Education are pressing for more phonics in reading textbooks that are up for board approval this week. Textbook publishers argue that making the changes would cost them millions of dollars……Such criticism is ridiculous, responded Texas Eagle Forum president Cathie Adams. "They like to say it is a conspiracy by the religious right to make sure children can read difficult words such as those found in the Bible," she said. "But if children can read the Bible, they also can read Mark Twain." Ms. Adams said the other major technique to teach reading skills - "whole language" - is a failed liberal experiment that has left generations of children unable to read….."

NEA Website 11/1/99 Karen Gutloff "….If you feel awkward when you're confronted with arguments for vouchers, you're not alone. Many NEA members know in their gut that it's wrong to subsidize private school tuition with public tax dollars, but aren't sure how best to rebut the claims made by voucher promoters. But other NEA members, like Diana Briseno Herrera, who teaches the Gifted and Talented program at Henry B. Gonzalez school in San Antonio's Edgewood school district, are anything but speechless when confronted by voucher promoters……Last year, an organization called CEO America began a privately funded voucher program aimed at Edgewood's largely Hispanic community. Herrera joined forces with parents, community activists, and other educators to fight back. Together, they formed a coalition to educate their community about vouchers. Then, with help from the Texas State Teachers Association, the group descended on the state capitol in Austin to lobby against legislation that would allow the use of public funds to pay for private school vouchers. In neighborhoods city-wide, Herrera and other educators spoke sense to parents, warning that voucher schools were only accepting select students from their community. "The private schools are literally handpicking their students," says Herrera, the recently elected president of the Edgewood Teachers Association. "They only want the cream of the crop." Adds Herrera: "As public school educators, we need to meet the needs of all students, from those with low abilities to the gifted. If a child is in special education, private schools won't meet the child's needs." ….."

Daily Oklahoman 11/6/99 Cristy Watson Melissa Nelson "….An Oklahoma City principal sued the NAACP and members of its local chapter Friday claiming they made false allegations that tarnished her reputation as a principal and a professional counselor. The lawsuit filed in Oklahoma County District Court claims the NAACP libeled and slandered Douglass High School Principal Sally Cole…… At issue is a petition circulated by members of the organization and presented to the Oklahoma City School Board in September. The petition demanded an investigation into allegations that Cole used profanity in front of students, falsified grades, carried a concealed weapon, mismanaged funds and was hostile to parents. The lawsuit calls the defendants' actions "extreme," "outrageous," "beyond all possible bounds of decency," "atrocious" and "intolerable." "What's been said is a lie," Cole said Friday. "It's important to me that I say, 'Look, these things are not true.' I have to stand up." ……"

Jewish World Review Nat Hentoff 11/11/99 "…..I OFTEN SPEAK at high schools and colleges around the country as well as at elementary schools. Nearly everywhere, I find an alarming, pervasive failure in American education. Most young people have only the dimmest knowledge of the rights and liberties guaranteed to every American under the Constitution. They do not know -- as Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson emphasized in West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette -- that: "One's right to life, liberty and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no election." These rights cannot be taken away by a majority of the people, or Congress, or state and local legislatures. When you are born an American -- or obtain citizenship -- these basic liberties, more extensive than in any other country in the world, become yours by the authority of the Constitution……."

San Antonio Express-News 11/10/99 Cecilia Balli "….The University of Texas law professor who made headlines two years ago by saying that African-Americans and Hispanics can't compete academically with Anglos stirred up another controversy with UT students Wednesday when he joked about race and reiterated his belief that minorities are less qualified college students. "Obviously, blacks and Mexican-Americans are not academically competitive with whites and Asians," tenured constitutional law Professor Lino Graglia said in a high-profile debate over affirmative action policies. "That's why there are preferences. If they were (as competitive), there wouldn't be preferences." Graglia dismissed another panelist's argument that minorities are equally qualified as "all fantasy," and noted scarcely any African-Americans have test scores and grades high enough to get into prestigious public law schools in Texas and California…..When a female Indian honors student asked him if he was satisfied with the idea of all-white law schools, Graglia candidly shot back: "You don't have to worry about an all-white law school. The Asians will come in numbers. The Indians are very dark. They'll be very far from white." Half of the students in the 500-member audience broke into a hearty laugh. The other half shook their heads in disbelief….."

Denver Rocky Mountain News 11/10/99 Lynn Bartels "….State Board of Education member Patty Johnson has a theory about Einstein: "If he were alive today, they'd probably put him on Ritalin." Johnson and others who appeared before a legislative group Tuesday condemned what they called the drugging of America's kids, a practice they fear is linked to school violence, including the Columbine tragedy. "The use of psychotic drugs is creating kid killers," said Dr. Bruce Wiseman, president of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a national psychiatric watchdog group. Opponents of drugs such as Ritalin, Luvox and Prozac argue that too many students are misdiagnosed by educators and by doctors who don't spend enough time with patients….."

Republican National Committee 11/9/99 ".....Asked yesterday what's wrong with letting local school districts decide how best to spend federal education dollars, President Clinton replied, "because it's not their money" - and Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson is hopping mad. "Mr. Clinton, it is too our money," Nicholson reminded the President. "If those dollars don't belong to local parents, teachers and principals, just whose money is it?" asked Nicholson. "Bill Clinton's latest remark crystallizes the difference between the parties - not just on balancing the budget, but on everything. Republicans know that the resources of this great country belong to the people - while Democrats think everything belongs to them and the Washington bureaucrats, except what little they let us keep....."

The Washington Times 9/38/99 Michael Farris "....Neither the academic success nor the increasing popularity of home-schooling has deterred government officials from taking an incredibly aggressive approach at the beginning of this school year. The Levittown, N.Y., school district reported the names of many home schoolers-including many who had complied fully with the burdensome paperwork requirements of New York law-to Nassau County Department of Social Services. In turn, the department mailed letters to the home-schooling families, advising them that they were being investigated for child abuse....."

Salon Magazine 11/8/99 Chris Colin "….In July 1998, a white professor said "nigger" before a classroom of white and black college students. By the end of the month he had lost his job. It seemed like a normal enough day in Ken Hardy's introduction to interpersonal communication class at Jefferson Community College in Louisville, Ky. The adjunct professor had wanted to talk about taboo words and their historical evolution. How did they work to support dominant paradigms? he asked his class. How did ordinary words take on the taint of the taboo? The students seemed engaged, rattling off a list of slurs that have traditionally oppressed marginalized groups: "girl," "lady," "faggot," "bitch." Then a student said the word "nigger" and Hardy, in taking up the conversational thread, repeated it…… But first-year transfer student Julia Pierre found the earnest discussion of language quite beside the point. Pierre, one of nine blacks in the 22-student class, didn't want to hear the word "nigger," regardless of the context. She said so, and the effects were devastating……"

San Francisco Examiner 11/5/99 Julian Guthrie "…..Ignoring a federal judge's warning that using race as one factor in school admissions is possibly unconstitutional, San Francisco school officials defended the use of race and, for the first time, said it would remain a factor in determining who is admitted to top-ranked Lowell High. And, during a special meeting of the Board of Education on Thursday night, another significant change in the district's proposed new enrollment plan was introduced: Children who live near the district's prized alternative schools no longer would be guaranteed a seat. Instead, kids applying to alternative schools - considered among the best in The City - would be admitted if they increased diversity. "Students will be assessed based on whether they will contribute to diversity at the school," said Eric Boutwell, the district's director of information technology services. "We will select students with the most diversity." …."

New York Times 11/6/99 Linda Greenhouse "....A sharply divided Supreme Court issued an unusual order Friday permitting Cleveland to operate its disputed school voucher program at full strength until a federal appeals court rules on the program's constitutionality. The Cleveland program, which has been the subject of legal challenges since its creation by the Ohio legislature in 1995, is being closely monitored by both sides in the debate over school vouchers as offering a potentially crucial Supreme Court test of the concept...."

AP via Newsday.com 11/5/99 Richard Carelli "….New students can participate, at least temporarily, in a tuition voucher program for private schools in Cleveland, the Supreme Court said Friday. The court, granting an emergency request by Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery, shelved a federal judge's order that temporarily barred new students from participating. Although a victory for pro-voucher advocates, the action does little to clarify the muddy state of the law over providing tuition help for families whose children attend religiously affiliated schools……."

WORLD Magazine 11/20/99 "…..Many of the spin-doctors in question-high-school textbook authors-have long viewed American history through the politically correct lenses of feminism, multiculturalism, and environmentalism. But after more than a quarter-century of layering -ism upon -ism, some authors may be producing a new -ism: anti-Americanism. In a one-two punch, say conservative historians, such authors process American history through today's PC orthodoxy, then write it up as a kind of retroactive atonement for a national past that doesn't measure up to that code. The combination, says John Fonte, can wind up shredding students' national pride. "These historians emphasize the negative aspects of American culture, and gloss over or romanticize other cultures," says Mr. Fonte, director of the conservative Hudson Institute's Center for American Common Culture. " The more they can show the negative aspects of this country, the more they can deconstruct any sense of nationalism or patriotism." …..

WORLD Magazine 11/20/99 "…..For example, the textbook United States History and the Course of Human Events (West Publishing, 1997) rightly assails American slavery, but validates slavery in Africa as socially tolerable. It also criticizes the colonists for their attempt to "Christianize" the Indians, but calls the Indians' torture of white men "a means by which bereaved families compensated for the loss of loved ones." In its analysis of the U.S. space program, the same book strains to portray the selection of Mercury astronauts as sexist. While admitting that female astronaut candidate Gerry Cobb had not accumulated any actual flight hours, the authors paint her rejection as an injustice since she was able to pass all required mental and physical tests. The didactic bottom line? That, despite its best efforts, America as a nation is a sociocultural screw-up……"

Atlanta Journal-Constitution 11/12/99 Thomas Sowell ".... Nearly two-thirds of the eighth -graders in New York City failed a recent statewide test in English and more than three-quarters failed the statewide test in math. Nearly half of these youngsters did so badly in math that the scores indicate ''they can barely add and subtract,'' according to a report in the New York Post. The local education establishment had one of their automatic defenses. A brief paragraph in the New York Times said it all: ''Some school officials in New York City, stunned by the low scores, suggested yesterday that they could only have come from unrealistically difficult tests or a flawed scoring system.'' In other words, we couldn't possibly be doing anything wrong. ...."

AP 11/12/99 "....Books used to teach schoolchildren reading now focus too much on cultural diversity and not enough on laying a foundation for reading, writing and thinking, a Harvard researcher who has studied three generations of textbooks said. ``Children hop from culture to culture, century to century,'' Sandra Stotsky, a deputy commissioner of the Massachusetts education department and a research associate at Harvard University's graduate school of education, said Friday. ``You are not introducing them to a good literary foundation. You are introducing them to linguistic chaos.'' ...."

Electronic Telegraph 11/13/99 Liz Lightfoot Education Correspondent "…..PRIMARY schools are withdrawing from the "Smarties" reading competition this year in protest at references to lesbians and genitals in one of the books. Organised by the Book Trust charity and sponsored by Nestle¿, the competition has run for 15 years without incident. But the choice of Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison for children aged nine to 11 this year has shocked teachers at a Roman Catholic primary and at least two other schools have refused to take part….."

The New Los Angelos Times Online 11/4/99 Jill Stewart "…. The Napoleonic Forrest Ross and his fiefdom of bureaucrats have defied Prop 227 and kept L.A.'s Spanish-speaking children in the educational dark ages …. "The school leaders here stirred up tremendous fear among the mothers that their children would forget their Spanish," says the teacher, who asked to remain anonymous because she fears retribution…."

AP 11/12/99 "….On the wall of Carolyn Sherrod's business, a laminated paper tells visitors: ``God is like Coke ... he's the real thing.'' Outside is a copy of the Ten Commandments. Ms. Sherrod is among area residents rallying around the school board's decision to post the edicts in district schools. A rally in support of the display is planned for Saturday night……. The board is expected to discuss the policy at its Tuesday meeting. School officials say the district's lawyers have provided a legal opinion on the issue, but have declined to reveal what they said. Saturday's rally at Southeastern Illinois College is expected to draw thousands from throughout southern Illinois who support the display. It gives Stalcup, the waitress, confidence that supporters will prevail….."

Reuters 11/12/99 "….A suburban Ohio school superintendent who suggested that teachers be armed resigned under pressure late on Thursday. John Varis, superintendent of Reading Community Schools for the past 13 years, had provoked a firestorm of criticism when he said at a public meeting Oct. 15 that arming teachers might improve school security. Many parents in the working-class community were alarmed by the suggestion and circulated petitions calling for his removal...."

AP 11/11/99 "….DECATUR, Ill. (AP) - Fights at football games are nothing new in this blue-collar town, where one bumper sticker reads, ``My Kid Beat Up Your Honor Student.'' But a fight nearly two months ago - and the resulting expulsions of several black students - has stirred Decatur like nothing before, bringing the Rev. Jesse Jackson to town for days of negotiation and protest. In one sense, it's a dispute over whether the punishment fit the offense. But in a town already struggling with racial issues, the debate has been framed in terms of black and white. ……Jackson said Thursday that he will ask the Illinois attorney general to investigate whether the expulsion violated the students' right to due process, and he accused the school board of leaking private information about them. School officials, meanwhile, are reluctant to abandon their zero-tolerance policy on violence……"

AP 11/11/99 "….The tension became evident three days before the fight at the football game when a black teen was shot to death by a Decatur police officer. Police said the youth fired a gun at police, and two investigations concluded last month that the officer was justified in returning fire. But some black activists doubted that conclusion. And some black residents question why there aren't more blacks in leadership positions….."

Fox News 11/18/99 Tom Stuckey AP "….The NAACP is criticizing college entrance exams as unreliable and unfair to minorities and is appealing to American colleges to stop using the tests as the primary factor in admissions. At the same time, the NAACP says that until colleges reduce their reliance on such exams, states have an obligation to provide money to help minority students prepare for the SAT and the American College Test. The stand was contained in a resolution adopted by the civil rights organization's board last month……"

Los Angeles Times 11/19/99 Richard Lee Colvin "….Nearly 200 top mathematicians and scientists, including four Nobel laureates, are urging U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Ailey to with-draw the government's endorsement of math programs that experiment with nontraditional teaching methods. The strongly worded letter expresses outrage that some of the 10 widely used programs leave out such basic skills as multiplying two-digit numbers and dividing fractions. "These curricula are among the worst in existence," said David Klein, a Cal State Northridge math professor who was one of the letter's authors. "To recommend these books as exemplary and promising would be a joke if it weren't so damaging." ..."

The San Diego Union-Tribune 11/18/99 Susan Gembrowski Jeff Ristine "….More than 250 students attended a rally at San Diego State University yesterday to protest tougher admissions standards that led to a 31 percent decline in African-American first-time freshmen and a 28 percent drop in Latinos admitted to the campus this fall. "This is having a critical impact on diversity," said Kahli Brown, a senior African studies major. "We are here to voice our anger. . . . We will not have SDSU become an all-white campus." ….. Last week, in response to one trustee's concerns, university officials decided to accept in fall 2000 all first-time freshman applicants who are residents of San Diego and Imperial counties if they meet Cal State's eligibility requirements. The "eligibility index" for freshmen is derived from high school grades and test scores…… Ethan Singer, associate vice president for academic affairs at SDSU, said 60 percent of first-time minority enrollees are from outside San Diego and Imperial counties. "The university's view is that everyone should be competing on an equal basis," Singer said. …."

AP 11/17/99 "…..For the first time, federal education funds may soon be used to help parents move their children to another public school. Under a new provision in the education spending bill being negotiated in Congress, poor children attending a school deemed failing by the state could tap into federal funds for transfer to another school as long as it is in the public system. The measure would not approve public funding of vouchers for private schooling. ..."

National Center For Policy Analysis 11/16/99 "….A group led by noted education expert Chester Finn reports that states have done a poor job of improving their teachers.The Thomas B.Fordham Foundation surveyed efforts in 49 states and gave them an overall grade of D-plus,based on 29 indicators of policy and practice. In the foundation's report,"The Quest for Better Teachers:Grading the States": Only Texas and Florida were granted A's. Seven states got B's--California, Colorado, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York and North Carolina. Thirteen states flunked altogether,and Oregon and the District of Columbia did not participate. …."

Wall Street Journal 11/16/99 "….It's been almost a generation since the "A Nation at Risk" report was released in 1983, warning that public schools were being swamped "by a rising tide of mediocrity." Since then, state education spending has gone up more than 70% in real terms, but improved results have been halting and spotty. Now, to its credit, a blue-ribbon establishment panel this week has issued a report calling for fundamental change in how our schools are managed and who runs them. One of its two recommended approaches would make every public school an independent charter school. The National Commission on Governing America's Schools grew out of the well-regarded Education Commission of the States, which is run by all 50 governors. Its report minces no words. It quotes management guru Peter Drucker: "The wrong structure aborts results and smothers even the best-directed efforts." …"

World Net Daily 11/16/99 Linda Bowles "…. If you listen to the questions reporters ask, watch the debates between candidates, and read public-opinion polls, it is obvious that the issues which are of most concern to voters are taxes, education, Social Security, health care and the environment. While these topics are important, they are being discussed as though the Constitution of the United States does not exist. The seminal issue, the most important one facing America today, has to do with the evolving role of government, what it is becoming, and the impact upon the freedoms of the American people and their children….."

Pittsburgh Tribune Review 11/15/99 Ralph Reiland "…. Christopher Beamon, 13: Does this young Texan have the right stuff to be a pulp-fiction hero? Not much happens in Ponder, a Texas farm town of 500 people. Not much, that is, until teacher Amanda Henry assigned her 7th-graders the task of writing a scary story for Halloween. As it turned out, that was more than the folks of Ponder could handle. By the time the hysteria and panic blew over, 13-year-old story-writer Christopher Beamon was jailed as ``a threat to the community.'' ….. The next day, Christopher, turned in by a terrified Mrs. Henry who's been whipped into a frenzy after being inundated by phone calls from spooked parents, was hauled out of class by sheriff's deputies….."

WorldNetDaily 11/16/99 Jon Dougherty "….The United States Supreme Court ruled long ago that police departments do not "have a duty to protect" citizens against criminals. There may come a day when the Supremes will have to hand down a similar ruling for the nation's public school administrators. After all, public school officials -- and to a lesser extent, parents -- are already acting like they have no such obligation. In fact, school superintendents, school boards and many parents are teaching their children how to become victims instead of fostering better ways to help them protect themselves……"

Reuters 11/15/99 "….The U.S. Supreme Court, which has barred public school prayers in the classroom since 1962, said on Monday that it would decide whether high school students may read Christian prayers at football games. The justices agreed to review a U.S. appeals court ruling that the Santa Fe Independent School District in Texas violated the constitutional requirement on church-state separation by allowing student-led prayers at football games. The high court will hear an appeal by the school district, which said students should be given the right to participate in student-initiated group prayers at football games….."

Boston Sunday Globe 11/14/99 AP "…..After six years of lawsuits, two court orders, and a loss at trial, St. Johnsbury Academy continues to fight demands by special-needs students' families that their children be integrated into regular classes, the families said. Amanda Jackson is on of those students. The 13-year old ninth-grader is in regular classes this year, but her guardian, Kate Campbell, said the academy is seeking to place her in "individualized services," a separate classroom for special needs students, and has been prevented from doing so only because of a federal court order……."

Investor's Business Daily 11/15/99 Tyce Palmaffy "… What is a "sound basic education" and how much should it cost? Such questions lie at the core of a court battle being waged in the New York State Supreme Court. The plaintiff: the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE), a New York City-based coalition of parents, school boards and activists. The defendant: the state of New York. The CFE's lawsuit accuses the state of neglecting its constitutional duty to ensure that all students get a sound basic education. It claims the New York City school district cannot provide such an education for $9,700, the district's annual per-pupil spending. So what is the CFE's goal? "We want a funding system that is geared toward educational needs," said Michael Rebell, executive director of the CFE. "If we had a fair system that distributed funds based on student needs, New York City would get more."…."

Accuracy in Media 11/15/99 Reed Irvine Cliff Kincaid "….. George W. Bush may not believe we're slouching toward Gomorrah, but when college textbooks are teaching the benefits of having sex with children, it's hard to come to any other conclusion. At the AIM 30th anniversary conference, Professor Clark Bowers tried to explain why we have come to this point. Bowers, who served as the Fred Schwarz distinguished Visiting Fellow at Harvard, says we have to understand who and what ideas have driven the dominant philosophy in American education today. He named the individual as Michele Foucault, who wrote several important books that have had a major influence on what is being taught on college campuses. His books are in widespread use in college courses today. And yet Bowers said most people would be shocked at what this man espoused. …..Foucault was part of a tradition that rejected absolute truth. Although a leftist, he even rejected the idea that leftist ideologies such as communism represented the truth. He believed there is no truth and no right or wrong. Another philosopher in this tradition, Friederich Nietzsche, taught that God did not exist, but Foucault went further, stating that man did not exist. He argued that man did not have the right to impose his views on others. He argued for the abolition of prisons and insane asylums on the ground that society did not have the right to imprison or treat others for mental illness just because some people think or act differently. Personally, Foucault was a pervert who visited the leather district in San Francisco, where he participated in sado-masochistic activities, including torture, involving the use of pain to generate sexual pleasure. He got AIDS and died in the early 1980s. Bowers commented, "This is the man who has been put in the shrine of higher education." ….."

CBS online 11/15/99 "…. Thousands of people showed up at a rally to support the Harrisburg, Ill., board's decision to post the Ten Commandments in district schools. The event Saturday night drew about 2,500 people to Southeastern Illinois Community College near here. "Our meeting tonight is not about the Ten Commandments," said Darrell Scott, whose 17-year-old daughter Rachel was one of the 12 students and a teacher gunned down at Columbine High School in April. "It is about our young people - our children." ... The board unanimously approved posting the edicts last month, fueling a controversy that has already touched much of the country....

Associated Press 11/27/99 Anjetta McQueen "….In MathLand lessons, kindergarten children learn to count with calculators. Older children count a million birdseeds to fully understand the concept of such a large number. No textbooks are used as children get ``classroom manipulative kits'' with pattern blocks and cubes. To the Education Department, the package of elementary school lessons is a ``promising'' program proven to help a variety of children learn math. To more than 200 mathematicians and other scientists, MathLand and nine other math programs that recently won departmental endorsement are neglecting important skills such as dividing fractions and multiplying multidigit numbers. These skills, the lessons' critics say, are essential to students mastering advanced concepts such as algebra, calculus and physics, which in turn lead to high-performance in engineering and other skilled fields….."

New York Times 11/27/99 "….The federal court decision that struck down raced-based admissions at the University of Texas in 1996 was promptly decried as a barrier that would not only exclude black and Hispanic students from university life but also diminish their professional prospects and their role in the next generation of Texas state leadership. But three years after affirmative action was decreed dead, the flagship university at Austin is admitting as many minority students as it did under affirmative action -- thanks to a state law guaranteeing college admission to all students who graduate in the top 10 percent of any public high school….."

INSIGHT Magazine 12/20/99 Aimee Howd "…. More than 80 percent of professors are Democrats and ideological diversity is an endangered species on law-school campuses. Can honest debate make a comeback?. . . .. . . . With few exceptions, only a narrow range of legal opinion has been tolerated at the most prestigious law schools in recent years. Left-liberals acknowledge that much, without apology, and some say they'd like to keep it this way. . . . . As early as the 1960s the left-liberals almost completely dominated legal education. They held that the Constitution ought to be read as a flexible document, subject to changing interpretation by a judicial elite that could create new fundamental rights without regard for the intent of the Founding Fathers. And by the 1980s, their ranks filled with sixties-era radicals, law-school faculties and administrations had established a deeply entrenched orthodoxy of political correctness that lingers to this day, say conservative critics. But there are whispers of a revolution.. . . . "The social injustices that drove liberalism are fading…... "The public is seeing other injustices emerging from the left-liberal overreaction, and that reaction is now fueling a conservative movement," says Calabresi….."

CNSNews,com 11/24/99 Susan Jones ‘…..Amid growing concerns about public education - or the lack of it - the Massachusetts Board of Education actually plans to lower the standards for students. On Tuesday, eight of the Board's nine members voted to lower the passing mark on a test that students must take to graduate from high school. Henceforth, students taking the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests will need to score a minimum of 220 out of 280 to graduate. Putting that in perspective, a score of 220 is the lowest end of the "needs to improve" category. In fact, it's just one point above failing….."

The New York Times 11/25/99 Michael Janofsky "….A resolution recently passed by the Colorado Board of Education to discourage teachers from recommending behavioral drugs like Ritalin and Luvox has intensified a national debate over the growing use of prescription drugs for children. The resolution, the first of its kind in the country, carries no legal weight. But it urges teachers and other school personnel to use discipline and instruction to overcome problem behavior in the classroom, rather than to encourage parents to put their children on drugs that are commonly prescribed for attention deficit and hyperactive disorders…."

Eagles Up / Etherzone 11/99 "…. In 1967, the National Education Association declared war on the American people. Its executive secretary proclaimed: "NEA will become a political power second to no other special interest group... NEA will organize this profession from top to bottom into logical operational units that can move swiftly and effectively and with power unmatched by any other organized group in the nation." Today, that prediction is a reality. The 1.7 million-member NEA is the most politically powerful - and dangerous - organization in the United States with plans not only to control the federal government but also every state legislature in America…..Samuel Blumenfeld, veteran researcher, has trained his expert skills on the NEA and pieced together a story of intellectual deceit and moral subversion that is bound to cause shock waves across America. ……"

flash.oregon.com, via AP, via WND 11/19/99 "….Six high school teachers have accused the Portland School District of promoting homosexuality with a list of reading material for students and teachers aimed at better understanding gays and lesbians. "We are concerned that an entirely one-sided perspective on the issue of homosexuality is being disseminated to students by the school district through its sexual diversity committee," the teachers wrote in a Nov. 16 memo to Cleveland High School Principal Bruce Plato. "Its effort has been solely to condone, affirm and encourage homosexual practices among students and adults," the memo said. …."

Washington Post 11/22/99 David Vise "…. Jill Harris recalls being "shocked" when she learned last month that Robert W. Ray had been named to replace Kenneth W. Starr as independent counsel…. Harris, a lawyer who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.…. she and a number of other residents in Brooklyn's Park Slope and Windsor Terrace neighborhoods remember Ray in another role--as an unsuccessful school board candidate who vehemently opposed an elementary school curriculum designed to teach children about families with two moms or two dads, an approach he characterized as an "assault on the moral authority of parents." ….."

Boston Globe 11/22/99 Kathleen Burge "…..After a quarter-century in some of the world's most troubled places, Bill Corrow came home to Vermont. A former teacher and retired Air Force colonel, Corrow started volunteering at the local high school, teaching a course called ''Conflict in the 20th Century.'' The class quickly became a magnet for the school's best students, who liked Corrow's first-hand knowledge and his insistence on hard work. The school's guidance counselor began recommending the class for college-bound students. Yet as word of his teaching spread, Corrow found himself drawn, again, into the fray. The union that represents the teachers demanded that Williamstown Middle-High School fire Corrow, who has been blunt at times in his criticisms of the quality of teaching at the school. The union argues that he is not properly certified and that he violates the union contract by teaching for free……"

Dalas Morning Post/ AP 11/19/99 "…. LITTLE ROCK - New rules for parents who teach their children at home have caused some confusion for school administrators and parents alike, state lawmakers were told Thursday. A law passed this year set an Aug. 15 deadline for parents to notify school districts of their intent to home-school their children this semester. But many parents either did not get the word or chose not to listen, said Barbara Gates, superintendent for Crossett schools…."

Boston Globe 12/2/99 Jeff Jacoby "…..Education reform'' in Massachusetts is now seven years old. It has cost taxpayers more than $6 billion in increased state spending on public schools. It has enjoyed robust support from virtually the entire Bay State political establishment. It has been championed by the teachers unions. It has been earnestly covered by the press. And it has failed. After all these years of ''reform,'' educational achievement is as pathetic as ever. The latest statewide exam scores confirm it. In nearly every grade and every subject tested, a majority of Massachusetts public school students either did poorly or failed outright. ..."

Education Week On the Web 12/1/99 Kathleen Kennedy Manzo "….A coalition of education and mental-health organizations is mailing out a new booklet that it says will help teachers and administrators create a safer school environment for gay and lesbian students. The booklet takes direct aim at therapy- and religion-based programs that seek to change individuals' homosexual orientation. The 12-page booklet, "Just the Facts About Sexual Orientation and Youth: A Primer for Principals, Educators, and School Personnel," was mailed last week to superintendents in the nation's nearly 15,000 public school districts. It outlines the "factual and scientific information" on homosexuality endorsed by major health organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association, and urges school administrators to deal openly with issues of homosexuality. …."

American-Statesman Washington Staff 12/3/99 Andrew Mollison "….Texas is pulling ahead of almost all states in the race toward the ambitious education goals set by top state and federal officials for the year 2000, according to the National Education Goals Panel. But the bipartisan panel also reported Thursday that neither Texas nor the nation will reach those goals next year. Texas was singled out for "outstanding progress" toward world-class levels of student achievement. Together with North Carolina, Connecticut and Maine, it was praised for across-the-board progress toward most of the educational goals. Just below those four states were eight others that made "outstanding progress" in at least one field: Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Washington, Indiana, Wisconsin and North Dakota. But in its annual report, the panel said the other 38 states still have far to go. The goals were proposed by President Bush and the nation's governors at an education summit in 1989 and modified by the governors, Congress and President Clinton in 1994. …."

WorldNetDaily.com 12/2/99 Samual Blumenfeld "…..Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt's new book, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America," is without doubt one of the most important publishing events in the annals of American education in the last hundred years…….. But Iserbyt has done what no one else wanted or could do. She has put together the most formidable and practical compilation of documentation describing the well-planned "deliberate dumbing down" of American children by their education system. Anyone who has had any lingering hope that what the educators have been doing is a result of error, accident, or stupidity will be shocked by the way American social engineers have systematically gone about destroying the intellect of millions of American children for the purpose of leading the American people into a socialist world government controlled by behavioral and social scientists. This mammoth book is the size of a large city phone book: 462 pages of documentation, 205 pages of appendices, and a 48-page Index. The documentation is "A Chronological Paper Trail" which starts with the Sowing of the Seeds in the late 18th and 19th centuries, proceeds to The Turning of the Tides, then to The Troubling Thirties, The Fomentation of the Forties and Fifties, The Sick Sixties, The Serious Seventies, The "Effective" Eighties, and finally, the Noxious Nineties. The educators and social engineers indict themselves with their own words….."

World Magazine 12/3/99 Joe Belz "…. When it comes to the crisis faced by American education these days, a return to "standards" and "fundamentals" may sound attractive-and it will certainly help. But it won't correct what has gone so desperately wrong. That's because in losing our way, we aren't even agreed any longer on what the "basics" are and what makes up the "standards" and the "fundamentals." If we aren't sure what they even are, how can we get back to them? When 385 educators (and lay people interested in education) gathered recently in Washington for a "No Excuses" conference sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, they focused on the theme that almost anybody, under almost any circumstances, ought to be able to do better at education than America is doing. There is no good excuse for the terrible job we are doing educating our children-and society should quit accepting the typical excuses that are offered. Too little money? Run-down facilities? Too few teachers? The excuses pile up especially with reference to inner-city, low-income schools. But the excuses, conference participants were reminded, don't hold water….."

Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune 12/3/99 Tabatha Barham "…..The Sarasota County branch of the NAACP is asking the Sarasota County School District to review the contents of a play at Venice High School and remove all costumes and dialogue that illustrate hatred, bigotry and violence. The request was sparked by photographs published in some editions of Thursday's Herald-Tribune advancing the school's play, "The Foreigner." One of the photos depicts a scene in which a frightened boy is taunted by two other boys portraying Ku Klux Klansmen, including one holding a gun. [More specifically, the boy was seated on a couch with two hood-clad actors standing within a few feet of him. One held a mock rifle. The photo's caption simply stated the location and dates for the play and noted that it was a comedy.] ……"The picture was taken completely out of context," Parrett said. "It (the scene) depicts the violence that is in our society, but not in our play." Parrett said that in one of the scenes shown in the paper, the Klansmen are trying to intimidate the boy. But he doesn't let them and they run away. "The play shows how ignorant and cowardly hate groups can be and how knowledge and education overcomes the ignorance," Parrett said……"

Associated Press 12/2/99 "…..Officials in the United States' second-largest school district have delayed a plan to fail students who don't make the grade, after realizing it would mean keeping back 350,000 students. Instead, the students -- half the district's total enrolment -- will be promoted on "social" grounds. In the case of those in eighth grade, more than two-thirds would have been held back if "social promotion" was dropped, according to the Los Angeles Times. …."

CnsNews.com 11/19/99 Theodore Forstmann "…..The 13th-century Italian poet Dante observed, "A great flame follows a little spark." For me, the spark was ignited by my involvement, beginning many years ago, with the Inner City Scholarship Fund, which is run by the Archdiocese of New York. I was so impressed with their success in helping to educate children at half of what it costs the public schools to fail to educate the same children that I thought, why not start a similar enterprise to help low-income families seek a good education wherever it can be found? I got together with John Walton, one of the directors of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., and we offered 1,000 scholarships to low-income students in Washington, D.C. After a few months, with virtually no media coverage and no advertising, we had received nearly 8,000 applications. This huge demand persuaded us to go national. In June 1998 we donated $100 million toward funding 40,000 scholarships, and the Children's Scholarship Fund (CSF) was born….."

Orlando Sentinel 11/21/99 Charley Reese "…. The first step to start real reform in government education is to repeal compulsory-attendance laws. Now, don't worry. There would be no mass exodus of students. Compulsory-attendance laws are obsolete. They may have been useful in an agrarian society, when parents used to work their children on the farm. But in this urban society we have today, there is little danger that parents can persuade their children to work at anything. In fact, the purpose of repealing compulsory-attendance laws is to send a message to parents that public education will no longer be their free baby-sitting service; that public education instead is a benefit but a conditional benefit; and those conditions are that the parent or parents a. civilize their children before they show up for kindergarten and b. support the child's teachers. ….."

Washington Post via the Dallas Morning News 11/21/99 Amy Argetsinger "….. Lack of male role models listed among possible causes At a time when women are making tremendous gains in higher education, finding more support and earning more advanced diplomas than ever, a troubling phenomenon is occurring on college campuses across the country: The men are vanishing. An Iowa-based policy analyst is highlighting the trend, which flips the age-old gender gap in higher education. Thomas G. Mortenson told a gathering of regional college presidents and deans at Goucher College on Tuesday that he believes it signals deeper problems in society. "There is an absolute revolution going on in terms of college participation," he said. "Women are succeeding, and men are failing." ….."

Reuters (via Yahoo News) Michael Conlon 11/21/99 "….Less than six months ago Jesse Jackson was on some hero-of-the-year lists, in the middle of a war zone negotiating with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to release three captured U.S. soldiers. But after a two-week fight with school officials in Decatur, Illinois, Jackson is on a different kind of list in some corners of the media. His actions on behalf of six expelled black youths in that city have brought a blast of criticism from columnists and editorial writers who think he picked and ennobled a flawed target. ``Truth is,'' the Chicago Tribune remarked in an editorial last week, ``Jackson looks at this point like nothing so much as Don Quixote, tilting at a windmill in the insane belief that it's a dragon ... Give it up, Jesse. Give it up.'' …."

LA Times 11/20/99 Anjetta McQueen AP "….Independent auditors say they cannot offer an opinion on whether fiscal 1998 financial records from the Education Department are accurate. Citing bugs in a new accounting system and turnover on the financial staff, a report issued Thursday by the department's inspector general, says missing paperwork left the firm of Ernst & Young LLP unable to provide an audit or clear tally of accounts for the department that manages $32 billion in annual spending. ….."

Christian Science Monitor 11/19/99 Jillian Lloyd "….When Colorado's education board last week urged schools to rely more on effective classroom discipline - and less on medication - for unruly kids, the move catapulted the state to the forefront of an intense debate over the use of behavioral drugs for school-age children. The statement was prompted by news that student gunmen in several mass school shootings were taking psychiatric drugs - and it marks the first time a government body has officially registered concern about the growing prevalence of such prescriptions among America's youths. Not surprising, the decision by the Colorado Board of Education has sent shock waves through the medical community. To many, the move seems a desperate attempt to explain the recent rash of school violence, based more in hysteria than common sense. ….."

Decatur Herald review 11/18/99 Mark Tupper "…..When Barb Hodges put her 12-year-old daughter to bed Tuesday night, young Stephanie asked a troubling question. "Mom, do you think it's safe for me to go to school?" Barb Hodges flushed when recounting the story Wednesday. "That really upset me," she said. "It shouldn t be that way." No, it shouldn't……. But in the past two weeks, the fallout from the Sept. 17 fight has led the focus far from the real issue -- violence in and around our schools. And on that matter, I find myself deeply disappointed in Rev. Jesse Jackson's failure to demonstrate real leadership. There's no doubt Rev. Jackson commands a huge following and wields considerable influence. So it troubles me that he has missed on a chance to use that influence in a way that might have galvanized this community. Rev. Jackson actually could have come to Decatur and turned this into a national issue with far-reaching benefits. We might even have lined the streets hand in hand -- black, white, conservative, liberal -- and saluted him with a civic parade. …."

WORLD Magazine 11/27/99 Lynn Vincent "….Digital revolution frees time for homeschooling parents and opens new worlds to students High-school sophomore Micah Prewitt was okay with homeschooling, except for one thing: isolation. The Delton, Mich., 15-year-old is, according to his mom, "a socialite" for whom the four walls of his home-classroom seemed at times to block him from contact with the larger teen world. But all that changed when the Prewitt family went global-via the Internet. "Now he finds people his age to chat with online, including other homeschoolers," says Micah's mom Heidi Prewitt, a 10-year homeschool veteran who is educating all five of her children: "It's really helped him not to feel so isolated." …."

Washinton Post 11/21/99 David Broder "….On the school issues of overriding importance to American families, there is some good news to report. The debate at the federal and state levels is moving away from polarizing issues and quick-fix remedies that don't last. More substantial changes--emphasizing flexibility and accountability--are coming to the fore. Congress has said no to vouchers, which would invest public money in private and parochial schools...."

CNSNews.com 11/23/99 Ben Anderson "…..A former teacher and retired Air Force colonel turned volunteer teacher in Williamstown, Vermont, while lauded for his success in the classroom is facing complaints from local education union officials that he should not be allowed to teach and also want him dismissed. When the Williamstown school district's finances hit a low point four years ago, Bill Corrow began teaching "Conflict in the 20th Century," a humanities course at Williamstown Middle High School. Corrow is a retired English teacher with a Master's in Psychology. He's also a retired Air Force Colonel, having served tours of duty in Southeast Asia, Europe, and part of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Bosnia. According to school officials, college-bound students taking the humanities course to improve their research and writing skills have a high regard for Corrow and his high expectations. "He's got an extensive reading list and a lot of expectations," said School Superintendent Clif Randolph. Corrow teaches the course at no cost to the school system or its taxpayers. Students, however, are charged with having to meet the expectations of a demanding instructor who also gives the students his phone number should they need help……"

NY TIMES 11/23/99 Erica Goode "…. In a move likely to fuel debate over how secondary schools should handle the issue of homosexuality, a coalition of medical, mental health, educational and religious organizations announced Monday that it would send the nation's school superintendents a booklet informing them that there is "no support among health and mental health professional organizations" for the idea that homosexuality is abnormal or mentally unhealthy. The Just the Facts Coalition, representing the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Education Association, the American Psychological Association and seven other groups, said the 12-page booklet would be mailed today to the heads of all 14,700 public school districts in the United States. The coalition said the booklet "provides information that will help school administrators and educators to create safe and healthy environments in which all students can achieve to the best of their ability." ……"

Religion Today 11/30/99 "…. A sixth-grader has been punished for refusing to curse in class. Hanna Darnell, 12, was reading a portion of a book out loud in front of her classmates recently when she came to the word "damn." When Darnell skipped over the word and "respectfully explained that she did so because of her Christian beliefs," she was sent to the principal, who ordered her to say the word or be suspended for the rest of the day, a spokesman for the Rutherford Institute (see link below) said. The Virginia-based rights group is representing Darnell, who attends C. B. Eller Elementary School in Elkin, N.C. ….."

LATimes.com online Los Angeles Times 11/27/99 "…..In international math surveys, U.S. students have consistently lagged behind students in nations like Japan and the Czech Republic that emphasize memorization. Nevertheless, the National Science Foundation continues to lavish most of its yearly grants on school districts that implement so-called nontraditional math programs emphasizing concepts, not facts. In 1977, a foundation official threatened to cut off federal funds unless California education officials reversed a state mandate that third-graders memorize multiplication tables…….."

Spokane Review 11/28/99 Wendy Harris "….. In an elementary classroom at Spokane's Oak Classical Christian Academy, students conjugate Latin verbs with the ease of reciting nursery rhymes. "Amo, amas, amat, amamus amatis, amant," two dozen students chant in sing-song unison, as if it were "fee, fi, fo, fum." After the Latin lesson, teacher Dana Peterson moves on to English grammar. For a refresher on prepositional phrases, Peterson cues them to recite a jump-rope jingle of 49 prepositions. Then come the adverb and adjective chants and diagramming sentences. The lessons -- often the stuff of high school curricula elsewhere -- are handled with ease by the 9-year-olds. Both in the way it teaches and the results it gets, the Oaks school flies in the face of modern education. Even in the realm of private religious schools, something very different is happening here. ….."

11/29/99 Freeper Truant mom reports "…Word has it (by my extremely good sources, as usual) that one of the reasons the Bakersfield, Vermont school district is so adamantly trying to retain Karen Maple's son, Trevor, in their system is that he is worth $50,000.00 (!) a year to them as a 'SEVERELY DISABLED' special education student!!! For those of you who remember, Karen Maple is the nursing homeschool mom here in Vermont who was imprisoned for 14 days in September of this year for refusing to give her son to the state of Vermont. There was much discussion about the situation here on Free Republic. Is this the label (severely disabled) Trevor had while the Bakersfield school collected money for him the three (NOW FOUR!) years they maintained him on the rolls while he was homeschooling??? We're talking nearly $200,000.00 here, folks! Where are the investigative reporters on this case? …."

Florida Times-Union 11/29/99 "…. In the 1950s, the most serious discipline problem in public schools was students chewing gum. Now, it can be rape, robbery and murder. A few incidents have gotten a lot of attention - a student's shooting spree in Georgia, for example, and the Trenchcoat Mafia slayings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. But Congressional Quarterly reports there were nearly 4,200 rapes, 7,000 robberies and 11,000 physical attacks involving weapons during the 1996-97 school year - not to mention 120,000 thefts and 100,000 cases of vandalism. Teachers nationwide are being urged to take extraordinary measures to protect themselves. They are told not to tape artwork on windows or lock classroom doors, for example. …."

N.Y. Post 11/26/99 "….. A well-placed story this week in the Washington Post painted Starr-successor Robert Ray as a social troglodyte of the first order. The evidence? In 1993 and again in 1996, Ray ran for the board of Community School District 13, in Brooklyn's Park Slope, as a member of the Children's Slate -- whose principal plank was opposition to the infamous Rainbow Curriculum. Remember "Heather Has Two Mommies?" "Daddy's Roommate?" Condom instruction for third-graders -- and teaching approvingly about homosexuality as a matter of "tolerance" in the first grade? That was the Rainbow Curriculum. While the Washington Post characterized that preposterous gaggle of radical edu-junk as "a multicultural approach to teaching children about alternative lifestyles," it was -- in point of fact -- about much more than that. It was an outrageously age-inappropriate effort at social indoctrination, undertaken by then-Schools Chancellor Joseph Fernandez and a coalition of activists -- who, in the end, almost won. But they didn't, and soon Fernandez was sent packing……"

NY Post 11/27/99 "….. For those desperately seeking a way to solve the problem of how to increase minority enrollment in elite state universities without using affirmative action -- which has been ruled unconstitutional -- new laws in three states must have seemed like a godsend. But a new report suggests strongly that educators more interested in social engineering have merely replaced one problem with another. In Texas, the top 10 percent of graduates from each and every high school are guaranteed a place at the state university campus of their choice, regardless of how they've performed on standardized admissions tests. (In Florida, the automatic-admit level is 20 percent; in California, 4 percent.) And minority enrollment in those Texas schools has climbed back to the levels seen before courts threw out race-based admissions systems. But far from guaranteeing that the system will be composed of academically elite students, the new program has created a two-tier system in which students from impoverished inner-city and rural schools simply can't keep up with college-level work…."

AP via Fox News 11/27/99 Anjetta McQueen "…..In MathLand lessons, kindergarten children learn to count with calculators. Older children count a million birdseeds to fully understand the concept of such a large number. No textbooks are used as children get "classroom manipulative kits'' with pattern blocks and cubes. To the Education Department, the package of elementary school lessons is a "promising'' program proven to help a variety of children learn math. To more than 200 mathematicians and other scientists, MathLand and nine other math programs that recently won departmental endorsement are neglecting important skills such as dividing fractions and multiplying multidigit numbers. These skills, the lessons' critics say, are essential to students mastering advanced concepts such as algebra, calculus and physics, which in turn lead to high-performance in engineering and other skilled fields. "Many of us felt they were among the worst programs in existence,'' said David Klein, a math professor at California State University at Northridge….."

Investor's Business Daily 12/6/99 "…..Business leaders have complained for years that public schools aren't turning out graduates ready to take part in a skilled work force. Now, a new test suggests America's schools aren't turning out adults ready to take part in its democracy. Producing good citizens, after all, was the major point of requiring universal education in the first place. Yet the 1998 results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress in civics showed major gaps in American students' knowledge of how the U.S. government works and even how it came to be…….. "

Jewish World Review 12/6/99 Nat Hentoff "…..THREE STATES have figured out a way to increase college admissions for minorities without depending on what has become traditional affirmative action. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has proposed that the top 20 percent of high school graduates be automatically admitted to public colleges and universities, no matter what their SAT scores. In California, the top 4 percent of each high school's graduating class will now automatically get into the University of California system. In Texas, the top-ranking 10 percent of every graduating class are being admitted to any of the public campuses they prefer…… In Texas, the percentage of blacks and Hispanics in freshman classes on most of the selective campuses has increased...........

CNSNews.com 12/8/99 Lawrence Morahan "....Saying it was wrongly censured for its pro-life views, the Maryland Conservative Society (MCS) last week severed its ties with the University of Maryland's Student Government Association (SGA), and opted to forfeit $2,000 in entitlements rather than be associated with a body it considers "discriminatory." "Apparently the SGA feels free speech only applies to groups agreeing with its liberal values," Aisha Jaleel, MCS president, told CNSNews.com. "MCS won't be associated with any person or group that discriminates against anyone for any reason," she said. The dispute between the two student-run groups arose when members of the MSC advertised an appearance by a pro-life speaker at locations that were being used by a feminist group to publicize an event on violence against women......"

Investor's Business Daily 12/7/99 Cynthia Drake "….If your child is antsy and has trouble paying attention, you may find yourself at the pediatrician being told he or she has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). But now evidence is surfacing that physicians may be a little too subjective in making this diagnosis. That's alarming, because there's been a rise in the number of cases in recent years - and new studies show conflicting opinions about overdiagnosis and overtreatment of the disorder. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 3% to 5% of school-age children have ADHD. That's more than 2 million children and adolescents in the U.S. But a study published in September's issue of the American Journal of Public Health by pediatric psychologist Gretchen LeFever found much higher rates. LeFever's group looked at students in grades 2 through 5 in two different Virginia cities. The percentage of children medicated in school for ADHD was 17% for white boys, 9% for black boys, 7% for white girls and 3% for black girls….."

Insight Magazine 12/7/99 Kelly Patricia O'Meara "….. There was, however, complete silence from the president when it came to including representatives from the mental-health community, whom many believe can provide important insight about the possible connection between the otherwise seemingly senseless acts of violence being committed by school-age children and prescription psychotropic drugs such as Ritalin, Luvox and Prozac. . . . . There are nearly 6 million children in the United States between the ages of 6 and 18 taking mind-altering drugs prescribed for alleged mental illnesses that increasing numbers of mental-health professionals are questioning….."

Insight Magazine 12/7/99 Kelly Patricia O'Meara "…..* April 16: Shawn Cooper, a 15-year-old sophomore at Notus Junior-Senior High School in Notus, Idaho, was taking Ritalin, the most commonly prescribed stimulant, for bipolar disorder when he fired two shotgun rounds, narrowly missing students and school staff.

Insight Magazine 12/7/99 Kelly Patricia O'Meara "….. * April 20: Harris, an 18-year-old senior at Columbine High School, killed a dozen students and a teacher before taking his own life. Prior to the shooting rampage, he had been under the influence of Luvox, one of the new selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI, antidepressants approved in 1997 by the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, for children up to the age of 17 for treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD.

Insight Magazine 12/7/99 Kelly Patricia O'Meara "….. * May 20: T.J. Solomon, a 15-year-old at Heritage High School in Conyers, Ga., was being treated with Ritalin for depression when he opened fire on and wounded six classmates.

Insight Magazine 12/7/99 Kelly Patricia O'Meara "….. * May 21, 1998: Kip Kinkel, a 15-year-old at Thurston High School in Springfield, Ore., murdered his parents and then proceeded to school where he opened fire on students in the cafeteria, killing two and wounding 22. Kinkel had been prescribed both Ritalin and Prozac. Although widely used among adults, Prozac has not been approved by the FDA for pediatric use.

Insight Magazine 12/7/99 Kelly Patricia O'Meara "….. * March 24, 1998: Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, opened fire on their classmates at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Ark. Johnson had been receiving psychiatric counseling and, although information about the psychotropic drugs that may have been prescribed for him has not been made public, his attorney, Val Price, responded when asked about it: "I think that is confidential information, and I don't want to reveal that."

AP 12/7/99 Anjetta McQueen "…The Education Department, unable to give a Congressional panel an accounting of disputed parts of a $32 billion budget and billions more in student loans it manages, insisted it broke no laws and could overcome its accounting troubles. ``Our auditors identified issues we must address, but they did not report that any funds were lost, misallocated or stolen,'' Marshall Smith, a deputy to Education Secretary Richard Riley, told the oversight and investigations subcommittee of the House Education and Workforce Committee on Monday. Testimony came a few weeks after the department, one of four federal agencies unable to audit its 1998 books, became the last of the 24 agencies to submit reports to the agency that oversees federal auditing. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., chairman of the investigations panel, said the department, with its 1998 accounts in disarray, could be wasting millions of taxpayer dollars meant for education programs. …..Hoekstra read internal department e-mails and other documents that recounted duplicate payments to grant winners and even an $800 million college loan to a single student. …."

Florida Times-Union 12/9/99 James Kilpatrick "….Three years ago, Zachary Hood was in the first grade at Haines Elementary School in Medford, N.J. As a reward for special achievement in reading, his teacher said her best pupils could bring a book from home and read a favorite story to the class. This was how the lunacy began. The teacher, Grace Oliva, stipulated only that the content be "appropriate" for first graders. Zachary qualified for the honor. The great day arrived, and Zachary showed up, book in hand. Horrors! Gasp! Aaargh! The book was titled - The Beginner's Bible: Timeless Children's Stories……In any event, Zach was shuffled off to a private corner, and there he read the offending tale to Oliva alone. Humiliated by the ostracism imposed upon him, he came home red-eyed from crying. His mother complained to school authorities but got nowhere. Pratt told her that reading the story was the equivalent of praying, that the Muslim, Hindu and Jewish students might be offended, and that there was "no place in a public school for reading the Bible." Finally, Zachary's mother sued for violation of her son's civil rights, and the case wound up in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit….."

AP via Newsday.com 12/9/99 "….A judge ruled Thursday that prosecutors can proceed with criminal charges against four teens accused of participating in a football game brawl. The case sparked a national debate over zero-tolerance policies on violence in schools and brought the Rev. Jesse Jackson to this central Illinois town to protest. The four teens -- Roosevelt Fuller, Gregory Howell, Coryell Spates and Courtney Carson -- are charged with mob action. Fuller also faces aggravated battery and misdemeanor resisting arrest charges……"

The Reagan Information Exchange 12/9/99 Mary Mostert "…..Another school shooting. This time the shooting occurred uncomfortably close to my family. Fort Gibson Middle School, in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, where a quiet, 13 year old honor student fired 15 shots at students, wounding five, is only about six miles away from where a son, daughter-in-law and seven of my grandchildren live…… None of the popular explanations for school shootings seemed to apply in this case. Fort Gibson is a quiet community in an area with very few low income, minorities or disadvantaged students. The boy doing the shooting had never been in trouble, was not in any rebellious groups and was an honor student. In a school of seemingly good kids, he is one of the best. ……In school after school, when shootings occur, the first thing that happens is the children get the attention of their parents - sometimes for the first time in their lives. While we hover over and supervise everything kids do today, there seems to be remarkably little actual interaction between most parents and their children. Suddenly, when there's a shooting, parents want to talk to their children and actually find the TIME to talk to their children in their busy career schedules. ….."

UPI 12/15/99 "....A 7-year-old Massachusetts girl spent a night curled up in her dead mother's arms after a first-grade teacher ignored the child's claim her mom had died. After little Lydia Ann Hanson was chided by the teacher, reports Wednesday said she returned to her Peabody, Mass., home and spent thenight sleeping in the arms of her mother, Kimberly Hanson, who apparently had died of natural causes....... Instead of acting to help Lydia, the Kiley School teacher said, '"You shouldn't say things like that,"' and told her to take her seat, according to Lydia's grandmother, Sharon Tucker...... Both grandparents said they were appalled the teacher dismissed the child's remark. "If a kid went to school and said, 'My mommy hit me,' they would have DSS (Department of Social Services) been down there like that," Richard Tucker said with a snap of his fingers......"

WorldNetDaily 12/15/99 Jon Dougherty "..... A new computerized screening program designed to anticipate threatening or violent behavior by students, and rating each child on a violence scale of 1 to 10, will begin field trials this month in about 25 school districts across the United States. The program, called Mosaic 2000, was developed by Gavin de Becker Inc., a security consultation firm, with some assistance from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The firm said the idea came on the heels of the Columbine High School shootings earlier this year when law enforcement officials and high school administrators expressed an interest in finding ways to identify troubled students who may be on the verge of committing similar acts in the future. ....."

STAR-TELEGRAM 12/14/99 M Deller "….Administrators are expected to recommend that Gloria Nelson, an African-American teacher, be suspended for 10 days without pay for telling her third-graders that some studies say black people have smaller brains than white people….."

WorldNetDaily 12/14/99 Linda Bowles "…. The archives are full to overflowing with evidence that government schools are failing to teach millions of children how to read, write and do simple arithmetic. Columnists, educators and politicians struggle to get the point across that government schools are dumping millions of dumbbells upon our society. They make the case over and over again, apparently convinced that for some reason, the message is not being heard, and that the danger to our society of endemic ignorance is not fully comprehended. However, the message has been heard. Education is the No. 1 issue in America today. There are plenty of solutions being advanced. The problem is that most of them treat symptoms, leaving root causes undisturbed. Nothing illustrates this better than Bill Clinton's solution for the inability of third-grade students to read. He asked for thousands of volunteers to enter the classrooms and do remedial teaching. He said nothing about replacing the incompetent first- and second-grade teachers who obviously don't know how to teach. He was silent on the insidious policy of hiring teachers for reasons that have nothing to do with competence. He called for extending government school education another two years, as though that is an answer to 12 years of incompetent teaching….."

Christian Science Monitor 12/14/99 Marjorie Coeyman "….In "Taking Religion Seriously Across the Classroom," Charles Haynes, a scholar at The Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center in Nashville, Tenn., and co-author Warren Nord make the case that keeping religion out of school shortchanges students in all fields. Some excerpts follow. Elementary school. "Silence about religion denies students the promise of a good education. If they are to understand the world they live in, they must be exposed at an early age to the religious dimensions of society, history, literature, art, and music. Without this foundation, they will be unprepared for ... more complex and critical study...." Literature and the arts. "For more than a millennium in the West, the greatest theme of a painter was the life and death of Christ, and the greatest task of the architect was to build a cathedral. The greatest work of literature in the thousand years before Shakespeare is Dante's account of hell, purgatory, and paradise.... [Yet national academic] standards never single out religion as being of any special relevance or importance in performing or studying the arts." Science. "[National academic] standards and texts completely ignore one of the most momentous questions of modern intellectual and cultural history: the relationship of science and religion. Of course, the nature of this relationship is deeply controversial, but that would seem to be a reason for discussing rather than ignoring it." ….."

Drudge Report 12/14/99 UPI "….A ninth-grader at Archbishop Curley Notre Dame High School in Miami pulled two guns on his biology class Tuesday and held it hostage for several minutes. A team of teachers trained in negotiations after the Columbine High School tragedy in Colorado last April talked the youth into releasing the class. Police were summoned and took him into custody. The two handguns - a 9 mm pistol and a .25 caliber semi-automatic - were not fired and no one was hurt. ..."

Chicago Tribune 12/12/99 Robert Rotundo "…. A little over a month ago, a three-judge panel in the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that a public school was correct in prohibiting a 1st grader from reading a story derived from the Bible. This case will soon be in the news again, because it will be reargued before the full court. A rehearing is unusual, and it portends a reversal of the original opinion. When we look at the facts, we can see why the full federal appeals court is likely to uphold the free-speech rights of 6-year-old Zachary Hood. Zachary's teacher told him that he could pick a story to read to the class as long as it was not too long or complex. Zachary picked a story that, in its entirety, read as follows: Jacob traveled far away to his uncle's house. He worked for his uncle taking care of sheep. While he was there, Jacob got married. He had 12 sons. Jacob's big family lived on his uncle's land for many years. But Jacob wanted to go back home. One day, Jacob packed up all his animals and his family and everything he had. They traveled all the way back home to where Esau lived. Now Jacob was afraid that Esau might still be angry at him. So he sent presents to Esau. He sent servants who said, `Please don´t be angry anymore.´ But Esau wasn´t angry. He ran to Jacob. He hugged and kissed him. He was happy to see his brother again. That's it. There was no reference to God or the Bible. ….."

Chicago Tribune 12/12/99 Robert Rotundo "…. About the same time that the 3rd Circuit decided young Zachary lost free-speech rights when he entered the public school, a Brooklyn museum opened what it called the "Sensation Exhibit," displaying artwork such as a portrait of the Virgin Mary adorned with elephant dung and accompanied by photographs of female genitalia scattered on the background. Other displays included two pigs in formaldehyde. The museum announced that the exhibit would be inappropriate for children under age 17 "without adult supervision." …. But a federal court held that the 1st Amendment required New York City to subsidize the Brooklyn Museum. The issue is not whether the "Sensation Exhibit" is "art." I assume that it is, although I've never seen dung or pig parts displayed next to the oils and acrylics in an art supply store. The issue is whether the 1st Amendment requires the government to subsidize. Must the common masses, the poor, be forced to subsidize the tastes of the literati, the rich? …."

New York Post 12/12/99 "….. A bombshell report charges the Board of Education with widespread criminal abuses -- including padding class rosters with the names of dead kids to scam millions of dollars in aid from taxpayers. Doctored records -- a violation of state and federal criminal laws -- were uncovered system-wide by the Moreland Act Commission in its nearly yearlong probe of the city school system, said sources who disclosed details of the report expected later this week. "This was like shooting fish in a barrel," one investigator told The Post. "Almost everywhere we looked, in all five boroughs, we found something." A series of Post stories beginning in December 1997 first exposed the fraud and led Gov. Pataki to appoint the commission in January. Among the report's startling revelations are charges high schools throughout the city packed their class rolls with phantom students -- including dead and double-counted kids -- and created bogus attendance records….."

NY Post 12/12/99 Kirsten Danis, Susan Edelman, Maggie Haberman "….A bombshell report charges the Board of Education with widespread criminal abuses -- including padding class rosters with the names of dead kids to scam millions of dollars in aid from taxpayers. Doctored records -- a violation of state and federal criminal laws -- were uncovered system-wide by the Moreland Act Commission in its nearly yearlong probe of the city school system, said sources who disclosed details of the report expected later this week. "This was like shooting fish in a barrel," one investigator told The Post. "Almost everywhere we looked, in all five boroughs, we found something." A series of Post stories beginning in December 1997 first exposed the fraud and led Gov. Pataki to appoint the commission in January……"

AP – Yahoo 12/13/99 Richard Carelli "…..For the second time in five weeks, the Supreme Court today let a state continue subsidizing children who attend some private schools while denying the same tuition help for those who go to religious schools. The court, without comment, rejected an appeal in which parents of religious-school pupils argued that Vermont violates their freedom of religion by denying them the same financial help given to parents whose children attend private, nonreligious schools. The Vermont Supreme Court ruled that state tuition payments for children attending religious schools would violate the constitutionally required separation of church and state. The justices rejected in early November a similar appeal from parents of religious-school pupils in Maine. But, as in the Maine case, the justices' action set no legal precedent and did little to resolve the national debate over tuition vouchers and other financial help for families whose children attend parochial schools. Politically charged battles over vouchers still are being fought in several lower courts. ….."

LA Times 12/12/99 Richard Lee Colvin Duke Helfand "…..Tens of thousands of students in California's special education system have been placed there not because of a serious mental or emotional handicap, but because they were never taught to read properly. Failed by mainstream classes and teachers, they are then referred to special education and labeled "learning disabled." There they are failed a second time, by a badly flawed system designed to be their safety net. The needless referrals and inadequate instruction for these children are widely acknowledged by educators and officials but are rarely addressed. As a result, public education costs have spiraled upward and academic prospects have dimmed for otherwise bright children sometimes described as "instructional casualties." ….California has 651,000 special education students--about one in 10 public school students. Of them, 18% suffer disabilities that include emotional disturbance, mental retardation and autism. Another 26% are in special education because of speech and language impairments such as stuttering. But more than half of special education students are called "learning disabled," a catch-all category primarily for children who have trouble reading. That category has grown by 63% over the last 15 years. ….."

WorldNetDaily 12/13/99 Thomas Sowell "…. IF YOU HAVE BEEN appalled by the low test scores of students in our public schools, you should also know that it is not always good news when the test scores go up. Investigators have charged dozens of teachers and principals in New York City with helping students cheat on tests. This was done in order to make their schools look good --- or at least not as bad as they would have looked with honest test results. This is just one of many ways in which our academically failing schools are very successful in doing something other than what they are supposed to be doing. They are most successful in serving the interests of "educators" who do not educate…… "

Investor's Business Daily 12/13/99 Tyce Palmaffy "…..Violence in the schools made national headlines again last month. This time, however, it was the punishment, not the crime, that drew a swarm of media attention. The controversy swirled around the Decatur, Ill., school board's decision to expel seven students for their roles in sparking a brawl at a high-school football game in September. Guided by the school district's "zero tolerance" policy against violence, the board had kicked the students out of school for two years. What elevated Decatur's discipline policy to the national stage was the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson's charge that racism was behind the board's decision to sanction the students, all of whom were black, so harshly…… The Decatur episode wasn't an isolated event. Across the nation, a decade-long crackdown on school discipline has sent expulsion and suspension rates soaring…..The deadly school shootings of the past few years have only quickened this trend. Upwards of 80% of school districts have adopted so-called "zero tolerance" policies similar to Decatur's. ….. Kicking them out of school is the easy, and popular, part. It lets teachers regain control over their classrooms while losing their most troublesome students, making it a no-lose situation for them. Their students, too, will likely benefit from fewer distractions and increased attention on academics rather than discipline……But expelled kids don't just disappear. Left to the streets, their troubles may multiply as they get mixed in with the wrong crowd and fail to gain job skills. Spurned by the education system, they may drop out of school altogether……. "

Florida Times-Union 12/12/99 "….. School choice opponents have come up with an ingenious explanation for the growing acceptance of vouchers, charter schools and other alternatives to government schools. It amounts to this: Parents don't know what they are doing. Public Agenda, described as a non-partisan opinion research group, did a poll that anti-reform groups see as evidence that vouchers are popular solely because of ''a well-financed, right-wing policy apparatus.'' Public Agenda concluded that parents, even where vouchers and charter schools are well established, ''don't really understand those alternatives to regular public education.'' Vouchers allow parents to choose the school their child attends, public or private. This is a difficult concept? ….."

Tampa Tribune 12/9/99 "…..A 12-year-old boy who stomped his foot in a puddle at school, spraying classmates and a school resource officer, was taught a lesson he's not likely to forget. Kyle Fredrikson was walking back to class from lunch when Deputy Tim Langer said the boy ``purposely stomped in the water'' after being told numerous times by school personnel to stay with the group and out of the rain. He didn't, and at that point, Langer took the sixth-grader to a school office where the boy was cuffed, put in a patrol car and taken to jail. ….."

St.Paul Pioneer Press 12/10/99 Joe Soucheray "…..The latest school shooter has been described in all the usual ways, meaning that he was thought to be an upstanding lad who would never pull out a gun and start firing at his classmates. This was the school shooting in Fort Gibson, Okla., the other day. The 13-year-old arrested for the attack fired at least 15 times and miraculously didn't seriously injure anybody. Just as miraculously, that meant CNN stayed in Fort Gibson for only about 10 minutes….."

CNSNews.com 12/10/99 Susan Jones "…..Public schools in Davis, California have slammed the door on the Boy Scouts of America, after parents complained that the organization discriminates by excluding homosexuals and atheists. According to reports, the superintendent of the Davis Joint Unified School District says the Boy Scouts will no longer be allowed to use school bulletin boards, PTA newsletters, or student folders to send notes or other information home with students. Superintendent David Murphy said communicating with parents through the schools is a privilege that very few groups enjoy, and therefore, he said it can be legally rescinded without violating the Boy Scouts' free speech rights. A spokesman for the Boy Scouts says the group will continue to emphasize its traditional family values - and simply find another mode of recruitment. …."

FoxNews 12/10/99 Adam Pasick "…. The controversial drug Ritalin is being quietly phased out in favor of a powerful blend of amphetamines as doctors search for the best way to treat children who have problems sitting still. Adderall - twice as potent as Ritalin and originally sold as an obesity drug in Canada - has captured 28 percent of the market for drugs to treat attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, up from virtually nil 10 years ago, according to its manufacturer, Shire Pharmaceuticals. That puts Adderall ahead of Ritalin, although methylphenidate, Ritalin's generic version, is still a big seller. "It's like Ritalin, but a step stronger," said John, a 20-year-old college student who asked his last name not be used. He used Ritalin for nearly 10 years to treat his ADHD before starting on Adderall several months ago. ….."

LA Times 12/10/99 Doug Gamble "….When Reagan delivered his presidential farewell address to the nation in January 1989, he issued an Eisenhower-type warning about the future, which most Americans have by now forgotten. He cautioned that what he termed the "new patriotism" that swept the country in the 1980s would fade unless it was reinforced by constant reminders of America's past and present greatness. After almost eight years of Bill Clinton in the White House, the patriotism Reagan urged the country to protect has been diminished, in part, by the egotism of a self-glorifying president. While the Reagan presidency was all about America, the Clinton presidency has been all about Clinton. The Great Communicator kept America at center stage; the Great Self-Promoter has used America as the stage itself. The kind of reinforcement of national pride that Reagan had in mind--he called it "reinstitutionalizing patriotism"--included extensive use of the presidential bully pulpit, a hallmark of his leadership from his inaugural address in 1981 to his last speech as president to a GOP national convention in 1988. ….. This is not to suggest that Reagan loved America more than Clinton does, but that Reagan wanted Americans to love their country and all it stands for more than Clinton does. Clinton wants Americans to love him, first and foremost. Also, he brought with him to the White House the typical liberal mind-set that overt displays of love for one's country are embarrassing. But Clinton isn't the only culprit. The educational system has abandoned even the pretense that patriotism plays any role in American life. How can students who are not adequately taught about the American Revolution, George Washington or Abraham Lincoln appreciate why they have what they have and the importance of defending it? Reagan addressed this in that 1989 farewell speech, when he said educators "must do a better job of getting across that America is freedom--freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise--and that freedom is special and rare."…. "

The Associated Press 12/9/99 Anjetta McQueen "…. With high school requirements that ignore advanced math and reading skills, many graduates are finding themselves unprepared for college and the work world, according to a report Thursday criticizing state education standards. "Many American young people are totally undone by the gaps between high school and college," said Kati Haycock, director of Washington-based Education Trust, which examines state academic standards and prepared the report. For graduates who turn to the world of work - two-thirds of high school graduates never earn a four-year college degree - the situation isn't much better. "Many high schools really don't expect students to learn the things that both higher education and business say they need," Haycock said, such as basic algebra. The report said there are significant gaps between many states' requirements for high school graduation and the knowledge and skills that colleges require for admissions and course placement. As a result, many graduates could find their diplomas to be "little more than a ticket to nowhere," said Janis Somerville, director of the National Association of System Heads, which represents leaders of the nation's state university systems. ….."Adding insult to injury, we blame the kids," said Somerville, who was quoted in the report. "The truth is more likely that the material on the placement test was never covered in their high school courses in the first place." ….."

Newark (NJ) Star Ledger 12/8/99 Ana Alaya ".....In the math world, there are always ripples of dissent over teaching the old discipline -- traditional versus new method. On occasion the debate flares intensely, as it has in the past few weeks. Fired by the U.S. Department of Education's recent endorsement of 10 new math programs, and a letter signed by 200 noted mathematician and scientists denouncing those programs, the quarrel concerns the best way to teach math so students grasp its fundamentals, and whether the nation can produce the stellar math and science minds the future will demand. "It's all about how you get kids to be reflective, strategic thinkers," said Newark School Superintendent Marion Bolden, a long-time math teacher and new-math proponent. "And there's more than one way to be strategic." There are the math teachers and scholars who favor the traditional pencil-and-paper approach, which calls for memorizing rules for computing everything from basic addition to algebra. ...."

BBC 12/8/99 Jane Hughes "..... An investigation into New York schools has uncovered what is being described as the biggest cheating scandal in the history of the United States. Investigators say at least 52 teachers and head teachers across the city helped pupils cheat in public exams in an attempt to improve their schools' overall results. The special schools' investigator spent 17 months looking into the conduct of public exams and exam results in New York. ......"

CNSNews.com 12/8/99 Susan Jones "....The vote was 7-0 Tuesday against a student's proposal to create a gay tolerance club at his Orange County, California high school. 15-year-old Anthony Colin announced his intention to form a Gay-Straight Alliance Club at El Modena High School back in September. He sued the Orange Unified School District last month, claiming it violated the federal Equal Access Act, which requires schools to give equal treatment to non-curricular groups, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation. But at Tuesday's meeting, the school board said education is a curriculum issue that has nothing to do with equal-access law......"

Washington Post 12/14/99 Kenneth Cooper "....The Education Department today will release a new draft of guidelines on how schools and colleges can use standardized tests without violating the civil rights of minority students, who have generally scored lower on such tests than whites. Under federal civil rights laws, the guidelines say, standardized tests must be "educationally justified" if their use in deciding who graduates from high school, advances to the next grade or gets admitted to college results in a "disparate impact" on students of different races. While the department advises that disparate impact "alone is not sufficient to prove a violation of federal civil rights laws," it notes that in such instances a court can require a school to provide sound educational reasons for its testing practices. ...."

Newark (NJ) Star Ledger 12/16/99 Matthew Futterman "….A group of parents in Ridgewood has filed a civil rights complaint, claiming the school system conducted an inappropriate survey, without their consent, that asked children as young as 12 about drug habits and sexual activity. School officials in the Bergen County community maintain they notified parents before distributing the 156-question survey in school at the request of a community group, which plans to use the results to strengthen youth programs in Ridgewood…."

Reuters 1/7/00 "…..In a ruling with nationwide implications, a federal judge ruled on Friday that Texas can continue to require all students to pass a standardized test as a requirement for graduation from high school. U.S. District Judge Ed Prado ruled that the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) is ``valid and in keeping with current educational norms,'' rejecting a suit which sought to end the test on grounds that it unfairly penalizes minority students. Hispanic groups which brought the suit against the state argued that the test is discriminatory because differences in the quality of education across Texas lead to higher failure rates among Hispanic and African-American students. …."

USA Today 1/4/00 Louis Gerstner "….we're beginning to see backsliding toward the low level of expectation that created the crisis in our schools. Forty-nine states have set appropriate educational standards and are putting rigorous tests in place to measure achievement. But when the first round of testing proved something we already knew -- that many kids are unprepared to get over the higher bar -- some officials, beset by public pressure, are rushing to "dumb down" the tests, delay them or, worse, walk away from them altogether. These now are isolated decisions. But unless we speak up in support of students, there's a real danger that today's isolated events will spread… If only one high school sophomore in 10 passes the new math test, as was the case in Arizona, the answer is not to make the test easier, as some parents, teachers and administrators have asked the state's Board of Education to do. The answer is to focus on making changes to curriculum and instruction so more kids can succeed and to provide extra help for those who need it. If only 7% of Virginia schools currently meet demanding new accreditation standards, we should do whatever it takes to strengthen the schools, rather than back off the standards, as the Virginia Board of Education seems poised to do. ….."

Wall Street Journal 1/4/00 "….So you've got thirteen, And you take away seven, And that leaves five......Well, six actually. But the idea is the important thing.--"New Math" by Tom Lehrer (1965) …..Reinventing math is an old tradition in this country. It has been around at least since the 1960s, when the inimitable Tom Lehrer mocked the New Math in Berkeley cafes. Even Beatniks understood that a method that highlights concepts at the expense of plain old calculation would add up to trouble. And, as it happened, the New Math's introduction in schools across the country coincided with the onset of a multi-year decline in math scores. Today the original New Math is old hat, but many folks in the education world are hawking yet another reform. It is known by names like "Connected Math," or "Everyday Math." Not surprisingly, the New New Math has a lot in common with the Old New Math. Like its forerunner, it focuses on concepts and theory, scorning textbooks and pencil-and-paper computation as "rote drill." And like its forerunner, today's New Math has powerful allies. Education Secretary Richard Riley and other Clintonites smile on it. Eight of the 10 curriculums recently recommended for nationwide use by an influential Education Department panel teach the New New Math. ….."

Detroit News 1/6/00 Barrett Kalellis "….One of the oft-repeated mantras of the past year was that the impeachment process would "weaken the presidency." This seems illogical, because impeachment is a specific constitutional remedy for miscreants who would jeopardize the office. In fact, removing bad presidents would probably strengthen the institution. But one wonders, in the new century, whether weakening the presidency instead might be a very good idea….. Both the general public and the Congress have become used to the president setting these kinds of agendas. At this point in history, it is sad to note that a great many Americans have sacrificed their individual freedoms in favor of letting political elites regulate their lives by promising the chimera of security. Three generations of our citizens apparently have gotten used to it, and their "freely elected representatives" are manipulating them on a level most do not understand. Our educational system has poorly prepared our children to understand the nation's founding principles. Whereas our Founding Fathers valued economic freedom, self-reliance, sacrifice, morality, discipline, hard work and personal responsibility - the highest virtues of an independent self-governing people - many Americans today want something else.."

Sacramento Bee 1/5/00 Stephen Magagnini "….They met at a parent-teacher organization meeting at Mark Hopkins Elementary School in the summer of 1996. They came to voice a common fury: They wanted to know why their school was the district's worst in terms of test scores, and they wanted to know why their fourth-graders weren't reading. Yesenia Solorzano, the mother of six daughters, said Joanna, her sixth-grader, "had no clue about math and was reading at first-grade level," while Ruby, her fourth-grader, couldn't read at all and was terrified of her teacher. Solorzano was relieved to find kindred spirits in Jocelyn Graves, a widow with two children, and Sandra Johnson, a mother of two. "You find out you're not alone -- your kids are not the only ones who can't read," said Solorzano, 32. Led by Graves, they pushed the Sacramento City Unified School District to pay teachers to make house calls -- a revolutionary idea that this year will become a reality at hundreds of schools statewide….."

Boston Globe 1/6/00 Beth Daley "….In Newburyport, a frightened student recently circulated a petition asking for the permanent expulsion of a classmate caught with a cache of weapons. At Dorchester High School, nervous parents of a freshman have demanded a transfer because their son has been repeatedly attacked by gang-affiliated classmates. Similar stories across the state, coupled with rising school violence and classroom disruptions, have led many teachers, parents, and even students to ask administrators to get rid of out-of-control or potentially dangerous students once and for all……"

U.S.A. Today 1/6/00 Tamara Henry "….Only five states have strong academic standards with tough accountability for students and educators, contrary to claims that standards-based reforms are sweeping the USA, says a state-by-state report card out Thursday. Alabama, California, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas "exemplify the theory and practice of standards-based reform" across five core subject areas, says the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, an education research group led by Chester Finn, a Reagan administration Education Department official. Critics fault the report for failing to include any meaningful measure of student achievement. Instead, it evaluates how well state education systems combine good standards with strong accountability. Based on that measure, 42 states hold mediocre or inferior expectations for kindergartners through 12th-graders, the study says. Finn adds that "the dismaying reality is that tens of millions of American kids are still attending schools that lack one or both of these essentials." …."

Freedom Network News via IWR.com 1999 Mark Valverde "……Samuel L. Blumenfield, writing in WorldNetDaily (July 7) noted: What is most disturbing, however, is the growing awareness that the increased violence among school children may have more to do with the drugs than with the guns they use to carry out their violence. Kelly O'Meara, writing in the June 28, 1999 issue of Insight magazine, (and cited by Blumenfield) reports that there are now over five million school children on psychotropic drugs, most of which are prescribed and administered in the government schools themselves. The December 1996 Teacher Magazine (also cited by Blumenfield) reports that there are four million on Ritalin alone, while Alexander Cockburn, writing in the Los Angeles Times (July 6), reports that Ritalin is being given to about two million American school children…….. Eighteen-year-old Eric Harris, who with his friend Dylan Klebold, 17, massacred their classmates and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado on April 20, had been taking Luvox for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. T. J. Solomon, 15, who shot and wounded six fellow students at Heritage High School in Conyers, Georgia, on May 20 was on Ritalin for depression. Also on Ritalin for Bi-polar Disorder was fifteen-year-old Shawn Cooper, who fired two shotgun rounds, narrowly missing classmates and teachers at his high school in Notus, Idaho. Kip Kinkel, 15, who first killed his parents and later killed two students and wounded 22 more in his Oregon school's cafeteria, was on Ritalin and Prozac. Mitchell Johnson, 13, who, with his friend, Andrew Golden, 11, shot several children and a teacher at Westside Middle School in Jones-boro, Arkansas, was being treated by a psychiatrist and is presumed to have been on some sort of medication…… "

Freedom Network News via IWR.com 1999 Mark Valverde "……Jack Wheeler, writing recently in Strategic Investment, observed that Prozac and Luvox are Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs): Serotonin is a brain chemical or neurotransmitter that conducts messages in the brain's serotonergic nervous system. As an inhibitory transmitter, it inhibits or slows down other nerves from firing. Thus it is essential for impulse regulation, for inhibiting acting without thinking first. Serotonin-deficient people are more prone to depression, impulsive violence, and committing suicide by violent means . . . .. A SSRI like Luvox or Prozac blocks or slows down the transport mechanism, leaving more serotonin in the gap. This causes an increase in production of the enzyme to eat it up. People feel more optimistic, and less depressed and prone to go out of control, with more serotonin in the receptors. But note that an SSRI doesn't enable the brain to produce more serotonin - rather, it causes what serotonin there is to be used up faster……Wheeler, insists that the "FDA is far more to blame than the NRA" for the recent incidences of school violence, not because the FDA approved these drugs, but because the FDA legally prohibits a nutritional alternative….."

Fort Worth Star-Telegram 1/8/00 Bechetta Jackson "….Textbook publishers met with the Fort Worth school district textbook committee yesterday to tout their books -- most of which now comply with state standards adopted in November. "I think just about all of us meet the new requirements for phonics decodable text," said Joan Reeves, regional manager for McGraw-Hill School Division. "We didn't have much of a choice in the matter." Publishers were outraged in November when the State Board of Education voted to implement new phonics guidelines in first-grade reading textbooks. The last-minute change required that books be at least 80 percent "decodable," meaning the words can easily be sounded out as part of the phonics method of reading instruction. Before the unexpected vote, the board had required simply that "most" words in first- grade reading texts be decodable. In response to inquiries from publishers, Texas Education Agency officials interpreted "most" to mean 51 percent. Publishing industry officials said the process of going from 51 percent to 80 percent decodable text would be costly….."

Associated Press 1/9/00 "…. Because teacher requirements are changing, most instructors are feeling ill-prepared for the classroom, Education Secretary Richard Riley said. Riley said there are too few ``talented, dedicated'' teachers in the first place. ``It's gotten so bad that some schools have been forced to put any warm body in front of a classroom,'' Riley said in remarks prepared for delivery Sunday at a National Conference on Teacher Quality sponsored by the Education Department. ``It has been estimated that 250,000 teachers are working without proper preparation in course content, or without any kind of training in how to teach,'' he said…….. He quoted a recent survey that found only 36 percent of teachers who felt they were ``very well prepared'' to meet currently increased standards in grammar and high schools….."

Manchester Union-Leader 1/9/00 Jack Kenny "…..VICE PRESIDENT Al Gore was at Manchester's City Hall Thursday morning, where his Presidential campaign received the enthusiastic endorsement of newly inaugurated Mayor Robert Baines. In his remarks, the vice president spoke of the need for a "revolutionary improvement" of our nation's schools and called for a near doubling of the current level of "investment" of federal tax dollars in education. During the press availability that followed, I asked both the vice president and the mayor (a high school principal for the past 20 years) if they could tell us where in the Constitution they found the authority for the federal role in education that Mr. Gore described. The mayor never did answer, but the vice president responded with the longest, blankest stare I have ever seen on the face of a public official. Judging by his reaction, you might have thought he'd just been asked for the average daily temperature on Mars (which he probably could have given quite readily). After several seconds, he finally replied, "Well, the 14th Amendment." Not knowing what provision of the Amendment he had in mind, I could only guess. "Equal protection under the law?" I asked. "That's right," he replied ….. Nor do you need constitutional authority for any increase of federal power. The 14th Amendment, cited by Gore, prohibits the states from denying to any person "the equal protection of the laws." That clause was the basis of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, finding racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. But there is nothing in the 14th Amendment or any other part of the Constitution authorizing Congress to raise and appropriate money for education, mandate education reform or to set education standards, goals or guidelines for states and school districts to meet, "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined," wrote Madison in The Federalist #45…."

The Associated Press 1/7/00 "…. The mother of 6-year-old boy who was removed from school because he brought nail clippers to class said she supports the state's "zero tolerance" law but believes it was not applied well in her son's case….. Timiere Crosby was told not to return to Devers Elementary School for at least six weeks after he pulled a notebook from his backpack and his nail clipper fell to the floor. Another child picked it up and took it to the teacher who decided the shiny metal tool violated the school's weapons policy. …. "I didn't even know it was there," said Timiere, who received the nail clipper as a Christmas gift in 1998….."

ASSOCIATED PRESS 1/9/00 "….In compliance with a judge's order, the San Francisco Unified School District has decided to abandon its effort to use race as a factor in assigning students to schools. One board member called the race-neutral plan "an abomination." "I think every kid in the school district is being negatively affected by this," said board member Dan Kelly. "The plan is horrible." The district informed U.S. District Judge William Orrick on Friday of its plan to continue using its current race-neutral plan, which was implemented last spring. …."

The Buffalo News 1/20/2000 Tom Ernst "…Security guards in Lackawanna schools soon will be armed. The Board of Education on Wednesday night voted to require the guards, who are off-duty police officers, to begin carrying their service weapons. They wear civilian clothes, and the pistols will be concealed. "A recent incident opened a lot of eyes, Board President Kenneth Motyka said. "The problem was in the community, not the school, but we're being forced to take action, he said….."

AP 1/20/2000 Shannon McCaffrey "….Hillary Rodham Clinton used the power of the White House bully pulpit on Thursday to push an issue she is embracing on the campaign trail in New York making college tuition more affordable. Mrs. Clinton's appearance on behalf of a plan to make college tuition tax deductible was her first with the president since she told a Buffalo television station she planned to spend the rest of her life with him. Speculation has swirled since the Monica Lewinsky scandal that couple might split up when the president leaves office. …… "

WorldNetDaily 1/21/2000 Samuel Blumenfeld "… The great American education fraud consists of not teaching inner city, minority children to read in the proper phonetic manner, then expecting them to pass an academic assessment test based on so-called high standards in order to graduate. But how can they pass such a test when they've been deliberately crippled in the primary grades?…. The recent Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests prove how successful the dumbing down process has been. In Boston, where the minority is now the majority in the city's public schools, 50 percent of 10th graders failed English, 63 percent failed math, and 69 percent of eighth graders failed history. In Brockton, a city with a large Latino population, 69 percent of eighth graders failed history and 72 percent failed science. In Chelsea, another city with many Latinos, 84 percent of eighth graders failed science, 68 percent failed history. In Holyoke, 82 percent of eighth graders failed history, 81 percent failed science, and 58 percent of 10th graders failed English. …. Only 10th graders were tested in the Voc Ed schools. In Upper Cape Cod, 70 percent failed English, 87 percent failed math, and 62 percent failed science. In Greater Lawrence, 75 percent failed English, 90 percent failed math, and 81 percent failed science. As for the state as a whole, 32 percent of 10th graders failed English, 53 percent failed math, and 38 percent failed science…."

Boston Globe 1/21/2000 Doreen Iudica Vigue "….Many teachers and parents consider it a miracle drug to calm children with attention-deficit disorders. But after spending four years on Ritalin, 10-year-old Jerry Billett suffered severe stomach pains and mood-altering side effects. So his dad took him off it. But Fitzgerald Billett accuses the school system of pressuring him to put Jerry back on the drug to control his behavior, the second such complaint from a Lawrence parent in a month. While school officials deny that parents were pressured to keep their children on Ritalin, officials from the US Department of Education's civil rights division plan to be in Lawrence next week to investigate. The crux of the issue, however, goes beyond Lawrence and into every school system in the nation: As schools become more inclusive of students with disabilities, Ritalin use has become commonplace. And while many educators consider it vital to control unruly children, some parents say school districts are overstepping their bounds to simply ensure order in classrooms. …."

[VA] Cavalier Daily 1/20/2000 Rakesh Gopalan "…. The Center for Equal Opportunity has released a study that alleges a black student is 111 times more likely to gain admission to the University than a white student with similar test scores and class rank. The study was released last month, nearly a year after a similar study was conducted by the same Washington-based think tank. The previous study found that a black student was 45 times more likely to be admitted to the University than a white student with similar academic credentials…….. "

Philadelphia Inquirer 1/22/2000 Melia Bowie "…. While other school districts are touting "zero tolerance," some members of the Colonial school board say their own school weapons policy needs some wiggle room. Because of a state law passed in 1995 and concern about instances of school violence, some local districts have suspended or expelled students who bring weapons to school - including a pen knife or a nail clipper - whether or not they were used in a threatening way. ….. Board members said they wanted their policy to allow more flexibility in defining a weapon and also to consider whether a student intends to use it as such. According to state law, a weapon "shall include, but not be limited to, any knife, cutting instrument, cutting tool, nunchaku, firearm, shotgun, rifle and any other tool, instrument or implement capable of inflicting serious bodily injury." "The policy is defective because it doesn't define a weapon in a sensical way," Kessler said. He maintained that a cutting instrument could be scissors a student brings to school. Even a book or chair, he said, could be used to inflict serious bodily injury….."

Washington Post 1/23/2000 "…. Educators in the nation's second-largest public school system are learning a hard lesson of their own these days: Ending social promotion is much easier said than done. Faced with the prospect of flunking several hundred thousand children, and suffering from dire shortages of classroom space and qualified teachers, the Los Angeles school system has just decided for the second time in recent months to limit its plan to keep students with failing marks in the same grade until they pass. Now, under guidelines that the school system's leaders revamped this week, the looming crackdown against social promotion will affect only students who are failing English, not other core subjects such as math. And even that pool will be limited……"

Fox news 1/11/2000 "….A federal judge on Tuesday upheld the expulsion of six students for fighting at a football game, ruling they did not prove their rights were violated by the school district's "zero tolerance" anti-violence policy. U.S. District Court Judge Michael McCuskey, who issued his ruling from Urbana, found the school district "did not act illegally, improperly or deny the students their constitutional rights." ..."

The Wall Street Journal 1/9/00 "....If you think some of our Presidential candidates come across as syntactically challenged, don't tell Kirk Hazen. Professor Hazen teaches linguistics at the University of West Virginia, and we caught a glimpse of him the other night on one of the highest-rated shows on cable, Fox News's "The O'Reilly Factor." There, Professor Hazen was trying to persuade a dubious Bill O'Reilly that anyone who corrects someone else's bad grammar is guilty of "dialect discrimination." Alas, this is no joke. Today, everything from reading to writing has become infused with the latest in sensitivity etiquette. One teacher's manual for a popular reading textbook states, "To help students begin to develop cultural awareness and understanding, they first need to know who they are--their ethnicity, gender and social class--and how they are viewed by society." Even the National Council of Teachers of English has advised banning the word "English" as exclusionary. The group recommends "Language Arts" instead....."

CNSNews.com 1/17/2000 Lawrence Morahan "…..The state of Washington cancelled funds awarded to a local scholarship recipient when it learned the student was using the scholarship money to study theology, alleging it created a conflict with the state Constitution that mandates "the separation of church and state.""We have consistently interpreted this constitutional provision as prohibiting state financial aid funds for students who are pursuing a degree in theology," the Higher Education Coordinating Board told the student in a letter, a copy of which was made available to CNSNews.com. ..."

WORLD Magazine 1/22/2000 Candi Cushman "….."She" is 41-year-old June Evans, a 5'3" African-American woman with a pixie-like grin and deep, boisterous voice. A full-time lecturer for Aim for Success, one of the nation's largest abstinence programs, Mrs. Evans will speak more than 20 times this week in four different schools, encouraging teenagers to remain abstinent until marriage. Today's [Duncanville Texas] audience is typical-an ethnic mix from a lower middle-class neighborhood 15 miles southwest of Dallas. "All I'm out here to do today is to give you the truth," begins Mrs. Evans. "Is everyone comfortable with that? I am because I talk about sex all day every day." The room is suddenly silent as 50 students, ages 14 to 16, perch on the edges of their seats….. But not everybody is celebrating. ABC News this December accused schools of "shortchanging students" with abstinence-only programs. "Our children are being denied life-saving information that their parents want for them," Sexuality Information and Education Council (SIECUS) president Debra Haffner told ABC. Time magazine went further, citing "public health experts'" concerns that abstinence education could "undo a decade of progress in education about safe sex." That depends on the definition of progress. After more than two decades of safe-sex education, STDs have reached epidemic proportions. Thirty years ago doctors recognized only two STDs-syphilis and gonorrhea. Both are curable. Today there are over 25 STDS, generating more than 12 million new cases annually. Half are incurable. Also hidden from the public limelight is the fact that condoms do not protect against one of the most common and incurable STDs-Human Papilloma Virus (HPV). This February, the National Cancer Institute quietly told U.S. House members that "condoms are ineffective against HPV." The Institute also reported that HPV affects 24 million people annually and causes over 99 percent of cervical cancer cases, killing more than 5,000 women every year. Even so, a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll showed that less than 1 percent of teenagers and adults know HPV is sexually transmitted…….."

WORLD Magazine 1/22/2000 Candi Cushman "…Despite local success, groups like MCCAP face stiff competition nationally. "There is at least $500 million going to fund contraceptive-based education through hundreds of different government and agency programs," says Mr. Brandt. In response, Oklahoma obstetrician-gynecologist Tom Coburn has taken his battle to the White House. Doubling as Congressman, Dr. Coburn proposed legislation requiring HPV-warning labels on condom packages as well as a registry for physicians to report new HPV cases. Predictably, the safe-sex lobby is vehemently opposed. "This effort is solely designed to advance an abstinence-only approach to sex," said Planned Parenthood's Gloria Felt. "This is part of the whole 'shaming of America' campaign promoted by people who want to impose their own personal religious and moral agenda on all people." ….. More tragic is the opposition of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which stated that it was "alarmed" by Dr. Coburn's public stance in favor of abstinence outside of marriage as the only fool-proof way to avoid HPV. Despite colleagues' attacks, Dr. Coburn refuses to water down his message. "What we are fighting in liberal America today is people who want to say there are no consequences for behavior that's immoral," he told WORLD….."

Christian Coalition of America Weekly News and Updates 1/20/2000 "….The Department of Education cannot account for how it spent almost $32 BILLION in taxpayer funds and BILLIONS more in student loans according to an ERNST AND YOUNG AUDIT report. The audit report from the Department of Education for fiscal year(FY) 1998 was released on November 18, 1999, more than eight months after the March 1 deadline. Numerous examples of financial mismanagement were cited by the report. It was concluded that the Department's books are in such disarray for FY 98, they cannot be audited….."

Nando/AP 1/25/2000 Anjetta McQueen "…. The Clinton administration is buckling to pressure from colleges in delaying a requirement that they report the scores of their graduates on teacher licensing exams, a key Democrat in Congress charged Tuesday. Teachers' colleges were to reports were to begin this April under a 1998 student-aid law but the Education Department is delaying them a year, claiming it hasn't have enough time to create one reporting system for varying state exams. The law also directed states to publicly identify colleges that consistently produced poor teaching candidates. ..."

United Press International 1/25/2000 "…..Police have arrested one of the six high school students expelled for fighting at a football game last year in Decatur, Ill. Roosevelt Fuller, 18, is charged with aggravated battery, domestic battery and aggravated assault for allegedly beating his 16-year-old ex-girlfriend and two of her teenaged friends. Fuller is one of six black students originally expelled for two years for brawling under the school board's "zero tolerance" policy for violence...."

UPI 1/25/2000 "….The Rev. Jesse Jackson is questioning the wisdom of "zero-tolerance" policies in schools, saying mandatory expulsions do not advance the cause of education. Many schools have adopted zero-tolerance policies concerning drugs, weapons and various forms of violence. "Right now, youth are being kicked out excessively, arbitrarily, racially," Jackson said Monday, "and the result is not that they become educated but that they end up in the much more expensive jail system." Jackson also said black students are expelled in disproportionate numbers compared to whites ..."

Boston Herald 1/25/2000 Ed Hayward "….Boston's public high schools will form ``gay-straight alliances'' as required by state law with the help of $40,000 in funding from the Department of Education, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino announced yesterday. Under the Safe Schools Project, the city's high schools will receive staff and financial support to ensure gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered students attend schools free of harassment. ``The No. 1 challenge we face as a city is to ensure a quality education so that no one - not one student - gets left behind,'' Menino said at an event at Boston High School. `…."

Daily Southtown 2/2/2000 AP "... A principal's decision to keep certain gun-related magazines out of the middle school library has spawned debate about the touchy schoolhouse issues of censorship and violence. Principal Melanie Ogle of Mayo Middle School ordered the magazine Guns and Ammo out of the library, and later rejected a teacher's proposal to replace it with a more youth-oriented magazine about shooting sports. ...."

The Minnesota Scholar, via CASNET Winter 2000 William Meehan III "....If there is any doubt that the campus Culture Wars are still being fought, and that the side defending academic freedom, intellectual substance, and individual merit is still losing, the story of the Applied Psychology (APSY) Department at St. Cloud State University (SCSU) is convincing. The APSY story is an exposé of the typical campus malaise created when an institution of higher learning loses sight of its mission, embracing instead an extreme ideology of Political Correctness, a dogma anathema to the purpose of a college and to the idea of liberal learning in a free society. This is the saga of how such a university carries out this misguided objective in a most intolerable way: by facilitating an attack on academic freedom, academic standards and academic quality, and by employing double standards in the discriminatory enforcement of policies. The APSY Department is in complete disarray, about to be divided into two divisions, the result of almost two years of turmoil. To date: The University is splitting the department because six of the twenty-two APSY faculty want a separate department for themselves. The six separatists also have accused the department of several "isms" and moral turpitude--all uninvestigated accusations that appear to be the only reason for the split. Meanwhile, ten professors ("APSY 10"), united to prevent the division, have prevailed in a complaint of discrimination. The finding--that College of Education Dean Joane McKay and President Suzanne Williams discriminated against the APSY 10 based on race, gender, and age-went unannounced, as did the exoneration of three professors on charges of racism. Moreover, minority graduate students toss around ugly accusations of racism under "free speech," while four white professors remain defamed. What is more, the President has proven to be a blatant ideologue. It's a university at its worst. ....."

Providence Journal 2/3/2000 Marisa Katz "..... Eight years and $8 billion into education reform, the state's only school accreditation agency has declared that the politically-led initiative has been of questionable benefit and is misdirected in its reliance on the MCAS tests. ``Putting the political bureaucracy in charge of standard setting for public education is, at best, a risky practice. ... '' wrote Jacob Ludes III, executive director of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, in a statement to educators and state legislators. ..... ``The notion that a single high-stakes test can be used to set policy, and reward or punish schools and the children in them, is indeed appalling,'' he wrote. ``The idiosyncrasies of the day, the validity of the items, the bias of the test maker, the conditions of the test site, and a score of other variables can compromise assessment based on a single instrument. Assessment that leads to ranking must be comprehensive and take into consideration data and information gathered from diverse and reliable sources.'' ...."

Washington Times 2/3/2000 "..... Today is the first day of Harvard Law School's new animal-rights law class, the first time the 183-year-old school has offered a course in this emerging legal specialization. The instructor is Steven M. Wise, 49, a Boston lawyer whose law practice in the past two decades has focused almost entirely on animal-related legislation. He also heads the Center for the Expansion of Fundamental Rights in Boston. Culture page editor Julia Duin interviewed him about his new book, "Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals." ...... Q: Your opening salvo in the book is: "Chimpanzees are persons" and killing them is genocide. How are you defining personhood? A: "Person" is a technical legal term. They should be legal persons, which is what common law intends persons to be. Under the law, personhood is the gold standard. When you become a legal person, you have legal rights. When slaves were not persons, they could be treated illegally. ...... Q: I understand you are a vegetarian and you don't wear leather. Where do you draw the line at protecting animals? Would you say all animals should not be killed? A: I personally am a vegetarian, but you don't need to be a vegetarian to accept the idea that chimpanzees and bonobos should be entitled to fundamental legal rights. All nonhuman animals are things in the eyes of the law. Like chairs, they have no legal rights whatsoever. The basic legal right to stop others from killing or torturing or enslaving you is as important to the great apes and others as it is to you. I am morally convinced animals are created with the type of minds that deserve fundamental legal rights. Drawing a line at human beings is drawing the line at an arbitrary place. Let's draw it where science points. To have a fundamental liberty right to bodily integrity, you need a realistic autonomy. You need to be conscious enough, to have desires, to want things, to have a sense of intentionality, to be conscious, to be experiencing and to have a sense of self to know the life you're living is yours. Trying to puzzle out who has consciousness and who does not is very hard. ...."

Denver Post 2/1/2000 Dave Curtin ".... Colorado College, in an effort to attract minority and disadvantaged students, is dumping those stodgy old college-admission exams in favor of a novel Lego-building test for a handful of applicants. Instead of coloring in bubbles with a No. 2 pencil, selected high school seniors are snapping together colorful Legos in hopes of attending the prestigious private college in Colorado Springs. The revolutionary test is designed to pinpoint students likely to succeed at tough colleges despite below-average standardized test scores. The Lego test helps identify initiative, leadership and an ability to work in groups - qualities that hours-long ACT and SAT tests never quite get at. CC is participating in the national experiment with eight other schools to recruit diverse students who probably wouldn't otherwise qualify for admission. The students will be admitted this fall. ...."

The Journal UK Newspaper of the year 2/1/2000 ".... An educational video that encourages children to experiment with gay sex will "help save lives", a health authority insisted yesterday. In the film - produced for the Bristol-based Avon Health Authority - a boy called Karl looks directly into the camera and tells pupils that to obtain sexual satisfaction, they should "try experimenting with both boys and girls to see who you feel most comfortable with". The health authority yesterday defended the video, Beyond a Phase: A Practical Guide to Challenging Homophobia in Schools, which it said aims to reduce suicides, sexually transmitted diseases and the transmission of HIV among young gay men. The video has been distributed to schools across Britain....."

The Springfield News (Oregon) 1/30/2000 ".... Parents upset with graphic sexual content in several scenes during recent student theatrical performances at Thurston High School say they want to know why the scenes were allowed in the first place and they want a promise that similar scenes will not be performed in the future. Principal Larry Bentz said there's no question mistakes were made and that some of the material was inappropriate, but he said he "will not guarantee that kids will not deal with adult level themes in their work in the future." The controversy stemmed from a Jan. 20 performance by students rehearsing for an upcoming regional acting competition. "I'm no prude," said Noelle Covington, mother of one of the students, "but it was gross, it was shocking and it was obscene." Several pieces, chosen by students from a selection of works provided by Thurston drama director Mike Fisher, contained scenes so graphic, Covington said, that they were "disgusting." For example, in one scene, a young girl described a penis in terms of "looking like a mushroom." In another, a girl describes losing her virginity in detail. Other issues, such as abortion, are also included in selections. "I could see some of this at the college level but this is high school," Covington said. "This is a public school." Bentz said the productions were not meant for a general audience but were a way for students in the higher level Acting Ensemble to fine tune their work before the regional competitions scheduled for Feb. 5. He said that while he and Fisher acknowledge some of the material was inappropriate and will be edited before a future performance, only three parents have complained. ....."

Washington Times 1/31/2000 John Lott Jr "....The concern about violence in public schools has quickly turned into hysteria. Fanned by politicians, notably President Clinton, and the media, what may have begun as misguided but reasonable concerns over safety has ignited into an implacable and unreasoned hatred of guns, or indeed anything that looks like a weapon. Across the nation, those entrusted with the care of children have transformed firearms into a symbol of menace and evil, attempting to purge guns from the consciousness of kids, even when all admit doing so would in no way improve safety. I had a firsthand glimpse of the hysteria last fall, when I took my four boys to the Yale University Health Service for their annual medical checkups. Prominently displayed posters on the walls warned about having handguns in the home. Along with the normal questions about medical histories, the nurse practitioner asked us whether we owned guns and whether they were locked up or loaded. Her tone made it clear she disapproved of our answers, and she was unmoved by the fact that the Centers for Disease Control could only identify 21 children under age 15 dying from accidental handgun deaths in 1996. But the hospital had no signs warning parents about 5-gallon water buckets, in which 40 children under the age of 5 drown every year, or about bathtubs, which claim 80 lives. No questions were asked about whether we kept our buckets stored away or our bathroom doors locked. Yet the hysteria Americans may face when they walk into their pediatrician's offices pales when compared to what is going on in our schools. Under a "zero tolerance" policy, students face suspension or expulsion for even carrying around pictures of guns or other weapons. Students ranging from elementary school to college have even been expelled for even bringing water pistols to school, though no one believes brightly colored plastic water gun can be confused with a firearm. ....."

Kentucky Herald-Leader 1/31/2000 Lori Becker Hayes "…. A lawyer, a legislator, a rabbi and a scholar will come to the table this week to debate a decades-old question: Do the Ten Commandments belong in classrooms and courthouses? The Central Kentucky chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is hosting a forum on Posting the Ten Commandments in Public Buildings on Thursday night. Recently revived in Kentucky, the issue has prompted both lawsuits and proposed changes in the law. Four bills are pending in the state legislature that would return the biblical moral code to schools. Postings of the Ten Commandments in schools and government buildings have some saying it's a violation of the First Amendment's separation of church and state. Others say the commandments are needed to address a moral crisis for today's children. ….."

New York Times 1/31/2000 Michael Janofsky "....One mother said it was the violence. Another said it was the drug dealing. A third said it was the growing number of children she noticed each day smoking, hugging and kissing in the schoolyard. One by one, two dozen parents from low-income neighborhoods here in southwest Albuquerque explained how fear and anguish had led them to remove their children from public schools and enroll them in private schools costing as much as $2,000 a year. Their stories unfolded as part of a plea to lawmakers to enact a school voucher program that would let them use public funds to help pay private school tuition. It is a plea that has caught the ear of Republicans here, particularly Gov. Gary E. Johnson, who is proposing what would be the most ambitious voucher program in the country. But their heartfelt passion is being met with equal fervor by other politicians, as well as teachers and their union representatives, who fear that taking money out of public schools would hasten their erosion. It is a debate playing out across the country with increasing intensity as more than 25 legislatures consider bills that would create some type of system in which public dollars would be used for private and parochial schools like the Abundant Life Christian School here, where many parents pay $2,000 a year for each child they enroll....."

CNSNews.com 1/31/2000 Matthew Robinson "…. Los Angeles' recent experience with cheating teachers isn't the first time school officials have been caught cooking the books. In fact, when a dozen teachers at Banning High School in Wilmington showed copies of the Stanford 9 exam to their students, they were treading ground that has become all too familiar to parents and education reformers. Just last year, teachers and principals in New York City and officials at the Austin Independent School District in Texas did the same thing. The sad fact is that as educators face the pressure of accountability and improved performance, chances are, we'll see such problems of teacher cheating grow….. To date, New York is still the biggest offender. Investigators charge that teachers and principals at 32 schools gave students answers to the Empire State's standardized tests. And back in April, Austin officials were caught fixing test results on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills. The district threw out the scores of students in low-income areas to bolster results district-wide......."

Los Angeles Times 1/24/2000 Julian Weissglass ".... It may be surprising, as reported recently in The Times, that upper-middle-class white families "work the system" to gain an advantage for their children on the SAT. Many people believe that the SAT is designed to provide colleges a fair method for making entrance decisions. In fact, the development of the SAT was influenced by a desire to decrease access by certain ethnic groups, and it continues to play that role. Both IQ tests and the SAT originated during an era of fear of the new immigrants from eastern and southern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries....."

The Columbus Dispatch 2/7/00 Don Baird "…..The teacher whose complaint about a slain piglet led to charges against a fellow teacher has swapped her classroom for a spot on the Honda assembly line at nearby Marysville. Instead of shaping young lives at Champaign County's Graham High School, "I hang doors on Accords,'' Molly Fearing said last week. She also has formed a new animal- rights group to continue her fight against what she considers abuse. Her critics blame the changes in her life on her stubborn refusal to tell her boss whether she violated a student's rights by publicly revealing his name. Supporters blame Fearing's situation on her willingness to stand up for animal rights in an area where agriculture is big business and pigs are meant to be eaten, not petted. ……"

New York Times 2/10/00 Barbara Whitaker "….Under the protection of a court but in defiance of a school board's wishes, a group of gay teenagers held their weekly lunch-hour meeting today in an empty classroom at El Modena High School here. But whether they will ever do so again remains uncertain. In a fight that has roiled this conservative suburban community and drawn attention from legal scholars across the country, the Orange Unified School District is seeking to ban the group, contending that it is inappropriate because it deals with issues of sexuality. Now, faced with a lawsuit and a judge's preliminary injunction, the district is considering a new approach: whether to vote on Thursday to ban all 38 noncurricular clubs, including the Black Student Union and the Gentlemen's Club, as a way of halting the gay group's meetings. Only one other school district, Salt Lake City, has taken such an approach, and a lawsuit against that district is still moving through the courts. ….."

The Associated Press 2/9/00 "…."Captain Underpants" has proved no match for elementary school officials here, who have banished the cape-and-underwear-clad character from their library. "The Adventures of Captain Underpants: An Epic Novel," one in a series of four, features bathroom humor and two mischievous boys. Officials at Maple Hill School say the problem was that some fourth-graders started acting like the boys in the book. "The book was beginning to take on a life of its own," Superintendent Alice Carolan said Tuesday. Some parents, including Jennifer Merrill, want it back in circulation because it entertains kids who otherwise don't like to read. "It's not harmful to children," she said. …."

Naples Daily News 2/8/00 Denise Zoldan "….About 900 people have signed form letters addressed to the Collier County School Board and the School Board's Diversity Task Force, "vigorously opposing the inclusion of 'sexual orientation' " in the district's anti-harassment/discrimination policy set to go before the task force tonight. Inclusion of "sexual orientation" would allow gays and lesbians to be singled out for protection, which has caused alarm among some Collier County parents. Homosexuals are not a constitutionally protected class of people. Adding "sexual orientation" to anti-discrimination policies at government agencies and private businesses is an issue that has come to the forefront nationwide recently. In March, the Palm Beach County School Board faced a similar decision on whether to add sex orientation to its anti-discrimination policy, but by a majority vote decided not to. Palm Beach County School Board members said at the time the current policy met federal and state law and did not condone harassment against anyone. ….."

MSNBC – local 2/9/00 "….A Maury County mother could go to jail for home schooling her children. She's been served with arrest papers because the Board of Education says she is promoting truancy, but Sharon Miller says that the school system knows, and has known for months that her children are being educated at home. Miller says that she and her children are learning a thing or two about the Maury County Board of Education. "I don't appreciate the intimidation, I don't appreciate what they've taught my kids so far." In November, Miller took her three teenagers out of public high school and began home schooling. "I could do a better job with life and social skills that I think are important to the kids." Two weeks into the home schooling, Miller received juvenile court petitions concerning the children's' absences, petitions that will be part of their permanent academic records. "This is a court document that says my children are unruly!" To be exact, the document reads "unruly and in need of treatment and rehabilitation," but the petitions were only the beginning. Despite the fact the school system was notified in December that the children were being taught at home sheriff's deputies started visiting the Miller home. At one point Miller says the school system threatened to have her children's drivers licenses revoked if they didn't resume classes here at central high. Then on Monday another visitor from the sheriff's office dropped by. The school system had sworn out a warrant for Miller's arrest. She was ordered to appear in court. "I don't want to go into court. I don't want to defend myself when I feel what I'm doing is right." …."

CNSNews 2/8/00 Bob Melvin "….Parents in the Dallas suburb of Plano, Texas, are disturbed over what they call the Plano School District's usurping of their parental rights, free speech and equal protection. Those parents are so upset that the matter has gone to court over an issue involving mandated "Connected Math" in the Plano school system. A federal judge met with Texas Justice Foundation (TJF) attorneys, representing Plano parents, and Plano School District attorneys at a case management conference on Friday, February 4th, to set a trial date, deadlines for motions and discuss the issues. The trial was set for November 6, 2000…….. All we ask is that these parents have a choice. If they do not want their child subjected to an experimental class, they should have another option."……. There is much controversy centered on the Connected Math curriculum. Plano ISD claims in their Response to the Plaintiff's Motion for Class Certification that "the content of CMP is based on traditional mathematic concepts." However, more than 600 Plano parents have protested use of the Connected Math Program. It failed in other pilot programs in California, and more than 200 math experts and three Nobel laureates protested the Department of Education's decision to place it on a list of "exemplary programs."….."

Buffalo News, Buffalo, New York 2/8/00 Andrew Galarneau "….Niagara County authorities dropped their educational-neglect case against Brenda and Joseph Shepard on Monday after verifying that the Hartland couple have an approved plan to home-school their children. But the Shepards may still face having their names added to the state abuse-and-neglect registry, said attorney Victor Orzechowski, who represented Joseph Shepard. The Shepards have been involved in a dispute about their children's educations with Barker Central School officials since September 1997. ….."

PBS 'Front Line' 2/9/00 Freeper sigi "…..I just watched part of this PBS 'Front Line' report. It is about wild sex parties in a small afluent community. Young middle school girls having sex with dozens of boys who line up at a party. Real sex orgies right out of the porno movies they were watching. PBS actually interviewed some of the teenage kids involved. Many of these teens were infected with syphilis as a result of their sex, alcohol and drug parties.... I became so angry had to turn off the television……. EXCERPTS FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH A SCHOOL COUNSELOR ……….. How can it be that a guidance counselor knows more about a child's life than a parent? ….. ... We have counselors, kindergarten through twelfth grade, in this school system. ... By the time a child gets to middle school or even high school, they know what a counselor is for. They know the counselor is there as a guide for them. As a listener. ... Very many of the children are very frustrated. …… Like what? Be specific if you would. ……Adult questions-- such as whether or not to participate in parties where there is drinking. Parties where there is drug abuse. Parties where there may be persons where there may be children who are much older than them or semi-adults. For example a party where there would be a lot of 14 year olds but there would also be 18 year olds or maybe 20 year olds at the party. Whether or not they should be sneaking out of their house in the middle of the night to go do something without their parents' knowledge. Whether or not they should participate in what they know as illicit behavior. Driving, illegal behavior. Driving without a license. Those kinds of things that really should not, that they really that most adults don't think children should have to deal with until they're older. ...... "

PBS 'Front Line' 2/9/00 Freeper sigi "….. Let's talk about the culture in which these kids are growing up. Their own culture. The culture that surrounds them. Talk about the influence of television on these kids. What they're seeing. ...I think television, movies, computer games, the media if you will, had a lot of influence on children. They have access, even by their own computers to things around the entire world. If they're influenced by it, it's probably more in seeing things that they may not have seen otherwise from lots of information that they wouldn't have been able, that they may not know otherwise about relationships. They see sex.. ... "

PBS 'Front Line' 2/9/00 Freeper sigi "…..How young are kids having sex now? ….. Several years ago a counselor came to me and said that she was extremely surprised to find that she had a fifth grade student who was sexually active. And this is a young girl who was 10 years old. That's an isolated incident. It is even now unusual. But I think what was more common for the older adolescents 10 years ago is becoming, not common-- at least, it's known that it exists at much younger ages such as 12, 13, 14. ... …."

PBS 'Front Line' 2/9/00 Freeper sigi "…..What you're describing is in a sense--kids who are running their own lives. ……I think there are a lot of children who are running their own lives. Who really are testing limits or don't know what the limits are. One or the other. And they don't have the maturity. They don't have the experiences. They don't understand the consequences. They don't even understand time, the concept of time as well as a person who's an adult. And by adult, I mean probably 25 plus. And so they're like a balloon out there floating around in the sky with little direction and to run into a power line or to a tree and just burst is something that they're very unaware that could happen. They don't know what's down the road. So I think there are many young people now who are very anxious about their lives and where they're headed and which way they're going. ……"

A.P. 2/8/00 "….A substitute teacher has been barred from the city's schools for telling students, ``Hitler is cool.'' ``I have no idea how the conversation got started or where it was going, but his statement was inappropriate in front of children,'' Jane Wilson, principal of J. Henry Higgins Middle School, told The Boston Globe. ``We don't want anything that would be controversial with students.'' ….."

Boston Globe 2/13/00 Michael Paulson "….The rise of Jewish day schools could have consequences even beyond the Jewish community. Community leaders say a quiet debate is already underway about the merits of vouchers, which allow parents to use government money to send children to private schools..... His day has two more hours to go. Here at the New Jewish High School, students are spending 42 hours a week in school, trying to cram into their days a mishmash of the secular and sectarian, from English and math to Hebrew and Jewish philosophy, not to mention gym, art, and daily prayer. The day might sound horrific, but the school is thriving even before its first seniors have graduated. By fall, enrollment will have risen 440 percent in four years, and school officials are preparing to hire an architect for their first building. There are now 13 Jewish day schools in Greater Boston, double the number of 12 years ago. Enrollment at Jewish day schools in the area has jumped 51 percent over the last five years. …."

Buffalo News 2/9/00 Andrew Galarneau "….Niagara County authorities dropped their educational-neglect case against Brenda and Joseph Shepard on Monday after verifying that the Hartland couple have an approved plan to home-school their children. But the Shepards may still face having their names added to the state abuse-and-neglect registry, said attorney Victor Orzechowski, who represented Joseph Shepard. The Shepards have been involved in a dispute about their children's educations with Barker Central School officials since September 1997. After Monday's brief hearing, in which the Department of Social Services withdrew its petition alleging educational neglect, "The caseworker told us that we were going to be "indicated,' and we could appeal it if we wanted," said Shepard. ….."

wsj.com 2/11/00 "…..Jason Scoggins will never graduate from high school, have a class rank or be recommended by his guidance counselor. But Oglethorpe University wants him anyway. Jason, who is 17 years old, was home-schooled by his mother. After he scored 1,570 out of a possible 1,600 on his SAT college-admissions test -- with a perfect 800 in math -- Oglethorpe invited him to compete with other top applicants for five scholarships valued at about $100,000 apiece. Of the 94 prospects in the Jan. 22 contest, eight were home-schoolers, each with SATs above 1,300. The high scores are no fluke. As the movement grows larger and more diverse, evidence is mounting that home-schooling, once confined to the political and religious fringe, has achieved results not only on par with public education, but in some ways surpassing it. Though home-schooling may never be feasible for most families, the data offer little comfort to those who advocate a standardized curriculum as the best hope for improving American education. After all, each home-based pupil follows a unique lesson plan……"

New York Law Journal 2/10/00 Mark Hamblett "….A divided federal appeals panel has upheld a New York school district's right to refuse access to school facilities to an after-school religious program. In The Good News Club v. Milford School District, 98-9494, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the group's teachings were "quintessentially religious" and were thus barred under the First Amendment's doctrine of the separation of church and state. In 1992, Milford School District adopted a policy on community use of school buildings that expressly forbade use for religious purposes. Although the community-use policy allowed groups such as the Girl Scouts and the 4-H Club, school officials rejected the application of the Good News Club, which offers religious instruction to children ages 6 through 12. The club, one of several throughout the country, is affiliated with the Child Evangelism Fellowship, a Christian missionary organization……"

AP 2/12/00 Anjetta McQueen "…. Four hundred new charter schools opened last school year, reflecting families' increased interest in alternatives to more traditional, but often lower-performing public schools. About 250,000 children are now served by 1,500 charter schools, a 40 percent increase in such institutions in the 1998-99 school year, the Education Department reported in its fourth annual study on charter schools. Charter schools - public schools created by parents and teachers and run with exemptions from most state laws and regulations - represent a public school-choice for parents in poor communities, where schools often struggle. "We can see that there is a continued need for our support of these schools," Education Secretary Richard Riley said in releasing the report Friday. "Public charter schools are providing parents and students with choice they want and deserve." ……"

Daily Republican 2/11/00 Sam Goldman "….The Diversity Hoax is a collection of essays by members of the University of California, Berkeley's Boalt Hall Law School class of 2000, the were the first to have been admitted after passage of California's Proposition 209 barred the use of racial preferences in university admissions. Most Berkeley students and faculty had strongly opposed the measure, but conservatives, and even some liberals, among the class never dreamed that their legal education would be taken hostage by affirmative action activists for whom the "marketplace of ideas" had no room for dissent. The Boalt students' stories are appalling. One class was invaded by protestors, who demanded that white students give up their seats for minority members whose applications had been rejected. The professor was hooted down when he explained that he would teach only actual Boalt students and was forced to dismiss the class. David Wienir reports rumors that a Caucasian piñata was smashed by irate students, behavior that would almost certainly be prosecuted as a hate crime had white perpetrators destroyed an effigy of a person of color. An anonymous contributor to The Diversity Hoax imagines a "White Person's Anonymous...the only place at Boalt where I feel I don't have to apologize for the color of my skin," in an "almost nonfiction" essay….."

Daily Republican 2/11/00 Sam Goldman "….Speech codes are a particularly nasty product, popular with the campus left. These rules, some form of which exists at most major universities, penalize behavior believed to create a "hostile environment" similar to that proscribed by some kinds of sexual harassment law. In practice, speech codes makes an actionable offense of any kind of communication that anyone finds upsetting. The Diversity Hoax details some of the worst excesses of the speech code fad, which reached a height with the well-publicized Penn "water buffalo"case of 1995. Kors and Silverglate keep the smug editorializing to a minimum--a smart move, since anyone who finds nothing wrong with the statement that there is "no place [at the University] for something that doesn't show African Americans in a positive light" by the University of Missouri's Equal Employment Opportunity director of probably won't be convinced by any book. Kors and Silverglate also report the draconian procedures that many schools used to prosecute speech offenses. Hearings were carried out in secret and alleged offenders were often denied the opportunity to speak to a lawyer or be represented by a faculty advocate. Due process, clearly, was less important than enforcing consensus. ….."

Daily Republican 2/11/00 Sam Goldman "….The Shadow University's final chapter mercifully details the defeats that the advocates of stifling political consensus have suffered in the courts and public opinion. They describe the remarkable coalition of students and administrators, liberals and conservatives, lawyers and reporters, who are, like The Diversity Hoax essayists, the only good guys in what is otherwise a race to craven submission. Politicians, particularly, have been reluctant to speak out, for fear of alienating powerful constituencies. It is a testament to just how bad things are that Alan Dershowitz appears as one of minor heroes of MIT's speech code fight……"

Daily Republican 2/11/00 Sam Goldman "….Professors and administrators at most of our most prominent institutions bring their ideological baggage to class with them, hoping to use the educational process as a vehicle for social engineering. Williams students, for instance, were required to declare "Hello, my name is _______, and I'm Gay!" as a part of a Feel What It Is Like To Be Gay meeting. Such abuses of the trust placed in professionals by students and parents is even more disturbing than the Boalt student radicals' Orwellian outbursts….."

Denver Post 2/4/00 Howard Pankratz "…..In a landmark ruling, the Colorado Court of Appeals said Thursday that parents cannot sue public school districts if they believe their children have been denied a quality education. The decision came out of a case involving more than 3,400 parents who sued Denver Public Schools, claiming the district shortchanged students by not providing a quality education, especially for minorities. The lawsuit claimed that school districts had a "contractual duty" to provide a good education. But the court saw otherwise, saying if parents want change, they should force it at the ballot box and not in the courtroom. Parents, wrote Judge Peter Ney, can't "hold a public school district to the implementation of its educational objectives in a judicial setting. This matter is of a political nature." Lt. Gov. Joe Rogers, who originally represented the parents, said he expects the case to be appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court and higher if necessary. "When you have a court system that says that the Denver Public Schools system is immune from accountability, that is really a remarkable stretch of the law," Rogers said. ….."

San Francisco Chronicle 2/4/00 Debra Saunders "…. LAST OCTOBER, the U.S. Department of Education released a list of 10 math programs which department educrats considered ``exemplary'' or ``promising.'' It would have been more accurate to rate the 10 programs as ``trendy'' or ``math-lite.'' Some 200 appalled mathematicians and scientists -- including three Nobel laureates -- ran an ad in the Washington Post calling on Secretary Richard Riley to rescind the seal of approval. On Wednesday, two House Education subcommittees held a hearing on the issue. Educrats defending the Top Ten talked about process. Critics of the trendy new-new math talked about results. Susan Sarhady, a parent from Plano, Texas, knows what the middle-school Connected Mathematics program -- rated ``exemplary'' -- did for her community. Some high-achieving students didn't test well in math. Parents were baffled by assignments, like the tossing of marshmallows to see how many landed on their ends or their sides. Her friend Kathy bought a traditional math textbook and started spending a half hour every night with her son to make sure he didn't miss math he would later need. Kathy found it galling that if her son scores well, Connected Math will get the credit. …."

CNSNews.com 2/4/00 Chris Sieroty "…..A federal judge on Friday ordered school officials to allow a homosexual tolerance club to meet at an Orange County, CA, high school pending resolution of a lawsuit. The judge said he felt that, otherwise, the homosexual group might suffer "irreparable harm." US District Court Judge David O Carter issued the preliminary injunction against the Orange Unified School District while a lawsuit filed by two homosexual El Modena High School students plays out in court. "Plaintiffs have been injured not only by the board's excessive delay but also by the inability to effectively address the hardships they encounter at school every day,'' Carter said in a written ruling. Even though Carter ruled temporarily in favor of the students, his ruling also urged the Orange Unified School District to appeal its case to the state Supreme Court. ….."

World Net Daily 2/7/00 Samuel Blumenfeld "….The other day, I got a call from my good friend Marshall Fritz, president of the Separation of School and State Alliance. He had attended a meeting in New York of private entrepreneurs interested in doing something about education.. ….Education, I told him, is concerned with the development of the mind, of the intellect, while training deals with learning specific skills. Education is a more personal activity, in that its main purpose is the enhancement of an individual's ability to use his mind for his own personal pleasure or gain. Training means developing skills that will be used more for social and economic reasons than for the self. Which means that education should come first, training later……. Even Noam Chomsky, noted socialist who also happens to be the world's leading linguist, writes: [H]uman language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world. ... As far as we know, possession of human language is associated with a specific type of mental organization, not simply a higher degree of intelligence. There seems to be no substance to the view that human language is simply a more complex instance of something to be found elsewhere in the animal world. ... In fact, the processes by which the human mind achieved its present stage of complexity and its particular form of innate organization are a total mystery. Of course, they are not a mystery if you believe the Bible.... The takeover of American public schools by behavioral scientists and psychologists means the permanent destruction of traditional education. And because most parents, teachers, and politicians don't understand the distinction between education and training, there is virtually no chance that traditional education will ever be restored in our public schools. …… Finally, the beauty of education is that, after learning to read, you can educate yourself by reading and investigating anything you want. But when it comes to training, you need trainers and schedules, tests and assessments, psychologists and remediators. To deprive children of the great personal benefits of education and to throw them at an early age into training is a crime, and its victims will be a blight on America for generations to come……"

Wall Street Journal 2/7/00 "…..As bragging rights go for colleges, the head count of international students is right up there with SAT scores and party-school bona fides. College administrators know it gives their institutions a glow of cosmopolitan prominence. And kids think it's cool to have a circle of international friends who look like they fell out of a Benetton ad. But if the government's immigration patrol has its way, foreign kids will not only be treated as potential lawbreakers, they will have to pay for the privilege. Starting this year, colleges and universities could be called upon to collect a $95 fee from each of their foreign students on behalf of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the same group that's been ham-handing the Elian Gonzalez problem. The money would be used to fund an "electronic tracking system" to keep tabs on our foreign visitors. After all, what if they stayed and got jobs and helped relieve Alan Greenspan of his worry that today's boom might run aground on a labor shortage? ….."

The Boston Globe 2/2/00 Sandy Coleman "…..When the legendary, ivy-covered Phillips Academy in Andover approved a new policy allowing gay faculty members to live in student dormitories with their partners as house counselors, Bill Constantine applauded. But Constantine, a parent from New York, admits that the topic made him hesitate when it was first raised. Although at home he preaches tolerance and understanding of all kinds of people, with his daughter, Claire, an 11th-grader at Andover, the issue seemed more complex. ''Is a same-sex couple the right role model in the dormitory?'' Constantine said he wondered. ''Is this a role model you want? Does this encourage young kids to consider a same-sex relationship as a course they should follow? I don't know that it does or doesn't. The thought just went through my head.'' Constantine's contemplation was shared by officials at Andover, where the new policy takes effect in the fall, and at least three other New England boarding schools that have quietly made gay faculty counselors and their partners at home in the dorms. Andover had notified parents of the policy. …."

Massachusetts News 2/1/00 Edward Oliver "…..The students at Framingham State College are being "brainwashed in leftism and multiculturalism" by radical feminists who have taken control of the school, according to what many professors tell Massachusetts News. "They have put into place a political culture that is educationally corrupt and operates by bureaucratic tyrannies one associates with Stalinism and anti-utopian novels like 1984," according to the professors. They say it is typical of what is happening at all of the state colleges in Massachusetts. …….. The problems at the state colleges came into public awareness after a popular English professor, Dr. Eugene Narrett, was dismissed in 1997 because of what many believe were his conservative political beliefs. He is now a lecturer at Boston University. He is currently suing the school, as well as its former president, Raymond Kieft, and the former chairman of the English department, Alan Feldman, for violating his free speech rights. He taught at the college for four-and-a-half years……."

Washington Post 2/8/00 Craig Timberg "…..Bills to ban firearms in schools died in the Virginia General Assembly today as gun-control advocates energized by the Columbine massacre lost out to the growing power of rural legislators devoted to gun rights. The bills, which would have closed several loopholes allowing guns on school grounds, could be revived in the state Senate, but their defeat in a House committee was so resounding that gun-control advocates have nearly given up hope of passing new restrictions this session. They are preparing instead to defend against bills pushed by gun-rights advocates, including one that would prohibit Virginia cities from suing weapons manufacturers……"

Associated Press 2/7/00 Mike Smith "….The Indiana House approved legislation Monday that would let government entities, including public schools, post the Ten Commandments in their buildings. The House approved the bill 92-7. The Senate already has approved a similar measure, and it seems certain that one of the bills will end up on the desk of Gov. Frank O'Bannon. O'Bannon has said he would sign the bill if it was constitutional, and he believes the current versions are. Under the bill, the commandments could be posted in schools, courthouses or on other government property if displayed with other documents of historical significance that have formed and influenced the U.S. legal system….."

Denver Rocky Mountain News 2/16/00 Aurelio Rojas "…..Opponents of a ballot measure that would ban recognition of same-sex marriages in California began airing their first television ads Wednesday and charged that an ad by supporters featuring a teacher is misleading. Appearing at a news conference in Sacramento, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin and representatives of the two major teachers unions said most teachers in the state oppose Proposition 22. "We believe this is largely an anti-gay referendum," Eastin said. "The initiative process is being used in this case to single out a group of people for scorn. When adults play wedge politics it is most often our kids who get hurt." ….."

frc.org 2/00 "….. Since 1990, the city of Milwaukee has provided vouchers for children in low-income families to attend private schools through the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. This month, the Wisconsin State Legislative Audit Bureau released a report evaluating the program. The report found that participating parents selected their child's school for a variety of reasons, the most common of which was high educational standards. In addition, nearly 70 percent of parents were dissatisfied with the values their children learned in the Milwaukee Public Schools. Have parents been pleased with their choices? Apparently so: 127 of 135 surveyed families report that their child has stayed in the first private school they chose….."

Eagle Forum 2/15/00 "….When Idaho Board of Education Chairman Harold Davis officially proclaimed the death of School-to-Work (STW) last month, grassroots citizens breathed a sigh of relief. In announcing that the state's STW offices would close their doors on Oct. 1, 2000, Davis stated: "There is no evidence that there are any STW efforts going on in Idaho, and we don't anticipate that there will be. A couple of local partnership councils have had some limited activity, but there is no indication of any public interest in their continuation." His words were music to the ears of Idaho Eagle Forum members and education activists who have worked tirelessly to bury the program. "STW has been hanging on by a thread for three years," says pro-family leader Dani Hansen. "Our six STW partnerships, only two of which were very active, have turned down federal dollars and informed the Idaho Board of Education that they are happy with their individualized, locally-controlled programs." ……"

Los Angeles Times 2/15/00 Kristin Sauerwein "…. Already, the eighth-graders can hear the taunts: Stupid. Dumb. Slow-brain. Beyond that frightening prospect, there's the pressure from teachers, principals and, worse, parents reminding them that they are in danger of being held back a grade. As if life weren't tough enough for angst-ridden middle-schoolers. With Los Angeles Unified School District cracking down on social promotion-the long-held practice of advancing students to the next grade even when they are not academically ready eighth-graders with lousy grades in English feeling the heat……. In the Los Angeles school district, notices are being sent home this month informing parents of students who are failing English that their children still can advance with their classmates by passing a writing test this spring, raising their English grades to Ds by July or graduating from special summer classes. The district estimates that 4,000 eighth-graders, or about one-tenth of the students enrolled in those classes, are in danger of retention……"

The Chronicle of Higher Education 2/18/00 Katherine Mangan "…. Bernard Dobranski was already dean of a Roman Catholic law school when he got an unexpected job offer early last year: Did he want to start a law school with a truly Catholic mission? Any doubts he may have had about the offer were eased by Thomas S. Monaghan, the Domino's Pizza mogul who was bankrolling the venture to the tune of $50-million……. Touted as a school that will integrate Catholic teachings into every course and turn out lawyers who are guided by faith, as well as by reason, Ave Maria is consciously striving to set itself apart from its Catholic brethren. Not surprisingly, the implication that existing law schools have somehow strayed from the fold has many Catholic educators bristling. "Catholic law schools, and the Jesuit schools in particular, have been offering legal clinics for the poor and addressing Catholic social teachings for years," says Monika K. Hellwig, executive director of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities. "They pride themselves in being extremely Catholic."….."

CNSNews.com 2/15/00 Scott Hogenson "….. Reading Kristina Sauerwein's February 15 Los Angeles Times piece about the wailing and gnashing of teeth by 8th graders worried about ending social promotion in school was a real eye opener, and I can't help but think that a story designed to support the practice actually made the case for ending it. Social promotion, that destructive practice of pushing kids from one grade to the next even though they're not ready for it, is apparently coming under scrutiny in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which sent to parents this week a notice that kids who don't pass English could be held back a year. …….. Social promotion always has been the intellectual equivalent of a free lunch, inasmuch as there is no such thing. Pushing a kid into the next grade when they're not ready for it cuts some immediate slack for the student, but it invariably compounds their problems further down the road. We can run from our ignorance, but we cannot hide from it, a fact illustrated by the 13-year-old tutor's observation that kids who got a poor education in grade school may now be punished for it as they prepare to enter high school……Yes, it's too bad that as many as 4,000 8th graders in Los Angeles will flunk this year. It borders on tragic, and it's the ugly byproduct of a public education system that's enslaved by selfish union structures that are more concerned about wielding political power than helping prepare kids for adulthood. ….."

AP 2/26/00 "……Some professors at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have criticized former CIA director John Deutch's return to a teaching position there in light of accusations he mishandled classified information after leaving the security agency in 1996, The Boston Globe reported today. Deutch, who served as MIT provost from 1985 to 1990, now works at the university as one of about a dozen ``institute professors.'' The lucrative positions are awarded to top professors, who are allowed to essentially do as they please. ......... His MIT defenders say, despite the ongoing investigation, Deutch would never knowingly compromise the country's security. ``Obviously, he messed up,'' said MIT chemistry professor Timothy Swager. ``But John's a patriot.''......"

AP 2/26/00 "……Students using state-issued calculators during crucial achievement tests got incorrect answers when math problems were entered too quickly. School officials in Palm Beach County reported problems with Casio HS-10 calculators during the recent Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests. And teachers in other counties got wrong answers when asked by The Palm Beach Post to test some equations. "Three times three times three. Oh no, I got 81," said Carol Ann Whitehorse, a guidance counselor at Bay High School in Panama City. "This is really funny. This is funny in a bad way." ….."

Reuters 2/26/00 "…….President Bill Clinton urged Congress on Saturday to pass his proposal to raise funding to help troubled schools and urged states and school districts to take firm measures to fix the schools or shut them down. In his weekly radio address, Clinton released official guidelines from the Education Department to help states and school districts make better use of a $134 million Accountability Fund approved by Congress for fiscal 2000 to help fix schools...."

Nicholson 2/26/00 "……. Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson issued the following statement today in response to the president's radio address on education: "I think somebody needs to educate the president on American's real priorities for their children," blasted Nicholson. "Americans want to empower local communities, parents and teachers, not Washington-based teachers' unions. "Republicans will no longer allow the president to recklessly hijack education dollars, funneling them to pencil-pushing Washington bureaucrats, instead of letting them get to local communities who best know what their schools need. How can D.C. bureaucrats know what's best for schools in Los Angeles and schools in Boston when they never leave Washington? One size does not fit all, Mr. Pres