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 th