Mary Thompson -- Have You Checked Your Private School Choice Lately?

HAVE YOU CHECKED YOUR PRIVATE SCHOOL CHOICE LATELY?

By Mary Thompson
December 5, 2012
NewsWithViews.com

There have been voices in the wilderness exposing what has taken place in the nation’s public schools. No one questions the obvious success of the planned agenda put in place since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) turned on the spigot for Federal money over forty-five years ago. That having been accomplished, now the laying of the foundation for nationalization/internationalization of schools is upon us.

The agenda is moving ahead in public schools in the name of Common Core Standards. The implications of Common core Standards have been noted with alarm by education watchers. Common Core Standards entail on-going assessments with massive amounts of data to be assembled for every public school student and teacher. Common Core Standards are necessary scaffolding if the purpose of schools has been engineered to become facilities for workforce training to provide a global workforce for a planned global society.

Prior to that, parents have sought escape from public schools as one step after another in the on-going process became too objectionable for them to accept. Vouchers seemed to some to provide an answer to their dilemma. Then the agenda for charter schools was packaged with the mix, and the buzzword became, “school choice.” The combination comprised the Trojan Horse Twins of voucher and charter schools. Both are designed to destroy institutional fundamentals. Charter schools undermine principles of local elected authority resulting in taxation without representation. Vouchers compromise the “private” in private schools through government funding. Vouchers will “public-ize” private schools rather than “privatize” public schools as some opponents of vouchers claim.

Common Core Standards are rightly being identified and opposed as the current culprit in the school wars, in a new wave of articles, books, and organizations dedicated to opposing the standards. With new alarm, parents continue to look for escape routes from public schools. They need to remember that charter schools are public schools. Are private and religious schools looking better all the time? Look again!

According to Education Week, October 10, 2012, Private schools, including religious schools, are opting for Common Core Standards. Note the significant phrase “opting for,” not “forced to accept,” but choosing to do so. They are volunteering to adopt Common Core Standards as benchmarks for achievement in their private/religious schools!

The American Association of Christian Schools reported how “private schools are being impacted by Common Core Standards.” Education Week, October 8, 2012, has chronicled how private schools are seeing Common Core Standards as a “credibility factor.” The same source reported that “Catholic schools have been first to adopt the Common Core standards on a widespread scale with over 100 dioceses adopting them in their schools. Other church related schools including schools of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, have signaled they will be assimilating the standards into their curriculum.”

Some private schools have thus far hesitated, but according to Dr. Jeff Walton AACS Executive Director, “although there’s no great track record for national reform efforts some schools will feel the need to align with the standards because of external pressures such as credit transfer, voucher program inclusion and college admissions”. That pretty much reveals the fallacy of the idea of vouchers being agents to change the direction of existing public schools, the idea behind the advocacy of vouchers based on Free Market arguments.

There exists a “Common core Catholic Identity Institute,” and national organization to synthesize Common Core Standards with Catholic teachings. The Superintendent of Schools, archdiocese of Louisville, is quoted as saying, “we sometimes talk about ‘baptizing’ state standards.” (Education Week, 10/8/2012)

As incomprehensible as it would seem to be, it may not even take government carrots which have been a means thus far, to entice religious schools into the government tent. Like lemmings they are lining up to voluntarily conform to government’s nationalizing/internationalizing of schools through Common Core Standards. The result will further the creating a closed global system of public/private partnership model to create a workforce for global corporate interests. Private schools need to remember that Common Core Standards came about with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as partners with National Governor’s Association and Council of Chief State School Officials. (Common Core, A Trojan Horse for Education Reform, by Orlean Koehle, pg: 52-55).

When private schools use Common Core Standards, and perhaps other nationally spawned “one size fits all” program and uses the same yardstick against which to measure themselves, they render themselves more and more indistinguishable from the public schools, a form of suicide of private schools, while parents are searching for what made private and religious schools different.

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It’s long past due for parents with students in Christian and other private schools to take look under the hood of the private or religious vehicle they have chosen or are considering for education of their children. Is it really different? Does it know why it needs to be different? Or is it being led toward the cliff of” identity extinction” not even needing a government “push” to render it a clone.
When that happens, everyone loses including the students, the parents, the integrity of what the school itself represents, and the culture it was intended to influence, not mimic.

Mary has a degree from Michigan State, her home state. Mary relocated with her husband to California where she became active in Republican Party, then as an early activist opposing innovations in schools which were emanating from Washington resulting from the passage of ESEA. She formed an organization with another mother and political activist to become a research source for information and opposition to the imposition of an all inclusive curricula in the nation's schools, called Family Life Education as well as PPBS, the management by objectives system used to accomplish the acceptance of FLE. During that effort, party activism was abandoned to concentrate on issues before becoming a small business owner with her husband until the 1990's.

In 2001 Mary became an individual plaintiff in association with the Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association in a lawsuit against the Santa Clara County Open Space Authority which ultimately resulted in a favorable unanimous decision by the California State Supreme Court in 2008. Following that court decision she was the class representative for negotiations allowing property owners to receive refunds for the illegal OSA assessment.