Charlotte Iserbyt -- Miracles Still Happen!

MIRACLES STILL HAPPEN!

By Charlotte Iserbyt

April 9, 2005

NewsWithViews.com

Sit down, folks! What you are going to hear is going to astound you. At least it did me. This is the only really good news we have ever had regarding the protection of parental and pupil rights. This new information will strike at the heart of many destructive values- changing federal education programs, but especially at the heart of President Bush's plans to require mandatory mental health screening of our children in the government schools. (New Freedom Commission on Mental Health).

Yesterday, I did an Internet search on "protection of human subjects from government programs related to mental/psychological/psychiatric/physical experimentation, etc., etc.". My hope was to find an old law covering this subject which would be broad enough to encompass the mental health screening of our children called for under President Bush's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. I had been informed by persons and organizations involved in opposing the President's Mental Health Initiative that the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment would not protect our children due to the fact it covered only programs funded by the U.S. Department of Education, and that the mental health screening programs to be implemented in the public schools under the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health were funded by the Department of Health and Human Services, and therefore not covered by the Amendment.

After having pulled up many pages on the "protection of human subjects" issue I became frustrated by the Internet's ability to provide endless amounts of research information. It was then that the hand of God landed on my shoulder with an important and very clear message:

Charlotte: Why don't you go back to your old subject, the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, more commonly known as the Hatch/Grassley Amendment, and take a look at information on its Internet pages. I felt very comfortable following the Good Lord's simple suggestion, and typed into Google "Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment" and lo and behold...the most incredible article entitled "Pupil Rights Law Allows Parents to Opt Students Out of Surveys" appeared. [Link]

The article was published by Health and Health Care in Schools Report which is supported by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Making the Grade, School of Public Health and Health Services, The George Washington University Medical Center, #505, 1350 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.

Paragraph 2 of that article says:

"As the result of recent amendments to PPRA in the No Child Left Behind education law (Public Law 107-110, signed January 8, 2002), parents have additional rights to examine materials with regard to the surveying of minor students, even when the surveys are not Education Department-funded, and to opt their children out of surveys and certain non-emergency medical examinations."

I was so surprised when I read the above paragraph that I re-read it several times. The amendment's wording is very clear, and the additional rights are what we parents have been insisting on for many, many years, to no avail, until now.

The reader of this article is urged to relay this extremely important information to his/her elected officials at the local/state level, in Congress and to the leadership of pro-family organizations with the request that they follow up on this subject and obtain whatever regulations exist for the carrying out of the intent of the amendment. If regulations have not yet been written, we must demand that they be written and promulgated immediately, as was done in 1984 when we forced the U.S. Department of Education, after a delay of seven years, to hold ten regional hearings to take testimony from parents and teachers regarding the need for and promulgation of regulations. Do not forget that the amendment is absolutely useless without regulations. (I had been involved in the drafting/ wording of the regulations when working in the Department of Education from 1981-1982.) For those who are unfamiliar with the the Hatch Amendment saga, contact Eagle Forum (www.eagleforum.org) and buy "Child Abuse in the Classroom" which contains the incredible parent/teacher testimony presented at the regional hearings and/or go to my website (www.deliberatedumbingdown.com) and buy my book "the deliberate dumbing down of america...A Chronological Paper Trail" and Dr. Dennis Cuddy's excellent booklet "National Mental Health Program...Creating Standards for the New World Order".

Once the amendment has good regulations the word must go out across the country to parents, teachers, state departments of education, school boards, and local school superintendents informing them that mental health screening, regardless of the funding source, cannot legally take place without written, informed parental consent. Do not allow U.S. Department of Education or congressional aides/bureaucrats to tinker with this amendment in any way. I have contacted the U.S. Department of Education regarding whatever regulations they may have developed. They are already stonewalling in that they say there is no such amendment, requesting more information from me, which I have submitted. Dr. Dennis Cuddy, who has written extensively on this subject of mental health screening, has received a copy of the amendment from Congressman Tiahrt's office and the wording is as spelled out in the article from which I quoted.

A great big thank you is due Congressman Todd Tiahrt, KS, for his role in getting this amendment to the PPRA, in the No Child Left Behind Law, passed in 2002. Finally parents and children in the public schools can look at a member of Congress and say thank you, thank you, for actually having done something most significant to protect our children from mental and psychological abuse in the public schools.

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Charlotte Iserbyt is the consummate whistleblower! Iserbyt served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first Reagan Administration, where she first blew the whistle on a major technology initiative which would control curriculum in America's classrooms. Iserbyt is a former school board director in Camden, Maine and was co-founder and research analyst of Guardians of Education for Maine (GEM) from 1978 to 2000. She has also served in the American Red Cross on Guam and Japan during the Korean War, and in the United States Foreign Service in Belgium and in the Republic of South Africa.

Iserbyt is a speaker and writer, best known for her 1985 booklet Back to Basics Reform or OBE: Skinnerian International Curriculum and her 1989 pamphlet Soviets in the Classroom: America's Latest Education Fad which covered the details of the U.S.-Soviet and Carnegie-Soviet Education Agreements which remain in effect to this day. She is a freelance writer and has had articles published in Human Events, The Washington Times, The Bangor Daily News, and included in the record of Congressional hearings. Website: www.deliberatedumbingdown.com E-Mail: dumbdown@blazenetme.net

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Finally parents and children in the public schools can look at a member of Congress and say thank you, thank you, for actually having done something most significant to protect our children