Make your voice heard.
The U.S. Department of Education has wasted billions trying to impose counterfeit reforms on public education. High stakes, useless testing has demoralized teachers, narrowed the curriculum and left parents on the sidelines. Student achievement has not improved. The DOE can help by changing to a research, resource and advisory organization. As stated in the 10th Amendment, we should leave public education as a state responsibility.
So we created a petition to The United States House of Representatives, The United States Senate and President Barack Obama, which says:
"Change the U.S. Department of Education from a dictator of school policy to that of a research, advisory and resource organization."
Will you sign our petition? Click here to add your name
I have been asked to pass this on by its creator, Lynn Stoddard, a retired educator from Utah who is trying to make education more humane. He is the originator of Educating for Human Greatness. I have signed the petition and support his efforts.
A quick explanation of why I signed. There are few areas in which the Federal government should be imposing upon the states, and it can do so only as a condition of aid unless a civil right is involved. Those conditions of aid should include things like access to real science. One can argue also that it is a civil right not to have someone else's religion shoved down your throat in public school - that would be a clear violation of the No Establishment clause of the First Amendment.
Under Arne Duncan the Department of Education is now moving to impose one narrow - and badly flawed - view of education upon the states and thus the nation. Most of what Duncan is doing has not been blessed by the Congress. What the petition asks could potentially at least start the appropriate discussions.
So I ask you to read it again, consider signing it, even though petitions often do not make that much of a difference, and consider passing it on to others.
Thanks.
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