Charlotte Iserbyt -- The True Goal of School Choice

THE DESTRUCTION OF TRUE SCHOOL CHOICE

By Charlotte Iserbyt
January 14, 2013

NewsWithViews.com

The definition of real, "authentic" school choice (whereby parents pay for and make ALL decisions regarding what they want for their children's education) can be found ONLY in private schools (religious, secular, or home school) which DO NOT ACCEPT ONE PENNY OF TAX MONEY OR TAX-SUPPORTED PROGRAM FROM THE FEDERAL, STATE, OR LOCAL GOVERNMENT.

The "non-authentic" school choice agenda, being promoted by Governor LePage and his Education Commissioner Bowen, which includes work force training and school choice: tuition tax credits, vouchers, and charter schools with their unelected school councils (taxation without representation) is also promoted by the following unsavory alliance of leftist, neoconservative right, and globalist entities: President Obama and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the neoconservative Heritage Foundation (which has affiliates in all states, including Maine), and the Rockefeller-controlled globalist Council on Foreign Relations. (Note: the Washington, D.C. based Heritage Foundation drafted the North American Free Trade Agreement which has resulted in thousands of American jobs going overseas and high unemployment here in the USA).

All three entities obviously have much to gain from passage of "non-authentic" school choice and work force training legislation, both of which are necessary in order to spin off profits for the global planned economy.

They also have much to gain by the inevitable demise of privately funded academic education (private schools' inability to survive/ compete with tax-funded education). Their planned global economy requires that every single human being on this planet be included in the global computerized labor statistics tracking system.

This plan was called for in 1934 by the Carnegie Corporation in a little book entitled "Conclusions and Recommendations for the Social Studies". The recommendation in 1934 was to use the schools to change America from a free market system to a "planned global economy."

No part of this phony "non-authentic" school choice agenda will give parents "true" choice since the agenda is taxpayer and foundation/corporation funded and controlled. Tax-supported programs require that the recipient of the money adhere to government regulations related to staffing, curriculum, testing, etc. If they don't, funding is cut.

In 1981 the American Legislative Education Council, [which in 2012 was involved in drafting and pushing school choice legislation in all states] mailed to 16,000 state and federal officials and legislators a suggested educational voucher. Thomas A. Shannon, Executive Director of the National School Boards Association, said,

"Tuition Tax credits for private schools profoundly change the character of private education. Private schools that operate with public money will be subject to public regulations."

You can be sure that Shannon would be even more emphatic regarding charter schools which are a special kind of "public" school. Their specialness lies in their having no elected school board, thus denying those who fund them (you, parents and taxpayers) any say in how they are run. Such denial of a say in taxpayer-funded government operations used to be referred to as "taxation without representation". The United States fought and won the Revolutionary War against Great Britain to obtain that important right for our citizens.

This writer understands the parents' frustration over our "deliberately" dumbed down schools and parents desire to "do anything" (even take poison? (work force training, not being allowed to vote) to get a better education for their children. In doing so (accepting "non-authentic" choice proposals) they are opening up a can of worms, walking straight into the lion's den, where their children's education has been, for many years, carefully planned for them by the globalist entities mentioned above. Acceptance of this alternative form of public education, with no elected boards, will deny them any say in their children's education!!!!!

This is happening in every state of the union. It is the goal for total destruction of our children and future generations.

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This writer doubts that Maine parents, if they understood the "real" "non-authentic" school choice agenda, would be willing to sacrifice traditional academic education, run by elected boards, with its emphasis on reading, math, history, literature, music, art, science, etc, in order to have their children "trained" not educated. As C.S. Lewis, the noted English writer said: "When education is beaten by training, civilization dies."

An updated, abridged version of “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America” can be purchased from NewsWithViews on their online store front.

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.