Charlotte Iserbyt -- School Choice is America's Trojan Horse, Part 2

SCHOOL CHOICE IS AMERICA’S TROJAN HORSE
PART 2 of 2

By Charlotte Iserbyt
June 12, 2013

NewsWithViews.com

Twenty-nine year public school veteran teacher, Steven Schran. and I attended the press conference of Maine Governor LePage, and Maine Heritage Foundation's clone, Commissioner of Education Bowen, held July 24, 2012 in the State Capitol, to outline the Governor's plan to change our schools from academics to Work Force Training.

Here is the announcement of the press conference we attended:

For Immediate Release:
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Contact: Adrienne Bennett (207) 287-2531

LePage Administration Sets Education Agenda Reform begins with the ABC’s – accountability, best practices, and choice

AUGUSTA

– Following a report released by Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG), Governor Paul LePage and Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen will hold a media conference in the Hall of Flags of the State House on Wednesday, July 25 to discuss Maine’s educational system and the Administration’s plan moving forward. The conference will begin at 2:00 p.m.

The PEPG report, an analysis of growth trends of student performance in math, reading, and science, ranked Maine 40th out of the 41 participating American states. The study examined test scores from one U.S. series of tests and three series of tests administered by international organizations given to fourth and eighth grade students across the country.

In 1992, Maine was ranked 3rd in the nation in overall test scores, but has fallen nine places since then. Maine is currently ranked 12th in overall test scores – the lowest of the participating New England States.

Governor LePage and Commissioner Bowen will present in more detail the findings of the PEPG report at the conference, as well as discuss initiatives to improve Maine’s educational system.

“This report reaffirms what we already know: that the status quo in Maine is not working,” said Governor LePage. “Our educational system has neglected to put its students first, and has therefore failed them. We have a lot of work to do to rejuvenate our academic performance.”

Education is a key priority of the LePage Administration, and it is a critical component to a prosperous economy. Last year, Governor LePage increased funding to general purpose aid for education by $63 million over the two-year budget.

During the 125th Legislature, the Governor led the initiative to allow charter schools in Maine for the first time, giving more choices to Maine families. The Governor also introduced a series of reforms to improve Career and Technical Education in Maine, bringing it back to the forefront of education and Commissioner Stephen Bowen created comprehensive legislation addressing educator effectiveness, making sure Maine’s educators are evaluated regularly, given the training and support they need to improve, and are held accountable for student achievement and growth.

“We have come to a pivotal moment for the future of Maine’s educational system. We have proof that past methods have not been effective. We now have a chance to change our educational system for the better,” said Commissioner Bowen.

For the full findings of the PEPG report, go here. For more information on charter schools and Maine’s current educational initiatives, go here.

The Governor's talk was long on "bad" test scores, need for performance-based teaching to the federal test, and accountability, etc. (Are teachers and children considered nothing but Skinnerian/ Pavlovian slobbering dogs with no soul, conscience or free will?) The speech was short on telling the truth which you are reading in this article. Steve Schran had a great sign hanging around his neck which said "Lies, Lies, and More Lies!" My sign quoted from C.S. Lewis, the famous English writer, "When training beats education, civilization dies." The Governor was really upset when he saw us and mumbled something to effect, "Ha, ha, look at those two freaks." He recognized Steve since he had recently had a meeting with Steve during which he promised not to do any of what he is doing right now. He knows me due to a telephone conversation we had the day before he was inaugurated, during which I warned him, regarding charter schools and their unelected boards! He admitted he would have to do something about the unelected boards. Well, he must have found out you can’t have elected boards with charter schools or you end up back where you were with the traditional public school! So he literally did nothing about the problem and went with charter schools.

I did spout words to the effect, "This plan of yours (Marc Tucker Plan) has been in effect since the 1980s!" He wanted everyone to believe what he is doing is simply in regard to Maine's low test scores!!!!!! Of course, the press conference was limited to questions from the press, so we couldn't speak, although I did mutter those few above-mentioned words which it is unlikely anyone heard. The pathetic press corps is made up of well-meaning young people who don't have a clue. The nightly news carried NOTHING regarding our attendance; i.e. total corporate media control of what Americans are allowed to know about this so-called education reform which is designed to forever change our nation. The average American doesn’t have a clue either. He/she doesn’t have the foggiest idea that their country is being comfortably merged into the communist/socialist New Global Economic Order, and that their children and their teachers are the guinea pigs being used as fodder (drones) to spin off profits for the global elite.

Governor LePage's talk, and that of his Maine Heritage-controlled Commissioner, Steven Bowen, was long on phony statistics out of Harvard (we are supposed to trust Harvard?) which are designed to convince us that Maine’s test scores are bad in comparison to those of southern states. (So we are supposed to emulate what is being done in Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, et al?) These states which have traditionally had the lowest academic test scores, in part due to their children being experimented on with the same Skinnerian Effective Schools/Direct Instruction pigeon-training methods since 1965, are all on board with the school choice agenda and work force training. When our system remained an academically-focused one, these states, which were involved in experimentation for the new system, were considered failing. Now that the focus has officially changed to work force training, and the tests focus on training, not academics, these states are considered succeeding. And we are meant to follow in their footsteps? (These southern states and many inner cities have been since 1965 the pilots for the Outcomes-Based Education Skinnerian method which is now being implemented for the rest of the country in order to change our education from academics to work force training!) Take a look at the headlines of the Knoxville News Sentinel for July 27, 2012!

The Governor's speech was short on telling the truth about how traditional education is being targeted for elimination; about how all this low test score hype is simply the means to get Americans to accept yet another reform, like the 1981 "A Nation at Risk" which came out of my old office, and was a farce. Check out The Sandia Report, commissioned by Admiral James Watkins, Secretary of Energy. This report stated the nation's test scores were nowhere as bad as they were stated to be by the so-called phony Commission on Excellence, whose purpose was nothing other than to move us toward a restructured education. This report was successful in carving in stone the future use of Skinnerian method, known as Mastery Learning/Direct Instruction, something traditional teachers had been opposing since 1965’s ESEA.

We are looking at a repeat of The National Commission on Excellence’s "A Nation at Risk”, 1983, using, for the umpteenth time, the Hegelian Dialectic: Create the problem (the very expensive deliberate dumbing down) over a period of 78 years, get people to scream using partially phony statistics. Then, since the public is so incensed over those so-called dumbing down statistics, get them to accept any solution the “change agents” want.

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When you see President Obama's Secretary of Education. Arne Duncan, who calls for the Skinnerian/Pavlovian method of paying students for good grades, the globalist Council on Foreign Relations, and the neoconservative movement led by the Heritage Foundation, along with other tax-exempt foundations and corporations, all supporting TAX-SUPPORTED SCHOOL CHOICE, you MUST start asking yourselves questions about their ultimate goal.

Americans had better wake up to the fact that education is “The” Trojan Horse. Please, for the sake of our children and our teachers, for the sake of our formerly free nation, put aside all your differences related to conservative and liberal, right and left, Republican and Democrat. Please spread the information in this article to everyone you know, including ministers, businessmen, elected officials, college officials, and public and private school teachers and administrators.

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Click here for part -----> 1,

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.