Anti Fed Ed Warriors, would you wait 4 or 5 years to enact your household budget or a family emergency plan? No! You’d make sure once you set a budget you’d immediately begin going by it.
Not so with our federal government’s involvement with education. Nope, ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act) was passed in Dec. 2015, we’re not far from its 5th anniversary. As federal laws go, especially for education, ESSA’s set to be re-authorized and funding extended in 2020.
One huge bone of contention about ESSA was the phrase ‘supplement not supplant’. (This was also in ESEA, Elementary and Secondary Education Act. ESSA is the re-authorized version of ESEA.)
Supplement Vs Supplant:
Why do I bring this up, Warriors?
Because Sec. DeVos has recently completed a new non-regulatory ‘Supplement, not Supplant’ guidebook for SEAs and LEAs (State Education Agencies, usually your State Dept. of Education) and Local Education Agencies).
The bottom line: While the document is supposedly a guideline, the language in ESSA is more of a mandate. Where will we most likely see ‘supplements’ in education? Title One funding, my Warrior friends. Title One, as we know, via ESSA, was made over to cover EVERY student, not those in the most need, as Title One was originally to cover. Title One funds, via ESSA, are to be used to label and categorize mental and behavioral health of EVERY student in the community, not simply the public school system.
Warriors, this new guidebook is the result of the federal government wanting to appear ‘flexible’ to each State. We’ve seen the ‘flexibility’ of the federally run education. There isn’t any. Especially when you consider that Page 17 of ESSA clearly states how ALL education is to be:
Supposedly, the public was allowed time to give their feedback about how federally led education was to help supplement local education, not supplant it. Yet, when you look at the guidelines (which coach SEAs and LEAs on HOW to use federal funds in ADDITION to Title One), you don’t see the public’s desire to END federal control of education, you see the CCSS Machine’s grasp tighten the funding streams, just a wee bit more.
Two questions: How does this type of ‘guidance’ even begin to appear like local control in education? How does this further illustrate our example of sticking to a family budget instead of waiting 5 years to enact it?
Two answers: Guidance, via our federal government, is a dressed up mandate to conform. In education, conformity equals the ‘privilege’ of receiving federal funds.
As far as our example, with 5 years between making plans and enacting them, doesn’t do anything to achieve your goals. It’s a moot point. You’d have been better off to not make a budget if you won’t work to make it happen.
If any State TRULY wanted to be free of the federal intrusion in education at ALL age levels for ALL choices, the answer is a plain as day: DON’T take the money! It violates our Tenth Amendment!!
When you read the Supplement Not Supplant Guidelines, look at the language..’May a State do x,y, and z’? If the States weren’t addicted to the federal funds, no State leader would EVER need to ask the government, “Mother, May I?!”
Higher Education’s Accrediting Updates:
As if we’ve not been insulted enough by the DeVos leadership, we also have the President’s EO (Executive Order from 2017) about reforming accrediting bodies when it comes to higher education. DeVos, at her ‘boss’s’ beck and call, has also updated (aka: reformed) higher education. Warriors, again, it’s taken 2 years for this ‘reform’ to hit the States. The U.S. Dept. of Education’s Press Release was even more insulting. DeVos has been ‘rethinking’ higher education reform.
Really, this woman with ZERO educational background?
To access the 28 Page document full of DeVos’s ‘thoughts’, go here. Below is a screen shot of the front page with added emphasis.
While I do recognize we need to rein in predatory accrediting and higher education schools, it should be a locally led charge, not a federally run dictated system.
This Accrediting document even has the same “States must report to the federal government”, as we’ve seen in ESSA. Let’s also take into account that EOs bypass Congress, therefore, bypassing “We the People”. With education, NO federal official, President Trump included, should have power to interfere.
With the HEA (Higher Education Act) currently under re-writing for re-authorization, we know more mandates and compliance will be forced upon the States.
Below, is a graphic image I made back when DeVos had just been confirmed as Secretary of Education. As you’ll see, Dr. King was still around. I left his name so Warriors could see the status quo in the CCSS Machine would live on.
Closing:
Warriors, we MUST Repeal ESSA, HEA, and even, WIOA as soon as possible. If we don’t more DeVos (or whomever’s appointed to take federal education to the next level) reforms will be visited upon us. (*Note: ESSA: Every Student Succeeds Act; HEA: Higher Education Act); WIOA (Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act))
Do you think our budgets can withstand this type of tyranny? I don’t!
*Two personal notes:
a) While I will continue to do my best to keep you up to date on the overreaches of the CCSS Machine, I also am having to divide my time between education and a recent nasty turn of events concerning my neighborhood. Homes on my block are being targeted to be impacted by a road widening project involving a P3 (public private partnership) contract. We are facing a long and uphill battle to save our homes. As America marches more toward the UN’s (United Nations) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we’ll ALL see this happen more and more.
b) Breaking News Journal has honored me with taking all my Common Core Diva visual content and placing in on their Roku channel. BNJ is a Christian based national network and survives on view funding (much like PBS without the agenda). If you’d like to donate to BJN, go here. BJN is also on Facebook. BJN has also partnered with Bears and Lord Network. B & L has a phone app where you can find out the latest anti Fed Ed News, too! B & L has graciously added my content (from Twitter) there. To access the app, go here.
If you’d like to support my work (past, present, future), you can go directly to my new PayPal account.
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