Club For Growth will be hosting an event in Concord on Tue, August 31, 2021. My advice– SKIP IT. Tell them to go back to Washington D.C. and start advocating for the repeal of the Every Student Succeeds Act. (ESSA) That would actually be helpful to parents. This is a 1061 page federal education law that needs to be repealed.
This series will include an appearance by former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Mike Pompeo, and Congressman Davie McIntosh. This event is described as a National Campaign for Parental School Choice. New Hampshire is doing just fine when it comes to helping families who need alternatives for their children. We have advanced some of the best school choice programs for families who reside in this state.
So it’s important to know that Betsy DeVos tried to push through a federal school choice plan that would have been disastrous for our state programs. We also know that any federal money will be used to control private and parochial schools. NO THANK YOU, Betsy.
Breitbart:
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos unveiled a plan Thursday that would provide $5 billion to federalize school choice by setting up a nationwide federal tax-credit scholarship program……….
Many who have been urging the Trump administration to dismantle the federal education department, however, warn another federalized program will further expand overreach into education. The U.S. Constitution provides for no federal role in education, except in the nation’s capital, in the military, and among Native American tribes.
“While school choice is critical and often undervalued, a federal school choice program reaches beyond the constitutional mandate of the federal government, and presents a real danger to private education in the future,” wrote Inez Feltscher Stepman at the Federalist Thursday. “If it passes, this latest example of federal overreach could be the Trump administration’s equivalent to the Common Core debacle, and worse, could taint one of the most important reforms advanced by conservatives in the states.”
Heritage’s Lindsey Burke said federal intervention could lead to the “homogenization of school supply.”
She noted that many states are already thinking about how to extend school choice by offering 529-type K-12 education savings accounts. Big footing these efforts with a federal voucher or tax credit, she said, “do we sort of snuff out what is, in my opinion, a more innovative option?”
Neal McCluskey of the Cato Institute agreed, adding that a federal voucher or tax credit “can essentially push out of the way programs that have been created by states … and that kills what Justice (Louis) Brandeis called ‘laboratories of democracy.’ We want to have states trying different ways of trying to deliver education and school choice, so we can see what works well, what works well for specific populations.”
DeVos should have been busy garnering support to repeal ESSA, and/or dismantling the U.S. Department of Education during her tenure. The U.S. Department of Education has been responsible for the demise in public education, as we all know.
Federal Grants poured into states and local schools for mental health services, which is another big problem.
The proposed project, Seminole Tribe of Florida (STOF) AWARE-SEA (SM-19-003, CFDA 93.243), will develop and implement school-based programs to enhance the identification, prevention, and treatment of emotional and behavioral disorders among STOF school-aged youth who attend the Lead Education Agencies (LEAs). To attain this, tribal members will be provided with counseling, training, and community outreach efforts that are considered Evidence-Based Practices (EBP) to identify and address the warning signs of mental health and substance abuse disorders. Prevention programs will train educators and other youth-serving adults to detect and respond to mental health issues, improve school climate, increase parental and familial awareness of mental health, and expand existing mental health and behavioral services and supports for school-aged youth.
SAMSHA grants have been awarded to New Hampshire for the treatment of mental health for students attending public schools. While this may seem like a noble cause, your school teachers and counselors are not educated to provide mental health services to your children.
Turning the local public school into a mental health clinic diverts the important task of educating children in the core academic subjects. Mental health assessments, treatment, and any other services need to be handled by Ph.D. level Child Psychologists who are licensed and follow the APA Code of Ethics. The APA Code of Ethics protects parental rights by requiring informed consent when assessing your child’s mental health. A trained teacher or counselor is not qualified, and they do not follow the strict code of ethics our licensed professionals must follow.
These federal grants ushered in Social and Emotional Learning. SEL is another education fad that is now prominent in many of our local public schools. It sounds great, but in reality, there are problems with SEL.
SEL goes beyond emotional support by teachers, it includes data-mining mental health information on your children. Look out especially for SEL competencies. Any form of SEL assessment of mental health needs to be approved by parents and guardians. Federal law:
How many parents are approving of the assessment or treatment of SEL in their schools? Most likely none. That’s because school administrators deny that SEL is assessing or treating a child’s mental health. Yet here is an assessment used in many New Hampshire Schools that is also used by Child Psychologists in their private practice to assess a child’s mental health. DESSA also confirmed to me that it’s an assessment of a child’s mental health.
One Professor of Child Psychology confirmed that he used the DESSA, and he was required to obtain informed consent by parents. So why are school administrators not doing the same? Because as one parent said, they are out of their lane. Their specialty is not mental health services. Most parents are not aware of any of this, but if they were, some might choose to file a complaint with the New Hampshire Department of Education for the violation of federal law or file a civil lawsuit.
School district administrators took the federal money, implemented SEL, ignored federal laws that require informed consent from parents, and also use SEL to push the critical race theory narrative in our schools as reported by parents:
The feds have created many of the problems we have to deal with in our local schools. Why would we look to them for any kind of solution?
Prior to accepting the position of U.S. Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos was a supporter of Common Core in Michigan. While she denied her support for the failed standards, the grassroots parents reported something else:
“Parents, educators, and grassroots activists across the state of Michigan know exactly who DeVos is and her position on Common Core,” Karen Braun tells Breitbart News the day after DeVos joined Trump in Grand Rapids at a “Thank You” tour stop in her state.
“We’re not fooled by a single, carefully parsed statement on a webpage that she is ‘not a supporter – period,’” she says. “We know the truth. We experienced it first hand. So have many Michigan lawmakers; but for some reason they continue to stay silent and give DeVos a complete pass. Loyalty to DeVos trumps loyalty to the truth, apparently.”
Finally, Trump vs Club for Growth:
Donald Trump repeatedly has accused Club for Growth of airing attack ads against him because he refused to give the conservative group a $1 million donation – or what Trump calls “a form of extortion.”
Is this really an organization that can help students in New Hampshire? School choice is important to parents but so are their public schools. Administrators may be contributing to their demise, but parents are looking for champions to help them fight for better quality schools for their children. They are not looking for organizations or bureaucrats who have contributed to their demise.
Many of us are working in New Hampshire on academic excellence in public schools, and choice for parents who need alternatives. We work to support state and local solutions that offer alternatives for parents who need it.
When Club for Growth comes to a state with national figures and ignores the advocates and activists on the ground, then they are ignoring the people who’ve been working for your children.
Go back to Washington D.C. and start looking at ways to dismantle the laws and grants that are hurting our teachers, children and public schools otherwise you are part of the problem, not the solution.