It's Confirmed! Totalitarian Democracy Alive and Well in Education.

We change the quote at the top of the MEW page from time to time and our current heading reads:

Is this Arne's Duncan plan for public education?

"Totalitarian democracy is a term made famous by Israeli historian J. L. Talmon to refer to a system of government in which lawfully elected representatives maintain the integrity of a nation state whose citizens, while granted the right to vote, have little or no participation in the decision-making process of the government."

We may have been on to something other than common sense understanding of what is happening in public education; we now have a legal opinion confirming what we've been writing and saying in this blog.

Read this from Utah's Republic:

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DOE Transition to Tyranny

October 4th, 2011

I received an interesting email today with a link to this document (PDF: Don Powers Assessment of Federal Education Law). Don Power’s is an attorney who was reviewing federal education laws. He starts off his report with this explanation:

“For this report we were asked to see if the federal government was conducting testing and analysis contrary to the requirements of federal law. We must report that under present legislation in the United States Code Annotated (USCA) the Department of Education (DOEd) can do what it wants relative to testing and analysis and the local schools have no control or input on what the DOEd wishes to accomplish, if the local school is receiving federal funds in any form. There is more explanation within the body of the report.”

What Don discovered was this:

“What we discovered is a transition to a tyrannical form of government. Sections of the USCA that supported local, states’ rights and local control of schools as well as sections that placed restrictions on the Federal DOEd were being repealed all together and in instances replaced by sections that grant more control to the federal level. We also checked other areas of the USCA and found this to be the rule, and not the exception. From the historical records, that we could check with our meager resources, it has apparently been going on since before the1960’s.”

Don lists several specific examples in his report. As I have already posted on this website, the federal government is moving toward the most intrusive data collection practices on our children that have ever been done. You can read it here and speculate as to how your child’s dental records being tracked will produce a student who is better at math.

Please read this post if you are unfamiliar with the problems of the Common Core State Standards.

Original link to Don’s report:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/67396352/Don-Powers-Assessment-of-Fed-Education-Law

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If you link to the scribd document, this should cause you sleepless nights if you are concerned about education and the local control you think your tax dollars should afford citizens. Take the opening paragraph (above):

We must report that under present legislation in the United States Code Annotated (USCA) the Department of Education (DOEd) can do what it wants relative to testing and analysis and the local schools have no control or input on what the DOEd wishes to accomplish, if the local school is receiving federal funds in any form.

to your state legislators when they tell you they love local control and will do anything to retain it. Until states start refusing the mandates and the financial carrots dangled in front of governors' noses (common core, RTTT, Pre-K RTTT), your local school district is being run by private organizations (National Governor's Association and Chief Council of State School Officers) with edicts set forth by the DOE.

All you do is provide tax money to fund this plan and the human capital for this "cradle to grave" agenda. Speaking as a Kirkwood School District resident whose district is contemplating "free" all day kindergarten, this just seems to be more money thrown into a black hole and it creates more federal control and unfunded mandates. Aren't you getting tired of paying for education in which you have no voice?

Use your common sense and understanding of political reality: this is a prime example of the "totalitarian democracy" in which we live.