As a parent who made the sacrifice and pulled my kids from public school, we arrived at a private catholic school to find the situation worse. Why? Because private schools are accepting fed funding and state accreditation, so they have to comply with the SEL requirements, etc. parents - be vigilant! Know what you are up against. Then will sell you school choice and you will do a victory lap while the door to the hen house is wide open. I know how desperate you are for even the smallest win, but school choice is a wolf identifying as a sheep.
These battles have to be fought. Maybe it's hopeless, any government involvement in education will corrupt it totally. If so, our problems are much bigger than education. But then why are we even having a public policy discussion? In theory at least, government should be accountable to the people, and so government-regulated education should be accountable to what parents and communities want it to look like.
It’s heartening to see some people from a political persuasion that traditional has supported so-called school choice starting to wake up to what a Trojan Horse it really is, but latching onto far-fetched conspiracy theories to try to understand it isn’t helpful, that’s what got us in this mess to begin with. Lisa Logan is attempting to divert attention from the genuine home-grown motives of the American school choice movement towards a fantastical narrative of a nefarious UN by cherrypicking sentence fragments not just out of context of the sources, but out of context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). I work in the sustainability field, know the SDGs intimately and she’s dead wrong.
Lisa Logan refers to a background paper titled “Regulating Public-Private Partnership, governing non-state schools: an equity perspective” which she presents as proof of the UN using SDG 4 “to get children all over the world to think in a very specific, “hive-mind” way.” She is being incredibly dishonest when she asserts that the authors are ‘lay(ing) out how public money funding private schools through school choice can be utilized ‘as the main policy option to tackle education inequalities resulting from private actors’ involvement in the provision of education.’” The full quote she cherrypicks from says “public regulation has recently emerged as the main policy option to tackle education inequalities, resulting from private actors’ involvement in the provision of education.” Logan is completely misrepresenting what the authors are talking about. The authors aren’t saying anything about public funding going to create or fund private schools, the authors are saying that regulation is currently being used to address problems created when private actors get involved in public education. Contrary to what Logan claims, the authors aren’t advocating a policy option, they are simply acknowledging the status quo.
The paper actually says the opposite of what Logan is trying to claim, instead of pushing for school choice, the paper warns of potential problems with involving private schools in the broad provision of education in a country, to whit: “Although the report considers that the involvement of private actors in the provision of education has some virtues [….], it also highlights the possible opportunistic behaviors of private providers in terms of student selection or information biases, as well as the underlying equity concerns.” And this is where it is critical to have some background understanding of what the SDGs are and why they were created. The SDGs were created for developing countries, the so-called “Third World.” The UN was recognizing the fundamental unfairness of industrialized countries, like the US, looking at the environmental problems we had created on our way to a high national standard of living, and saying “this place is a mess, everyone has to stop polluting” while the rest of the world is still way below our standard of living. The Sustainable Development Goals were created as a way for developing countries to develop a high standard of living for all their citizens in a sustainable way. If you look at all the other background papers in the collection that the paper Logan misquotes came from, they are all talking about poor countries in places like Sub-Saharan Africa, like the Cote d’Ivoire. Many countries like these lack broadly available public school infrastructure, and public-private partnerships are created to fill that need. However, for cultural reasons, private actors in these countries may only offer education to boys, or only to members of certain ethnic groups. The paper Logan misquotes is talking about how to fix these kinds of problems in these countries. SDG 4 really has nothing to do with industrialized countries like the US with well-established universally available public education.
So UNESCO is not the source of the School Choice movement in the United States, but Logan inadvertently reveals clues to the real source. Logan sets her sights on Social-Emotional Learning, claiming it is “Marxist” and equating it with “CRT” – two very well-debunked allegations. It was actually the American School Choice movement that manufactured the hysteria over “CRT”, SEL, and gender. “School choice” and voucher programs have always been a Trojan horse extremists have been constructing with the intent to siphon funding from public education to force it to collapse. Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo, the architect of the strategy of elevating critical race theory from an obscure graduate-level academic theory into a major conservative talking point, said in 2022 “To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust.” The strategy has always been to sow distrust of public schools by manufacturing outrage over lies about schools “failing” and “indoctrinating” students. Once enough people bought this Big Lie to be amenable to voucher programs, the decreased funding would make the “failing” part a self-fulfilling prophesy. Once public schools were truly failing anyone who could afford to put their children in private schools or homeschooling would have no choice but to do so, and public education would diminish in significance in American society.
LOL that you capitalized "Big Lie." All of the evidence I've put forth in its entirety on this Substack proves that Social Emotional Learning is, in fact, being used as a tool for the United Nations to push its Sustainable Development Goal agenda, particularly SDG4.
There is additional evidence on my Twitter account. Listen to the video in this tweet thread at the 35 second mark. You will hear the UNESCO MGIEP Director say that the SDGs are not just for developing countries, but for every country (unlike the UN's prior Millennium Development Goals) https://twitter.com/iamlisalogan/status/1540045379973947392?s=20
If you "work in the sustainability field," you would know that.
It contains actual video of them saying that they are trying to create a "single system" of education, creating common standards and monitoring processes for ALL providers and a tweet that contains an article about their #RightTheRules campaign with this quote: "Our role is to make sure that we design our governance & regulations in a way that ensures that all these actors pull in the same direction. This means strong oversight on the core values we committed to as part of the 2030 Agenda."
In Alabama, there's a push to get a 'school choice' bill passed in this state. A group of us have begun aggressively opposing the measure. This article is excellent, and much appreciated. Having been 'in the battle' for freedom for many years, I've come to assume that whenever some new draconian measure comes to the forefront, to go search UN documents so see what they've written on the subject. Without fail the pattern has been the same that these things are planned and coordinated well in advance and yet people at the local level never even understand they're pushing the globalist agenda.
I've been studying the destruction of our government and our country for over 20 years. I started with the education system because I read a letter that was placed into the congressional record that was a conceptual design for a completely un-American system that was cradle-to-grave human resource management. Are they trying to privatize the schools? Yes. Back when I was looking at the education system, we were spending about $7 trillion a year on K-12. Fast forward to today, how much are we spending on the schools? Are the schools still a target for takeover? No question about it.
I captured a lot of documentation on the UN agenda and the schools (links to original source). I was stunned to find out that the UN agenda was being incorporated into our schools. I have two websites of research documentation. (I was a computer systems analyst). If I can be of assistance to you in any way, please don't hesitate to contact me. My newest website is thetechnocratictyranny Most of my education research is on my old website. Its not well organized but there is a lot of it.
So, what's the alternative battle plan? It's one thing to recognize the danger of School Choice, but trying to fix public school looks hopeless. We can say "pay for it yourself" but far too many families can't (or won't) do that, leaving evermore children indoctrinated and messed up with each passing year.
Lisa, what do you recommend? I agree that you’re being realistic, but I’m interested in solutions that avoid this trap. I don’t want my kid in any educational construct that favors government control. Is there model legislation that explicitly keeps the government out? Is someone working on solutions?
What we need to do is get federal money out and restore hyper local control to public education. That would require repealing laws like ESSA (or having states outright reject it), restoring FERPA so that third party BigTech/BigData vendors aren't able to have access to our children's information, changing state constitutions so that parents have plenary power over education, not the state DOE, etc.
None of this will "easy" or convenient but will be the long term solution that will restore our freedom of choice, not further entrench government control so we have none. These are all just a starting point to dismantling the DOE, which has a lot of other departments (like HHS) wrapped up in it that would also have to be teased out before that's possible. Lynne Taylor/Common Core Diva has a lot of good information on this. I don't know if anyone has cooked up any model legislation on this yet. I have been doing all I can to reach legislators to warn them as well as encourage them to seek these other paths. I don't have the money or backing that the school choice lobbyists have.
This is defeatist. I live in Arizona. I homeschool two kids. I'll take the money now, thank you very much, and tell government to go pound sand if they attach stipulation one to it. Just like I already have with for two years with Venture Upward funds. And about 75 percent of homeschool families I know will do exactly the same.
It's very weird that Logan keeps pushing this notion that it's either keep funding gender grooming globalist teachers or absolutely have the government ductating edication in your home. That's baloney. I'm glad for the warning about backdoor plans. But I'm doubtful of the "guaranteee" that taking money now means it's all over. I'll take the money and keep fighting. Thanks.
I'm not a defeatist; I'm a realist. I'm sure all those charter schools who ended up under the thumb of the public education system believed the same thing. The truth is: What the government funds, it will run. They'll wait until a majority of states have passed these bills and maybe even hold off for a few years on regulations so that everyone feels comfortable. Then watch what happens. You can take the money now to benefit your two kids, but is it worth sacrificing educational freedom for your children's children?
How are my kids educational freedom being sacrificed? Do tell.
How would it be in the future? Don't want strings. Don't take the money. Easy peasy.
My kids came out of charter schools in AZ during kung flu, and we kept them home. But there were no government strings on our charter school.
And the Arizona Republic just complained in an article four years ago that charters have such little state control or regulation.
It's really weird to me that your bottom line keeps coming back to ensuring that failing, grooming public schools don't lose any funding. I've never seen a strategist discover an opponent's game plan and just throw up his hands and hysterically scream, "We must stop! They have a counterplan!"
You make a huge leap between revealing their plans and then pretending that a takeover by low-life liberal pedo educators is a fait accompli.
Democrat groomers in Arizona have been pushing to get their kiddie sniffing noses in charters and homeschools for a quarter century, so far unsuccessfully. So you'll pardon me if I don't set my hair on fire at learning they're still up to no good and still trying to diddle kids. I'll take my money (MY money) now and continue fighting, while concurrently removing funds from child-grooming, communist brainwashing racist perverts.
Again, it's pretty weird how your bottom line keeps coming back to leaving public school funding intact. 🤔
I have no incentive for revealing the truth about who is behind this. I fundamentally care about protecting our children from the social credit system that school choice funding bills accelerate us towards. In order for it to work, there has be a monopoly on the education system. Precedent tells me it is unwise to bank on the capacity of the people or elected officials to keep government intrusion out. COVID is a prime example of this.
On the other hand, the people obfuscating the truth about the regulatory measures that come through public accountability have a very clear financial incentive. So do their funders who are waiting to implement their "solutions" to support the changes in the education market. I'm not saying we leave the failing public school funding intact. What we need to do is get federal money out and restore hyper local control to public education. That would require repealing laws like ESSA, restoring FERPA so that third party BigTech/BigData vendors aren't able to have access to our children's information, changing state constitutions so that parents have plenary power over education, not the state DOE, etc. etc. I'm willing to have those conversations. Are you?
My point is, there are other pathways to restoring local control, though not as quick and easy as taking government assistance (let's be real: it fails to be your money when the government "allows" you to use it). They'll simply make all education options through government regulation look exactly like the indoctrination camps of public education. Then there will be no bastians of educational freedom left.
As a parent who made the sacrifice and pulled my kids from public school, we arrived at a private catholic school to find the situation worse. Why? Because private schools are accepting fed funding and state accreditation, so they have to comply with the SEL requirements, etc. parents - be vigilant! Know what you are up against. Then will sell you school choice and you will do a victory lap while the door to the hen house is wide open. I know how desperate you are for even the smallest win, but school choice is a wolf identifying as a sheep.
These battles have to be fought. Maybe it's hopeless, any government involvement in education will corrupt it totally. If so, our problems are much bigger than education. But then why are we even having a public policy discussion? In theory at least, government should be accountable to the people, and so government-regulated education should be accountable to what parents and communities want it to look like.
It’s heartening to see some people from a political persuasion that traditional has supported so-called school choice starting to wake up to what a Trojan Horse it really is, but latching onto far-fetched conspiracy theories to try to understand it isn’t helpful, that’s what got us in this mess to begin with. Lisa Logan is attempting to divert attention from the genuine home-grown motives of the American school choice movement towards a fantastical narrative of a nefarious UN by cherrypicking sentence fragments not just out of context of the sources, but out of context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). I work in the sustainability field, know the SDGs intimately and she’s dead wrong.
Lisa Logan refers to a background paper titled “Regulating Public-Private Partnership, governing non-state schools: an equity perspective” which she presents as proof of the UN using SDG 4 “to get children all over the world to think in a very specific, “hive-mind” way.” She is being incredibly dishonest when she asserts that the authors are ‘lay(ing) out how public money funding private schools through school choice can be utilized ‘as the main policy option to tackle education inequalities resulting from private actors’ involvement in the provision of education.’” The full quote she cherrypicks from says “public regulation has recently emerged as the main policy option to tackle education inequalities, resulting from private actors’ involvement in the provision of education.” Logan is completely misrepresenting what the authors are talking about. The authors aren’t saying anything about public funding going to create or fund private schools, the authors are saying that regulation is currently being used to address problems created when private actors get involved in public education. Contrary to what Logan claims, the authors aren’t advocating a policy option, they are simply acknowledging the status quo.
The paper actually says the opposite of what Logan is trying to claim, instead of pushing for school choice, the paper warns of potential problems with involving private schools in the broad provision of education in a country, to whit: “Although the report considers that the involvement of private actors in the provision of education has some virtues [….], it also highlights the possible opportunistic behaviors of private providers in terms of student selection or information biases, as well as the underlying equity concerns.” And this is where it is critical to have some background understanding of what the SDGs are and why they were created. The SDGs were created for developing countries, the so-called “Third World.” The UN was recognizing the fundamental unfairness of industrialized countries, like the US, looking at the environmental problems we had created on our way to a high national standard of living, and saying “this place is a mess, everyone has to stop polluting” while the rest of the world is still way below our standard of living. The Sustainable Development Goals were created as a way for developing countries to develop a high standard of living for all their citizens in a sustainable way. If you look at all the other background papers in the collection that the paper Logan misquotes came from, they are all talking about poor countries in places like Sub-Saharan Africa, like the Cote d’Ivoire. Many countries like these lack broadly available public school infrastructure, and public-private partnerships are created to fill that need. However, for cultural reasons, private actors in these countries may only offer education to boys, or only to members of certain ethnic groups. The paper Logan misquotes is talking about how to fix these kinds of problems in these countries. SDG 4 really has nothing to do with industrialized countries like the US with well-established universally available public education.
So UNESCO is not the source of the School Choice movement in the United States, but Logan inadvertently reveals clues to the real source. Logan sets her sights on Social-Emotional Learning, claiming it is “Marxist” and equating it with “CRT” – two very well-debunked allegations. It was actually the American School Choice movement that manufactured the hysteria over “CRT”, SEL, and gender. “School choice” and voucher programs have always been a Trojan horse extremists have been constructing with the intent to siphon funding from public education to force it to collapse. Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo, the architect of the strategy of elevating critical race theory from an obscure graduate-level academic theory into a major conservative talking point, said in 2022 “To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust.” The strategy has always been to sow distrust of public schools by manufacturing outrage over lies about schools “failing” and “indoctrinating” students. Once enough people bought this Big Lie to be amenable to voucher programs, the decreased funding would make the “failing” part a self-fulfilling prophesy. Once public schools were truly failing anyone who could afford to put their children in private schools or homeschooling would have no choice but to do so, and public education would diminish in significance in American society.
LOL that you capitalized "Big Lie." All of the evidence I've put forth in its entirety on this Substack proves that Social Emotional Learning is, in fact, being used as a tool for the United Nations to push its Sustainable Development Goal agenda, particularly SDG4.
There is additional evidence on my Twitter account. Listen to the video in this tweet thread at the 35 second mark. You will hear the UNESCO MGIEP Director say that the SDGs are not just for developing countries, but for every country (unlike the UN's prior Millennium Development Goals) https://twitter.com/iamlisalogan/status/1540045379973947392?s=20
If you "work in the sustainability field," you would know that.
So every point you make after that is moot.
Also see this tweet thread: https://twitter.com/iamlisalogan/status/1593375028623511553?s=20
It contains actual video of them saying that they are trying to create a "single system" of education, creating common standards and monitoring processes for ALL providers and a tweet that contains an article about their #RightTheRules campaign with this quote: "Our role is to make sure that we design our governance & regulations in a way that ensures that all these actors pull in the same direction. This means strong oversight on the core values we committed to as part of the 2030 Agenda."
Nice try, though.
In Alabama, there's a push to get a 'school choice' bill passed in this state. A group of us have begun aggressively opposing the measure. This article is excellent, and much appreciated. Having been 'in the battle' for freedom for many years, I've come to assume that whenever some new draconian measure comes to the forefront, to go search UN documents so see what they've written on the subject. Without fail the pattern has been the same that these things are planned and coordinated well in advance and yet people at the local level never even understand they're pushing the globalist agenda.
I've been studying the destruction of our government and our country for over 20 years. I started with the education system because I read a letter that was placed into the congressional record that was a conceptual design for a completely un-American system that was cradle-to-grave human resource management. Are they trying to privatize the schools? Yes. Back when I was looking at the education system, we were spending about $7 trillion a year on K-12. Fast forward to today, how much are we spending on the schools? Are the schools still a target for takeover? No question about it.
I captured a lot of documentation on the UN agenda and the schools (links to original source). I was stunned to find out that the UN agenda was being incorporated into our schools. I have two websites of research documentation. (I was a computer systems analyst). If I can be of assistance to you in any way, please don't hesitate to contact me. My newest website is thetechnocratictyranny Most of my education research is on my old website. Its not well organized but there is a lot of it.
So, what's the alternative battle plan? It's one thing to recognize the danger of School Choice, but trying to fix public school looks hopeless. We can say "pay for it yourself" but far too many families can't (or won't) do that, leaving evermore children indoctrinated and messed up with each passing year.
Lisa, what do you recommend? I agree that you’re being realistic, but I’m interested in solutions that avoid this trap. I don’t want my kid in any educational construct that favors government control. Is there model legislation that explicitly keeps the government out? Is someone working on solutions?
Thank you, Shiela.
Copied from my comment to Walk On Walter:
What we need to do is get federal money out and restore hyper local control to public education. That would require repealing laws like ESSA (or having states outright reject it), restoring FERPA so that third party BigTech/BigData vendors aren't able to have access to our children's information, changing state constitutions so that parents have plenary power over education, not the state DOE, etc.
None of this will "easy" or convenient but will be the long term solution that will restore our freedom of choice, not further entrench government control so we have none. These are all just a starting point to dismantling the DOE, which has a lot of other departments (like HHS) wrapped up in it that would also have to be teased out before that's possible. Lynne Taylor/Common Core Diva has a lot of good information on this. I don't know if anyone has cooked up any model legislation on this yet. I have been doing all I can to reach legislators to warn them as well as encourage them to seek these other paths. I don't have the money or backing that the school choice lobbyists have.
This is defeatist. I live in Arizona. I homeschool two kids. I'll take the money now, thank you very much, and tell government to go pound sand if they attach stipulation one to it. Just like I already have with for two years with Venture Upward funds. And about 75 percent of homeschool families I know will do exactly the same.
It's very weird that Logan keeps pushing this notion that it's either keep funding gender grooming globalist teachers or absolutely have the government ductating edication in your home. That's baloney. I'm glad for the warning about backdoor plans. But I'm doubtful of the "guaranteee" that taking money now means it's all over. I'll take the money and keep fighting. Thanks.
I'm not a defeatist; I'm a realist. I'm sure all those charter schools who ended up under the thumb of the public education system believed the same thing. The truth is: What the government funds, it will run. They'll wait until a majority of states have passed these bills and maybe even hold off for a few years on regulations so that everyone feels comfortable. Then watch what happens. You can take the money now to benefit your two kids, but is it worth sacrificing educational freedom for your children's children?
How are my kids educational freedom being sacrificed? Do tell.
How would it be in the future? Don't want strings. Don't take the money. Easy peasy.
My kids came out of charter schools in AZ during kung flu, and we kept them home. But there were no government strings on our charter school.
And the Arizona Republic just complained in an article four years ago that charters have such little state control or regulation.
It's really weird to me that your bottom line keeps coming back to ensuring that failing, grooming public schools don't lose any funding. I've never seen a strategist discover an opponent's game plan and just throw up his hands and hysterically scream, "We must stop! They have a counterplan!"
You make a huge leap between revealing their plans and then pretending that a takeover by low-life liberal pedo educators is a fait accompli.
Democrat groomers in Arizona have been pushing to get their kiddie sniffing noses in charters and homeschools for a quarter century, so far unsuccessfully. So you'll pardon me if I don't set my hair on fire at learning they're still up to no good and still trying to diddle kids. I'll take my money (MY money) now and continue fighting, while concurrently removing funds from child-grooming, communist brainwashing racist perverts.
Again, it's pretty weird how your bottom line keeps coming back to leaving public school funding intact. 🤔
I have no incentive for revealing the truth about who is behind this. I fundamentally care about protecting our children from the social credit system that school choice funding bills accelerate us towards. In order for it to work, there has be a monopoly on the education system. Precedent tells me it is unwise to bank on the capacity of the people or elected officials to keep government intrusion out. COVID is a prime example of this.
On the other hand, the people obfuscating the truth about the regulatory measures that come through public accountability have a very clear financial incentive. So do their funders who are waiting to implement their "solutions" to support the changes in the education market. I'm not saying we leave the failing public school funding intact. What we need to do is get federal money out and restore hyper local control to public education. That would require repealing laws like ESSA, restoring FERPA so that third party BigTech/BigData vendors aren't able to have access to our children's information, changing state constitutions so that parents have plenary power over education, not the state DOE, etc. etc. I'm willing to have those conversations. Are you?
My point is, there are other pathways to restoring local control, though not as quick and easy as taking government assistance (let's be real: it fails to be your money when the government "allows" you to use it). They'll simply make all education options through government regulation look exactly like the indoctrination camps of public education. Then there will be no bastians of educational freedom left.