Blog Posts

Should Government Fund the Education of just 87% of the Children?

4/13/2014

Many people are confused by the 87% because many people do not consider this argument. Many believe that they are offering to fund every child’s education. People need to change their paradigm of thinking on this issue.

First, everyone receives an education. On average, those outside the public schools score better on standardized tests. However, politicians ONLY offer to fund a child’s education within the Public School System. While the government chooses not to fund the 13% of children that are educated outside their control; it is fundamentally wrong to fund education for only 87% of children.

Outside the public school, parents and teenaged students can visit all the schools and investigate each school's mission statement, religious environment, teacher quality and character, past results, question other students and their families, and then ultimately choose the school that best fits that family. Homeschool and Homeschool/ private school co-ops among others are options as well.

The considerable cost that parents and students must bear to receive funding is the loss of control of all those factors to the government. Quite simply, government funding means almost total government control.
It is fundamentally wrong to condition a government benefit of a taxpayer funded education on the relinquishment of the right of parents to direct their child’s education.

The Public School System is Unconstitutional

Students Living in the Dark and Dank Shadow of the Wall of Separation

4/12/2014

The list of stories are endless; This is only small attempt to give a flavor of children living in an environment void of God's light of truth during their academic education.

This 7th Grader Was Forced to Deny God or Fail.

Common Core

3/16/2014

Common core is simply the federal government buying their way into controlling school testing and curriculum just like so many federal programs where the federal government creates a law that allows money to flow into state budgets if and only if the federal bureaucrats have a certain amount of control. This is simply wrong!

However, it is not right for the state or the city to have that control over education! Whether a government of 315 million, 8.2 million, one-fourth of a million or just a few thousand. Any size government that demands that everyone that accepts the government-funded education must have their education controlled by government bureaucrats is fundamentally wrong.

Clearly and unequivocally parents should have the power, without losing the public benefit of a government-funded education or alternatively have the tax only on the people who were in the public school system, to control their child’s education.

Link a great site on the common core

Student Prayer law: Fundamentally Wrong

3/3/2014

The documents of the state laws or proposed state laws and the stories about them for some reason were deleted from the website. (not from Bill Haley or anyone with Haley2024). The law basically stated that students were allowed to pray at certain school events.

I firmly believe in prayer and every person’s religious rights. This prayer bill is fundamentally wrong because it is fundamentally wrong for the government to educate our children. The government has an interest in ensuring our children receive an education and possibly funding that education. Government funding education is terrible economic policy: See Laffer Curve. The administration of that education is the fundamental wrong, along with funding only those that the government administers.

This law would not be necessary if the government were not administering education. This law is simply nibbling around the edges. The great injustice is that parents are required to give up control of how their children are educated if they want the government benefit of a government-funded education. Parents and students want to be at a school they can not only express their religious views but also be taught them and have them modeled by the leadership of the school. Under this law, students will have to hear that the leadership does not agree by giving a disclaimer. The disclaimer: Requires each school division to provide a disclaimer, either in writing or orally, or both, in advance of any school event at which a student is permitted to publicly speak, including graduation ceremonies, that the school division does not endorse any religious viewpoint that may be expressed by student speakers.

Educational Choice Is for Parental Rights, Not for Failing Schools

3/2/2014

We hear too often that we need to allow children in failing schools to switch to a better performing school. While that is nice and I fully agree, we need to stay focused on the big issue. That issue is parental rights.

Often a school has to be failing for so many years before a school choice plan will take effect. Should those failing years be wasted? What if the school is right on the edge of failing and the option never takes effect?

The What Ifs

What if a good school is failing your child? What if the learning style of your child just does not match the teacher in that school and a proven successful model for your child type is at another school. What if you just do not like the worldview in which the teacher teaches. What if your child is academically far above the average of the class and the teacher has to teach to the average, thus not challenging advanced students. The same applies to those struggling; many students are left behind so as not to delay the entire class.

School choice should always be about parental rights, liberty, and free enterprise. School choice is about getting rid of the oppression of socialism. School choice is about the benefits of people competing to develop the best education models. School choice is about parents inculcating religious values. School choice is about the government not mandating academic education be taught in a secular environment. School choice is about not allowing special interest to force their interest on all children.

Parents place a high value on their child’s character development. When asked to list the top three factors that influenced their decision to have their child attend their chosen school, the only factors to be selected by a majority of scholarship parents were religious environment/ instruction (66%) and morals/ character/ values instruction (52%).

Different Approaches

3/2/2014

Many approaches will be tried, some will fail, and others succeed. Those that succeed will always be topped by new models.

Linked

This is truly a despicable act on the part of liberals. When someone tries a new approach and succeeds overwhelmingly, the government wants to shut it down so bureaucrats can keep government control.

Here we see that a school went outside the box the government wants to keep people in, and it works, at least for them.

People Giving High Quality Education Away for Free

2/9/2014

This page is all about how many people and organizations will give high-quality education for free. Just with access to the internet and anything you want to from pre-k- high levels of college can be found for free.
More will come online rapidly if the government would step out of the way.
The government very often crowds out private endeavors.

This fact that free and low-cost education is available to all should demonstrate that if the government does not provide education, the poor would have access.

This is just a small sample of what is out there.

The world’s largest selection of courses Choose from over 80,000 online video courses with new additions published every month

All this for Free

They have many subjects. I am just showing math. Click on the KHAN icon to link to the site.

MathMathKnowledge Map

The wealth and expertise on this page is tremendous. Click on the icon to go to the web page to look around.

My Study

Click to go to my study. This is where I spend dozens of hours a week and never come close to a small percentage of what this has to offer. The new stuff rolls in faster than I can keep up, plus all the high quality information from the past.

There is just an incredible amounts of information at iTunes U

Low cost online courses with heavy teacher involvement.

Special Education

1/4/2014

The Haley2024 plan will substantially improve education. While it is always difficult to deal with these special needs issues, a free market in education supplemented with charity would result in better outcomes.

LINKED

It is difficult to envision all the plans; because no one person directs the free market or charity giving. Education CRA’s, Charity CRA’s, and ratings will play a significant role, and new and better ways will emerge as organizations compete to have the best ratings on the issues surrounding mental and physical disabilities.

Look at some of these comments. Do any of these comments look like these parents think that they control how their children are educated? You do not have control if you have to ask a government official for something.

California’s K-12 Transgender Bathroom Bill is Morally Reprehensible

1/4/2014

The more the government does, the more bureaucrats get to decide. Instead of having to convince private schools to change policy where parents are free to switch schools based on those policy changes; activists target public schools. Parents are not free to switch schools based on those policies. Parents must pay a very large price to switch since government funds are conditioned on parents giving up their rights to choose the school they wish their child to attend. Since government only funds government schools, a parent’s decision to enroll in a school different then the bureaucrats choice comes with the pulling of those funds.

"This radical bill warps the gender expectations of children by forcing all California public schools to permit biological boys in girls' restrooms, showers, clubs and on girls sports teams and biological girls in boys restrooms, showers, clubs, and sports teams," said Randy Thompson of SaveCalifornia.com, according to Fox News.

"No 13-year-old girl should ever have to worry about a 16-year-old boy entering showers where she's showering on the pretext that he is a she," said Brad Dacus, president of PJI

Teaching a World View

12/29/2013

Parents have limitless areas of their worldview that they want to pass on to their children. The time they are learning academics is a key and indispensable time to impart this wisdom. It is impossible not to pass a worldview during education and a highly desired time to pass the correct worldview.

Some believe that if a teacher stays “neutral,” the child will not be taught a worldview. First, neutral is a worldview. The teacher clearly does not have the time to teach every viewpoint much less, competently know every viewpoint. Teaching that murder, rape, and theft are wrong is teaching a worldview. Staying neutral on those issues is immoral. Most parents want their children to value one viewpoint over another, particularly among moral issues. Yes, there is a state law requiring the Public Schools to teach morality. Teaching morality is highly problematic when the foundation cannot be the Bible.

The teacher/ child Association is critical and belongs to the parents to decide.

The Supreme Court in TROXEL et vir. v. GRANVILLE No. 99-138. (2000), confirmed the “liberty of parents and guardians” includes the right “to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control.”

History

History is so broad and disputable that teachers, even those wanting to stay just with the facts, have to come across many areas where one needs to declare something was morally wrong such as slavery. For a teacher to stay morally neutral on this issue is highly objectionable; however, where is the line drawn?

There are many examples of people with a master’s degrees in American history, not knowing key verifiable facts that totally change a person’s outlook on a particular person or event. First, let’s acknowledge the fact there are too many facts for one person to know. There are over one Billion Americans that lived over the last one hundred years and each with Hundreds of astonishing stories. Who decides which to teach and which to leave untold? Many widespread false stories or narratives deserve to be taught as a lesson of false narratives. Parents, not the government should determine the history curriculum being taught.

Morals

It is highly problematic to have the government deciding morality and forcing by law (Virginia Code § 22.1-208.01: Character education required) for government employees to teach morality. Teachers are forced by the great separating wall casting a god-free shadow from explaining from where the good character and morals come. Without the ability to teach the origins of character and morality we are doing a major disservice to the children. Many parents clearly want those that teach their children to be grounded in the roots of the morality they want taught

Religion

For religion to be properly taught it needs to be taught by being lived as well as academically. The six-plus hours a day a child is at school is a vital time to learn religion interwoven within most if not all subjects. Even a quick overview of most non-public schools shows a high desire by parents to have their children taught within their faith and not waste the education hours in that endeavor, moreover many parents believe that having a religiously neutral position does harm to their effort to inculcate a religious worldview into their children.

Conservatism, Libertarian or Statist

Ideology is often taught blatantly; however, regularly more subtle. Just the fact a teacher brings up facts versus the facts the teacher leaves out can show worldviews. Many parents do not want to stay neutral on this issue; many clearly want liberty taught and other want the “liberty of government provision” taught.

Creation

The Creation and Evolution page is here to show my, Bill Haley’s view on the issue. The thinking on this issue will not affect proposed policies at all. The policy is that parents decide how, where, when, by whom, and what is taught to their children. Many may not want their children taught what others believe.

It is a very dangerous policy for the government to claim that they can force the teaching of "facts." There are not just two ways, instead, hundreds of variations on these subjects. Society should oppose forcing specific teaching on any child that their parents disapprove. However, it is highly desired by parents that their children be inculcated within their worldview.

Forward>>