Time For Parents To Take Back Control Of Education

I made it clear in my introductory column that education is among the issues I care about most. We can’t have prosperity without a well-educated populace.
Education, of course, starts with the family. Our parents are our first and most important teachers. When it comes to K-12 public education, our local school district provides the most funding and should have the most influence on policy through a duly-elected School Board.
States reserve the right to establish guidelines and curriculum standards that all school districts must follow, as well as requirements for high school graduation. The federal government, however, has no constitutional authority to set educational policy. That did not prevent Congress from authorizing the federal Department of Education in 1979 and President Jimmy Carter from establishing the new bureaucracy.
The size and scope of the federal Dept. of Education has expanded rapidly since the Carter Administration. President George W. Bush doubled spending for the DOE and signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law, leaving states to implement expensive federal education mandates.
The federal control of education reached unprecedented levels with the 2009 Race To The Top grant program. By agreeing to receive Race To The Top incentive grants, the South Carolina Board of Education joined 44 other states in agreeing to implement the Common Core K-12 education standards.
The Common Core concept was promoted during the George W. Bush Administration as a way to improve and standardize education standards in all 50 states, while giving states the flexibility to modify the standards and maintain control of education guidelines.
With Race To The Top, states which approved the grants were obligated to follow the copyrighted Common Core curriculum standards without the ability to amend them. That was essentially a trap which put the federal government completely in control of education policy.
I’ve spent several years researching the Common Core K-12 standards and have spoken with numerous elected officials, policy analysts, teachers and parents and found many disturbing flaws. Math is taught in a manner which is incomprehensible to most parents. The Common Core English/Language Arts curriculum is developmentally inapropriate, asking elementary students to analyze reading passages in ways which most of us could not have done in high school.
Most Common Core math questions are presented in the form of word problems in which the way a student explains the answer is more important than arriving at the correct answer. The math curriculum de-emphasizes computation skills.
Common Core English includes a lot of politically-correct reading passages and value statements. Here is a sample middle school grammar question: Circle the pronoun in the sentence – “The wealthy are greedy and callous and don’t even know that they are destroying the middle class.”
Parents, particularly those with elementary school students, have expressed to me that the school experience has become much more stressful since Common Core was implemented two years ago. Students who used to excel at math now are frustrated with the complex problem-solving techniques required and the nebulous word problems they are given.
Although not part of the Common Core curriculum standards, school sexual education programs are also a big concern to parents. The 1988 SC Comprehensive Health Education Act emphasized sexual abstinence until marriage and explain the risks associated with sexual activity outside of marriage.
The Charleston County School District is considering the adoption of the Proud Choices middle school sexual education curriculum, which does not emphasize the importance of marriage in sexual relationships and explicitly describes various types of sexual activities. The curriculum is endorsed by the Planned Parenthood organization, which has contractual relationships with abortion providers.
I encourage all parents to take a close look at what your children are being taught. If you think it is harmful or goes against your values, please voice your objections to the schools your children attend and participate in the pubic comment period at the Charleston County School Board meetings on the 2nd and 4th Mondays of each month at 5:15 p.m.
If the Charleston County School District does not listen to the parents and meet the needs of the students it serves, we must pursue more educational choices for our children. Quality education is essential to a moral and prosperous society!
John Steinberger is the former chairman of the Charleston County Republican Party, a leading Fair Tax advocate, and a West Ashley resident. He can be reached at John.steinberger@scfairtax.org.