Alabama passes school vouchers for students at failing schools, Dems erupt
   
Did they erupt in joy for the children who now have a real opportunity to choose success over failure?  Er, not exactly:

Republicans dropped a legislative bombshell tonight as they slammed through a dramatically revamped education bill that will give tax credits for families at “failing schools” to send their children to private school or another public school.

Lawmakers voted mid-day to send a school flexibility bill — that would let school systems seek waivers from some policies — to conference committee. The conference committee reported a dramatically different bill that included the flexibility measures plus what some lawmakers called school vouchers.

Republicans heralded it as a historic day for education and life-altering for children stuck in poorly performing schools. But tempers boiled over as Democrats called the maneuver “sleaziness” and a “bait and switch.”
Governor Robert Bentley insisted that this represented a step forward for children whose choices had been restricted to just the failing schools in the government education monopoly prior to the passage of the bill, which Bentley will sign next week:

The reaction on the state senate floor can be heard here, although it’s not easy to follow except to note the anger over the change in the bill.  “We’re going to help children in this state!” says one of the bill’s backers, over the repeated chant of “Point of order!” from one of its opponents.

Democrats in the legislature accused Republicans of “sleaziness” in pushing the school choice option for students in failing schools:

The move drew outrage from Democrats who said the plan was evidently in the works for some time.  “I’ve never seen such sleaziness,” Rep. Thomas Jackson, D-Thomasville, said.

And consider the race card tossed:

Rep. Mary Moore, D-Birmingham, as she was leaving the House chamber threw her hands over her head and shouted, “Welcome to the new confederacy where a bunch of white men are now going to take over black schools.”

Well, if the “black schools” are where students are failing, wouldn’t that set the black students free of that failure?  Isn’t that supposed to be a good thing?  Why wouldn’t we want to give those students the same chance at success as other children in the state, rather than leave them locked into failing state-run institutions?

Our tipster on this story noted that the teachers union managed to block a more limited school-choice bill last year in Alabama, which is probably why the state GOP held their cards closer to the vest this time.  If Alabama voters agree that this was a sleazy maneuver, and the argument can certainly be made, then Republicans will suffer the consequences in the next election.  If, however, the parents of those children locked into failing schools value the educational possibilities for their children over the needs of the teachers union and the Democrats, the state GOP will reap a harvest of new voters.  I suspect that the latter will be much more true than the former.

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Texas schools Rotten to the Core

Texas is a right-minded red state, where patriotism is still a virtue and political correctness is out of vogue. So how on earth have left-wing educators in public classrooms been allowed to instruct Lone Star students to dress in Islamic garb, call the 9/11 jihadists "freedom fighters" and treat the Boston Tea Party participants as "terrorists"?

Here's the dirty little secret: Despite the best efforts of vigilant parents, teachers and administrators committed to academic excellence, progressive activists reign supreme in government schools.

That's because curriculum is king. The liberal monopoly on the modern textbook/curricular market remains unchallenged after a half-century. He who controls the textbooks, teaching guides and tests controls the academic agenda.

That is how the propagandistic outfitting of students in Islamic garb came to pass in the unlikely setting of the conservative Lumberton, Texas, school district. As Fox News reporter Todd Starnes noted this week, a 32-year veteran of the high school led a world geography lesson on Islam in which hijab-wrapped students were banned from using the words "suicide bomber" and "terrorist" to describe Muslim mass murderers in favor of the term "freedom fighter."

Madelyn LeBlanc, one of the students in the class, "told Fox News that it was clear her teacher was very uncomfortable lecturing the students. 'I do have a lot of sympathy for her. ... At the very beginning, she said she didn't want to teach it, but it was in the curriculum.'"

But the headline-grabbing injection of moral equivalence into social studies and American history is just the tip of the education iceberg.

Top-down federalized "Common Core" standards are now sweeping the country. It's important to remember that while teachers-union control freaks are on board with the Common Core regime, untold numbers of rank-and-file educators are just as angered and frustrated as parents about the Big Ed power grab. The program was concocted not at the grassroots level, but by a bipartisan cabal of nonprofits (led by lobbyists for the liberal Bill Gates Foundation), statist business groups and hoodwinked Republican governors. As I've reported previously, this scheme, enabled by the Obama administration's "Race to the Top" funding mechanism, usurps local autonomy in favor of lesson content and pedagogical methods.

One teacher described a thought-control training seminar in her school district titled "Making the Common Core Come Alive." A worksheet labeled "COMMON CORE MIND SHIFTS" included the following rhetorical muck:

--The goal of curriculum should not be the coverage of content, but rather the discovery of content. ... If done well, Common Core will elevate our teaching to new heights, and emphasize the construction of meaning, while deepening our understanding of our students."

--"In our classrooms, it is the students' voices, not the teachers', that are heard."

Blah, blah, blah. In practice, Common Core evades transparency by peddling shoddy curricular material authored by anonymous committees. It promotes faddish experiments masquerading as "world-class" math and reading goals. Instead of raising expectations, Common Core is a Trojan horse for lowering them. California, for example, is now citing Common Core as a rationale for abandoning algebra classes for 8th graders. Common Core's "constructivist" approach to reading is now the rationale for abandoning classic literature for "informational texts."

Claims that Common Core bubbled up from the states are bass-ackward. A shady nonprofit group called "Achieve Inc.," stocked with federal-standards advocates who've been around since the Clinton years, designed the materials. They were rubber-stamped by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and subsidized by the Gates Foundation.

In states like Texas, which (SET ITAL) rejected (END ITAL) Common Core, similar secretive alliances prevail. The Texas Education Service Center Curriculum Collaborative, a nonprofit group led by government officials, designed the "CSCOPE" curriculum now used in 80 percent of the state's schools. The state Board of Education, local schools and parents were denied access to the online CSCOPE curriculum database -- which was exempted from disclosure rules. In fact, dissemination of the lessons was considered a crime until earlier this month. Only after parents and teachers across the state blew the whistle on radical CSCOPE lesson plans (including designing a new flag for a socialist lesson) did the state take steps to rein in the CSCOPE zealots.

Grassroots activists in Indiana, Alabama, Utah and nearly a dozen other states are now educating themselves and their state legislatures about the centralized education racket, whether it's under the guise of Common Core or any other name. Last week, in response to a passionate parent-driven protest, the Indiana state Senate passed legislation to halt Common Core implementation. Anti-Common Core bills are moving through the Alabama state legislature, where lawmakers are especially concerned about how Common Core's intrusive database gathering would violate student privacy.

As Texas goes, so goes the nation. The fight against the federalization of academic standards is a national education Alamo.

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Australian universities improve world standing

AUSTRALIAN universities have improved their international standing in the past year and now enjoy the third highest ranked reputation in the world.

The Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings, to be released today, found Australian now lags only behind the US and UK, with six of our universities ranked in the Top 100.

In the past year, Australian universities outperformed the Netherlands, Japan and Germany, with two new entrants on the list _ Monash University in Victoria, and the University of NSW _ joining the four existing place holders.

The University of Melbourne improved its rank from 43 to 39 and Australian National University from 44 to 42. Sydney University rose one place to 49, and University of Queensland remained in the 80th percentile.

Times Higher Education editor Phil Baty said the reputation rankings have been held since 2011 and Australia has improved its standing at each survey.

The results are based on a global opinion poll and take into account more than 16,000 responses from senior published academics in 150 countries.

"Australia is a country very much on the way up in terms of worldwide academic prestige," Mr Baty said in a statement.

"In many ways these results show that Australia's image among scholars around the world is catching up with the reality: until now it has tended to perform less well in the reputation rankings compared with the overall, objective World University Rankings.

"These results show how well poised Australia is to make the most of its geographical advantages: while it has strong links with the best universities in the West, it has also made the most of East Asia's booming higher education scene. If it continues to exploit these opportunities, Australia could be a serious beneficiary of the Asian century, which is great news for its economy and competitiveness."

Monash University president Ed Byrne said in a statement: "Australia is ideally situation between the rising academic powerhouses of Asia and established centres in the old Westticipate a bright future."

UNSW Vice Chancellor, Professor Fred Hilmer, put the institution's first-time inclusion down to a "very strong improvement path".

"When you look at the quality of the student intake, it's gone up every year. It's harder and harder to get in and if you look at research in particular, we are winning increasingly competitive grants," Professor Hilmer said.

Universities in the US and UK still hold the bulk of the top 100 positions, (43 in the US and nine in the UK) with an elite group of six "super-brands" including Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge, holding the top positions since the rankings' inception.

The highest ranking university outside of the US and UK is the University of Tokyo at 9th, while India and New Zealand are among the countries with no entrants on the Top 100 list. China's two most prestigious universities, Tsinghua University and Peking University, both dropped slightly in the rankings, but they remain in the Top 50.

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