Muslims Demand (& Get) Prayer In Public Schools – Attack Off
Campus Bible Studies
The
Council on American-Islamic Relations
(CAIR) is leading the charge by pushing for public school policy, and
they’re getting it.
CAIR’s impact in the public school system is now being
seen in two cases in Michigan.
The
first comes from one of CAIR’s press releases….
“The
Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI) said
today that a Detroit-area school district has apologized for handing out
permission slips for Bible study classes to elementary school students.”…
A
school district official today apologized to CAIR-MI for the distribution of
the permission slips and said district principals will discuss the issue at
an upcoming meeting.
“We
thank school district officials for taking quick and appropriate action once
this violation of religious neutrality was brought to their attention,” said
Walid.
He
said CAIR offers a booklet, called “An Educator’s Guide to Islamic Religious
Practices,” that is designed to help school officials provide a positive
learning environment for students of all faiths.
…
Second notice the hypocrisy and downright deceptiveness of CAIR. They scream
and decry permission slips to attend a Bible study, but have no problem
providing these same facilities, which they want to be religiously neutral,
with
“An
Educator’s Guide to Islamic Religious Practices.”
There is a direct attack on Christianity, as if the Islamic anti-Christian
doctrines found in their Qur’an and Hadiths, along with the mass murders of
Christians world-wide they engage in weren’t enough.
In
another article from
April 2013, CAIR shows just how religiously neutral they really are:
The
Council on American Islamic Relations of Michigan (CAIR-MI) staff recently
met with Dearborn Public Schools Superintendent Brian Whiston to discuss
concerns from some parents regarding prayer
accommodations in
Dearborn Public Schools.
Dearborn Public Schools has implemented
a policy which fully accommodates student-led prayer in all the schools, as
well as
unexcused absences
for students who leave early on Fridays for Jumu’ah prayers. ….
Islam is like the homosexual lobby. They want to cry that they are the
victims, but the reality is that they are the aggressors. [Classic Alenski
tactic] They complain about a permission slip for an off campus Bible study,
saying it was a “violation of religion neutrality,” and within months they
push the school board to accommodate Islamic prayers in public schools,
event granting excused absences for student who leave early for Jumu-ah
prayers.
Michigan is the testing grounds for Islamic takeover in the U.S. It seems to
be working there. “
Read more: http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/06/muslims-demand-get-prayer-in-publ…
Five People Wrote ‘State-Led’ Common Core
June 7, 2013
Joy Pullmann
Editors Note: This article is the second of three.
Read the
first here.
Many education leaders continue to insist the process for creating national
education standards was state-led, referring to its incubation within two
Washington DC-based nonprofits, the National Governors Association and Council
of Chief State School Officers.
That seems to depend on how one defines state-led.
Former Virginia Gov. George Allen told
School Reform News NGA
is less a policy forum and more a networking opportunity, because any
resolutions governors vote on are not binding and governors often disagree. He
attended NGA meetings particularly so he could recruit IBM into Virginia.
I find regional governors associations were much more practical, he said. You
have similar concerns and similar philosophy.
Somehow that unelected, unrepresentative networking forum quickly became a
serious driver of education policy changes for the nation by creating and
promoting Common Core, a list of what kids must know in math and English that 45
states have traded for their education standards.
How NGA Made Common Core
NGA first directly involved governors in nationalizing education standards in
June 2008, when
it co-hosted an education forum
with the Hunt Institute, a project of former North Carolina Gov. James Hunt Jr.
In December 2008, NGA, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), and
Achieve Inc. released a report calling for national standards. The report
recommended a strong state-federal partnership to accomplish this goal.
Those three nonprofits
answered their own call
the next few months, deciding to commission Common Core. NGA and Hunts press
releases during that time, and
a paper describing NGAs Common Core process
by former NGA education director Dane Linn, provide no endorsement of such
activity from more than a handful of elected officials. NGA spokesmen refused
requests for comment.
On June 1, 2009,
NGA and CCSSO announced
46 states had joined a state-led process to develop a common core of state
standards, without explaining what joining entailed. Two weeks later,
the June 2009 NGA-Hunt education forum
featured direct national standards advocacy to the 21 governors and staff who
attendedthe invitation-only event does not release attendee namesand spliced
in new U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who spoke of national standards as
a federal-state partnership.
[M]y job is to help you succeed in adopting common national standards,
Duncan told
the assembly. He said states initiated Common Core because a Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation-funded 2007 commission of 15 people, headed by two former
governors,
had recommended national standards.
The federal government empowers states to decide what kids need to learn and
how to measure it, Duncan said. One of the ways it would do that, he said then,
was funding national Common Core tests.
Three Main Committees
By July 1, 2009, NGA and CCSSO
had formed more committees.
There were two work groups, whose dozen members in math and English wrote the
standards. These included no teachers, but did include a few professors. Second
were two feedback groups, who were supposed to provide research and advice to
the writers. Those had 18 members each, who were mostly professors but included
one math teacher. Third was the
validation committee,
announced in September 2009, which acted as the final gate for Common Core.
Their job was to ensure [the standards] are research and evidence-based.
While many people sat on these various committees, only one in sixty was a
classroom teacher,
according to teaching coach and blogger Anthony
Cody.
All of the standards writing and discussions were sealed by confidentiality
agreements, and held in private. While Linn says six states sent intensive
teacher and staff feedback, committee members werent sure what effect their
advice had, said Mark Bauerlein, an Emory University professor who sat on a
feedback committee.
I have no idea how much influence committee members had on final product. Some
of the things I advised made their way into the standards. Some of them didnt.
Im not sure why or how, he said. He said those who would know were the
standards lead writers: David Coleman and Susan Pimentel in English, and Jason
Zimba, Phil Daro, and William McCallum in math. Of these, only McCallum had
previous experience writing standards.
Several people on the validation committee said the same: They had no idea what
happened to their comments once they submitted them.
Impossible to Deal With
The facilitators for the validation committee meeting were virtually
impossible to deal with, wrote James Milgram, a Stanford University professor
who sat on the committee, in an email obtained by
School Reform News.
The facilitators were emphatically trying to not let us act according to our
charter, but simply sign or not sign a [final approval] letter when the charter
said we had final say over the quality of the final [Common Core] and could
revise or rewrite it if we deemed it necessary.
Five of 29 validation committee members refused to sign off on Common Core. The
validation committees
final report
does not mention their objections. Its author later told Sandra Stotsky, another
committee member, he had never received any written objections from committee
facilitators, she said, although she and several others had sent them. He would
have included them, he told her.
When government agencies solicit public comments on proposed policies, standard
procedure is for the agency to publish all comments submitted and a response.
This didnt happen with Common Core.
Its like how laws are passed. Who wants to see how sausage is made? Bauerlein
said. People want to look at what is the outcome: Are these standards good? It
all depends on the curricula that gets created at the local level. You can have
strong standards and end up with weak curricula. Its happening in many places,
in fact.