**** ON THE DSS/NEA

On Tue, 24 Jun 2003 00:53:21 -0700, Doan wrote:

On 19 Jun 2003, Kane wrote:

On Wed, 18 Jun 2003 23:30:34 -0700, Doan wrote:

Thanks, Lord Valve. Another reason to support reform of the Child
Services system in the USA. Threaten to take kids away from the
parents because they refused to take standardize test!!! Aren't these
the same people who keep asking for more tax-payer money because
their
social workers are carrying too many cases??? Do they really care
about
the kids or just the money? But hey, it's for the children! Right?

Doan

Yet another example that you can't teach a dog to read. This also
demonstrates how well you read and understand other material, such as
research reports.

If you go over this a bit slower, and use your dictionary, and ask
mommy to assist you, you might get it that CPS is not the villian
here. CPS did not target this family. The education system in this
state did. The judge backed them up and CPS was acting on the order of
the judge.

You might want to read the article again. Since when does "just following
order" a valid defense?

So if you were served a warrant to produce the records/logs of those
using the system you maintain you'd say the same?

Doan

So much for YOUR ethics, Doan.

Especially in ignoring the rest of my post.

R R R R RRR R R R R



If you researched the actual events and difficulties this family has
gallantly weathered you'd have known that as well.

I'll be amused to see why the lately touted HSLDA has not touched this
case.

It will be interesting to see if the state can make good on its threat
to make the children take a test they refuse to take.

If you have any guts at all, which I doubt, you'll write a protest
letter to the govenor of the state....but please, try to remember, the
issue there is NOT CPS, it is the board of education and the judge.

Your stupidity and dull minded little rant is akin to blaming the
police for the law.

Finish your Alpo.

Stoneman


On Tue, 17 Jun 2003, Lord Valve wrote:

Homeschoolers in the trenches

Posted: June 17, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By David Limbaugh =A9 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.


Given the poor academic track record of public education
in many areas of this country, you would think the
government and education establishment would be a
little less arrogant about superimposing their will
on homeschooling families who prefer to opt out of
their system. But you would be wrong.

The establishment's assault against the homeschooling
movement continues. In Waltham, Mass., local a
uthorities are so adamant about imposing their
mandatory standardized testing that they sent social
workers and policemen to the home of George and Kim
Bryant at 7:45 a.m. last Thursday demanding their
two teen-agers take the tests.

According to WorldNetDaily.com, the Department of Social
Services actually threatened to take the Bryant's
children away from them over this issue - if other
issues were involved, the article didn't say so. But
the Bryants refused to let their children go, believing
they have a right to determine their children's
educational choices.

The Waltham Public School's homeschooling policy mandates
that parents develop a grading system and file educational
plans for homeschooled children, but the Bryants have
steadfastly resisted the government controls.

It's not that homeschooling families are afraid of
competing with their public-school counterparts.
Homeschoolers have continually done well on academic
tests and contests.

In 2000, the top three winners in the Scripps-Howard
News Service's National Spelling Bee were all homeschooled.
This is all the more remarkable when you consider that
only 11 percent of the contestants were homeschoolers.
That same year, homeschoolers placed first and second
in the National Geography Bee.

There's more. According to official reports for the
American College Testing Program, homeschoolers have
scored higher on average than students in public and
private schools. In 2000, the average composite ACT
score for high-school students was 21, while homeschool s
tudents scored 22.8.

Dr. Lawrence M. Rudner, an expert in quantitative analysis
and one who has studied the performance of homeschoolers,
once remarked that this move to make homeschoolers meet
public-school standards was "odd" given the superior
academic performance of homeschoolers.

Rudner conducted a study in 1998 that included 20,760
students in 11,930 familes. He found that in every
subject and at every grade level (K-12), "homeschool
students scored significantly higher than their public
and private school counterparts." Some 25 percent of
all homeschool students at that time were enrolled at
a grade level or more beyond that dictated by their age.
According to the study, the average eighth-grade
homeschooler was performing four grade levels above
the national average.

Nevertheless, some homeschooling families are still
reluctant to submit to standardized testing because
it would be an indirect method for the state to gain
control over the curriculum. If homeschoolers were
required to pass standardized tests geared to public-
school curricula, is it not inevitable that their
families would have to alter their curricula to teach
to those tests?

Don't just assume the Bryants are being stubborn and
unreasonable. This is a freedom issue. Why shouldn't
the Bryants or any other parents be free to make their
own curricular choices? We've seen the extent to which
the educational establishment influences public school
curricula, often in directions that many parents - not
just homeschooling ones - would consider repugnant.

Most homeschool parents - at least Christian ones -
understand what the education establishment has known
for a long time but won't often admit: that there is no
such thing as values-free education. With the banning of
Christian values and their replacement with humanistic
ones in the public-school system, we have witnessed the
adoption of bizarre ideas having little to do with
academics and everything to do with social engineering,
directly resulting, ultimately, in the corruption of
educational quality.

As more parents opt for homeschooling, public schools
will grow increasingly nervous. Homeschooling's financial
impact on public schools can be significant. If thousands
of students are homeschooling in a school district, it
stands to lose millions of dollars in revenue. And with
every additional homeschooled student, the public-education
monopoly is eroded a little further, and control over
children's academic and social development shifts away from
the state and back to the family unit.

So, despite homeschooling's outstanding academic track record,
we can expect persistent opposition from the establishment,
sometimes reaching the point of policemen and social workers
at homeschoolers' homes threatening to snatch away their children.

But we can also be sure that homeschooling families will
continue to resist this oppression. They deserve our support,
because they are fighting over the most fundamental rights
of a free society: the right to raise and educate children
as they see fit. They are carrying the banner of liberty for
all of us.