OEA gets $100,000 media grant

"Each NEA member contributes $4 annually to the national union's Media Campaign Fund, of which a portion is returned to state affiliates in the form of grants for statewide advertising," Mike Antonucci reports today. "In addition to the paid advertising, such campaigns also tend to result in a decent amount of free media." This school year, NEA provided OEA a media grant in the amount of $100,000.

Online learning continues to expand

The Oklahoman reports today on the growth of virtual schooling in Oklahoma.

'When you have a monopoly, you can do whatever you want'

Obama will tell schoolchildren to 'run for the door'

Scott Ott, editor in chief of ScrappleFace.com, has obtained a leaked draft of President Obama's upcoming speech to the nation's schoolchildren. Ott reports:

A draft copy of President Barack Obama's planned September 8 address to America's public school children tells students that "If you want to grow up to be like me, you should beg your parents to put you in private school, right now."

Although Obama attended public school in Indonesia early in life, he soon switched to a private Catholic school, and from fifth grade through graduation went to a private college-prep school in Hawaii. His own daughters now attend a private school in Washington D.C. ...

On Tuesday, the president will bypass parents, taking his message directly to kids in the classroom "in hopes that you'll pester Mom until she gets a second job to pay private-school tuition so you can escape the swirling vortex of ignorance and despair that is our government-run school system."

Read the whole thing here.

For preschool choices

Friday, a weekly newspaper in Oklahoma City, recently ran a house editorial entitled "What price saving children?" I submitted a letter to the editor, which appears in this week's issue:

Dear Editor:

Thank you for your July 31 editorial, "What price saving children?" Though I don't fully share your confidence in the salvific powers of "early childhood education," I think it's important to note something Dr. James Heckman mentioned at the recent early-childhood summit in Oklahoma City: School choice is important.

"Competition plays a role" in good education policy, said Dr. Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist. In early childhood education, there ought to be "multiple, diverse modes of delivery." He said such programs can and should accommodate the interests of "Orthodox Jews, Mormons, Southern Baptists, you name it."

Fortunately, some Oklahoma school districts already collaborate with daycare centers to serve a share of Oklahoma's preschool children. Policymakers should now provide Oklahoma parents a tax credit for educational expenses incurred in private preschool programs or home schools.

Sincerely,

Brandon Dutcher
Vice President for Policy
Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, Inc.

Politics in government-run schools? What next?

With the Dear Leader set to address the nation's schoolchildren, Adam Schaeffer is shocked -- shocked! -- to find politics in state-run schools.

How inefficient has state-run schooling become?

So inefficient, Andrew Coulson points out, "that one recent study finds higher public school spending is associated with LOWER subsequent economic growth."

Thank you, Mr. President

Cato's Neal McCluskey hopes the president's Orwellian move will serve as "a desperately needed wakeup call to all Americans about the great damage government education can inflict on otherwise free people."

State regulation of private schools

A new document from the U.S. Department of Education provides a brief description of state legal requirements that apply to K–12 private schools.

Underfunded-schools watch

A cool $1.7 million to renovate the Norman High School football building.

'Grateful for the choices that already exist'

Good editorial in the state's largest newspaper this morning reminding us that school choice is "alive and well" in Oklahoma.

'A recipe for academic success'

Homeschoolers continue to shine on standardized tests, including the ACT.

School-free drug zones

"For the more than 49 million students who are attending elementary and secondary public schools this fall," writes constitutional attorney John Whitehead, "their time in school will be marked by overreaching zero tolerance policies, heightened security and surveillance and a greater emphasis on conformity and behavior-controlling drugs -- all either aimed at or resulting in the destruction of privacy and freedom."

In his award-winning documentary The War on Kids (2009) [watch the trailer here], director Cevin Soling examines the dangers posed to young people today by a public school system that looks upon them as "superpredators" to be controlled and treated like criminals. Two obvious results of this dangerous mindset are the rise in zero tolerance policies and the physical transformation of the schools into quasi-prisons. ...

As Soling's insightful film documents, from the moment they walk into school, students today find themselves under constant surveillance: they are photographed, fingerprinted, scanned, x-rayed, sniffed, and snooped on. Between metal detectors at the entrances, drug-sniffing dogs in the hallways and surveillance cameras in the classrooms and elsewhere, America's schools have come to resemble prison-like complexes. Much of this is an attempt to appease parental fears in the wake of the 1999 Columbine High School shootings. Yet as one student remarks in the film, "They [the surveillance cameras] don't really prevent anything. They just take pictures of it." Indeed, the documentary points out there is no empirical data to show that metal detectors, locker searches, or security cameras have any impact in reducing school violence.

Neither have they managed to reduce drug usage among young people. Yet, ironically, while our nation's schools have become the primary battleground for the so-called war on drugs, they have also become a testing ground for the pharmaceutical industry. "Why is it that the U.S. has six times as many kids on Ritalin as any other country?" asks Dr. Bertram Karon of Michigan State University. "Because this is the most profitable country to sell your drugs." In fact, some 4 million children in the United States are on drugs, accounting for 90% of all Ritalin prescriptions in the world.