The current educational administration structure is top-heavy and expensive. The problem starts at the top. Many would think that the top would be the Federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare. This is alarmingly not so. Current leadership in education comes from the United Nations. UNESCO, the United Nation Education, Science, and Cultural Organization is the think tank from which most progressive educational thought now originates. This world body, a collection of the globes most progressive thought, makes the old days of Dewey, Sanger and the ACLU look like the tea cup ride at Disneyworld. Today’s educational administrative ideals are funded by or are overseen by some UNESCO sub structure or affiliate. Their goal is to undermine America’s national sovereignty by creating a truly international system of education or, as opponents put it, global indoctrination. They seek to mandate, through federal and state education systems, the production of universal citizens made in the image of the U.N. charter and declaration of human rights. They undermine American citizenry by removing the highly successful systems of free and local education, which is usually open to the Judeo-Christian ethic, and in some places even given to a Gospel culture, in order to become one of secular and centralized control.
The Obama Core Curriculum is not new, and it did not originate with Obama. It is this global idea, filtered through money grabbing hands of corporations like the Bill Gates Foundation, whose plans include garnering the billions of dollars of educational money by having a monopoly-like hold on curriculum, testing materials, training products and teacher materials. After several years of operation, studies show that this model is not working. Test scores are down, not up. International and federal system administrators do not care about this downward trend. They are more concerned with the political control of the future, that is, the next generation of school children and their way of thinking, than they are with real learning. We do not need to put all the blame on the Obama administration. The Reagan and Bush years also sought to establish the international student and curriculum. The “No Child Left Behind Act” was a more patriotic face to progressive education, and a ruse to get more funding and administrative control of local education. Republican funding is as disingenuous as Democratic demagoguery.
The cost of education is going up. Why? The multiple layers of administrative bureaucracy including layers of management, strategic partnerships, endless academic system studies, progressive benefits through bleeding funds into unions, and super funding for illegal immigrant’s children is fueling the ever constant cry for more funding. Much of the money designated stays in state and federal capitols never reaching the local student or classroom. The distribution process itself is cumbersome and corrupt, compounding the problem of getting the designated funds to the individual schools and teachers who do the real educating. A large sum of mandated dollars also immediately disappears annually into the removal of debt, most of which is going to outdated teacher retirement accounts. Increasing education budgets is often a futile matter for the student themselves. After UNESCO is funded, federal structures dispense funds to their favorite pet projects, and the states line up like baby birds in the nest, mouths open, squawking for money, money, money. Despite all of this flow, local districts regularly ask for millage votes to fund what their government amounts do not provide. Any doctor diagnosis would deem the system broken and on life support.
This system needs to change radically. The top heavy administrative platform is like an elephant on a toothpick bridge. Too much superstructure rests upon the emaciated local school districts. We must shrink the beast!
We are in danger of having authoritarians not educators. These academic Marxists disregard parental powers, use their influence to push dangerous political ideals, and spend to empower the bureaucracy instead of real teachers. It would be great to see teachers cry out en masse on behalf of their students and their great profession instead of silently crossing their fingers for better benefits or increased salaries. Perhaps both of their remuneration considerations would increase with better administrative systems. Less money at the top means better flow to the teachers and students.
Unfortunately, there is no real fresh vision for change competing with the UNESCO, federal, state paradigm. These supposed de facto models have failed, but the socialistic and progressive administrators are claiming success. Their utopian ideals have been installed but are neither academic, practical, nor American. Leadership change is greatly needed.
Solutions are available. Fresh leadership is ready! Let’s start by changing the current state board and superintendent structure that is a slave to the federal and UNESCO empire of thought and management. In Michigan, let’s cut the State Board of Education’s term of office in half – from eight years to four years. Dr. John Austin, our states lead progressive, has entrenched himself and his dangerous thought for two terms already. Sixteen years is long enough! He runs again on the notion of removing parental rights and making the state, that is state school systems, the new authority of the student. Anybody but Austin should be a great start and is in Michigan’s best interest. Democrats are being duped by their party, unions are being enslaved to Dr. John’s cold Mengele-type experimentation with their students and their jobs.
Next, let’s mandate less money in the state superintendent’s purse and siphon the money out of Lansing as fast as possible. There is too much administrative structure in the capitol. Increased accountability will result in shorter terms and mandated moneys out of the bureaucrat’s hands.
These measures clearly mean that the State Board of Education and its pyramid of administrative process will have to shrink. Their antiquated concepts of tenure and cronyism are creating a lazy and cold atmosphere of entitlement. Why else would they feel it was their job to execute Washington’s ideas about the LGBTQ community within the school system? They have lost a sense of reality and of truly educating children. It is the same with almost every state school board system. Unions feed this frenzy of insanity as well, and such a rapid turning of the system on its head, putting funding and policy back onto the local districts will curb the turbulent power of progressive union bosses.
Finally, a reinforcement of local control, local districts funded through government, local hiring, academic ideals and even discipline would rapidly increase test scores, graduation rates, teacher retention and parental involvement. We have grown accustomed to listening to state education “authorities’” as if they were oracles of Olympia, when in reality, and in Dr. Austin’s case, he should be rejected outright as a puppet of a failed progressivism.
It is time for new leadership and a fresh vision for Michigan education.
To learn about Dr. Levesque’s campaign for Michigan Board of Education visit: ElectLevesque.com
