March 18, 2008

ACTION:

Amidst DFL efforts to control the family bank account via historic tax increases, legislative committees have been furiously hearing and passing bills dealing with state control of the raising and education of children from birth through college. This includes expansion of the subjective kindergarten readiness assessment that does de facto mental health screening and falsely labels 50% of Minnesota children as not "ready to learn," and data collection on every aspect of your children's lives from their genetic information to their body mass index.  Part one of this series of reports will deal with early childhood control and assessment. 

These bills have been heard in some committee(s).  In the House they will be or have been rolled in to a giant omnibus policy bill (HF 3316) that is tentatively scheduled to go to the floor after Easter, a finance bill yet to be put together, and/or an early childhood finance/policy bill. The House early childhood policy bill, HF 2555, will be put together and passed on Wednesday, the 19^th at 2:15 PM in the basement hearing room of the State Office Building. No language is currently available for that bill, but it will likely contain similar language to the Senate bill. In the Senate, all these provisions are in the omnibus Senate education bill, SF 3001, that was put together just a couple of hours before the March 12th hearing, included bill that hadn't even been heard in the committee until that day, and passed on to the E-12 budget committee that will hear it on the 19^th at 8:30 AM in room 112 of the capitol building.

Here are the provisions of urgent concern that are moving through the process:

Kindergarten Readiness Goal:  This lofty sounding statement comes from the early childhood subcommittee of legislators that met over the interim.  The legislation was presented in the Senate by Senator Terri Bonoff (D-Minnetonka), a candidate for Congress, and Senator Geoff Michel (R-Edina). Though having no immediate programs or funding attached, it creates a very dangerous precedent. It will be used to further cement government control over the raising, education, medical care, and mental health of all Minnesota children from before birth to school entry, as well as being the basis for all of the early childhood bills that the legislature is seeking to pass in this and future sessions:

The legislature says it seeks to ensure that 75 percent of Minnesota children are "school-ready" by 2012.

As we have demonstrated on numerous occasions, "school-ready" or "ready to learn" means much more to the education establishment than knowing letters and numbers.  Ready to learn means that children are accepting of controversial, non-academic attitudes values and beliefs.  This goal cannot possibly be reached without screening and assessing every child in the state, which is expensive, intrusive, and extremely subjective, as well as doing de facto mental health screening.  If the current kindergarten readiness assessment is used, it will contain very vague, non-academic questions put into a child's permanent record for life, such as:

• "Begins to use simple strategies to solve mathematical problems"
• "Gains meaning by listening"
• "Shows empathy and caring for others"

Achieving this "goal" would violate what even the Department of Education, in the most recent report on the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment, said in the following:

"Because children develop and grow along a continuum with great variability, the goal of these studies is to assess children s proficiency within and across these developmental domains and not establish whether or not children are ready for school with the use of a composite ready or not ready score. Young children develop rapidly and at varying rates across the domains, and an early, definitive determination of readiness can have unintended negative consequences." (p. 8) [Emphasis added.]

School Readiness Assessments and Kindergarten Transition Strategies: This section promotes and pays for expansion of the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment or similar assessments and transition strategies that include based on the vague, subjective, intrusive and inaccurate assessments used to label children "not ready" for kindergarten as described just above.  Some of these strategies include:

• The state telling parents how to raise and educate their children including information on "comprehensive child development,"  "the skills and knowledge incoming kindergartners should demonstrate" and "related community resources" (i.e. social services);
• Providing collaboration among all the various purveyors of government early childhood programs

This should be opposed, not only because there is a deficit due to profligate spending by liberals, but for all the reasons just described.

Office of Early Learning:  Both the House and Senate bills have provisions that harken back to the old days of the Department of Children, Families, and Learning.  The bill requires the governor to "appoint, with the advice and consent of the senate, a director who is a recognized expert in the field of early childhood care and education who will facilitate communication and coordinate pre-kindergarten and child-care programs under the administration of the Departments of Education, Health, and Human Services."  The duties of this director put the state in control of all of the following:

• "Funding streams" to "ensure the accountability and coordinated development of all early education and child care services to children from birth to age five" [emphasis added] - The word "all" was amended out by Senator David Hann (R-Eden Prairie), but remains in the version of the bill passed from Senator Wiger's policy committee.
• The creation of "common standards for quality early childhood programming and rules for teacher training and certification" - This is the Quality Rating system that would require private and religious childcare and preschool programs to teach the radical, non-academic Department outcomes regarding gender identity, family structure diversity, careers, and environmentalism.
• "Advance the quality of early education and child care programs in order to support the healthy development of children and preparation for their success in school" - It is parents' job to do this, not government programs.
• "Develop and manage an effective data collection system." - This is intrusive and unnecessary.  We already know that these programs do not work and can cause emotional and behavioral problems.  (See above)
• "Respect and be sensitive to family values and cultural heritage" - Teaching values-laden, non-academic topics is not the job of the state, but rather of families.  It is impossible to do this because family values vary so much, and as we have chronicled on numerous occasions, the state early child outcomes and various programs routinely violate traditional values.
• "Establish the administrative framework for and promote the development of early education"in "every community for all families that express a need for them" - It is not the job of a state agency use tax dollars to impose any program in every community in the state, much less preschool where there is evidence of academic and emotional harm.

State Advisory Board on School Readiness:  This is yet another organization similar the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation that promotes early childhood for all and government intrusion into the raising and education of children from birth to age five.  It contains duties similar in scope to the Office of Early Education discussed above, with some of the more intrusive being:

• "A multiyear plan for effectively and efficiently coordinating and integrating state services for early care and education, improving service delivery and standards of care, avoiding duplication and fragmentation of service, and enhancing public and private investment"
• "Policy changes to improve children's ability to start school ready to learn"

It needs to be opposed for the same reasons.

Minnesota P-20 Education Partnership:  This is yet another group that with feel-good sounding language, seeks to consolidate government control over education from birth through college.  Its duties to study and recommend to the governor and legislature include, among other things, "improving the quality of and access to education at all points from preschool through the graduate education," apparently without regard to or in despite of expense, lack of benefit or evidence of harm.

World-Class Schools Vision Statement:  This statement also proposes "investment" in early childhood education and "making sure children come to school physically and mentally ready to learn," which opens the door to all sorts of invasive screening and indoctrination.  Of course they also seek to collect more data and promote the utopian goal of "ensur[ing] that all cultures are included and supported, and connections are made across local and global cultural divides."

WHAT YOU CAN DO: 

1. Please call your own representative and senator and the legislative leaders listed below and let them know that the raising and education of children is up to parents, not the state, and that you do not want these programs that are intrusive, expensive, ineffective, as well as academically and emotionally counter-productive.  Ask them to please take or keep these provisions out of the education bills.
2. Let them know that you will email them the link to the document "Evidence of Academic or Emotional Harm of Preschool Education or All-Day Kindergarten" and then do so.
3. Please forward this email to your friends and neighbors, especially the parents and grandparents of young children.

THANK YOU!!