By Jim Dossett
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March 27, 2013
A Parent's Right to Choose Education
Whether they
are concerned about a national student database, failing public
schools, bullying and violence, or moral instruction, more and more
parents are looking for choices in education. Many pull their children
out of school and teach them at home, but not all parents find this
solution practical. Others are looking to put their children into
private schools that will protect their privacy and their values,
whether secular or religious. But some find themselves unable to afford
this option, either.Last week Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee introduced an amendment to a budget bill that would allow federal Title I dollars to go to whichever school a student below the poverty line actually attends. Under current rules, that money can only go to the public school in whose district the student lives; it cannot go to a private school. In most cases, changing this rule would allow $1,300 per student per year to go to whatever accredited school the student attends, even if it is a private school. This would allow schools to reduce tuition or credit the money against the tuition of the low-income student. Some are opposed to any bill that would send tax dollars to a private institution. Others hold that the tax dollars earmarked for education should be used for that purpose, regardless of what school parents choose; private school (and home school) parents pay the same taxes as everyone else. “School choice for low-income parents and students across America is a way out of the poverty cycle,” sponsoring Senator Rand Paul stated in a Senate.gov release last week. “Allowing Title I funds to follow the student creates an opportunity for students to get the most out of their education in the best environment available.” While ParentalRights.org does not have an official position on this amendment (which failed on a 39-60 vote), we do support the right of fit parents to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their child. We believe every fit parent has the right to shape their child’s education, and we do not believe poverty should take away this right. The right to direct the upbringing of one’s child is one of the fundamental liberties traditionally upheld by the Supreme Court, but it is now being eroded in federal courts. This is a result of the fractured and ambiguous ruling in Troxel v. Granville, the 2000 case in which the Supreme Court called parental rights “fundamental” while refusing to accord them proper legal protection. This ambiguity is a primary reason for our proposed Parental Rights Amendment, which begins:
The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their children is a fundamental right.
Action Items
1. Pass this email along to your friends and family who might support a parent’s right to direct the education of their child. The Parental Rights Amendment would not ensure tax dollars for private schools – it has nothing to do with funding. But it will preserve the role of parents in deciding the kind of education their children receive.Ask your friends and family to sign the petition at ParentalRights.org/petition. (If you received this email directly from us, you have already signed this petition.) 2. Volunteer to take an active role. Whatever your passion or skill set, we would appreciate your help in promoting the Parental Rights Amendment. Simply fill out our online volunteer form. 3. If you have not done so lately, please donate to continue our efforts to preserve parental rights. We regret that because we are a lobbying organization, donations cannot be deductible for income tax purposes, but we depend on the support of donors like you to keep us moving forward. Whether you enroll your children in public school, private school, or home school, we appreciate your support of parental rights. By standing together regardless of our educational choices, we can preserve every family’s right to choose for themselves. Sincerely, Michael Ramey Director of Communications & Research |
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March 20, 2013
National Database of School Children Launched
Last week
the SXSWedu Technology Conference in Austin, Texas, featured a new
project that has many educational technology companies very excited –
and that has many parents angry and deeply concerned. The project is
called inBloom – a massive national database of personal information on public school students – and it is already up and running.
Largely funded by the pro-internationalist Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, the $100 million project contains information on millions of
children to date.So far, at least 9 states are using or planning to use the system: Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, and North Carolina. But parents in New York are furious that their child’s information is being shared with private companies “to create a national database for businesses that contract with public schools,” according to the New York Daily News. Data being stored includes identifying information such as name, address, and social security number, along with school grades, attendance, and even information on hobbies, interests, and attitudes toward school. School boards and education materials producers are very excited. Product Manager Jeffrey Olen of CompassLearning, an education software company, told Reuters, “This is going to be a huge win for us.” And Brandon Williams, a director at the Illinois State Board of Education, told them, “We look at personalized learning as the next big leap forward in education.” But parents are equally "excited" – and deeply concerned – about all of that data being collected about their child and stored in a massive database with nationwide access by anyone with whom the school system would like to share it. And that’s saying nothing of hackers who might get at it illegally. The Electronic Privacy Law Center in Washington is suing the U.S. Department of Education over this issue. Their administrative counsel, Khaliah Barnes, told the Daily News, “It’s a lot of smoke and mirrors. What happens if a company using the data is compromised? What happens if the company goes out of business? We don’t know the answers.” Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union is also concerned. “Turning massive amounts of personal data about public school students to a private corporation without any public input is profoundly disturbing and irresponsible,” she told the Daily News. Her organization has blasted the state for not giving parents any notice of the plan or the opportunity to opt their child out of the program. But the committee that oversees implementation of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) would be proud. They routinely include the following in their Concluding Observations to a nation’s periodic report on CRC implementation: “The Committee reiterates its recommendation for the State party to set up a national and comprehensive data collection system and to analyse the data collected as a basis for consistently assessing progress achieved in the realization of child rights and to help design policies and programmes to strengthen the implementation of the Convention.”i With inBloom building a comprehensive national database to track students from Kindergarten through high school, much of that work will already be done in the United States. Those who believe there is no need for a Parental Rights Amendment tend to fall into one of two groups. Either they believe the government would never really threaten the right of fit parents to direct the upbringing of their child, or they believe the government would make better decisions than most parents. Secretly shipping personal and educational data on millions of school students to a private corporation seems like an excellent way to prove both of these groups wrong. Far more important, it leaves the identities, reputations, privacy, and future of our children at stake.
Action Items
1. Sign the petition. If you haven’t already done so, please visit parentalrights.org/petition
to sign up in support of the Parental Rights Amendment. (If you
received this email directly from ParentalRights.org, you are already
signed up.) The Amendment will codify in the U.S. Constitution the
fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing, education, and
care of their children; it would also prevent ratification of such
intrusive treaties as the United Nations’ CRC.2. Pass this email to as many friends and family as you can who might be concerned over this privacy violation in the public schools of America. While you’re at it, encourage them to sign the petition and join the fight to protect children by empowering their parents. 3. Sign up to volunteer. If you’d like to be more actively involved in your region, whether it is to pass a statute or resolution in your state, or just to help spread the word where you live, please fill out our volunteer form. Done that already? Email David@parentalrights.org. 4. Make a generous donation to ParentalRights.org to support our ongoing efforts to halt threats such as these. Or, if you love liberty and have not yet received Michael Farris's DVD series Constitutional Literacy, you might want to donate during a special offer period coming this Friday.* Together we can empower parents, and empowered parents can halt the invasion of their children’s privacy. Thank you for teaming with us to protect our children by preserving parental rights. Sincerely, Michael Ramey Director of Communications & Research i. Committee on the Rights of the Child, Concluding Observations, Sixty-first session, Sept. – Oct. 2012. This (or in 2 cases a similar) injunction occurs in all seven reports from the session: Albania (paragraph 18), Andorra (para. 18), Austria (19), Bosnia & Herzegovina (18), Canada (21), Liberia (20), and Namibia (19). * Because ParentalRights.org is a 501(c)(4) lobbying organization, we regret that donations cannot be deductible for income tax purposes. |
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Background:
In November 2003, a court ordered independent assessment
confirmed that Dan was
psychotic, “lacked capacity to make decisions regarding
neuroleptic medication.
” Instead of acute standard care at the
hospital, Dan was enrolled into a commercial, market promotion
drug trial by psychiatrists
at the University of Minnesota who coerced Dan with the threat
of involuntary
commitment—i.e, incarceration—to get him to agree to be a
subject in AstraZeneca's Seroquel trial.
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March 13, 2013
A Tale of Two Measures
Two state
measures are facing important votes this week, and they provide the
perfect opportunity to clear up a few things about what is going on in
the states.The first measure is Oklahoma’s HB1384, the Parents’ Bill of Rights bill. It passed the Human Services Committee on Feb. 20 and now faces a floor vote in the Oklahoma House. If it passes, it will go to the Senate, where it will again be assigned to a committee before it can go to the floor. (Oklahomans can read the current alert here.) The second measure is Nebraska’s LR42, a legislative resolution that would call on the U.S. Congress to adopt the Parental Rights Amendment and send it to the states for ratification. LR42 faces a hearing in the unicameral Judiciary Committee on Thursday at 1:30 p.m. (Nebraskans can read the current alert here.) So, how exactly does a bill like HB1384 differ from a resolution like LR42? What is our plan for using these measures in the states?
A Bill Creates Law
A bill such as Oklahoma’s proposed Parents’ Bill of Rights is intended to make law. It has a direct and binding effect within the state that passes it. Generally,
the parental rights statutes we are championing in various states take
the legal standard that has been established by the courts, and add it
to the state code, or written laws. This preserves the standard so that
it will not erode under future courts or legislatures, but it does so
without disrupting the legal balance already in place. States continue
to exercise jurisdiction over matters of child abuse or neglect, for
instance, but the fundamental right of parents to direct their child’s
upbringing is secured.Oklahoma’s bill will also preserve this balance, but it is a more involved statute than for instance the one passed in Virginia last month. HB1384 seeks to establish the rights of parents in a number of specific areas impacting children. Boiled down, it would still equate to a preservation of fundamental parental rights; it just involves greater detail. If it passes, HB1384 will become binding law on every court in Oklahoma. However, even HB1384 is not sufficient to protect parents and children if the U.S. Senate chooses to adopt the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) or the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Once ratified, those treaties would become “the supreme law of the land.... anything in the law or constitution of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.” So why pass it? Because the law would provide clarity and security for families in the courts until such time as one of these treaties is adopted.
A Resolution Impacts Congress
On the other
hand, Nebraska’s LR42 doesn’t make any state law at all. Rather, it
constitutes a request from the government of Nebraska to the government
of the United States: send us the Parental Rights Amendment so that we and our sister states can ratify it.Resolutions like LR42 have already been adopted in Louisiana, South Dakota, Florida, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, and though they have no legal effect, they have an impact on the U.S. Congress. First, the Congressmen and Senators who represent that state in Washington, D.C., are encouraged to support the aim of the resolution. Second, both grassroots supporters and other members of Congress can see the support spread across the country. Finally, enough resolutions could ultimately put Congress over a barrel. While 6 or 7 may not seem significant, if we start to reach 28 or 30 resolutions, Congress will be under a lot of pressure to propose the amendment. That’s because the Constitution allows two methods of amendment. The first is for 2/3 of each house of Congress to pass the amendment, then to send it to the states for ratification. (Ratification requires the approval of 38 states.) The second way is for 2/3 of the state legislatures – that’s 33 states – to apply to Congress for a convention to propose an amendment. If 30 or more states have called on Congress to propose the amendment, it becomes clear that those same states could decide to call for a convention. The handwriting would be on the wall, so to speak, so Congress may as well pass the amendment along. (Ratification still requires 38 states.)
Planning Our Efforts
Initially,
we were working on resolutions at the state level to engage grassroots
volunteers and involve the state legislatures. Recently, though, we have
come to realize that parental rights in America may or may not
have the time to wait for passage of the amendment. Statutes provide
real legal protection right now, and until we get the Amendment adopted.That’s why some states have tried one method and others another. Virginia’s House of Delegates adopted a resolution 3 years ago (which died in the Senate), but the full legislature just passed a parental rights statute earlier this year. Resolutions are currently being considered in Texas and Mississippi as well as in Nebraska, while Oklahoma is joined by Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas in attempting to secure legislation this session. Other state efforts will soon be getting under way, too, while we hope to engage many other states next year.
Action Items
If you live in Nebraska or Oklahoma, please see the respective alerts and take action in your state this week.If your state is otherwise listed in this email, be prepared to take action when an alert comes your way. Decide now that when you receive that message, you will take the time to act. Finally, if you would like to help with the launching and championing of a resolution or a statute in your state, please email David and let him know of your interest. And no matter what state you live in, your generous donation* today will help support and continue our efforts in every state until parental rights – and the children they protect – are secured throughout the United States. Sincerely, Michael Ramey Director of Communications & Research * Because ParentalRights.org is a 501(c)(4) lobbying organization, we regret that donations cannot be deductible for income tax purposes. |
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March 1, 2013
Farris on Fox News Saturday
ParentalRights.org president and constitutional law scholar Michael Farris will appear on the Fox News Network’s Huckabee show on Saturday evening at 8 p.m. Eastern.
(The show is often re-aired at later hours, too, so check your local
listings.) Farris and host Mike Huckabee will discuss parental rights
and the pending Sixth Circuit Court case, Eric Holder v. Romeike.The Romeikes are a German family granted asylum in the United States because of persecution they have suffered at the hands of the German government over their educational choices. When they opted out of state-run schools to train their children at home, they were prosecuted under Germany’s state-school-only mandatory attendance laws. In U.S. courts, the Romeikes have claimed Germany’s law violates a parent’s prior right to determine the education of their children – a right recognized in international human rights agreements and by the U.S. Supreme Court. The office of the U.S. Attorney General has appealed the decision, essentially arguing that no such right exists. Farris, who is representing the Romeikes in the case, will discuss the parental rights issues implicated and the threat he sees in our own government’s response.
Action Items
Please watch or record the show, and encourage your friends to watch it, too.
The show will highlight the need to protect our parental rights against
a government increasingly hostile to those rights. It will be a great
chance for your friends to see the need to act, while a boost in the
ratings can encourage Fox News and Mike Huckabee to have Mr. Farris on
the show again.Please support our efforts with your most generous donation*. We are supporting parental rights legislation in several states while gearing up for the Parental Rights Amendment in the new Congress. And Senate insiders have warned us that the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – an international treaty that threatens the right of parents to direct the care of their children with disabilities – will be back in the Senate in the near future. All of these efforts can be costly, and we rely solely on the support of concerned champions like you to keep us going. Finally, become a fan of ParentalRights.org on Facebook. Those who are may have already seen notice of this upcoming interview – we broke the news there on Tuesday. (We just confirmed details last night, which is why you are just getting this email today.) You can also get in on the earliest, most up-to-date parental rights news by following our Facebook page. Thank you for standing with us to defend parental rights and to spread the word so that others can join us in the fight. Sincerely, Michael Ramey Director of Communications & Research * Because ParentalRights.org is a 501(c)(4) lobbying organization, donations cannot be tax deductible for income tax purposes. |
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