Idaho Eagle Forum 

Legislative Analysis - February 13, 2006

 

After a careful reading of Senate Bill 1341 - Early Childhood / Intervention Services and the fact that the International Baccalaureate program is proposed for Idaho schools, plus the School-To-Work program of Polytechnical Education, plus the mountains of other evidence compiled by Idaho Eagle Forum - including information on the Student Information Management System (SIMS), it has become painfully obvious that serious Socialist forces are at work in Idaho.  S1341 is virtually identical to Mikhail Gorbachev’s Whole Child Initiative that is led by Jane Goodall, the famous primatologist.  It’s being piloted in Florida. And it is a UNESCO program.

 
S1341 is a bold Socialist program that takes responsibility away from parents, giving it to the schools as the coordinator of all programs necessary for children to thrive from infancy through school age.   It’s not that Idaho Eagle Forum doesn’t want to see children thrive, but that is a family responsibility, not the State’s responsibility and certainly not the school’s responsibility.  
 
To develop and implement a statewide, comprehensive coordinated multidisciplinary, interagency system of early children AND early intervention services for all young children. Section 3, 106-102, #4.   [Comprehensive means all services - health, psychiatric, social, coordinated means case management, multidisciplinary means teachers, social workers, psychologists, health care providers, law enforcement, etc;]
 
To develop and implement with available resources a statewide screening and tracking system for infants and toddlers at risk.  Section 3, 106-102, #3. [This legislation provides for an appointed council to define the program and it provides that they can accept private grants (See Reese Committee Hearings 1953-1954).  Private money is used to start the program then at some point the state takes over and the taxpayers pick up the costs.  The ‘screening’ program is the Parents As Teachers program or a similar program with a different name (that’s their MO also - just rename it).  The tracking system is actually the Student Information Management System (SIMS). This means that even if H0531 is defeated, this bill, S1341 mandates the computer system anyway] 
 
To facilitate the coordination of payment for early childhood and early intervention services from federal state, local, and private sources including public and private insurance. Section 3, 106-102, #6 [This means they will do the billing for Medicaid and private insurance companies which means that they will have the medical, psychiatric, dental, etc. records on the school’s computer system on the student record.  This is why Kempthorne wants to split out children from the Medicaid pool to create a separate program.  That way the program can be expanded for children.] 
 
To build on statewide outcomes and shared goals…. Section 3, 106-102, #8. [To build on… this means that they are adding this to exisiting information on children.  In other words, all of these records become part of the lifetime SIMS school record of children.]  
 
It’s very insidious and deceptive how they’ve done this.  The goal behind all of this is to be able to build a complete computer information system on future citizens.  The combined, school, medical, psychiatric, law enforcement, family, and employment history represents a complete base of information on future citizens.  And they’ve made the schools the central point for collection and retention and dissemination of the data.  It is DARPA’s ‘Total Information Awareness’ system minus the adult, private sector information like credit history, etc. 
 
It will include ‘assessments’ from all of the people who have worked with the child.  The assessments are simply opinions that will stay on the child’s record for a life time. It includes referrals to providers.  It includes billing information for the providers - which means that effectively, they will have the medical and psychiatric record.  There is no other way to describe this system than as a communist system of control.  It gives the state the power to control the economic and life opportunities of future citizens. 
 
To really understand the computer system, one needs to examine the data that will go into it.  While the handbook says that the elements are optional at state level, from the Early Childhood program one can see how these programs create the ‘need’ for the data elements that would be excluded otherwise.  Once in the database, the data elements are available for use for the lifetime of the record (i.e. even for students who are older than Early Childhood). 
 
The Data Element Guides are produced by the National Center for Education Statistics for the U.S. Dept of Education.  It should be noted that data dictionaries are revised but they are never completely changed because each change means major changes to a computer system (think Y2k date problem):  
 
1997 Data Elements for Elementary and Secondary Student Information systems (notice that there are data elements in here for Early Childhood even in 1997).
 
 
 
The question is, how did Idaho lose local control of our schools?   Clearly the Idaho Board of Education has become just a puppet agency that rubberstamps whatever programs come through the Education Commission of the States, the National Governor’s Association and the US Dept. of Education.  What they’ve been approving is the nationalization and now the internationalization of our schools even as the quality of the schools declined.  WHY?
 
The answer is in Idaho Law:  Title 33, Chapter 41 Interstate Compacts.  This law calls for cooperation with the Education Commision of the States and it provided for an appointed education council, giving the governor the power to appoint the Chairman.  This took the power away from the Idaho Board of Education to set policy and direction for Idaho schools.  It happened so long ago, that it is doubtful that current Idaho School Board members even remember what it was like to actually be able to set policy and direction for Idaho Schools. 
 
 
The idea of an interstate compact on education was set forth in the mid-1960s by James Bryant Conant, an educator, scientist and diplomat who had served as the president of Harvard University from 1933 to 1953.
 
Writing at a time when the GI Bill, the National Defense Education Act, the Great Society legislation and other initiatives had greatly enlarged the federal role in education, Conant, in his 1964 book Shaping Education Policy, called for a kind of counterbalance - a mechanism for improving and strengthening education policy and policymaking at the state level. Such a mechanism, he said, would give voice to the diverse interests, needs and traditions of states, enable them to cooperate and communicate with one another, and promote their working together to focus national attention on the pressing education issues of the day.
 
In early 1965, the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Ford Foundation awarded grants to Terry Sanford, who had recently left the governorship of North Carolina, to transform Conant's idea into reality.
 
A draft of the interstate compact envisioned by Conant was completed in July 1965 and endorsed by representatives from all 50 states and the U.S. territories at a meeting in Kansas City two months later. By the time the functional arm of the compact, the Education Commission of the States (ECS), held its first annual meeting in Chicago in June 1966, 36 states had formally ratified the compact. (Since then, all 50 states and three territories have joined the Compact for Education, either by legislative action or executive order of the governor.)
 
Idaho Eagle forum agrees with idea of improving Idaho schools.  As a first step, Title 33, Chapter 41 should be repealed.  The next step would be to replace the current Board of Education and Education Department leadership with people who are not mired in the mindset of Socialist indoctrination and control over academic goals. That would be the start of really improving Idaho schools for Idaho children.  

 

March 9, 2006