Yesterday, January 8th, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had a gathering to commemorate the 5th anniversary of the No Child Left Behind law.  Margaret Spellings was the featured speaker.  During the Question and Answer period, there were two questions asked of Spellings that I think will interest you. 

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Did you get that?   Schools providing services to PARENTS!

The concept is that "to help the children, you must help the parents".  So they are turning the schools into social services centers - "Community Learning Centers".  The truth is that they are doing this for the 30-40 million illegal aliens so that they can provide what are basically welfare benefits that they wouldn't be able to offer through the State Departments of Welfare. 

Last year in legislation that came before the Idaho State Legislature, we found the implementing legislation for this transition.  One of them was to split the Medicaid program into 3 separate programs for "simplification".  The truth was that the split was necessary to implement Section 1118 of the No Child Left Behind program so they could offer medical, dental, psychological, and social counseling and services to the families of school children.  

Another supporting piece of legislation was the Early Childhood Intervention Services bill.  This legislation was very cleverly written to appear to serve disadvantaged children but it left loopholes to cover all children. 

The other legislation had to do with the schools collecting medical, psychological, dental, work information, etc.  in addition to school records for the creation of a LIFELONG - CRADLE-TO-GRAVE portfolio on each student AND their families. 

Now ...take that information and couple it with the report that Marc Tucker of the NCEE produced named "America:  Tough Choices or Tough Times" which is really about the privatization and corporate takeover of the schools - while the public still pays the bills. 

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"First, the role of school boards would change.  Schools would no longer be owned by local school districts.  Instead, schools would be operated by independent contractors, many of them limited-liability corporations owned and run by teachers (if you believe that... I have some swamp land in Florida for you..)  The primary role of school district central offices would be to write performance contracts with the operators of these schools, monitor their operations, cancel or decide not to renew the contracts of those providers that did not perform well, and find others that could do better.  The local boards would also be responsible for collecting a wide range of data from the operators specified by the state, verifying these data, forwarding them to the state, and sharing them with the public and with parents of children in the schools.  They would also be responsible for connecting schools to a wide range of social services in the community, a function made easier in those cases in which the mayor is responsible for both those services and the schools."

And because these social services are all buried in the education pot of money, most state taxpayers wouldn't even be aware that they are paying for all of this. 

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law is apparently up for renewal.  You may want to consider contacting your members of Congress to tell them to VOTE NO! on the renewal of NCLB.  And while you are at it, why not suggest that they dismantle the federal Department of Education except for the section that provides loans and grants to college students.  They can use the savings for more money for grants for academic achievement and at the same time, put these communists out of business before they finish destroying our public school system.