Publisher’s Note: Splendor in the Grassroots

I became an education reform activist fifteen years ago. My daughters and tax money were subjected to endless education fads from open classrooms to whole language. During the early 1980s, I asked school officials for empirical data showing that open classrooms improved learning. Walls had been torn down at taxpayer expense. When kids came home with stories that there was too much noise and too many distractions, the school cabal was challenged. As parents complained, the principal and teachers told them they were the only ones whining. The PTA turned a deaf ear. They were part of the impenetrable wall between inquisitive parents and arrogant school authorities.

Questioning parents were successfully convinced that concerns were unfounded. Their children were the problem, not the experiments, school officials claimed. My oldest daughter suffered through elementary school. We were told she needed counseling for her inability to adapt to new learning methods. I believed the school. Then history repeated itself. My youngest daughter had come of fourth-grade age. Unauthorized group therapy was performed on these youngsters, turning them into egotistical, anti-parent, out-of-control monsters. A combination of invented spelling, declarations of atheism, poor math and reading skills, and classrooms without walls pushed me and my husband over the edge. We yanked our daughters out of pricey suburban New York public schools and enrolled them in private parochial schools. Academically, they were two and three years behind their new classmates.

I first thought the “education problem” was local. After researching twelve years of district school spending, I found some interesting correlations. The more money spent, the worse the SAT scores. I expanded my research to include other NYS school districts. I learned that the NYS teacher pension fund was greater than the GNP of most countries. More money had bought fads, incredible employee benefit programs, teacher aides, aides to aides, new math, whole language and unholy classrooms. It didn’t take long to conclude that government school employees at all levels love any education fad that expands the budget. Notice I will not say “public” when it comes to describing education by government. The schools are not public. They exist by government fiat, and the kids are government-issue.

Per-pupil expenditures have little or nothing to do with academic achievement. Viewed through a financial microscope, government education successfully accomplishes wealth redistribution from the private to the public sector. The golden rule of education is: He who has the gold rules. But those who control education also control the destiny of everything else.

I became a champion of parents’ right to choose and publicly protested the fads and the money being spent to diseducate kids. Private schools were disappearing due to spiraling high property taxes needed to support the growing government education monopoly. The greater the private school closure rate, the greater the need to expand government schools and increase property taxes. The government school cheerleaders were always out in droves, denouncing any school choice advocate as a right-wing christian fundamentalist. More money! They cried. How much more no one dared asked. I was especially interested by the names I was called. I hadn’t been to church in ten years, but all of a sudden I was hailed as the leader of a christian cult whose agenda was to take over the schools. The more I learned, the more I realized that education by government mandate was fundamentally flawed and politically motivated. Those decrying school choice as some mythical violation of church/state separation were, in fact, the real extremists. Urban minority youngsters were especially victimized by a new breed of racists: government school supremacists who found greater value in a system than in kids. I became convinced that education freedom was, indeed, the biggest First Amendment and civil rights issue of our times.

I produced and hosted a NY area radio and television program that challenged the experiments and advocated school choice as the only true education reform. I was subjected to death threats and was hung in effigy by school choice opponents. I learned I was a threat. Most of all, I learned that there was a more potent agenda in place for keeping our kids in government schools, whether or not they were learning. To deny that this agenda exists is to be profoundly ignorant of how key captive children are to implementing radical social, economic, political, and spiritual changes in our country.

There were many memorable shows I hosted. I was mailed an advance copy of a middle school AIDS education program. With a warning to the audience, I read the script on the air. It was explicit and pornographic. The station was flooded with protests to stop the show. Most of the protests originated from teacher union officials. The show went on. I was threatened with FCC action. I challenged everyone complaining to come on the air to explain why the FCC should cancel my show while allowing this smut to be taught to 12-year-olds.

During school budget voting season, a newspaper ran a headline that “The Christians Were Coming,” and viciously denounced the agenda of the Christian Coalition. A local chapter of People for the American Way had been quoted warning of the feared Christian onslaught. On the air, I read the Christian Coalition mission statement side by side with PAW’s nifty little booklet entitled What’s Left of The Right. I asked the audience whose agenda they most feared.

Then there was the principal who announced a new physical education requirement: coed wrestling for 8th graders. I invited school officials to kick off their adolescent embrace by hosting a coed faculty wrestling match. The eighth-grade coed wrestling program was canceled.

One of my favorite televised school choice debates was with a state legislator—a former government teacher (you’d be surprised how many teachers end up in politics) and obsessive advocate of a “woman’s right to choose.” I asked her to explain what I considered to be a rights paradox: How could she advocate a woman killing her unborn child while preventing her from educating living kids in the school of choice? The legislator walked off the stage. She threatened to sue me for defamation of character.

By the late 1980s, parents realized they were not alone in their complaints. The biggest breakthrough in concerned citizen mobilization happened on the Internet in the early 1990s. Prodigy Interactive Services implemented an education bulletin board that became a magnet for anyone owning a computer and wise to the education establishment. Through public postings, parents across the United States compared curriculum fads and other classroom experiences. Patterns of orchestrated efforts by state and federal education officials to keep a lid on all levels of parent protest were established and exposed. The grassroots dam broke. National parent and taxpayer conferences were created to compare notes and offer solutions. The Parent Rights Movement was underway.

Crisis in Education represents a milestone in citizen activism against government abuse of power. I’ve met many of the writers featured in this issue. There are thousands more waiting to be published. It is our intention to showcase individuals who have sacrificed time, money, and reputation to speak the truth. Readers don’t have to agree with everything written. What’s significant is that for the first time, a forum has been created for grassroots activists to present what they have learned. Education debate in this country has been controlled and stifled by those who benefit most from the status quo. From School-to-Work, to school choice, to the pros and cons of compulsory attendance laws, we intend to let the people be heard.

I have been blessed to have met some of the smartest, kindest people who have surfaced because of our educational and cultural implosion. Editor Bob Holland has persevered against journalistic odds to expose education fads and frauds, while elevating parental insight. I met Associate Editor Cindy Duckett several years ago at a parent conference, in which many of the Prodigy education bulletin board participants traveled far and wide to share information. Cindy represents the zenith of parent activism. My dear friend, the late Jack Pollard, counseled me and others on the need to stay focused. Our mission, he would say, is to be faithful, not successful. Education reform activism has created a revolutionary spirit not witnessed since a solo horseback ride 200 years ago. God bless the new beacons of light, and may they shine on a new era of spiritual, economic, and educational freedom.

Author

  • Karen Iacovelli

    Ms. Karen Iacovelli is Member of Board at The Philadelphia Trust Company. She is Director of Communications and a member of the Executive Board at Dispoz-O Inc. She produced and hosted the NY based radio and cable television program "Inside Education", and has assisted in drafting several city and state school choice programs.

tagged as:

Join the Conversation

in our Telegram Chat

Or find us on
Item added to cart.
0 items - $0.00

Orthodox. Faithful. Free.

Signup to receive new Crisis articles daily

Email subscribe stack
Share to...