Obama's Online Fed Curriculum (for $500 Million)

[Herbert Spencer]

That Obama is a gosh dang marvel of modern science.  He runs GM, he runs AIG, he wants to run your health care, and now he's going to design your online curriculum.  

Another Obama First: Uncle Sam to Create Education Curriculum

Posted by Brian Faughnan (Profile)

Tuesday, September 15th at 11:56AM EDT

Millions of Americans are marching, blogging, calling Congress, E-mailing friends, and writing to newspapers to say that President Obama and Congress are expanding government too far, too fast. We need to do more, because it’s clear that they’re not getting the message. The latest example: the House of Representatives is preparing to put the Department of Education into the business of creating educational curriculum for American students.

This week the House is scheduled to approve H.R. 3221, an education lending bill that CBO reports will increase the deficit by $50 billion. The bill includes a little-known provision to give the Secretary of Education $500 million - to be provided to any entity he deems “appropriate” - to develop and disseminate free and “freely available” online courses.

This is unprecedented.

Federal curriculum is contrary to longstanding government policy - and it’s unnecessary. For decades, Federal law has prohibited the U.S. Department of Education from exercising control over the “curriculum, program of instruction . . . or over the selection or content of library resources, text books, or other educational materials by any educational institution or school system.”

Now the Obama Administration and Congress are poised to provide the Secretary of the Education half a billion dollars, and give him the authority to enter into contracts with any entity he deems “appropriate” to “develop, evaluate and disseminate” “freely available” “education courses.”

Why?

This provision comes under ‘open online education’ in the bill. But if the only goal is to expand online education, why not encourage states and districts to do that? They are already in the business of creating course curriculum. Why break decades (actually, centuries) of precedent, and allow the federal government to design course curriculum for the first time? And lastly, why give that authority with no guidelines whatsoever as to what groups qualify for the money?

[ham]

Let alone former junk fascist countries in Europe, now junk democratic countries, look at Canada...Quebec for example enforces severe curricula and little room is left, if any, for any 'special' or 'confessional' idea except big brother's party line.

Whose fault is it?
Surprisingly, it is damn f-cking, unwashed little hulkamaniacs' fault...and I can prove it.
Who brought big brother first into matters of school curricula? Those who fought either for or against creationism or evolutionism being taught in school.
It does not really matter whether Christian bigots won once and communist social alchemists won twice, or the other way round: they set a precedent squealing for big brother to intervene.
I remember a fable about frogs whose pond was drying up...they though they were smart when they asked a seagull to help them cross over to a nearby lake.
Guess what...the seagull ate all of them.
The story continues with a big, old crab who suspected the truth and was prepared, so when the seagull was ready to kill him, he strangled it with his big claws.

The lesson is: you can't complain when big brother says you're wrong, if you summoned him and rejoiced when it said you were right...and ultimately, big brother answers to none but the results of instant polls changing every hour and to the lash of the powerful carpet baggers and bankrollers who finance the sordid clique of the day.

Now they are all bellyaching that big brother grows too fast...like a cancer...but they would the first to salute it in case of another court case about creationism vs evolutionism.

[Don Dresden]

The bill includes a little-known provision to give the Secretary of Education $500 million - to be provided to any entity he deems “appropriate” - to develop and disseminate free and “freely available” online courses.

That's the government for you.  Spend half a billion dollars for something you can get online from MIT for....FREE!

Maybe Obama will hire me to administer this program.  I'll spend $25 on internet service and the other $499,999,975.00 on administrative salaries and expenses.

[Armando Ramos]

Maybe Obama will hire me to administer this program.  I'll spend $25 on internet service and the other $499,999,975.00 on administrative salaries and expenses.

Don't forget to deduct your mandatory union dues, your mandatory contributions to ACORN, your federal, state and local taxes, fees for licenses, permits and inspections, your mandatory government health care plan payments, your mandatory fees for lobbyists to secure congressional approval (i.e., liquor, drugs, hookers, etc.) and most important of all, your mandatory contribution to the "Obama in 2012" committee.

When you get done you might have just enough left over to buy one of those hot new Obamamobiles...and a glass of Kool-Aid!

[Herbert Spencer]

Dems Killing Access to Higher Education And Adding a Secret New Czar Too

Posted by Erick Erickson (Profile)

Thursday, September 17th at 6:00AM EDT

While we are all focusing on H.R. 3200, the House Democrats’ health care plan, we should at least glance at H.R. 3221, the House Democrats’ plan to kill off higher education access. (PDF)

The legislation is opposed by many major universities including Notre Dame, among others. Basically, the bill would shut down all private providers of student loans, drive up costs for universities, and become a bureaucratic nightmare for institutions of higher learning. The professors may be leftists, but the administrators have to pay attention to the bottom line.

The Director of Student Financial Strategies at University of Notre Dame warns in a letter to Congressman Miller, “Any legislation that eliminates choice and competition and mandates that all institutions adopt an all-government run program for the 2010/11 academic year is filled with immense risk and would create massive confusion.”

Get that? The Democrats want an “all-government run program” to provide people access to money to pay for college. And if they do that, then they can force universities to comply with lots of new rules or deny students the right to use federal student loans to go to particular colleges.

But it gets better. Boy does it ever get better.

§ 343 of the plan creates a Green Schools Czar. No kidding. A Green Schools Czar (and committee naturally) would examine the impact of more environmentally friendly universities and find ways to create even more environmentally friendly universities. Oh . . . I have an idea . . . if students need financial assistance and they are forced to go through the feds, the feds can simply tell universities to become compliant or they won’t let students use their student loans to go there.

What is so funny is that §312 of Obama’s stimulus plan also sent money to schools to become more environmentally friendly. That was the carrot. Well, this new law will become the stick

[ham]

Get that? The Democrats want an “all-government run program” to provide people access to money to pay for college. And if they do that, then they can force universities to comply with lots of new rules or deny students the right to use federal student loans to go to particular colleges.

What's new?
Nothing.
Since American Lenin Roosevelt opened up the flood gates of "deficit spending", credit and indebtedness...first getting people up to their eyeballs in debt with the mirage of a (more) affluent and careless life even for the bottom feeder; second, 'liberating' very noisy classes ( Africans, women...) with a chip on their shoulder that will jump in head first, eager to overcome centuries of 'discrimination'.
After big brother gets them awash in debt schemes and credit, it holds the purse...inflation/deflation...only big brother decides whether next year little hulkamaniacs from Alabama will: 1. afford a new home. 2. afford to keep the one they are paying for. 2. move out like burglars and drive away in the middle of the night losing everything.
Now freedom journalists discover in amazement what had been the core law of politics since Philip IV butchered the Templars to steal their wealth, in cahoots with the Pope.
The various Madoff, Lehman and so forth are just actors playing a script that has been in operation for centuries.
Remember that idiot Lincoln?
His only reason to go to war was "to save the Union" (=big brother), much as the only reason why the British waged war in America was "to save his majesty's Empire"...
Remember when big brother made it illegal for little Hulkamaniacs to own gold? Remember how it said it was for their greater good? How many decades have gone by without a proper audit of Fort Knox gold reserves? Perhaps because you may find much less than expected? Where has the remaining amount then gone? Wars? Only stealing German patents after both wars meant billions of profit.
Or is it that profit went to the usual clique of bankrollers, social alchemists and Barnums and losses were paid for with public money?

I am glad the great free press starts to realize some.

[Martin Eisenstadt]

HR 3221 is the education equivalent of Obama's health care nationalization plan.  It federalizes all student financial aid.  

One of the key points is that graduates who did not complete the federally approved national curriculum will be ineligible for financial aid.  So, for example, home-schooled kids will be ineligible for college financial aid.  

Students at colleges with non-government approved curricula will be ineligible for financial aid.  We've already seen how this operates in real life.  Remember when CCW applied to Oregon's adjudicated civil rights violator Gay Al for program approval?  He denied it because they were teaching "holistic" topics in their business program.  This bill effectively turns the DofEd into Gay Al for the entire nation.

Just Say No to HR 3221

[Herbert Spencer]

Federal Curriculum 101

Posted by Congressman John Kline (R-MN) (Profile)

Thursday, October 15th at 9:00AM EDT

Last month, I joined 170 of my colleagues in voting ‘no’ on legislation that would dramatically expand the tentacles of the federal government into our nation’s classrooms. At the time, most of the attention given to the bill – both positive and negative – focused on its shift to the Direct Loan program, which turns the U.S. Department of Education into the nation’s largest (and only) provider of Stafford student loans.

Establishment of a federal monopoly over the most widely used type of college financial assistance is certainly cause for concern. However, for all the attention paid to the loan programs, the creeping federal expansion into other elements of our education system has virtually been ignored.

For example, perhaps you haven’t heard that the legislation creates a new $8 billion “early childhood” program that imposes federal standards on state pre-K programs. Or that it directs more than $6 billion to school construction, modernization, and renovation – making the U.S. Secretary of Education the Facilities Manager-in-Chief. The legislation also calls for $7 billion in various new initiatives to support community colleges – much of it duplicative of existing spending on job training and workforce development.

Also of concern, tucked away in this flood of federal spending is a rather innocuous sounding item called “Open Online Education.” The details of this half-a-billion dollar program are contained in a single legislative sentence. “From the amount appropriated to carry out this section, the Secretary is authorized to make competitive grants to, or enter into contracts with, institutions of higher education, philanthropic organizations, and other appropriate entities to develop, evaluate, and disseminate freely-available high-quality online courses, including instructional materials, for training and postsecondary education readiness and success.”

If you blinked, you might have missed it. But with those 53 words, the federal government may have just seized control of our nation’s college curriculum.

The American Enterprise Institute’s Frederick Hess followed this federal foray into college curriculum in a piece published earlier this month by Inside Higher Ed :

First off, it’s not clear what problem the administration hopes to solve. Online courses already exist and are offered by an array of publishers and public and private institutions. Access to online courses is hardly an issue. Online enrollment grew from 1.6 million students in 2002 to 3.9 million in 2007, when the figure equaled more than 20 percent of total enrollment at all U.S. degree-granting institutions. U.S. News and World Report reports that nearly 1,000 higher education institutions provide distance learning. For-profit online providers reported that online enrollment was up more than 25 percent from summer 2008 to 2009. …

Today, the chokepoint is often not the lack of existing online courses or materials but the fact that colleges and universities offer them at prices that approximate those charged to students enrolled in more costly traditional instruction. Of course, this stickiness in price has been due to credentialing and regulatory practices that impede the emergence of low-cost entrants; state-funded institutions that use new e-learning students to cross-subsidize other units; and proprietary operators that have happily responded to this cozy arrangement by competing on convenience rather than price. …

The measure also manages to raise concerns about academic freedom and stifling critical research and development.

Federal law has long buttressed academic freedom and intellectual pluralism by prohibiting the U.S. Department of Education from exercising control over “curriculum, program of instruction … text books, or other educational materials by any educational institution.” The administration would suddenly have the department funding the creation and dissemination of entire courses. Once the U.S. Department of Education is sponsoring a freely available course financed with taxpayer funds, it will be difficult for all but the most expensive or distinctive institutions or providers to justify paying for an alternative offering. For the huge swath of the curriculum represented by general and introductory courses, it is not a stretch to imagine that federally-sponsored courses would become a de facto national college curriculum.

Hess rightly points out that federal law prohibits the federal government from controlling curriculum … or exercising any “direction” or “supervision” over it, for that matter. The statute is clear – the federal government cannot, it must not, interfere with or even involve itself with what is taught in our classrooms.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that this Administration and its backers in Congress are quietly assuming control of college classrooms. With an army of czars and an explosion in federal programs, the individuals controlling the levers of power in Washington these days have charted a clear course for an activist federal government. But for those who understand that America’s higher education system is rooted in academic independence and educational freedom, the prospect of a federal curriculum is downright Orwellian.

[Dennis Ruhl]

Whatever happened to the federal system where the federal government controls only the post office, foreign affairs and defence? The national government was created by the states which were essentially sovereign nations. How did it end up in charge with minimal changes in the constitution? Because federally appointed judges have allowed it to happen.

Ditto Canada.

[ham]

Whatever happened to the federal system where the federal government controls only the post office, foreign affairs and defence?  The national government was created by the states which were essentially sovereign nations.  How did it end up in charge with minimal changes in the constitution?  Because federally appointed judges have allowed it to happen.

Ditto Canada.

Or in the case of southern States, they will start a war to physically annihilate those who resist change big brother proposes. Before the civil war, big brother lived on import taxes & contributions from States...during the war it was printing money & exacting ferocious contributions.
Sadly enough, the whole wheel started spinning about matters of public spending and accountability.