PLATFORM
(Updated Platform: Coming Soon!)
1998 Education Reform Platform
The Education Alliance exists to promote the betterment of our educational system for the benefit of parents, children and society as a whole.
The Education Alliance arose and exists to further each of the following self-evident principles of an effective education system, and to help insure that these fundamental principles are adhered to by those who seek to govern the educational process:
1. BACK TO BASICS EDUCATION
Academic excellence and the teaching of the "Three R's"should be the hallmark of our education system and we should resist any attempt to impose upon our schools any other goals, objectives or ideologies.
Schools exist to educate children, not to serve as distribution centers for social service programs. It is detrimental to our schools to attempt to divert their energies away from educating our children toward other more questionable goals such as school based health clinics, school breakfast programs, psychological testing, etc. Likewise, schools should not be used as laboratories for experimentation on children. Parents, students and taxpayers have every right to demand that only proven methods of instruction are employed. Children are not laboratory rats to be studied to see how they respond to every untested crackpot theory concocted by educational bureaucrats.
We therefore reject the socialistic idea that schools should become miniature welfare states which serve as distribution points for social services, and insist that our children be taught using proven methods which emphasize basic, excellent academic instruction.
2. RIGHTS OF PARENTS
Parents, rather than government, should exercise primary control over the education of children.
Parents possess natural inherent inalienable rights to discipline, raise, control and participate in the education of their children. These rights should not be taken away by the government. Persons involved in education who disavow this most basic and self-evident of all principles impose a grave injustice on parents, students and society as a whole. Our education system as designed gives parents very limited control over their children's education. The system is designed and run by educational special interests who are determined to control how our children are raised.
We therefore support reforms such as charter schools and school choice programs involving private schools.
3. LOCAL CONTROL
How school districts are run belongs under the control of local parents and taxpayers, not the State or Federal governments.
Parents and other local citizens are closest to, and care the most about, the children in their communities. Therefore, all control over funding, expenditures, curriculum and all matters of administration of publicly run schools should remain in the hands of local parents, voters and locally elected school boards. The more control the State government asserts over local education decisions the less responsive our schools are to local needs. Federal control of education strikes at the very heart of the system of federalism established by the founding fathers of our country and must be resisted. Funding of education by the State and Federal governments is a primary means of exercising control. The failure of many existing school board members to resist both increased State and Federal control of our schools is error.
We therefore believe that all attempts to increase State or Federal control over any aspect of our education system or its funding should be resisted.
4. NO BILINGUAL EDUCATION
Students in the United States should be instructed in the English language.
One indivisible Nation such as ours must be united by a single common language. Failure to follow this policy will lead to an unnecessary and disruptive commercial, social and regional balkanization of the populace and contribute to impoverishment of those who are not educated in English.
We therefore believe our education system has the duty to insure that all students have an opportunity to become proficient in English quickly and that once English proficiency is achieved that all students receive their educational instruction entirely in English.
5. ELIMINATING UNION AND OTHER SPECIAL INTERESTS CONTROL OVER SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION
The unions and other special interests currently control our education system for their own gain and to the detriment of our children.
The proper function of teachers' unions is not to dictate educational policy, but to support teachers in collective bargaining of wages and working conditions. Unions have usurped unto themselves the role of educational policy makers. Union dues which are taken from teachers' salaries without the teachers' consent are used to fund political activities which they often disagree with. the election of school board members who represent the Unions, not the teachers, parents or the local voters. This has allowed the Unions' handpicked candidates to gain majority status on most school boards and to therefore control educational policy. School board policy should be made for the benefit of children, not Unions.
We therefore support eliminating any ability of the Unions to require membership or dues to be paid as a condition of employment. We also support eliminating the absolutely indefensible practice of allowing districts to act as collection agents for the Unions by taking dues directly out of employees checks.
6. PROMOTING POSITIVE VALUES AND DISCIPLINE
Our schools must impart positive values and discipline to students in order to maintain an optimum learning environment and to properly prepare students for life as productive citizens after school.
All educational processes necessarily impart values of some sort to their pupils. We reject the fallacy that it is possible to educate children in a "value neutral" manner. It is no more possible to govern schools in a "value neutral" manner than it is to govern an entire nation or state in such a manner. Likewise, just as it is not possible to govern an entire nation or state that is in anarchy, it is not possible to govern a school system or a class that is in anarchy and where discipline is neither maintained nor enforced.
We do not support teaching religion in our schools. Liberal defenders of an education system devoid of values charge that the teaching of values is somehow synonymous with teaching religion. We believe that this is a ridiculous and is designed by the defenders of the educational status quo in an attempt to deflect attention from their own failures.
7. TERM LIMITS
Term limits are necessary to prevent perpetual government of education by any particular person or special interest group.
Perpetual incumbency of any particular person or special interest group is antithetical to a democratic form of government in the modern age of campaign finance and leads to government of, by and for the incumbents and their financial supporters rather than the government of, by and for the People.
We therefore believe that term limits should be established to prevent constant unbroken sustained long-term re-election of any particular individual to any particular office in the government of education.