MORE MAJOR EDUCATION BLOWS

The pre­vi­ous blow to Catholics was, of course, the many Bish­ops’ embrace of Com­mon Core for Catholic stu­dents. U. S. Prelates instilled Com­mon Core into their Catholic class­rooms under the ban­ner of the Nation­al Stan­dards and Bench­marks for Effec­tive Catholic Ele­men­tary and Sec­ondary Schools.  Such stan­dards and bench­marks along with their rubrics and exem­plars were for­mu­lat­ed by change agents to teach Catholic stu­dents social­is­tic “social jus­tice”, glob­al­ism, and a “Sus­tain­abil­i­ty” agen­da (U.N. Agen­da 21?) all under such head­ings as 21^st Cen­tu­ry Learn­ing Skills and “Best Prac­tices”. (1)

Appar­ent­ly under the sway of most­ly Jesuit edu­ca­tors, the NCEA (2), and the Carnegie Foun­da­tion for the Advance­ment of Teach­ing and Learn­ing, our Bish­ops have allowed rad­i­cal changes in their Catholic class­rooms through Nation­al Stan­dards and Bench­marks based on Com­mon Core Stan­dards and laced with “Catholic Iden­ti­ty”. (3)  These stan­dards also estab­lished the blue­print for gov­er­nance and lead­er­ship for all aspects of the field of Catholic edu­ca­tion, includ­ing personnel.

The Jesuit Loy­ola Uni­ver­si­ty Chicago’s report, Catholic High­er Edu­ca­tion Col­lab­o­ra­tive Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence says: “Use a set of nation­al­ly devel­oped stan­dards for Catholic edu­ca­tion­al lead­ers (super­in­ten­dents, prin­ci­pals and pas­tors) to redesign and expand High­er Edu­ca­tion Lead­er­ship Pro­grams to meet the needs of the con­tem­po­rary con­text.” (4)

PAYING FOR GOVERNANCE

Now, Catholics are being asked to pay for this restruc­tur­ing of K‑12 Catholic edu­ca­tion to meet nation­al stan­dards of gov­er­nance and lead­er­ship affect­ing dioce­san schools.  Catholics are being asked to con­tribute to local phil­an­thropic foun­da­tions to sup­port the over­haul­ing of Catholic edu­ca­tion, with the “con­tem­po­rary con­text” of Com­mon Core stan­dards and pro­gres­sive Marx­ist tech­niques.  Grand plans for fund­ing and gov­er­nance are now tak­ing hold in many dio­ce­ses, as pre­sent­ed in the 2011 report, Sus­tain­ing Urban Catholic Ele­men­tary Schools: An Exam­i­na­tion of Gov­er­nance Mod­els and Fund­ing Strate­gies. (5)

In 2006, the Unit­ed States Coun­cil of Catholic Bish­ops (USCCB) called for sup­port for the entire Catholic edu­ca­tion sys­tem, with assis­tance from Catholic high­er edu­ca­tion, the phil­an­thropic com­mu­ni­ty, and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. In 2007, the Carnegie Foun­da­tion for the Advance­ment of Teach­ing and Learn­ing met with Catholic edu­ca­tors, uni­ver­si­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the NCEA, and phil­an­thropists. That meet­ing helped to set in motion top-down gov­er­nance, Com­mon Core-based edu­ca­tion, and rad­i­cal changes. Major insti­tu­tions named in the “Sus­tain­ing Urban Catholic Ele­men­tary Schools” are part of the same nexus that met with the Carnegie Foun­da­tion in 2007. They now appear to be spear­head­ing these gov­er­nance and fund­ing initiatives.

Accord­ing to this report, the NCEA, Catholic Uni­ver­si­ties, Boston Col­lege, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame/ACE are pro­vid­ing var­i­ous kinds of lead­er­ship in the areas of “best prac­tices” in K‑12 edu­ca­tion and improved “out­comes” (Marx­ist Out­come Based Edu­ca­tion). The NCEA dis­sem­i­nates local inno­v­a­tive approach­es to gov­er­nance, finance, and oth­er crit­i­cal domains of school­ing. They also have pro­grams for the devel­op­ment and man­age­ment of schools boards and lead­er­ship train­ing for all school per­son­nel.

The fol­low­ing report from an orga­ni­za­tion imbed­ded with­in the NCEA gives us more details. The School Boards and Effec­tive Catholic School Gov­er­nance: Select­ed Pre­sen­ta­tions for the 2012 Catholic High­er Edu­ca­tion Col­lab­o­ra­tive Con­fer­ence (6) shows how stan­dards for effec­tive gov­er­nance (Out­come Based Edu­ca­tion) of Catholic Schools and school boards are being for­mu­lat­ed for con­trol from the top down.

The report also states that appoint­ing the right kind of board mem­bers, such as those who are com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­ers, avoids the trap of believ­ing the board is strict­ly the domain of par­ents. The goal is to devel­op “Com­mu­ni­ty-Dri­ven” school boards. The pur­pose of the Board is for finance, devel­op­ment, enroll­ment, and facil­i­ties. Real­ly? Is all this restruc­tur­ing why par­ents can’t get their voic­es against Com­mon Core heard?

Phil­an­thropists have become intri­cate­ly involved in deci­sion mak­ing for schools and dio­ce­ses.  Phil­an­thropic orga­ni­za­tions such as the Bill Gates Foun­da­tion and the Wal­ton Foun­da­tion have con­tributed to var­i­ous Catholic school inno­va­tions, includ­ing work­force train­ing Char­ter schools. Gov­er­nance strate­gies for dio­ce­ses and parish schools include con­trol and account­abil­i­ty tools to assure “Best Prac­tices” and Com­mon Core-based stan­dards with test­ing and assess­ments for the stu­dents. In addi­tion, for-prof­it con­sult­ing groups have afford­ed dio­ce­ses man­age­ment strate­gies, con­sul­ta­tion to indi­vid­ual schools, large-scale plan­ning for school recon­fig­u­ra­tions, and insti­tu­tion­al management.

This com­pre­hen­sive gov­er­nance plan can also estab­lish Com­mu­ni­ty part­ner­ship­ping, which can incor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty exper­tise and goals into Catholic edu­ca­tion. This affords sec­u­lar com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices and coun­sel­ing for stu­dents and per­haps var­i­ous mem­bers of the parish com­mu­ni­ty. Com­mu­ni­ty par­tic­i­pa­tion includes men­tal health experts, psy­cho­log­i­cal behav­ior­ists, busi­ness­es (work­force and career train­ing), gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives, pub­lic schools, and com­mu­ni­ty social out­reach groups. Will these “experts” be appoint­ed to local Catholic school boards?

The term “part­ner­ship­ping” is also applied to par­ents. Par­ents become just one of many com­mu­ni­ty part­ners or “stake­hold­ers” to form com­mu­ni­ty gov­er­nance for stu­dents. Even though Catholic par­ents are, by Catholic def­i­n­i­tion, FIRST edu­ca­tors, they will have a mea­ger voice, if any, with regard to their child’s edu­ca­tion, which includes train­ing the “whole child” in spir­i­tu­al, emo­tion­al, men­tal, social, and behav­ioral out­comes (Marx­ist and social­is­tic out­comes?). In oth­er words, “it takes a vil­lage” to train not edu­cate.THE GOALS

The stat­ed goals for fund­ing and gov­er­nance strate­gies are to fill emp­ty seats in Catholic Schools, assist Catholic par­ents with tuition, and it appears to estab­lish or expand com­mu­ni­ty-type “ser­vices” and “part­ner­ships”.  Fund-rais­ing efforts to sus­tain authen­tic Catholic schools and help needy Catholic stu­dents are tru­ly laud­able goals. The prob­lem is that the mon­ey being raised is not for authen­tic Catholic edu­ca­tion. The mon­ey will be used to restruc­ture and con­sol­i­date gov­er­nance which, among oth­er top down con­trol mech­a­nisms, locks Com­mon Core-based edu­ca­tion into over 100 dio­ce­ses and all their schools: Parish, Choice, Mis­sion, Char­ter faith-based, or inner city schools includ­ing “Part­ner­ship” schools.

Fur­ther­more, the Boston Report rec­om­mends the “relent­less” pur­suit of gov­ern­ment “Choice” (Tuition Tax Cred­its and Vouch­ers) and ESEA Title fund­ing for edu­ca­tion, which will assure gov­ern­ment strings of con­trol. Char­ter schools with unelect­ed boards remove any hope of local control.

It is sur­pris­ing to learn that Phyl­lis Schlafly, leg­endary head of Eagle Forum who is fight­ing Com­mon Core, also sup­ports “Choice”. In a recent inter­view post­ed on World Net Dai­ly (7), she declared that she thought that she had invent­ed Choice and she con­tin­ues to favor it.  Mrs. Schlafly also states that Char­ter Schools with unelect­ed school boards have destroyed Catholic Schools. In light of this dev­as­tat­ing obser­va­tion, has she lead her Eagles in a bat­tle to fight against uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and destruc­tive Char­ter Schools?  In fight­ing Com­mon Core with­out expos­ing the dan­gers of ever-expand­ing Com­mon Core Choice and Char­ter schools, how does one expect to win the bat­tle against Com­mon Core at all? When will Catholics, who sup­port Choice and Char­ters, real­ize that what gov­ern­ment funds, gov­ern­ment even­tu­al­ly runs and controls?

Catholic schools in Israel are fac­ing the same prob­lems that French Catholic schools faced after accept­ing gov­ern­ment fund­ing in the 1940’s. Catholic schools in Israel are now strug­gling for sur­vival because the gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies and grants, upon which they must have allowed them­selves to become depen­dent, are now being with­drawn. The Israeli author­i­ties say the Catholic Schools should become ‘”state schools”. (8) Are we so naïve that we think that won’t hap­pen here in the U.S?

SEEKING “TOP FUND RAISERS”

And now, to add insult to injury, par­ents and oth­er Catholics are asked to sup­ply funds for these all- encom­pass­ing gov­er­nance plans. Catholic arch/dioceses have now engaged pow­er­ful out­side foun­da­tions and orga­ni­za­tions to raise funds to help pay for restruc­tur­ing of school sys­tems. At least one of these foun­da­tions pre-screens wealthy Catholics who are then solicit­ed for large dona­tions. Region­al foun­da­tion boards con­sist­ing of local Catholics have been formed to fur­ther solic­it dona­tions from fel­low Catholics. Fund-rais­ing cam­paigns can also be applied at the parish level.

ARCHDIOCESE OF ST. LOUIS

The dri­ve for fund­ing for gov­er­nance and restruc­tur­ing appears to be tak­ing place in the Arch­dio­cese of St. Louis.  The Alive in Christ, Mis­sion Advance­ment Ini­tia­tive plan was launched in St. Louis sev­er­al years ago. This six-year plan, includ­ing Com­mon Core, has seem­ing­ly many of the gov­er­nance plans described in the var­i­ous reports cit­ed above. Sis­ter Karen Tichy, Ph.D., Assis­tant Super­in­ten­dent of St. Louis Arch­dioce­san Catholic High Schools, is quot­ed in the Boston Col­lege report, so prob­a­ble famil­iar­i­ty with this report as well as many oth­ers, and the imple­men­ta­tion of such reports in the St. Louis Arch­dio­cese would not be surprising.

The St. Louis Arch­dio­cese has “Imple­men­ta­tion Com­mit­tees” to put their four-pronged pro­gram into effect. This Mis­sion Advance­ment Ini­tia­tive has the ear­marks of the pub­lic schools’ PPBS (plan­ning, pro­gram­ming and bud­get sys­tem), placed in all pub­lic schools in the 70’s to attain uni­form (com­mon) stan­dards and outcomes.

To assist the Alive in Christ plan, the Arch­dio­cese has intro­duced The Roman Catholic Foun­da­tion of East­ern Mis­souri for the solic­i­ta­tion of funds to help sup­port their plans. Fine and upstand­ing local Catholics have been appoint­ed to the board of this foun­da­tion which, in turn, is being sup­port­ed by out­side, high­ly trained experts to help obtain funds. There are, or have been, three out­side groups assist­ing the Archdiocese’s fundrais­ing plan: the Omeara-Fer­gu­son group, Chang­ing Our World, Inc., and the Cathe­dral Foun­da­tion.  Regard­ing the inter­na­tion­al fund rais­ing group, Chang­ing Our World, Inc., one can go to their web site to learn about their endeav­ors. It is impor­tant to note that they use the Boston Col­lege report as one of their resources.

The St. Louis Arch­dio­cese is trans­par­ent in its aggres­sive (relent­less?) pur­suit of gov­ern­ment fund­ing in all forms (Choice and gov­ern­ment Title Fund­ing.)   Here is a sam­ple of this Archdiocese’s approach to gov­ern­ment fund­ing, accord­ing to their website:

“Major Action Steps: 

1. Cre­ate a process which makes all schools which receive Arch­dioce­san fund­ing account­able for pur­su­ing any gov­ern­ment fund­ing for which they are eli­gi­ble. (Empha­sis added)

2. Work with the MCC [Mis­souri Catholic Con­fer­ence, Ed.] and oth­er stake­hold­ers to deter­mine the most pro­duc­tive long-term strat­e­gy to increase the amount of pub­lic and pri­vate fund­ing avail­able to the mis­sion of Catholic Edu­ca­tion in all of its forms…” (9)

    [An exam­ple of this was the failed Tuition Tax Cred­it “Children’s Edu­ca­tion Ini­tia­tive” to obtain pub­lic fund­ing. It was ini­ti­at­ed and pro­mot­ed by the Mis­souri Catholic Con­fer­ence and the St. Louis Arch­dio­cese. Ed.]

The St. Louis plan also calls for “stu­dent exchange” pro­grams between schools with dif­fer­ent racial, eth­nic or socio-eco­nom­ic ten­sions in local com­mu­ni­ties. Will this also incur fur­ther gov­ern­ment funding/control? To see the overview of the St. Louis pro­gram, includ­ing the procla­ma­tion of the Com­mon Core cur­ricu­lum, go to:   http://archstl.org/alive/page/superintendents-presentati

JUST ONE SMALL SAMPLE

From a Com­mon Core Catholic Iden­ti­ty Ini­tia­tive “Jus­tice” Exem­plar for the Catholic Nation­al Stan­dards and Bench­marks:  “Jus­tice –courage, risk, human dig­ni­ty, stew­ard­ship, prophe­cy, inter­de­pen­dence, peace-seek­ing, equal dis­tri­b­u­tion of goods, for­ti­tude, empa­thy.” (9) (Desir­able con­cepts blend­ed with social­is­tic “social jus­tice” prin­ci­ples. Is this the Bish­ops’ and Catholic edu­ca­tors’ con­cept of “Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty”? Ed.)  (10)    
ARE THERE ALTERNATIVES?

Yes! The good news is, in order to avoid these nation­al gov­er­nance plans for Com­mon Core and their brain­wash­ing tac­tics, par­ents are now remov­ing their chil­dren from Catholic schools and are home school­ing instead. Oth­er Catholic par­ents have start­ed their own authen­tic and pri­vate­ly run Catholic schools.
But, until Catholics stop fund­ing and acqui­esc­ing to rad­i­cal changes in Catholic edu­ca­tion, dire aber­ra­tions will con­tin­ue to be vis­it­ed upon Catholic edu­ca­tion and the Catholic com­mu­ni­ty.  WAKE UP, CATHOLICS!

______________________________________________________

*[This is not the first for­ay into restruc­tur­ing of Catholic parish­es. In the late 70’sand ear­ly 80’s, restruc­tur­ing took place through the efforts of change-agents includ­ing the rad­i­cal Marx­ist, Saul Alin­sky, his com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­ers, and Catholics, who in addi­tion to being advo­cates, afford­ed finances to Alin­sky and his fol­low­ers. These rad­i­cals intro­duced “Parish and Cor­po­rate Renew­al” across Amer­i­ca using behav­ioral tac­tics of Marx­ist Ben­jamin Bloom]. (11)

Sources and Footnotes: 

1. Kraus, Bet­sy, “Catholic Chil­dren in Grave Dan­ger: A Report on Com­mon Core in Catholic Schools”, May 2013.   file:///C:/Users/progressive/Downloads/CCCS.%20(9).pdf And:Iserbyt, Char­lotte, “Com­mu­ni­ty Edu­ca­tion and Agen­da 21Same Roots?  http://abcsofdumbdown.blogspot.com/2014/08/community-education-un-agenda-21.html
2. Brous­sard, Lau­ra, “Nation­al Catholic Asso­ci­a­tion and Their Friends”, March 17, 2014http://scribd.com/doc/213920259/NCEA-and-Their-Friends
3. Kraus, Bet­sy, “Catholic Edu­ca­tion in Amer­i­ca: To Deceive the Elect?” Octo­ber, 2013.http://scribd.com/doc/179787173/Catholic-Education-in-America-To-Deceive-theElect And:http://abcsofdumbdown.blogspot.com/2014/08/social-justice-in-schools.htmlhttp://abcsofdumbdown.blogspot.com/2014/07/critical-thinking-its-not-what-you-think.html http://abcsofdumbdown.blogspot.com/2014/07/tools-of-mind.html

4. Catholic High­er Edu­ca­tion Col­lab­o­ra­tive Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence, Loy­ola Uni­ver­si­ty Chica­go, Octo­ber 1–3, 2009.http://luc.edu/media/lucedu/ccse/pdfs/CHEC%20Proposed%20Actions.pdf
5. Gold­schmidt, Eric P., Ph.D. and Walsh, Mary E., Ph.D., “Sus­tain­ing Urban Catholic Ele­men­tary Schools: An Exam­i­na­tion of Gov­er­nance Mod­els and Fund­ing Strate­gies”, Boston Col­lege, 2011.http://deliberatedumbingdown.com/MomsPDFs/DDDoA.sml.pdf

6. Geru­son, Gre­go­ry J. and Co., School Boards and Effec­tive Catholic School Gov­er­nance: Select­ed Pre­sen­ta­tions for the 2012 Catholic High­er Edu­ca­tion Col­lab­o­ra­tive Con­fer­ence, 2013. http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1780&context=ce
7. Hohmann, Leo, “Con­ser­v­a­tive Icon Still going Strong at 90”, World Net Dai­ly, 8/14/2014.http://wnd.com/2014/08/conservative-icon-still-going-strong-at-90/#idfhqJwsm0GzMdbg.99mail.aol.com/38719–111/aol‑6/en-us/Lite/MsgList.aspx?folder=NewMail&message_select=32165364&seq=9&unseen=1&msgActionRequest=Mark%20Unread. And:http://abcsofdumbdown.blogspot.com/2014/08/schlaflys-choice-cat-finally-out-of-bag.html

8. “Israel: Catholic schools in dan­ger of being tak­en over by State”, ICN inde­pen­dent catholic news, 9/1/2014.http://indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=25470
9. Arch­dio­cese of St. Louis, “Objec­tives and Actions for Goal 3: Jus­tice”. http://archstl.org/alive/page/objectives-action-steps-goal-3-soci
10. Com­mon Core Catholic Iden­ti­ty Ini­tia­tive, “Gospel Val­ues (and Relat­ed Val­ues)”. http://cccii-online.org/catechetical-connections/gospel-values.   For more exem­plars and infor­ma­tion see: Pitts­burgh Catholics against Com­mon Core  http://pghcatholicsagainstcommoncore.com/ .

11. Block, Stephanie,” How Alin­skyian­ism Entered Catholic Parish­es”, Spero News. 6/21/2013.http://speroforum.com/a/JPFXTNPPRF0/74103-How-Alinskyianism-entered-Catholic-parishes#.U_oc3_ldXVc