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The Freedom in Education Act

Section I:
No federal funds shall be used to develop, publish, advertise, promote, or distribute textbooks or on-line curriculum.

Section II:
Competitive bidding shall be required for all education-related federal grants to non-governmental organizations.

Section III:
All questions in federally funded education assessments shall be released to the public within three years of being administered.

Section IV:
No federal funds shall be used for cooperative education activities between the Department of Education and UNESCO.

Discussion
Section I:

1. This section would end the current federal funding of the textbook We The People: The Citizen and the Constitution (WTP) by the Center for Civic Education, funded through a DOE grant in the current ESEA.

2. WTP, in particular, promotes a worldview that is hostile to the fundamental principles of the United States by redefining and undermining the principles of inalienable rights, self-evident truth, natural law, national sovereignty, the 2nd amendment, and the 10th amendment. At the same time, it elevates global citizenship and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights over our own Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence. (See Textbook Review of We The People: The Citizen and the Constitution.)

3. There is no constitutional federal role for education (Amendment X). Federal resources should be directed toward the numerous areas that are constitutionally delegated, especially in this time of spending “off-sets.” Textbooks and curriculum should be properly left to the states.

Section II:

1. This section addresses the non-competitive federal contract to the Center for Civic Education (CCE) to write, publish, promote and distribute Congressionally un-reviewed federal civics standards and a curriculum (We the People), as well the CCE contract to write the federal assessments of those standards (the NAEP).

Section III:

1. This section would require the NAEP to be open to public scrutiny. The public has a right to know the questions students are being asked, especially since 2/3 of the NAEP questions are non- academic. This is a Freedom of Information Act in education.

2. The NAEP assesses students for ideologically slanted beliefs and attitudes. It is based on the highly controversial and politicized “national standards.” The public has right to know the kinds of attitudes and values that are being assessed.

3. The NAEP is used by the federal government as a check on what the states test. For that reason, the NAEP has a significant input on what schools will teach. Schools will understandably be pressured to teach to the NAEP. Therefore, public review of the NAEP is essential.

4. Current federal law which allows private citizens individually to review the NAEP in private is unacceptable for proper public disclosure. Under the 2002- passed NCLB, public criticism, exposure, or discussion of specific NAEP questions is prohibited under penalty of felony charges. In contrast, the Iowa Basics Skills Test, for example, has been open to public scrutiny for years.

5. The cost of re-developing new questions every three years must be considered as a cost of a federal assessment, if there is to be one. Congressional NCLB prohibited development of a national test, yet under NCLB, states are for the first time required to administer the NAEP in math, reading, and science.

6. A current Senate bill, S 860, would extend state-required participation in the NAEP to civics and history. S 860 and similar future legislation would further expand the NAEP into a prohibited national test. This section is a positive alternative to S 860.

Section IV

1. Former President Bill Clinton signed the Education for All (EFA) international agreement Dakar Update. The Dakar Update specifies that UNESCO shall continue as the Secretariat for the implementation of the EFA. The educational objectives of UNESCO are hostile to the United States of America.

2. UNESCO establishes curriculum for U.S. and worldwide implementation, all of which are based on global citizenship, United Nations governance, international law, protocols, and international agreements. Even agreements that have not been ratified by the U.S. Senate are the basis of these curriculum, such as, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, and the Kyoto Protocol. Examples of these curricula are the UN Decade on Education for Sustainable Development, Peace Education, Global Education, the GLOBE program, and many more.