The Clinton administration learned a big lesson from the defeat of its plan to take over the entire U.S. health care industry. Releasing its plan as a single 1,342 page bill in 1993 gave conservatives a large target to aim for and enabled them to identify at least a dozen fearsome features against which Americans could rally.
       When health plan author Ira Magaziner and other friends of Bill and Hillary developed a parallel plan to take over the entire U.S. educational system, they used a very different strategy. They dispersed its coercive mandates among several federal statutes, bureaucratic regulations, a strange relationship between the Departments of Education and Labor, state legislation (whose authorship traces to a common source) and grant applications submitted by states seeking federal funding.
       The master plan for the health industry was developed by what became known as the Jackson Hole group, which met for several years at a private residence in Wyoming, according to an expose in the New York Times Magazine published after the Clinton plan was dead. The master plan for the federal takeover of public schools is contained in a remarkable 18-page "Dear Hillary" letter written on Nov. 11, 1992 by Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), an organization that has been able to milk the public treasuries of many states for millions of dollars to pay for copies of his plan to "restructure" and set "standards" for public schools.
       Tucker's letter confirms that his plan is the result of meetings with other left-wing gurus, including Magaziner, David Hornbeck and Lauren Resnick. It lays out a plan, modeled on the German system, "to remold the entire American public school system" into "a seamless web that literally extends from cradle to grave and is the same system for everyone, " coordinated by "a system of labor market boards at the local, state and federal levels" where curriculum and "job matching" will be handled by counselors "accessing the integrated computer-based program."
       The Tucker-Clinton plan would change the mission of the public schools from teaching children knowledge and skills to training them to serve the global economy in jobs selected by workforce boards.
       Nothing in these comprehensive plans has anything to do with teaching schoolchildren how to read. Although most Americans think that is the No. 1 task of schools, and it is obvious that the schools' failure to do this is our biggest education problem, teaching children how to read is not on the radar screen of these plans and is not even one of the eight national education goals in Goals 2000.
       The implementation of Tucker's ambitious plan was contained in three laws passed in 1994: the Goals 2000 Act, the School-to-Work Act and the reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The final piece of the Tucker plan to convert the school system into job training to serve a managed workforce, which was called "Careers" in the Senate version, didn't pass in 1996 but will certainly be revised this year.
       The Tucker-Clinton-Magaziner plan to restructure the public schools is based on specific mechanisms of control:

• Bypass all elected officials on school boards and in state legislatures, either by making federal funds flow to a new entity called a "consortium" of several school superintendents, or to the governor and his appointees on workforce development boards (as projected in the Careers/Workforce Development bill).
• Use a computer database, a.k.a. "a labor market information system," into which school personnel would scan all information about every schoolchild and his family, identified by the child's social security number: academic, medical, mental, psychological, behavioral and interrogations by counselors. The computerized data would be available to the school, the government and to future employers.
• Use the new slogan "high standards" to cement national control of tests, assessments, school honors and rewards, financial aid and the Certificate of Mastery (CIM), which is designed to function much like a green card used by resident aliens, i.e., you can't get a job without it. Marc Tucker's outfit has been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by individual states (including Texas) to write "reform" plans, which, funny thing, turn out to be substantially similar.
• Control the vocabulary of education, so that many words have double meanings. Thus, when parents hear the words "outcome-based" or "performance-based," they think the outcomes must be skills such as reading and the multiplication tables, but the educators mean "accepting diversity" or "being environmentally sensitive."
• Co-opt the governors and the CEOs of large corporations to front for these "reforms" by promising the former some control over the flow of federal funds and the latter some free teen-age labor. Once a governor or CEO signs on, all decisions are actually made by the same education bureaucrats who gave us the problems in the first place.

      The Robert J. Wood Foundation (RWJF) has invested heavily in school-based health clinics, and it has sought imaginative ways to implement them in the states under the guise of other programs. Beginning in 1989, Pennsylvania's Department of Welfare was awarded a planning grant of $100,000, and in 1990 was awarded a Phase I Implementation Grant for a total of more than $1.4 million under a RWJF program entitled Mental Health Services for Youth. The stated purpose of the program, according to the Foundation's brochure...was "to maximize the functional abilities of young people with serious mental disorders."
       The brochure describes plans for "expanding funding strategies" and "coordinating existing mental health services agencies" at the state level and promoting the development of new mental health services for youth at the community level. In fact, the program was designed to create the impetus for the development of school-based health clinics. Facts demonstrate that there was no clamor from Pennsylvanians for this program...they were selected by the Foundation.
       In Call for Proposals, RWJF directs state governments to form "state-community partnerships that can make major changes in financing, organization, and delivery of services... The state's participation will involve mental health, child welfare, juvenile justice, education, Medicaid, and health planning agencies."
       Clearly, by combining "mental health," "education" and "Medicaid," along with "health planning agencies," the Foundation was directing the state to develop school-based health clinics. Foundation documents were...specific about the objectives it planned to achieve, stating the expectation that "every grant dollar is expected to leverage five dollars in public monies" and that by establishing interagency coordination agreements concerning mental health for youth, the way would be paved to achieve comprehensive health reform.
       The Call for Proposals suggest that "diverse strategies" can be used to "broaden the array of mental health services for youth," including:

• expanding private insurance coverage for these services through negotiations with insurers or through enactment of statutes;
• expanding Medicaid coverage by taking advantage of existing optional services categories, waivers, the case management option, the EPSDT (Early Periodic Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment) Program, or by better leveraging of state dollars through increasing Medicaid reimbursement rates (which automatically increases federal dollars for these covered services);
• blending mental health, education, juvenile justice, and child resources to increase the availability of services for which there are joint agency responsibilities
• developing third-party billing plans to ensure that school systems recover some of the cost of supplying health and supportive services to emotionally disturbed children.

Texas and the Robert Wood Johnson Fdn.: The same deceptive strategy Genevieve Young has written about in Pennsylvania is being perpetrated on Texas by the RWJF. In a letter dated October 29, 1996 to Gov. Bush, RWJF offered to assist Texas "to develop and implement policies aimed at expanding health insurance coverage and controlling health care costs" using their State Initiatives in Health Care Reform program. The State Initiatives program is to "support the development and implementation of state reforms" including "direct expansion of insurance coverage, including strategies involving Medicaid.... The program will also fund related health care data initiatives and the restructuring of state government health programs to reflect new roles and functions." (See the March '97 Torch which explains the goal of turning our schools into quasi-hospitals funded by Medicaid.) Gov. Bush responded to RWJF in a letter dated November 25, 1996 that he would advise his Health and Human Services Commissioner Dr. Mike McKinney of the offer. Texas' Request for Project Support was received by RWJF on December 23, 1996.
       On January 29, 1997, the RWJF notified Gov. Bush of a $394,825 grant approval "to the State of Texas, Texas Dept. of Mental Health and Mental Retardation in 36-month support of its participation in the Foundation's program, Self-Determination for Persons with Developmental Disabilities." On February 14, 1997 Texas Health & Human Svcs. Commissioner Dr. Mike McKinney applied for another grant from the RWJF "to develop and implement a managed care model which creates incentives for clients and HMOs to voluntarily integrate Medicare and Medicaid into a seamless continuum of care."
       School-based clinics were established in Pennsylvania via the RWJF grant program entitled "Mental Health Services for Youth." The infamous abuse of pre-teen girls given genital exams without parental notice or consent resulted from this "mental health" program.
       The RWJF is the "tool" being used by the Tucker-Clinton-Magaziner plan (see page 1) to establish school-based clinics. While it is illegal for the non-profit foundation to participate in changing state laws; their proposals do just that. The entity should be investigated because of abuse of the federal tax code.
       Texas' House Bill 3 would establish the "Texas Healthy Kids Corp." which "shall establish a program to provide...health benefits for eligible children...." This is NOT a program for poor children; they're already covered by Medicaid. There is NO uninsured children crisis according to the U.S. Census Bureau; this legislation is unnecessary. This new corporation is simply a conduit for state, federal and foundation monies which, as in other states, could be used to establish school-based clinics.
       Like "Hillarycare's" failed boondoggle which would have required universal coverage, this "corporation may require that the parent...is responsible for premiums for coverage under the program...." It is anti-free market to FORCE parents into a state-run program for which the bill's author has asked taxpayers for an additional $50 million.
       The "providers" are required to market the program.
       Further discomposing the free market, the corporation is not subject to any licensing requirement imposed under the Insurance Code or other insurance law. Every other insurance provider MUST be licensed; HB 3 proposes an unlevel playing field.
       While the corporation must obtain informed written consent from a child's parent in order to access a child's medical records, that information is exempt from disclosure and discovery in a civil action. That provision is irresponsible and leaves a parent no recourse if a child is mistreated.

COMMENTS ON WHOLE LANGUAGE:

Dr. Seuss: "I did it (The Cat in the Hat") for a textbook house and they sent me a word list. That was due to the Dewey revolt in the Twenties, in which they threw out phonics reading and went to word recognition, as if you're reading a Chinese pictograph instead of blending sounds of different letters. I think killing phonics was one of the greatest causes of illiteracy in the country."

Charlotte Iserbyt, former US Department of Education official: "Once trained to treat reading as a guessing game, children read inaccurately, often substituting words ("pony" for "horse", "daddy" for "father"). Children are taught that letter order is not significant as they search for meaning. They mutilate words (read "delicacy" for "delinquency") or telescope words (read "testing the iron" for "testing the heat of the iron"). This method of teaching reading produces the well-known symptoms of dyslexia, that dreaded reading disability affecting millions of Americans that was nonexistent prior to the introduction of the look-say reading in the 1930's. The intensive phonics approach gave us a highly literate population."

Professor Patrick Groff of San Diego University: "Whole language is based upon two erroneous assumptions: 1) that students best learn to read in precisely the same way they learned to speak, by simply 'picking it up,' 2) that readers, rather than authors, ought to decide what information is contained in a piece of written material."

Robert Sweet, another former US Dept. of Education official: "Until the education elite, who continue to experiment on our children with their latest pet theories, stop defending their indefensible 60-year old practice of requiring children to memorize and guess at whole words instead of teaching the sounds of letters...in isolation, the illiteracy problem will worsen."

A mother: "Part of my concern is this creative spelling my son is allowed to use. I was told to give him time to learn proper spelling, but he's now in the 5th grade. He cannot use a dictionary, because his spelling is so far off the mark. He does not have the first clue about how to sound out a word."

QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT YOUR SCHOOL'S READING PROGRAM:

1. What books, workbooks, or audio-visuals are being used to teach my child to read?
2. Is intensive, systematic phonics being used in the first grade? (They will always say "yes" so follow with: When do you start teaching single letters and their sounds? In what order--first or after learning a stockpile of sight words? By what system? and How much--all phonograms (letter patterns) or just some?
3. How is reading instruction conducted in the first six months of first grade?
4. How is Whole Language being used?
5. On what findings of experimental research is your reading program(s) based upon? May I have copies of that research and examples of how it has been used successfully in other schools?
6. How long will it be before my child is an independent reader?
7. How long will it be before my child is writing neatly and spelling accurately?

       When responsible adults talk to teenagers about sex, what should they say? Sex education is now as American as apple pie. On the importance of honest and open sexual communication with kids, Americans are agreed. But what we don't quite know, in our heart of hearts, is just what we should communicate: Do we push abstinence, contraceptives or both?
       Programs pushing abstinence only remain highly controversial in some places, the subject of lawsuits by groups like Planned Parenthood, which has argued that schools invade teen's privacy if they don't unroll condoms on bananas in the classroom.
       Teens having sex are now considered normal. It's the virgins who have to explain their peculiar behavior. Meanwhile, parents who don't have pillow talks about the pill with their teens (and don't want condoms handed out in schools) face what can only be called social stigma.
       Dana Mack, author of the book, The Assault on Parenthood, relates the experience of one parent who stood up at a school board meeting to voice her opposition to condom distribution: "It's parents like you that are the reason why we need these (condom) machines," a school board member sneered back.
       In face of the MTVing of America, parents with traditional sexual values are apt to feel quaint, if not overwhelmed and impotent. That's too bad. Because several surprising new studies suggest that protecting your teens from premature sex is hardly an impossible dream.
       One study published last summer in Family Planning Perspectives, for example, found that even after controlling for various psychosocial factors (including self-esteem), parents exercise a powerful influence over their teens' sexual behavior. If parents want to help their teens postpone sex, this study found, these factors are important:

1. Maintain a good, warm relationship with your child (children are far more likely to accept family values if they feel valued by their family).
2. Let your teens know openly and honestly you expect them not to have sex.
3. Avoid discussing birth control.

      Radical environmentalists do not believe in the Ten Commandments of the Bible, but instead embrace an atheistic, materialistic code, which, among other things, calls for human beings to curb their desire to procreate because it harms great "Mother Earth." The following "Ten Commandments," being distributed by the Earth Community Center, is the new, modern environmental equivalent of the ancient Mosaic law:

1. Thou shalt love and honor the Earth for it blesses thy life and governs thy survival.
2. Thou shalt keep each day sacred to the Earth and celebrate the turning of its seasons.
3. Thou shalt not hold thyself above other living things nor drive them to extinction.
4. Thou shalt give thanks for thy food to the creatures and plants that nourish thee.
5. Thou shalt limit thy offspring for multitudes of people are a burden unto the Earth.
6. Thou shall not kill, nor waste Earth's riches upon weapons of war.
7. Thou shalt not pursue profit at the Earth's expense but strive to restore its damaged majesty.
8. Thou shalt not hide from thyself or others the consequences of thy actions upon the Earth.
9. Thou shalt not steal from future generations by impoverishing or poisoning the Earth.
10. Thou shalt consume material goods in moderation so all may share the Earth's bounty.