Public Schools: Trojan Horse for the Socialist State?

Representative Sam Graves recently introduced the NCLB Recess Until Reauthorization Act, which is a congressional bill to suspend the performance accountability provisions of the Bush administration's 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, but preserve the funding.

The Graves bill would strip NCLB of its most important element, and as the Wall Street Journal reports, "Not surprisingly, teachers unions like the National Education Association are supporting their efforts."

It should be no surprise, then, that Randi Weingarten, the brand new president of American Federation of Teachers, also wants to strip NCLB's accountability provisions, and go even further: She'd like to transform the law into a full-blown public sector welfare agency, providing a cafeteria plan of services from education to after-school care to medical and dental services:

Randi Weingarten, the New Yorker who is rising to become president of the American Federation of Teachers, says she wants to replace President Bush’s focus on standardized testing with a vision of public schools as community centers that help poor students succeed by offering not only solid classroom lessons but also medical and other services.

Ms. Weingarten, 50, was elected Monday to the presidency of the national teachers union at the union’s annual convention. In a speech minutes later to the delegates gathered in Chicago, Ms. Weingarten criticized the No Child Left Behind law, President Bush’s signature domestic initiative, as “too badly broken to be fixed,” and outlined “a new vision of schools for the 21st century.”

“Can you imagine a federal law that promoted community schools — schools that serve the neediest children by bringing together under one roof all the services and activities they and their families need?” Ms. Weingarten asked in the speech.

“Imagine schools that are open all day and offer after-school and evening recreational activities and homework assistance,” she said. “And suppose the schools included child care and dental, medical and counseling clinics.”

By laying out that expansive vision of government’s role in the public schools, Ms. Weingarten waded into a fierce debate among Democrats seeking to influence the educational program of Senator Barack Obama, their party’s presumptive presidential nominee. In an interview last week, she said the ideas in the speech amounted to “what I’d like to see in a new federal education law.”

Darleen Clicks suggests, "Imagine there are no families … … it’s easy if you try...

Exactly, who needs families when the state takes over complete responsibility for the health, education, and welfare of children?

What better way for a new Barack Obama administration to shift American domestic policy to the socialist model than by establishing the public schools at the center of a new Soviet bureaucratic structure in American education - the trojan horse for the socialist state?