Standards are what government uses to measure our children, teachers, schools, and districts. Standards are used by our governments to ensure that our children become exactly the same as children in other states and countries with regard to knowledge, attitudes, values, and beliefs ...which is communism.
In response to President Reagan's expressed intention to dismantle the U.S. Dept. of Education, the department published the bogus report, "A Nation at Risk" which "created a crisis" in education for which this same department would provide the cure: federal “intrusion” into a state controlled arena via Standards Based Education Reform.
“A Nation At Risk” declared:
- "The world is indeed one global village.” [an attempt to diminish the importance of U.S. citizenship]
- “The people of the United States need to know that individuals in our society who do not possess the levels of skill, literacy, and training essential to this new era will be effectively disenfranchised,” [people who do not allow themselves to be measured by government standards will experience the violation of their fundamental right to life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness]
- “We should expect schools to have genuinely high standards rather than minimum ones…” [feds will define the standards and states will comply]
- “The search for solutions to our educational problems must also include a commitment to life-long learning.” [Indoctrination through government schooling will be life-long requiring greater taxpayer "investment"]
- “…educational reform should focus on the goal of creating a Learning Society.” [where only those that the government deems to be educated are worthy of employment and/or advancement]
The underlying theme of this report is that US citizens must be prepared to compete in a global workforce--an idea which discounts the importance of educated citizens for a free society: the original purpose of “public education” was to ensure that citizens were educated enough to read a ballot and vote. Citizens need to be truly educated (not trained or indoctrinated) in order to distinguish between ideas and ideology that foster freedom vs. those that ensure enslavement and government control.
In 1990, the Secretary of the US Department of Labor appointed a commission to determine the skills our young people need to succeed in the world of work. The Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills included representatives from education, business, labor, and state government. They were charged with "defining a common core of skills that constitute job readiness in this new economic environment.” This report marked the change of the mission of our schools from educating citizens so that they may be free (liberty) to that of workforce development in a government planned economy (fascism/communism).