This is a repost of my weekly Da Tech Guy column: You Will Be Made To Care – Fed Ed Edition

By A.P. Dillon

For many parents engaged in the fight against Common Core, discovering the level of control the federal government has over your child’s education has likely been an ulcer inducing adventure and a disturbing eye-opener.

The deeper I got into the weeds investigating the overlapping tentacles of Common Core, the more I realized that just how much control the federal government asserts over the states in terms of education.

For brevity, let’s call this control what Michelle Malkin calls it: ‘Fed Ed’.

A fine example of ‘Fed Ed’, which I doubt most people out there know about, is a non-profit called WestEd which is used to farm out wish list projects that certain government agencies are prohibited from engaging in. WestEd has reaps millions in government contracts annually.

Another example of ‘Fed Ed’ would be the tax dollars that flow to Teach for America (TFA) and subsequently trickle down to TFA employees and alumni who are “Black Lives Matter” professional agitators.

‘Fed Ed’ includes ‘Full-Service’ Community Schools, which according to the program description provides “comprehensive academic, social, and health services for students, students’ family members, and community members”.  This program was just extended for another five years. Remember, Obama believes that the government should have some kids in government run schools “24/7“.

Now consider the pressure (legal and otherwise) being brought to bear on state school discipline procedures by the Obama administration which fits right in with the Liberal’s  ‘You will be made to care‘ theme.  Specifically, Southern states.

The Obama administration’s DOJ has been poking around school districts looking for racist policies with regards to discipline procedures, specifically looking at the discipline and expulsion rates of black students. In conjunction with that poking around is the use of the phrase ‘school to prison pipeline‘ by multiple social justice organizations.

The focus of this ‘school to prison pipeline’ has been mostly on Southern states and a recent report being written about right now is only about Southern states.  This report is penned by Edward J. Smith and Shaun R. Harper of  the “Center for the Study of Race and Equity” located  at the Penn Grad school of Education. They use the phrase, ‘school to prison pipeline’ throughout their report.

It’s worth noting that the report doesn’t mention who paid for this report, what data sets were  or were not used, that Southern states have a higher black population in general, a description or details of the circumstances of the expulsions/suspensions,  nor does it cite any statistics on other ethnicities for comparison or as a control.

The report does mention that a large chunk of data (269 school districts) had missing or incomplete data. Gee, that might skew conclusions even more?

What is mentioned in the Smith/Harper report is the blaming of Zero Tolerance policies and the involvement of the US Dept. of Education, the NAACP and Teach for America.

Don’t miss the suggestions for using this report on page 3 and the report’s conclusion statement on page 89.  Here’s a snippet from ‘Using this report’:

“Our aim is to equip anyone concerned about the school-to-prison pipeline and the educational mistreatment of Black youth with numbers they can use to demand justice from school boards, educational leaders, and elected officials.”

With ‘use statements’ like that, it’s pretty clear this report was less about science and more about promoting a ‘You will be made to care’ narrative.

A.P. Dillon resides in the Triangle area of North Carolina and is the founder of LadyLiberty1885.com.
Her current and past writing can also be found at IJ Review, StopCommonCoreNC.org, Heartland.org and Watchdog Wire NC.
Catch her on Twitter: @LadyLiberty1885