Ed Commish Peterson Yecki, friend of Jeb Bush, has declared she won't follow the "hate America agenda." She packed a commission reviewing social studies standards with right-wingers who essentially want to gut the public schools or turn them into freeper factories.
From City Pages:
http://www.citypages.com/databank/24/1197/article11649.aspsnippets:
"... what is striking is how much the composition and preliminary work of the committee reflected a hard tilt to the right, sometimes at the expense of fact.
"It was hard to pick the most egregiously right-wing standard set by the committee. Was it that all seventh-grade students are to know the significance of the four references to God in the Declaration of Independence? Or maybe that first-graders must understand the definition of "opportunity cost"? Entrepreneurship is cited in the standards more than three times as often as anything regarding the nation's labor movement.
"The Declaration of Independence is erroneously referred to as "the founding document that sets forth the principles for our nation" (that would be the Constitution), and the committee claims that the framers of the Constitution "secured the equal rights of all citizens" (which would have been news to women and slaves, among others).
How were these and countless other claims outside the political mainstream approved? According to committee member Mark Doepner-Hove, the group was "forced and encouraged" by Yecke's department to use standards already enacted in five other states. The standards in these states all received either an "A" or "B" grade from the conservative Fordham Foundation....
"The composition of the committee reflected the political bias of Yecke--who has ties to the Bush administration--and the foundation. Just one resident of Minneapolis, home of the state's largest school district, made the committee, while Plymouth, an affluent western suburb in the heart of Republican country, boasted five representatives.
"The backgrounds of some committee members are also notable. There's Bruce Sanborn, listed on the education department's website simply as a parent and, long ago, a schoolteacher for two years. But Sanborn is also chairman of the board of the Claremont Institute, whose mission is to "restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life." The institute will present Rush Limbaugh with its Statesmanship Award at a dinner in Los Angeles on November 21 and has recently named Reagan-era education commisioner William Bennett its Washington fellow. ....
"Matthew Abe is similarly listed on the website as an involved parent. There is no mention that Abe runs the Minnesota Education Reform News website, with a mission to "inform Minnesota citizens about the shortcomings of performance-based, anti-knowledge, behavior-, and attitude-based education." The site links to EdWatch, the new name for the conservative, Christian-oriented Maple River Education Coalition"