September 8, 2005

Oppose Federal Civics
E-Action on federal civics bill (S 860)

Tell your U.S. Senators to oppose the New Federal Civics: Click below to Send a FREE Message!

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        Take action to oppose the federal civics bill, S 860. Send a message to your US Senator to urge him or her to oppose it. When you click on the Action Now key, you will access a letter to your Senator and background information for you. If you wish to follow up your email with a phone call or fax, just click here for the numbers. To contact your House members to express your opposition to S 860, click here for their numbers..

        Lamar Alexander and Ted Kennedy's S 860 would expand the role of the Center for Civic Education (CCE) and federal bureaucrats over school curriculum by mandating that states administer the federal test (National Assessment of Educational Progress - NAEP) in civics and U.S. history, beginning with ten selected states. At the NAEP’s inception by Congress in 1969, however, state participation in the NAEP was sold to lawmakers on the basis of being voluntary. In 2002 federal law under No Child Left Behind for the first time mandated that all states administer the math, reading, and science NAEP. The Alexander bill would now extend the de facto federal curriculum to civics and U.S. history.

        The CCE is the special interest group (or NGO) that produces and sells the left-leaning curriculum We The People: The Citizen and the Constitution which redefines and undermines America’s founding principles of freedom. (See EdWatch’s Textbook Review of We The People .) For example, in the CCE curriculum the principles of inalienable rights, self-evident truth, natural law, national sovereignty, the 2nd amendment, and the 10th amendment are either missing, minimized, or redefined.

        The NAEP’s Civics Framework was also written by the CCE, specifically by CCE Associate Director Margaret Branson, under contract with federal agencies. This means that a special interest group the CCE with the non-competitive federal contract authorized and funded first to write Congressionally un-reviewed federal civics standards, then to write and distribute a curriculum (We The People) based on those standards, and then to write federal assessments of those standards (the NAEP).

        Lamar Alexander's new federal civics bill (S 860) is the next step in the federal takeover of education and would further extend the power of a special interest group, the Center for Civic Education (CCE), over schools and their civics curricula. It is being promoted under the banner of preserving our history and founding principles of freedom, and many well-meaning people have been misled into believing it will do just that. Instead, just as in Alexander’s 2004 legislation to set up federal history and civics "academies," S 860 will undermine the teaching of our founding principles and extend the CCE’s already substantial power over what schools must teach.

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Order
Textbook Review of We The People: The Citizen and the Constitution by Allen Quist
A review of the Center for Civic Education's federal civics curriculum.
One copy: $ 5.00

America's Censored Heritage DVD by Michael J. Chapman
Principles of American Liberty are being deliberately undermined through the National Standards movement.
One copy: $20.0

America's Schools: The Battleground for Freedom by Allen Quist
Follow-up to FedEd: The New Federal Curriculum and How It’s Enforced, taking a closer look at the ideological battle taking place in our schools
One copy: $15.00

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