Tag Archives: Christianity

Destroy Public Education (DPE); It’s a Billionaire Fueled Agenda

15 Dec

By Thomas Ultican 12/15/2017

Three researchers from Indiana coined the terminology Destroy Public Education (DPE). They refuse to call it reform which is a positive sounding term that obfuscates the damage being done. America’s public education system is an unmitigated success story, yet, DPE forces say we need to change its governance and monetize it.

We are discussing the education system that put a man on the moon, developed the greatest economy the world has ever seen and wiped out small pox. It is the system that embraces all comers and resists all forms of discrimination. In the 1980’s, it was laying the foundation for the digital revolution when it came under spurious attack.

Not only are great resources being squandered on DPE efforts but the teaching profession is being diminished. Organizations like Relay Graduate School and the New Teachers Project are put forward as having more expertise in teacher education than our great public universities. That would be amusing if wealthy elites were not paying to have these posers taken seriously.

The DPE Model Playing Out in Indianapolis

The researchers from Indiana who defined the DPE model are Gail Cosby, Nate Williams and Jim Scheurich. In 2012, Doctor Scheurich came to Indiana from Texas A&M to coordinate the Urban Education Studies doctoral program at the University of Indiana Purdue University Indianapolis (UIPUI). Gail Cosby is a former public-school teacher, a former school board member who won her seat in 2012 with DPE help and is presently in her second year of doctoral studies at UIPUI. Dr. Nate Williams received his doctorate in Urban Education Studies at UIPUI and is now teaching at Knox College.

Soon after becoming a school board member, Cosby realized the true nature of her benefactors and became an outspoken critic of the DPE agenda. While closely observing the events transpiring around Indianapolis public schools Cosby, Scheurich and Williams perceived a model for the destruction of public education. They believe that same model is being used throughout the nation.

Here are the key model components paraphrased from their work which Diane Ravitch posted:

  1. Business is the best model for schools.
  2. A local-national collaboration between wealthy conservatives. (Sometimes far right)
  3. Huge infusion of new dollars into school board elections. (Dark Money)
  4. Unified enrollment.
  5. Teach for America (or any instant-teacher-certification program) and groups like Teach Plus controlling professional development of teachers.
  6. Innovations Schools. An ALEC sponsored charter conversion model.
  7. A funding conduit for national-local wealthy individuals and organizations to support local DPE initiatives.
  8. Integration of charter schools into traditional public schools with rules favoring charter schools.
  9. Developing networks of local organizations or affiliates that collaborate on the agenda.
  10. Support for gentrification.

In Indianapolis, the big bopper is the Lilly Endowment. It has a total asset value of more than $10 billion making it three times larger than the Walton Family Foundation. The Lilly Endowment, which was established by Eli Lilly in 1937, presented grants totaling $458,522,495 in 2015. Of this total more than half went to Christian causes. As the endowment states, “The ultimate aim of Lilly Endowment’s religion grantmaking is to deepen and enrich the religious lives of American Christians, primarily by helping to strengthen their congregations.”

However, they also spend significant amounts of money on DPE efforts. Their education web-page lists the endowment’s partners in what amounts to the effort to destroy public education in Indianapolis. That list includes:

The Mind Trust – www.themindtrust.org
Teach for America – www.teachforamerica.org
The New Teacher Project – www.tntp.org

Lilly’s DPE grants in 2015 encompass:

Teach for America, The New Teacher Project and Teach Plus support DPE efforts to control teacher professional development and curriculum. The Mind Trust and Stand for Children function as money conduits for privatizing schools, lobbying state legislators and winning school board elections. All these organizations are operating in Indianapolis but most of their funding comes from outside sources. A very incomplete search revealed:

Gates Foundation

  • The Mind Trust Years 2011-1012 $539,334 + $1,420,000 = $1,959,334
  • Teach for America lists 97 entries the first 10 grants total more than $10,000,000
  • Stand for Children 111 entries fist grant listed was for $4,311,641
  • Relay Graduate School $8,954,644
  • Relay plus four other similar programs $34,700,000
  • Charter Fund the 1st of 302 entries was for $27,000,000
  • New Teacher Project Inc. in 2015 a total of $17,494,372
  • CEE Trust which is now SchoolSmart $1,250,000
  • Teach Plus total $19,094,388

Walton 2014

  • Charter Fund $6,638,000
  • Mind Trust $650,000
  • Stand for Children $350,000
  • Students First $1,250,000
  • Teach for America $22,019,240
  • Friedman Foundation for Education Choice In. $624,500
  • Relay Graduate School $1,500,000
  • Teach Plus $250,000 2013 and $250,000 2014

Broad 2014

  • Stand for Children $250,000
  • Students First $750,000
  • Teach for America $612,000
  • Charter Fund $350,000
  • Teach Plus $165,000

Arnold Fund

  • Charter Fund $10,000,000
  • Indianapolis Public Schools Education Foundation, Inc. $1,256,250
  • Kipp Foundation $10,000,000
  • Relay Graduate School $2,500,000
  • Stand for Children $6,640,000
  • Student First $7,850,000
  • Teach for America $9,482,369
  • The Mind Trust $11,075,000
  • The New Teachers Project $8,136,464

Both Stand for Children and Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children operate associated 501 C4 organizations. This means that instead of being a tax-exempt foundation operating under IRS section 501 C3 rules which limit political spending the C4s are not tax exempt and can spend directly on politics. What is even better for them is that they don’t have to reveal where they got the money. This kind of spending is known as dark money.

Betsy DeVos, then chairman of American Federation for Children did send DPE targeted funds to Indianapolis from the tax-free fund. Don’t know how much the C4 sent. The last form 990 filed by the C3 was in 2015. It showed:

  • Indianapolis Urban League for outreach $36,000
  • Institute for Quality Education Indianapolis $310,000
  • Network for Quality Education Indianapolis for strategic plan $100,000

Dylan McCoy of Chalk Beat Indiana reporting on the 2016 school board elections used a board seat in a small district with 11,000 students to illustrate the effect outside money is having. He wrote:

“In a district where candidates typically spend less than $10,000 on even the most competitive races, Deitric Hall, a local teacher, has raised more than $32,000. Nearly all that money is from a single political action committee: Leadership for Educational Equity, a Washington D.C.-based PAC that supports Teach for America alumni running for public office.

“It’s a small-scale version of a phenomenon that has played out in urban districts around the country as outside campaign contributions have increasingly influenced pivotal school board races. In Indianapolis Public Schools, outside contributions helped radically reshape the board in 2012 and 2014, when out-of-state funders backed a victory for charter-school supporters.”

An article in the Indystar about this situation says,

“Local democratic control of IPS schools by ordinary folks no longer exists. First, big outsider money has united with big insider money to make the cost of school board member elections far beyond the reach of ordinary folks. Second, a linked group of “local” “reform” organizations, funded largely by the same outsider-insider big money, are controlling IPS.”

Diane Ravitch summed it up:

“The business community, civic leaders, political leaders, DFER, the Mind Trust, and Stand for Children have joined together to Destroy Public Education. As they attack democratic institutions, they falsely claim that “it is all about the kids” and they claim they are advancing civil rights. Instead, it is about money and power and gentrification.”

Indiana has adopted Jeb Bush’s plan for grading schools with an A-F scheme. This plan is based almost exclusively on standardized testing which has zero ability to evaluate school or teacher quality. In addition, with the DPE forces pulling the strings, Indiana made it possible for Mind Trust to claim that six of seven Innovation schools in the Indianapolis public school system went from D and F grades to A and B grades in their first year.

The spectacular results are a ruse facilitated by having the option to use growth data instead of performance data. The scores for the schools are horrible. Gail Cosby shared the results:

“Let’s take a look at the actual percentages of students PASSING BOTH MATH AND ELA:

  • Cold Spring: 2%
  • Enlace: 28.0%
  • Global Prep: no data
  • Phalen 103: 8%
  • Phalen 93: 38.2%
  • Kipp Indy: 18.0%
  • Kindezi: no data”

DPE Model is Materializing Across the Country  

Another plan for destroying public education comes from The Gates funded Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) at the University of Washington. It is called the portfolio model. The National Education Policy Center describes the portfolio model:

“Generally speaking, four reform strategies are combined, in varying degrees, in portfolio districts: (1) performance-based (generally test-based) accountability, (2) school-level de-centralization of management, (3) the reconstitution or closing of “failing” schools, and (4) the expansion of choice, primarily through charter schools.”

CRPE has produced a chart based on the implementation of the portfolio model. This chart is in effect a limited outline of the DPE movement in the United States.

Portfolio Implementation Map

A Screen Grab from Portfolio Model Implementation by CRPE at University of Washington

Another example of the DPE model in action comes from Kansas City, Missouri. Two giant foundations – The Ewing Marion Kaufman Foundation (nearly $2 billion in assets) and the Hall Family Foundation (nearly $1 billion in assets) are the big local funders.

The late Ewing Kaufman is the businessman hero who brought major league baseball back to Kansas City. His fund spends a lot of money on business analytics and developing entrepreneurship. They also have started their own charter schools, are funding several other charter schools and are contributing to the national DPE movement.

Some Kaufman Foundation Reported Spending, 2015-990.

  • Ewing Marion Kaufman Schools Inc. and School Buildings $12,527,932
  • KIPP Foundation $200,000
  • Teach for America $577,500
  • Leading Educators Inc. $100,000
  • The Third Way Foundation $75,000
  • Relay Graduate School of Education $135,000
  • New Schools for New Orleans $20,000
  • Data Quality Campaign $965,895
  • WestEd $258,694
  • IFF One North La Salle St Chicago – education facilities access $5,100,000
  • National Council on Teacher Quality $134,658
  • Bellwether Education Partners Inc. $87,951
  • Kansas City School district to support STEM and IB $25,235
  • Kansas City School District for expansion of New America’s Academy at Gladstone Elementary School $150,000
  • Kansas City School district to support charter school liaison position $25,000
  • City of KC, Mo. for adviser to Mayor on Ed Policy $50,000
  • The Lean Lab to promote education entrepreneurs $50,000
  • SRI International to advance STEM studies $93,670
  • Bishop Ward School $170,000
  • Various other Charter Schools $1,325,000

As listed above, the local school district did get three relatively small grants from the Kaufman foundation; two to implement charter schools in the district and one to promote the fraudulent STEM program and move curricular development out of Kansas City to the International Baccalaureate program.

Some Hall Foundation reported spending, 2015-990.

  • Plaza Academy (private school) $50,000
  • Academe Lafayette $550,000
  • Citizens of the World Charter School $650,000
  • Cristo Rey Kansas City high school private catholic $50,000
  • Crossroads Academy of KC $275,000
  • Leading Educators $452,207
  • Missouri Charter Public School Association $50,000
  • Prep-KC $523,671
  • Science Pioneers Inc. (STEM Program) $50,000
  • Teach for America – KC $1,013,000

Notice that Kansas City is not on the CRPE chart but DPE is certainly doing well there. Originally the DPE agenda was led by the Gates financed CEE Trust. That organization alienated residents. Now SchoolSmart KC is the new DPE leader and they have learned from the CEE Trust failure. Chalkbeat reports:

“SchoolSmart has carved out its own niche by backing community schools, while also embracing much of what is known as the “portfolio” model for managing schools. The idea — including common enrollment and accountability systems for district and charter schools — has gained traction in a number of cities nationwide as a growing network of well-heeled groups like SchoolSmart are pushing for districts to adopt this approach.

“Kansas City is a case study in how that vision is being advanced city by city — and why some national groups that continue to fund and support the approach have taken a backseat in favor of local actors.”

Conclusion

DPE marketing has gotten better and it definitely has huge money fueling it. However, they are selling an inferior product. That is why more than 90% of America’s students remain in public schools run be elected boards. We must protect those boards from being defiled by monied elites and save our schools.

Twitter: @tultican

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White Man Fights Slavery; Calls for Ending Public Education

17 Nov

By Thomas Ultican 11/17/2017

Lee W. Olson feels enslaved by having to pay taxes especially those that go to pay for public education. Taking action to end slavery, he filed three citizen initiatives with the Attorney General of the State of California. His “California Freedom from Slavery Act” initiative would end state and local taxes after 55-years of age. The “California Parental Rights Act of 2018” puts parents in charge of education standards. And the “California Education Tax Relief Act” exempts people with no children in public schools from paying taxes to support public schools.

Perhaps Olson would be better served to find another metaphor than slavery. People from a legacy of slavery, might be a little offended by the whining of a well-off white man. However, he is persistent.  In 2009, he filed three similar ballot initiatives addressing the same principles, if you can call them that.

Slave Home

Home of a Self-Identified California Tax Slave

Olson must be sincere in his motives; each of these initiative filings includes a $2000 fee. The Attorney General must “request the preparation of a fiscal impact analysis from the Department of Finance and the Legislative Analyst’s Office” before issuing a circulating title and summary. The state has less than 65 days for this process. The fee helps defray the cost of the approximately 200 of these proposals the state receives every election cycle. The proponents will get the fee back if they gather enough signatures to put the initiative on the ballot. Lee’s initiatives have yet to make a ballot.

Curmudgucation Inspired this Story

I read education blogs and one of my daily reads is a blog by Peter Greene of Pennsylvania called Curmudgucation. I met Peter at a National Public Education conference in Chicago. He is one of those guys that knows everything. Not in a know-it-all kind of way but in a he really has a great breadth of knowledge way. His blog is witty, creative and somehow, he is often one of the first people on the blogosphere to spy a new development.

November 10th, Peter wrote a piece he called “CA: A Silly Proposal.” His lead sentence, “It should be said right up front that this measure has little chance of making it all the way to becoming an actual law, and the only big mystery here is why a local news station would bother to cover it at all.” It seems that Peter somehow noticed the story of Lee’s no kids – no taxes for school initiative on a local Sacramento, California CBS affiliates morning news show.

I became intrigued and soon found that there was a trio of initiatives filed including the one Peter Greene referenced all submitted by:

Signature

Now that we have evangelical Christians setting up church in public schools and also running after school programs, plus corporations are legally identified as people with first amendment rights – I take kooky ideas seriously. Who is Lee Olson? How strong is the Committee to End Slavery? Do they have the ability to gather the required 585,407 signatures for each petition in the next six months?

Bolsa Chica

Google Maps Satellite View – 16458 Bolsa Chica Street, #165 Huntington Beach, CA 92649

The address appears to be an office for Olson Leland and Edwards, LLC, a real estate investment company. There promotion at connected investors reads, “Olson Leland & Edwards, LLC is a real estate company with 1 employee(s). This company has been part of Connected Investors since 07/24/2009 – Olson Leland & Edwards, LLC is a real estate company in HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA.” WPnumbers lists Lee Olson as chief executive.

A public records search finds that Lee W. Olson is 72 years old and lives in Westminster, California. A search of a real estate data, shows the Olson is 75 years old and retired. It also says a 2014 property assessment valued his home a little more than $500,000 which is modest by California standards.

To sum up, Lee Olson is a retired real estate dealer over 70 years-old and lives in Westminster, California. He still has some relationship to Olson Leland and Edwards, LLC and maintains a business address in Huntington Beach, California about 3 miles from his home. Except for the six state initiatives he has filed there are few other mentions of him in the media. He does own a web domain, http://www.lovetrumpseverything.com/, but there is nothing on it.

The Committee to End Slavery does not seem to be a functioning body. It has no web presence and there is not a mention of the group in the media that is not tied to Lee Olson’s state ballot initiatives.

Gathering over 700,000 signatures to ensure that 585,407 of them are validly registered voter signatures looks to be out of the realm of possibility. Peter Greene’s observation that why a media outlet would run this story is well founded.

Yet, A Dark Motivation Appears Here

It is the same motivation that is pushing Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos’s drive to privatize public education. It is motivated by a fundamentlist religious belief.

Lee Olson calls one of his proposed initiatives “California Parental Rights Act of 2018.” California’s Attorney Generals official summary says in part:

“PROHIBITS GOVERNMENT FROM ENFORCING EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS AND MAKES PARENTS AND GUARDIANS SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR CHILDREN’S EDUCATION. …

“Changes Constitution to prohibit state and local government from requiring parents and guardians to meet educational standards.  Gives parents and legal guardians the sole authority and responsibility to educate their children, including the right to determine the venue, curriculum, and methods of education.”

Olson’s web domain name seems related to the Christian oriented love trumps everything key to life or a similar evangelical groups. The findings he wrote for this initiative would at one time have been deemed the hateful discourse of a kook. Now they are a serious and dangerous attack on constitutional guarantee of the separation of church and state.

In the findings for this initiative Olson writes:

“(1) The responsibility for the raising of children lies solely with parents, or legal guardians, in accordance with our Creators command given to parents, not the government, to “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

“(2) The government has immorally usurped, at gun point, the Creator endowed inviolable right of parents to control the education of their children.

“(3) The government has used its powers of coercion not only to usurp the Creator endowed inviolable parent’s rights but also to promote immoral teachings contrary to the way the Creator has said the child should go.

“(4) The government schools reject abstinence from sexual activity outside the bounds of marriage and teach that fornication is not only okay but it’s expected.

“(5) The government schools teach that homosexual behaviors are morally acceptable and should be praised, contrary to the Creator’s instructions for healthy living, by idolizing and establishing Harvey Milk Day honoring a man known primarily for his homosexual exploits rather than any good done for the public. …

“(6) Government schools have a full court press on to eradicate Judeo-Christian moral principles from any discourse in the lives of California residents.

“(7) Government school promotion of immoral sexual behaviors, especially fornication and homosexuality, …”

How did Christianity become so infused with hate and bigotry? Are these really the views of Jesus of Nazareth? I certainly don’t believe he taught discrimination against gays and lying about sex education.

I heard the points Olson made about sex education at the July 24 San Diego Unified School District board meeting. A new sex education program was being adopted. A relatively large group of people apparently from the same Christian sect started denouncing the sex education curriculum as pornographic and against God’s Law. People in the audience were holding up Bibles and cheering on their speakers. One speaker who identified himself as Mr. Brookes said that this sex education program was against God’s Law and that it promoted deviance and rebellion. He also said that Planned Parenthood is evil and that they support this curriculum.

Olson is not just one crackpot looking for attention. He seems to be part of an American religious movement working to end public education and establish a Christian theocracy.

In Olson’s initiative that could be called “No Tax Money for Government Schools”, he also has a long list of frothy findings. Here are three:

“Parents pursuing alternative education are penalized unfairly by having to not only pay for their children’s education but also by being forced to pay for the education of other children (and university/college students) enrolled in government schools via various government taxes, or other schemes, which extract their financial resources at gun point.”

“The Committee to End Slavery fully supports the inviolable right of parents to control the education of their children, including in whatever setting they choose, even the uninformed choice of enrolling in government schools. Our Creator never assigned the right and responsibility of a child’s education to a government entity; the government has usurped that inviolable right and responsibility at gun point.”

“The Committee to End Slavery condemns the theft of property (money) from Californian’s, euphemistically called taxation, to pay for government schools. Especially when their primary purpose is to create a dumbed down populace easy to control and prepared only to service the (slave) labor needs of the oligarchy that rules over us.”

It appears there is very little reason involved here and disdain for our government at all levels. This kind of thinking seems like a natural development from Ronald Regan’s nine most terrifying words in the English language; “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” I find this kind of hatred of America and its institutions worrisome.

It is About Ending Public Education

Olson’s three initiatives are aimed at the November 2018 ballot and were certified for signature gathering on November 9, 2017. Each initiative was given an ID and a cost estimate.

17-0028, “California Education Tax Relief Act” aka “No Tax Money for Government Schools”, cost $30 billion-dollar reduction in revenue.

17-0029, “California Freedom from Slavery Act” aka “Geezers Don’t Pay”, cost $60 billion-dollar reduction in revenue.

17-0030, “California Parental Rights Act of 2018” aka “Government Schools Are Evil”, cost cannot be calculated but possibly a lot.

Lee W. Olson’s initiatives are the work of a crackpot with too much money. However, he is not that far from our present mainstream school reform. Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos has an agenda that is not all that different from Olson’s. There is a dangerous sectarian attack being waged against both public schools and the constitutional guarantee in the second amendment of a separation of church and state.

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American Style Taliban Invading Public Education

26 Oct

By Thomas Ultican 10/26/2017

Christian soldiers have been marching off to war and elementary school is the battle ground. Writer Katherine Stewart’s book, The Good News Club, The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children provides the disturbing evidence.

The Good News Clubs are after school programs, sponsored by evangelical Christians, in elementary schools across America. Stewart begins her narrative by describing how the 2001 arrival of a Good News Club in Seattle’s Loyal Height’s Elementary School splintered the community and created enduring angst.

Some parents reacted by removing their children from the school. Stewart quotes one dispirited parent as saying:

‘“Before, we were all Loyal Heights parents together,’ sighs Rockne. ‘Now we’re divided into groups and labels: you’re a Christian; you’re the wrong kind of Christian; you’re a Jew; you’re an atheist.’”

The wrong kind of Christians include all New Age churches, United Methodists, Congregationalists, Catholics and Episcopalians. We Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and Muslims can just forget about it.

The episode in Seattle conjures images of the nineteenth century religious riots in America.

Horace Mann, a Unitarian, became Massachusetts’s secretary of education in 1837. He resolved the conflicts around religious ideology being taught in school by restricting religious teachings to commonly shared Protestant values.

Stewart informs about the result, “Representatives of a number of sects immediately and vigorously attacked him, but large majorities agreed with this policy, and it soon became the norm in the ‘common school,’ or public school, movement.”

She continues, “Common school textbooks at the time were filled with racist characterizations of the Irish, and the Pope and his clergy were described as ‘libertine, debauched, corrupt, wicked, immoral, profligate, indolent, slothful, bigoted, parasitical, greedy, illiterate, hypocritical, and pagan,’ according to … Professor of History, David Nasaw.” Of course, the growing immigrant Catholic population did not like it.

  • In 1844 religious riots broke out in Philadelphia.
  • In 1859 Boston had its turn for rioting. A Catholic boy refused to recite the Protestant version of the 10 commandments and was beaten for thirty-minutes.
  • In 1869 a Bible War raged in Cincinnati when the school board tried to assuage sectarian conflict by banning reading the Protestant Bible in school.

Stewart apprises her readers of how seriously America’s leaders took these disputes, “In 1874, President Ulysses S. Grant declared that if a new civil war were to erupt, it would be fought not across the Mason-Dixon Line but at the door of the common schoolhouse.” Stewart says concerns over religion in public schools continued growing and prompted another Grant speech in 1876:

‘“Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions,’ he said. ‘Keep the church and state forever separate. With these safeguards I believe the battles which created the Army of Tennessee will not have been fought in vain.’”

Great landmark decisions on the relationship between religion and school were decided by the Supreme Court in the 1962 and 1963 with eight to one decisions banning formal prayer in school. Stewart observes that these decisions received three votes from the four conservative judges on the panel. She explains the reasoning:

“This approach drew principally upon the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which, according to Thomas Jefferson’s interpretation, erects ‘a wall of separation between church and state.’”

Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia Tear Down that Wall

The evangelical Christian movement gained prominence beginning with Jerry Falwell’s moral majority in 1979 and the arrival of in 1977 of Pat Robertson’s 700-Club on ABC. These two movements developed large followings and generated huge sums of money. A significant portion of that money was spent on legal activism.

Stewart quotes Clarence Darrow who is famous for among other things representing John Scopes in Tennessee’s “monkey trial.” Darrow declared:

“I knew that education was in danger from the source that has always hampered it – religious fanaticism.”

In the same vain, when discussing the legal strategy of the Christian right, Stewart asserts:

“It is an attempt to use the principles of tolerance to secure a place for intolerance, discrimination and religious bigotry in the public schools and elsewhere.”

A significant figure in the tearing down of the separation of church and state is Jay Sekulow, who as general counsel for the “Jews for Jesus” began arguing cases before the Supreme Court. Sekulow was born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn. He converted to evangelical Christianity while attending Atlanta Baptist College (now Mercer University).

In 1990, Pat Robertson brought Sekulow together with a few other lawyers to form the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ).  Stewart conveys:

“The new outfit lined up alongside the Liberty Counsel, which was founded in 1989 by Mathew and Anita Staver and became affiliated with Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in 2004. In 1994, the Alliance Defense Fund, or ADF, added its name to the growing roster of Christian legal defense organizations with the backing of a group that reads like a Who’s Who of the new Christian Right: Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ; D. James Kennedy, founder of Coral Ridge Ministries; Larry Burkett, founder of Christian Financial Concepts; James Dobson, founder of Focus on Family; Marlin Maddoux, President of International Christian Media; Donald Wildmon, founder of American Family Association; and more than two dozen other prominent Christian ministries and organizations.”

In 2001, this massive legal artillery succeeded in undermining the separation of church and state most significantly with its victory in Good News Club v. Milford Central School. The upstate New York K-12 school denied a Good News Club’s application to run an after-school club. The denial was based on school policy and concerns about violating the Establishment clause. Stewart laid out the history and arguments for this case and concluded:

“The explosion of school-based church-planting in New York and across the nation that began in 2002 did not reflect a spontaneous eruption of religious enthusiasm. It was simply the direct consequence of the Supreme Court’ decision in the case of Good News Club v. Milford Central School in 2001. An alien visitor to planet First Amendment could be forgiven for summarizing the entire story thus: Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, together with a few fellow travelers on the Supreme Court and their friends in the ADF and ACLJ, got together and ordered that the United States should establish a nationwide network of evangelical churches housed in taxpayer-financed school facilities.”

Church-Planting

 On Sunday Morning in San Diego, California if you are driving up Genesee Avenue toward the University Town Center mall you will pass the Grace City church. Most residence would think of it as University City High School, but starting in 2015 it became the domain of an evangelical Christian sect on Sundays.

UC High_Grace City

University City High School/Grace City – Photo by T. Ultican

Originally proposed in 1962, bonds to build University City High School were not passed until 1976. Legal roadblocks delayed the construction until 1980. The schools web site concludes its history of the school’s founding:

“In September 1981, the school opened. Twenty years of effort finally bore fruit. In every phase of the battle, the crucial factor to success was the willingness of the concerned, active and involved University City community who gave time, effort and money to carry the project through to its successful conclusion. A grassroots effort to build a community high school resulted in the beautiful, well-equipped complex.”

It is certain that many of the community residence who worked for and paid for University City High School would be shocked that the facility is now in regular use to advance a particular religious sect. Even more disturbing, that sect did not originate from within the community but was “planted” by non-resident proselytizing evangelicals.

Grace Citie’s founding family is Randall Tonini who served in the Compassion Christian Church of Savannah, Georgia and his wife Laura who met Randall at Johnson University in Knoxville, Tennessee. Johnson University is a private Christian University. They left Savannah to come to San Diego on a religious mission.

The Grace City web presence states, “We are a part of a larger network of churches planted with the partnership of Stadia to bring the Gospel throughout San Diego County.”

Stadia’s “who we are” statement proclaims:

“Stadia began in the fall of 2003, when leaders of the Northern California Evangelistic Association (NCEA) met with leaders of the Church Development Fund (CDF) to create a nationwide church planting organization called Stadia. Since then, Stadia and our partners have planted almost 289+ U.S. churches and 189+ global churches and has mobilized sponsorship of over 25,000 children in impoverished communities.”

And about children they state:

“Children are close to the heart of God. So they are close to the heart of Stadia. “And whoever welcomes one such child in my name, welcomes me.” 85% of those who make a decision to follow Jesus do so between the ages of 4 and 14.”

Luis Bush, a Christian big picture strategist, was the first to call it the “4/14 Window.” Stewart discusses this issue at length and adds profound context and insight. One of her many paragraphs on the subject reads:

“Bush’s ideas lit up the skies of the missionary community like a bright flare in the night, illuminating the path for evangelicals worldwide and missionaries in particular. ‘Political movements (like Nazism and Communism) trained legions of children with the goal of carrying their agenda beyond the lifetimes of their founders…. Even the Taliban places great emphasis on recruiting children,’ wrote Dr. Wes Stafford, president of Compassion International, one of the largest worldwide missionary groups, in an introduction to Bush’s 2009 book, The 4-14 Window: Raising Up a New Generation to Transform the World. ‘May God inspire you to join us in His battle for the little ones!’”

In discussing this ominous ideology towards other people’s children, Stewart’s thoughts resonate:

“It is easy enough to dismiss these new missionaries on account of their extremely narrow notion of what constitutes Christianity. It is easy to disdain them in the same way that they disdain United Methodists, Roman Catholics, and U.S. Episcopalians. It isn’t hard for most observers to detect the authoritarian impulses and undercurrents of hostility and aggression that drive them to seek ‘spiritual’ authority over others and embolden them to pit children against children, children against schools, children against their own parents.”

Fellowship of Christian Athletics

For the past few decades, I have been seeing more and more athletes at every level pointing skyward when they hit a home-run or score a touchdown. As a kid, I saw BYU players joining in public prayer after games, but now I see public high school kids doing that. From Stewart, I learned that this did not just happen. It is a result of a well-funded campaign led by a group called the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA).

With funding from people like Truett Cathy, founder of Chick-Fil-A, and non-profits like the Bradley Foundation, FCA has infiltrated sports programs at all levels, marketing their version of “muscular Christianity” to impressionable young men and women. FCA leaders imbed themselves in teams and form sports “huddles.” Thus a peer pressure forms that indicates not precipitating in the prayers and the overt religious gestures means not being a team player. Stewart shared:

“In San Diego, California, a long-serving vice principal who wishes to remain anonymous observes that thirty years ago, prayer played a peripheral role in high school sports. Now, he says, there are FCA huddles at nearly every high school in the region.”

Conclusion

Katherine Stewart’s book is written in an enjoyable and fascinating fashion and her personal research is extraordinary. The account of witnessing the infamous Texas school book wars of 2010 or her telling of attending evangelical missionary conferences or her description of the misinformation being disseminated to teenagers in the now federally financed “abstinence-only” sex education programs are illuminating. All Americans concerned about – freedom of religion; Shielding children from unwanted religious indoctrination at school; and protecting public education – should read this book. Reading this book has been an eye-opening experience.

U.S. Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos is a devout member of an evangelical church, Mars Hill Bible Church. It is a widely held view within the evangelical movement that public education is a godless secular movement that provides an opening for Satan. That explains why so many evangelicals home school their children. It seems likely that our education secretary has an evangelically based anti-public education agenda. Arguing the relative merits of school policies misses the point.

It is more likely that religious ideology is the point.

Twitter: @tultican

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