parental responsibility

Kaiser Partners With OK To Fund Birth To Three ‘Early Education’ Collecting Data On Babies For Tax Dollars To Justify Putting Them In Daycare

Friday, Michael and I had Carolyn McLarty on during the first hour of the podcast to talk about citizen lobbying. It was a great show! I really urge you to check out the whole thing on YouTube or Rumble.

After Carolyn had gone, Michael and I talked about numerous issues, but one of those was about the data being collected on students. In the video below, Michael and I talked about how many apps and computer programs students now use at school and how those are often collecting data from their interaction with the program/application.

This article is from our original blogspot and was written in 2014 when we were trying to stop the State Longitudinal Database. I suggest you at least open it and scan it because it gives some pretty good examples as to how classroom data mining is happening through programs and applications used in the classroom.

Here are Michael and I talking about that very thing on Friday’s show.

This morning, I found a message in my Facebook messenger from an old “common core” friend. She sent me a website – the Kids Count Data Center. I remembered having seen that years ago, but I hadn’t looked into it recently. I scrolled through Oklahoma’s collected data categories and was – once again – completely freaked out by what I found.

The data is apparently provided by the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF) – a non-profit organization started by the man who created UPS. The AECF credits itself with helping to start the foster care system while moving toward the abolishment of orphanages.

I ran AECF through Data Republican and was not able to find that they take tax dollars of any kind, nor are they granted monies from organizations that take tax dollars. I was able to find some of the organizations they fund, however, and two things are clear; they donate to large organizations that do collect lots of taxpayer dollars and they donate lots of money to leftist, ‘social change’ organizations. This makes me wonder at the reasons for which they are collecting so much data on kids.

From the AECF website I was able to find out that the only grant given in Oklahoma was to the Oklahoma Policy Institute, headquartered in Tulsa. No shock then – after running them through Data Republican – the OPI is funded by a number of leftist organizations including the George Kaiser Family Foundation and the Tulsa Community Foundation.

This is interesting and concerning. Statistics can be made to say whatever the person using the statistic wants them to say. What do leftists want with all this data?

The AECF makes no bones about the fact that they are collecting all their data to influence policy decisions made by legislators.

Here’s a PERFECT example. “The First Eight Years” is a report created by the AECF populated with data collected through the Foundation. Why? To give policymakers reason to FUND early childhood education with tax dollars – tax-funded DAY CARE essentially – on the notion that it’s the “best way to ensure a successful workforce in the future”.

Apparently their strategy has worked in Oklahoma since 2006, when the Oklahoma legislature created OECP – the Oklahoma Early Childhood Program (OECP) – headquartered in…wait for it…TULSA. The OECP is tasked to “improve the quality of early education and expand capacity to serve children from birth through age three statewide.” (bold for emphasis)

According to this 2011 Tulsa Today article, the George Kaiser Family Foundation gave the Tulsa Community Action Project (CAP) 92 million dollars from 2004 to 2011. CAP is an OECP ‘partner’. So is Tulsa Educare – also funded by Kaiser.

Because I was offended by the fact that the AECF would/could collect information on kids NOT IN SCHOOL, I clicked on the data point called, “Young Children Not In School”. This data came from the U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey. So, families actually taking this survey, coughed up to the federal government that their kids weren’t in school and that information was entered into the US Census Bureau database – which is shared with the public and across government databases.

This is the reason the AECF gives for collecting this data on babies.

High-quality prekindergarten programs for 3- and 4-year-olds can improve school readiness, with the greatest gains accruing to the highest-risk children. Head Start and the expansion of state-funded programs since the 1990s have greatly increased access to preschool. But many children, especially 3-year-olds, continue to be left out, exacerbating socioeconomic differences in educational achievement.

What is ‘school readiness’? What is high-risk? Whatever the AECF, CAP, OECP says it is – usually based on a definition created by some group in the ‘get money from tax payers to take babies away from their parents’ scam.

At this point, I’d like to point out information from the OECP’s 2024 Annual Report.

Please note, this is supposed to be a state agency, yet George Kaiser funds the majority, while the state of Oklahoma comes in a paltry second. Also note, wages and benefits are the majority of the spending here because all the staff are involved in thinking about things related to how to grade childcare centers and the children inside. Here are two things the staff did last year.

They determined how attached to the caregiver BABIES and TODDLERS were. Shouldn’t we care more about the fact that these babies are in a place where they are NOT becoming attached to their parents?

And then there’s this:

Yes, Oklahoma is measuring the literacy of babies and toddlers and the state of Oklahoma is using tax dollars to do this, while partnering with an Obama donation bundler.

And let’s think on this just a minute. According to the OECP annual report, 3,666 children were ‘served’ by this program. Do the math. That’s an expense of almost ELEVEN THOUSAND dollars a child – for DAY CARE that the state and its private partners have dubbed EARLY EDUCATION.

In closing (for now), I’m going to add the diagrams I created while studying the State Longitudinal Database back in the 20-teens. THIS is why all this data collection is a problem. Once the data is collected, it goes everywhere and everywhere it goes, it populates databases that follow kids throughout their public school and work careers. Hopefully, it’s obvious why this is bad. Hopefully, it’s obvious why we need our lawmakers to protect our kids from this kind of intrusive nonsense that does nothing but build reasons for taking more and more tax dollars from citizens to fund more and more ways to take their tax dollars – and babies.

March 9, 2025 0

Usurping Local Control – Cell Phone Restrictions In Oklahoma – NO on SB1389 and HB1276

Here is the cell phone bill, by Senate Education Committee Vice-Chair, Ally Seifried; SB139. There is also a companion bill run by Representative Chad Caldwell in the House, HB1276 which has already passed its first Committee hurdle.

According to a press release sent out by Senate Media, the bill, “empower[s] schools to adopt ‘bell to bell’ cell phone policies”, yet the bill summary says, “An Act relating to schools; requiring school district boards of education to adopt a policy prohibiting use of cell phones while on campus during certain time period”. Requiring and ’empowering’ do not have the same meaning – the first includes force.

In fact, the bill goes on to say that it will require schools to set discipline policies for students who break the school’s required policy on cell phone use (the force part). Originally, it had allotted up to 2 million taxpayer dollars (“if available”, whatever that means) to be granted to middle and high schools so they can buy something to STORE cell phones during the day. Because a basket can’t hold cell phones in a classroom and we need a cabinet (or something) for THE SCHOOL to hold EVERY STUDENT’S cell phone.

Problems With The Bill

What is the point of a school board? According to state law, individual local school boards have the right and ability to set policy – including policy over cell phones. This bill actively usurps local school board authority by forcing them to create a policy. On one hand, we expect parents to execute control over their minor children, yet so much of what the state does actually removes parental executive control in favor of a government policy, rule or law. How can a parent execute parental control if we keep removing their executive function?
This is NEW LAW. How many laws do Oklahomans need to restrain them – or, in this case, their children? What about schools? Could an argument be made that part of the reason public schools in Oklahoma are failing is that they are constrained by state laws that may not have been needed at the local level? How many laws does Oklahoma actually need – especially when this one has no teeth, making it a suggestion.
This law forces schools to create disciplinary actions to be meted out when students break cell phone policy. What happens if a school DOESN’T create a cell phone policy? What happens if they don’t create a discipline policy? How many times has state law required schools to create a policy, but then never forced the school to write the policy when they don’t? Tulsa attorney Maria Seidler has told us numerous times, for example, that public schools don’t adhere to all of Oklahoma’s Parental Rights law, but there isn’t an enforcement mechanism in the law to make them, forcing parents to use their own money to sue schools while schools use taxpayer dollars to fight them. How many times has the state forced schools to follow the policies they DO create – about bathrooms, free speech, bullying, or student safety, for example? This law, then, would be meaningless, just like so many others our legislature creates, because there isn’t a mechanism of enforcement.
Our state has real problems with school employees who misuse and abuse children in their care. We have only to look at the number of multi-million dollar lawsuits being settled by schools in the last several years like Kingfisher and Ninnekah and Salina and Perry and Shawnee and Wewoka… Yet, parents who suggest CCTV for classrooms are confronted with an uproar like a tsunami from certain teachers and administrators against such a thing. Now, we want to remove the only way students have to ‘catch’ a school employee doing something they shouldn’t be doing. Just this thought should be concerning.
So much learning is now done on computers but somehow the kid’s cell phones are causing distraction? How does that work? Countless studies have shown that computer learning isn’t the best thing for students, but not only do we still do it, there are real problems with students accessing porn and other sites, as former Oklahoma resident Denise Roberts told us during an interview on our podcast – but cell phones are the problem?
This is a national movement. Why? Why we are attempting to do what so many other states are doing? Why do we play Follow The Leader so often in Oklahoma when we’re an individual state. What about, “I don’t care what the other kids do”. What about being an “laboratories of Democracy“?
Each and every teacher could create their own class rules about cell phones, but we’re not letting them – “Put the phones in the basket on my desk until the end of class everyone”. We’re telling teachers that we don’t trust them with a policy over a cell phone, but you trust them to educate the kids in their class? How much sense does that make? This is all talk out of both sides of the mouth of the legislature – here, have more money teachers – but you can’t manage your own classroom.

Bottom line. This is a bill in search of a problem that already has a solution. This isn’t even a bandaid for the horrible educational results we have in this state. This bill is vanity, not good governance.

Contact the Senate Education Committee and ask them to say NO to SB1389.

adam.pugh@oksenate.gov, ally.seifried@oksenate.gov, dusty.deevers@oksenate.gov, joanna.dossett@oksenate.gov, carri.hicks@oksenate.gov, kelly.hines@oksenate.gov, mark.mann@oksenate.gov, roland.pederson@oksenate.gov, dave.rader@oksenate.gov, aaron.reinhardt@oksenate.gov, kendal.sacchieri@oksenate.gov

February 10, 2025 0

Parents, Books Like “The Glass Castles” – And Worse – Have Been In Public Schools For Years – We Need To Get Them Out Now

I have to say, I’m more than mildly happy to read that parents have finally discovered the disgusting books being foisted upon their children in public schools and metropolitan libraries all across the nation – including Oklahoma – yes, “of all places” – but I have to say, I’m more than mildly frustrated that we’ve been trying to alert parents to this phenomena for over 10 years and not gotten much traction.

So, parents, please know; this is a trend that started years ago and is quickly getting progressively worse. There’s really no choice but to stop it NOW!

Those of you who have been followers know my story, but for those who don’t, suffice it to say that putting my kids into a nice public elementary in the nice neighborhood where I grew up as a kid, didn’t go the way I planned. You can read about some of our adventures here, here and here that led me to homeschooling three kids through high school with one still in high school left to go.

I didn’t begin parent life with the notion that I would be spending 24/7 with four kids, but that’s how life turned out and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Neither did I have any idea that I’d become an education researcher and activist, but putting my kids into public school sent me down that road, leading me to many, many days where I homeschooled with one hand while researching and writing a blog with the other. After seeing what I’d seen in our “Blue Ribbon” elementary in a nice, well-to-do neighborhood, I knew I HAD to wake up parents to either make their schools start educating their kids or get them to take them out!

Throughout our homeschool years, I’d take the kids to Half Price Books. They offer a 10% discount for homeschoolers/educators, plus, it’s always a great place to find any kind of reading material.

Unfortunately, my second-oldest daughter, Barbara, always seemed to pick out the most awful books every time we went – they had no compelling story line, there was nothing edifying or uplifting in them and they all seemed to be about vapid boy/girl relationships. I wouldn’t let her read them and we’d usually have some kind of argument, but my point always has been; why spend time reading something that doesn’t elevate you either mentally or spiritually, or teach you something you didn’t know?

She had been telling me she wanted to read some Judy Blume books – and I had heard they were fine – so one day while we were at Half Price Books, she pulled out several Judy Blume books to look through. One of them was a paperback called, “Forever“. It was used and without a cover for research so I skimmed several pages.

Unfortunately, I involuntarily screamed aloud (Barbara nearly died of embarrassment because people actually looked at us) when I reached a page with such sexually explicit detail that there was no way to refer to it but as pornographic!

Immediately I approached the young girl working close to us, held out the book and reported that it was NOT material for young teens. I then asked her to remove it from the Teen section. She shrugged affably, but seemingly uninterested so I thrust at her the page that had caused me to scream. Surprisingly, even this young, pierced and tattooed girl gasped and promised to immediately remove the book to the adult section where it would be away from young girls.

Not long after that incident really, I got an email from a member of our (previous board) telling me that one of her friends was really mad about the reading list in Edmond Public Schools, and asking if she could put her in touch with me.

After meeting with the mom, I wrote, “One Mad Momma Takes On Edmond School Board Over Sexually Explicit Books Assigned to Sophomores“, published in 2014. Today it has 9000 reads and 16 comments. I urge you to read them. It’s readily obvious someone read the blog and hit social media with a post about it claiming we were trying to “ban” books. Trust me when I say, leftists use the ‘straw man’ argument constantly and this was a perfect example. No one suggested the books should be banned, just not offered as class reading material to sophomores in high school, but that doesn’t matter. Leftists love to call names if for no other reason than it completely stops conversation on the topic. If someone is labeled a “BOOK CENSOR”, discussion stops in exactly the same way it does when you’re labeled a ‘racist’.

I didn’t use that blog to point to specific passages in the book, but because there was so much whining and crying about the blog and the poor mom’s (very brave) decision to speak out on the topic, I ran another blog copying and pasting actual passages from the book, “Complaints About Sexually Inappropriate High School Reading Material Part 2 – Garbage In – Garbage Out“.

Interestingly, THIS blog only got 889 views and only 4 comments, one of which was mine in response to leftist education political organizer Claudia Swisher, who – of course – called the mother and I “book banners” and “disingenuous” for ‘cherry-picking’ passages – because explicitly detailing everything in a sex scene needs context, right? <<insert rolled eyes emoji>>

So as not to relive the entire post here, check out the blog for the x-rated ‘cherry picked’ passages that made me a “disingenuous book banner”.

Not long after that, I received an email from a friend, Macey France, in Oregon who had found Tony Morrison’s, “The Bluest Eye” on the Common Core reading list. A blogger herself, she quoted portions of the book – including the unbelievably explicit child rape scene – in her blog and then linked it to the CC reading list, earning her a virtual firestorm of name-calling and derision from the Left all across the internet.

With everything in my blogs echoing what Macey was saying about the Common Core reading list and “The Bluest Eye”, I decided to pitch an article to my longtime editor Joy Pullman at the Federalist about the smutty books kids were being fed in public school through the eyes of the parents that were objecting to them – in 2014!

That article was my first for the Federalist, has been read thousands of times and is still – sadly – very timely today. I urge you to stop and read the whole piece because it explains very well WHY sexually explicit literature is not appropriate for K-12 students. There are reasons other than, “I just don’t want my kid reading that”.

But, I digress a bit. This is the article I wrote on our old website back in 2011 archived through the Way Back Machine (btw – support them so we don’t end up like 1984!) I recounted the story about Barbara, but here’s the IMPORTANT part. My Co-Founder, Julie McKenzie had gone out to the Norman High School Library website and pulled down the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA – which appears not to be a serviceable organization any longer) 2009 Best Books For Young Adults, copied the books and their descriptions and pasted them in the document. You can see all of them at the link, but let’s pull out a few here:

Geerling, Marjetta. Fancy White Trash. Penguin/Viking. 2008. 978-0-670-01082-0 $16.9 Abby Savage is determined not to be like her mother and sisters-each became pregnant as teens-but her only confidant is Cody who has his own sexual issues.
Harmon, Michael. The Last Exit to Normal. Alfred A.Knopf. 2008. 978-0-375-94098-9 $18.99 To get him on the right track, Ben Campbell’s dad and stepdad accompany him to Montana, where he encounters small town life, homophobia, an abused boy, and a special girl.
Scott, Elizabeth. Living Dead Girl. Simon and Schuster/Simon Pulse. 2008. 978-1-4169-6059-1 $16.99 Abducted at the age of ten, Alice has lived as a live-in rape victim for Ray for 5 years until he informs her that she’s “too old” for his love.

Okay, that’s enough, you get the idea. Sincerely? How many of you want your kids reading ANY of those? This was 2010!

WHERE HAVE PARENTS BEEN?

You think The Glass Castles is bad, try the new and improved Sequoyah Reading List for 2022, which you can conveniently find through the Oklahoma Library Association portal (with the convenient URL of OKLIBS).

We’ll tackle that in the next post – What Does The Library Want Your Child Reading? Shouldn’t You Know?

The last in the series will be, What To Do About Inappropriate Books in Your Public Libraries to give you a method to clean up your public reading spaces.

In the meantime, check out “Molly’s X-Rated Reading Room” on our website where ROPE Board member Molly Jenkins and our friend Andrea Crouch take on the inappropriate and awful books for kids in public school and the public library! Sign up to be alerted of their posts, so you don’t miss one!

Jenni White

November 11, 2021 0

ROPE Report

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