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           Welcome to Call to Decision 

 
WELCOME TO THE CONTINUING COLLAPSE!
 
"Doing the Education Research that Illegal Aliens Won't Do
 Since 1997"
 
 
JULY 2008
 
      In addition to the latest news about the corrupt and decaying government school system, The Continuing Collapse is pleased this month to bring you encouraging news from California and a wealth of short video clips that will help you break through Christian denial about the reality of government schools.
 
 
Imagine congregations that want to be faithful in the education of their children that are led by courageous pastors who refuse to compromise the Word of God.
 
Imagine, further, that these pastors would allow The Continuing Collapse to speak to their congregations at length about the corrupt, anti-Christian nature of the government schools while pointing out that the Bible requires parents to provide their children with a Christian education.
 
Imagine, finally, that those same pastors would then stand up and, with no equivocation and no exceptions, urge their congregations to rescue their children from government schools .
 
If this strikes you as fantasy, no one would be surprised.
 
BUT, it actually happened last month in Sacramento's Slavic churches. Exodus Mandate was invited by these churches to speak about Christian education and the crisis in American Christianity and American culture.
 
From the very moment we stepped into the first of the many Slavic churches we visited, The Continuing Collapse could tell that something was radically and marvelously different. It made no difference whether the church had 300-400 in attendance or was a mega-church with thousands in the audience (yes, there are Slavic mega-churches), the faithfulness of the congregations and the courageous commitment to biblical principles by their pastors was obvious and humbling.
 
Perhaps we shouldn't have been as surprised as we were by these churches. After all, these are people who in the former Soviet Union were denied opportunities, beaten, and imprisoned for their faith. They have been refined in the fire of persecution.
 
The contrast with the typical American Christian church, however, was painful.  We have all seen the lukewarm "American" congregations compromised by government school tares and led by cowardly, willfully ignorant pastors. While we all know that there are many exceptions, we also know that this is exactly the condition of the majority of American churches.
 
Please remember these Slavic churches in your prayers and give thanks to the Lord for the gift of their witness. If you would like to encourage them, do it by sending a note to Pastors Andrey Chiley and Ivan Gavrilyuk c/o The Continuing Collapse.
 
FINALLY, OUR HIGHLY TRAINED EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS HAVE A STRATEGY FOR LEAVING NO CHILD BEHIND!
 
Last month The Continuing Collapse reported that some government schools are giving slackers who literally do no work a grade of 50 to "encourage them".
 
You may also remember that The Continuing Collapse predicted that, having discovered a "genius" idea, our highly trained education professionals would soon improve this "educational strategy" by raising the minimum score that a child can receive as long as he is bringing revenue to the school. Well,  The Continuing Collapse did not have to wait long to be proven prescient:
 
In a move that would make zero a grade of the past, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school district is considering making 61 the lowest grade for a failing assignment.
The goal would be to assure that a single test-day disaster doesn't ruin a semester. Some teachers, students and parents say the change would coddle failing students....
 
By the way, 61 is a "D". So, a child who does no more that show up and fatten a schools coffers by bringing in state and federal revenue can be assured of passing. The next step will be to further raise the minimum grade so the slackers' self-esteem won't be damaged (and their parents will be kept happy).
 
 
A NEW YORK NEWSPAPER STUMBLES INTO THE STANDARDIZED TESTING FRAUD
 
Our highly trained education professionals understand that their cashflow depends on systematic deception...
 
Mayor Bloomberg will announce an education victory today: Test scores are up across the city, by double digits at some schools. But a cloud is already gathering, as education experts are raising the possibility that these gains and others across the country could suggest score inflation and not real learning gains....
 
The mayor has often greeted test-score increases as evidence that he is fulfilling his promise to improve public schools. "I'm happy, thrilled, ecstatic," he said last year, announcing gains on the state math test.
 
Since then, concerns have grown that rises in state test scores in New York and elsewhere do not reflect real improvement, but rather "inflations" — either due to easier tests, deliberate cheating, or more subtle "gaming" that helps students perform better without actually having to learn more material...
 
A report grading state tests recently delivered New York State a C+. And a study by the teachers union found that a reading test dropped in difficulty by as many as six grade levels between 2004 and 2005.
 
The concern in New York follows a pattern around the country.
"Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us," a new book by a testing expert and Harvard Graduate School of Education professor, Daniel Koretz, calls score inflation the "dirty secret" of high-stakes testing.
 
Although some test-score gains represent the real, hard work of teachers and students, others "are entirely illusory," Mr. Koretz writes.
 
A recent study of Texas schools is the latest in a string of academic observations on the effects of high-stakes testing. The study concludes that educators are "gaming" their state tests by preventing low-achieving students from taking them and teaching only material they expect to appear on the test, rather than the wider span of material tests are supposed to represent.
 
A study by a pscyhometrician and professor at the University of Iowa, Andrew Ho, found that two-thirds of state tests are publishing higher gains than a national test.
New York is not immune from the phenomenon, according to another researcher studying state tests, Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California at Berkeley.
 
"We've got great rhetoric and great pressure on teachers to teach to the test, but at the end of the day when Albany reports out the share of kids that are proficient, we can't really trust their claims, especially when put up against the federal definition of proficiency," Mr. Fuller said.
 
The Continuing Collapse has written about government school testing fraud at length. It's gratifying to see the mainstream media occasionally stumble across part of the truth.
 
THE GOVERNMENT SCHOOL SPECIAL INTERESTS ARE ALWAYS HUNGRY, SO THE SPENDING NEVER STOPS
 
 
Despite falling enrollment, the district will keep building schools as a way to eliminate year-round calendars, forced busing and portable classrooms. Critics say it's overbuilding....Over the last decade, fewer people moved to Southern California, large numbers of school-aged children grew up, and the birth rate among Latinos declined. Some students left traditional public schools to enroll in publicly financed charters, experts and officials said. Rising housing prices changed the face of some neighborhoods in the urban core, bringing singles and childless couples into what were once communities of large, poor immigrant families.

As a result, L.A. Unified has lost 57,000 students, nearly 8% of its total enrollment....And the decline in student enrollment is not over.

L.A. Unified officials calculate an average drop of 1.6% a year until 2014
 
THE GOVERNMENT SCHOOL FINANCIAL "CRISIS" IS GROWING
 
This couldn't happen to a more deserving group of people...
 
In districts across the United States, budget shortfalls are resulting in locked-up schools, flurries of pink slips, and empty shelves where new books and computers should be. In cities from Los Angeles to Detroit, and in rural towns from Louisiana to New Hampshire, schools, like other sectors, are caught between skyrocketing prices and dried-up funding streams.
 
"You have the perfect storm forming," says Chuck Essigs, director of government relations for the Arizona Association of School Business Officials. "You have costs going up ... for energy and fuel and health insurance ... and a loss of revenue from the state. [That is] creating certainly a lot more of a challenge than school districts have faced in many, many years."
 
Twenty-nine states are facing a total of about $48 billion in overall shortfalls for fiscal year 2009, nearly a 10 percent drop, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, and education will bear some of the burden....
 
The road is particularly hard in areas with declining enrollments. Much of education funding is distributed per pupil, but costs don't necessarily go down in the same proportion as the population drops.
 
The Mesa, Ariz., schools, for example, educate 72,000 children, down 1,500 from a year ago. They recently hammered out about $13 million in cuts, or three percent of their operating budget. In addition, they anticipate increased costs such as $4 million for bus fuel, up from $3.1 million this school year. ...
 
 
ONLY A HANDFUL OF PARENTS REALLY WANT THEIR CHILDREN IN TRADITIONAL GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS
 
You can fool some of the people all of the time... about 15%, it appears:

 
U.S. states are being surveyed one at a time by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice in order to determine the feelings of residents on school choice.
 
Spokesman Paul Diperna says Idaho is the latest of four states that have been checked thus far. "The broad takeaway is that Idaho parents ... want more [alternative school] choices...," he says. "... [W]e've seen overwhelming support for private schools, charter schools, home schooling, and even virtual schools to some extent," Diperna reports.
 
According to a press release, 39 percent of Idahoans would prefer sending their child to a private school; 25 percent, a charter school; and 21 percent, home schooling. If full choices were available, Diperna claims that only 12 percent of Idaho parents would choose the public school system. In other states, he says, that number fluctuates.
 
"... [I]t's been around 19 percent for example in Illinois, 15 percent in Tennessee, and 11 percent in Nevada ...," Diperna details.
 
Those percentages, notes Diperna, come from parents who mostly send their children to public schools either due to a lack of schooling alternatives or the cost.
 
Eventually parents will figure our that charter schools are just regular public schools in drag...
 
TWO MILLION MINUTES!
 
Technology entrepreneur, Bob Compton, has done business for years in the US, India, and China. Over time he noticed the large disparity between the US  educational system and those in India and China - a difference that is not flattering to the US. As a result he produced a documentary to illustrate the problem.
 
What follows is an interview with Bob Compton ("BC") about Two Million Minutes. In the Video Corner you will find several short clips from the documentary.
 
DI: What inspired you, a very successful entrepreneur, to direct a film about high school education, and why title it “2 Million Minutes”?
 
BC: “2 Million Minutes” is the amount of time that any one lives during a four-year time period. What I’m looking at in the film is the four years spent in high school in three different locations: India, China and the United States.
 
I came about making the film after a trip to India in 2005. One of my companies assembled about 100 software developers in Bangalore, India. We took them out to dinner. I went from table to table to get to know them, expecting to meet math and science geeks who would be socially awkward.
 
What I discovered was that these young men and women, ages 25-35, were very well spoken, very globally aware, knowledgeable about U.S. history and European history. They were not geeks as I expected.
 
I decided to make a film that would let the American viewers go not only into the schools but the homes and hangouts of Indian, Chinese and American teenagers and see how in each culture the students, guided by their families, allocated their two million minutes.
 
DI: You observed all six students in their normal classroom settings. How did the look and feel of the international classrooms differ from the American classrooms?
 
BC: The classrooms in both India and China have a lot less technology than those in the United States. Most classrooms had just chalk and a blackboard. The difference is the teachers there are experts in their domains. If you teach physics in India, you have a bachelor’s degree in physics, a master’s degree in physics and a one-year teaching certificate. The same is true for all subjects: chemistry, biology, etc. The teachers tend to be deeply knowledgeable in their specific domain. The same is true for China.
 
DI: What about the curriculum, how did it differ?
 
BC: In India, during the seventh, eighth and ninth grades (what they consider high school) students are required to take four years of math, physics, chemistry, biology, English literature, English grammar, civics, world history and Hindi. They are required to take 14 courses. Contrast that with America where there are relatively few requirements. There are just a few basics and a lot of electives. You take one year of physics, not four. One year of biology. One year of chemistry.
 
DI: You chronicled very high-performing students. Did all six emerge from affluent backgrounds and attend private schools?
 
BC: In China, all the schools are run by the government. In India, about half of the students go to for-profit private schools. The other half go to government-sponsored schools.
 
The demographics of the international parents are very similar to the American parents. The parents are all professionals that want their children to go to college.
 
We picked Carmel High School [in Indiana], because we wanted a top performing high school in the heartland. We wanted high achieving students in a high-achieving school in America. We tried, as much as possible, to compare apples to apples.
 
DI: During the late ’50s and early ’60s, the United States led the world in science, technology and innovation? Is the United States still in the lead?
 
BC: We used to be the strongest engineering and scientific base of knowledge. I would say on engineering in the world, India and China have passed us. We still have the most vibrant capital markets, but India and China are working hard to catch up in that area. Their economies are growing so quickly. China’s economy has grown double digits for the last 20 years. No other country in modern history has done that.
 
In a very short period of time, these two countries have caught up to us in a lot ways. A lot of the reason is their strong math and science education from kindergarten, but particularly in high school.
 
DI: How come the United States has yet to really respond to the fact that students from foreign countries are outpacing American students in academic achievement?
 
BC: Several reasons. We presumably don’t have the political will to respond. We don’t respond well unless there is a serious crisis. We don’t seem to be able to come to grips with the reality that we could ever be anything other than No. 1.
 
Also, those two countries are coming out of poverty. To get a job as an engineer, you can lift your standard of living dramatically. Here, [in the United States], kids don’t want to work that hard. When I go into schools, grade schools, high schools and elementary schools, I always ask how many students want to be an engineer or a scientist. If I get one or two in a class, I’m shocked. Most want to be: professional athletes, professional entertainers, professional wrestlers, rock stars. Our culture recognizes, reveres and rewards athletic achievement. Chinese and Indian cultures revere, recognize and reward academic achievement.
 
REPEAT AFTER ME: "SODOMITES ARE JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE"
 
Of course, they aren't at all like everyone else, but this is what our highly trained education professionals are teaching our children. So, just to inject a little reality into who and what are being invited into the government schools in the name of "tolerance", blah, blah, blah, as a public service The Continuing Collapse provides a reminder about the colorful folk ways of homosexuals.
 
...In the past decade, the number of complaints about explicit, open public sex in the Provincetown and Truro portions of the national park has more than tripled, Seashore acting chief ranger Craig Thatcher said. The activity ranges from flashing to masturbation to men's outdoor orgies, he said.
 
Public sexual activity is illegal in the Seashore under federal and state law, Thatcher said. He said in incidents of public sex rangers usually enforce a federal misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct, which prohibits obscene acts. The misdemeanor charge can result in a $150 citation, with a $25 court fee, for an outdoor violation. An indoor violation, as in a bathhouse, requires a court appearance before a federal magistrate...
 
An example of the complaints was a call reporting Wednesday that a 65- to 70-year-old man was flashing people at Herring Cove Beach, according to Seashore records.
 
In a Sept. 19, 2007, letter, a New Jersey family walking with children in the dunes encountered "several couples and then a large group of men having group sex in the nude, including oral and anal sex right out in the open."
 
In an August 2007 letter, a whale-watch boat captain leaving Provincetown Harbor with passengers reported seeing 20 to 30 nude men "playing around" near Wood End Lighthouse...
 
Provincetown has a relatively large gay resident population and is a popular destination for gay tourists.
 
"It's not acceptable, decent, moral behavior," said Province-
town Police Chief Jeff Jaran, whose department assists Seashore rangers. "There is a time to be discreet, and there are places to go and do those types of things."
Jaran said he supports a combination of "zero-tolerance" law enforcement and public education.
 
Public education? Does the police chief really think that sodomites commit acts of public obscenity because they don't know any better? The police chief had better be careful or he might be accused of being "insensitive" to sodomite "culture".
 
 
THE VIDEO CORNER
 
Here are some clips from Two Million Minutes. Be sure to share them with all of your friends who think "their schools are different".
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
As an added bonus, here is a link to all of Stossel's Stupid in America (without commercials). Share it!
 
 
Just a reminder about what your "really good suburban schools" are producing - a blast from the past - the amazing Miss Teen South Carolina! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww&feature=related
 
THE CULTURE CORNER
 
SOMETIMES AFTER A HARD DAY TRACKING DOWN THE PERFIDIES OF OUR HIGHLY TRAINED EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS, THE CONTINUING COLLAPSE NEEDS TO CLEAR ITS PALATE OF THE TASTE OF THE WRETCHED MEDIOCRITIES WHO CONTROL OUR SCHOOLS AND THE MEDIA.
 
Here are some short clips of music composed by geniuses and performed by artists of the highest caliber.
 
1. First, we have Cornell MacNeil as Scarpia from Puccini's Tosca. MacNeil brings to life the true meaning of "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you.": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUX3QzIEun4
 
2. A long time ago when Christians had leaders of heroic proportions, the Knights of Malta led by La Vallette humiliated the invading Moslems at Malta, Don Juan of Austria crushed the Moslem fleet at Lepanto, and Jan Sobieski routed the Moslems from the gates of Vienna. If you don't know of these events, you owe it to your children to learn about them (and not the diluted, denatured "Wikipedia" versions). These men (and others) were God's instruments for saving Christendom. (Does your pastor resemble any of them?)
 
Here are short clips of the most dramatic tenor entrance in all of opera - Otello's return from Lepanto. The outnumbered Christians were expected to lose, and as the opera opens the people of Venice are anxiously watching the flagship of the Venetian fleet struggle to make it to shore through a terrible storm. The ship finally makes port. The people expect tragic news, but Otello strides off the ship and proclaims "Rejoice! The pride of the Moslems is interred in the depths of the sea. God has given us the victory!"
 
Two versions - Mario Del Monaco and Franco Corelli (which do you prefer?): 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwQYgugzyT8  2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=motUFYY4d-g&feature=related
 
Just so The Continuing Collapse can't be accused of being entirely biased toward tenors, here is the great Bulgarian basso profoundo, Boris Christoff, singing a Russian folk song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cgCDHz6G1s
 
 
REMEMBER:
 
1. Feel free to circulate The Continuing Collapse.
 
2. If you aren't hearing about at least some these government school problems from your pastor, why is he your pastor?
 
3. FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS