DriveThru – Get What You Need

One in three teen mothers (34%) do not graduate from high school, according to Child Trends new fact sheet, Diploma Attainment Among Teen Mothers, while only 6 percent teen females who did not become pregnant never finished high school.

Consider this. What guarantees a teen will not become pregnant? Abstinence.

Abstinence, then, is also a sure-fire behavior for increasing teen women’s chances of graduating and reaching educational milestones. Moreover, the lead author of the Child Trends study notes that higher educational attainment can not only reduce teen pregnancy, it can also break inter-generational cycles of teen pregnancies.

So we must ask, do we want to provide our daughters and granddaughters the best possible chance of fulfilling their brightest and most beneficial potential? Helping teen girls to remain abstinent from sex – not merely “safer” when having sex – is a policy with guaranteed returns!

Other related Child Trends Research Briefs:

• Ten Reasons to Still Keep the Focus on Teen Childbearing
• Estimated Percentage of Females Who Will Become Teen Mothers: Differences Across States

“It’s millions of dollars … And it will help education,” Florida’s Gov. Crist told the press in regard to his new compact with the vastly wealthy, gambling-saturated Seminole Tribe.

Gov. Crist’s compact would give the Seminole Indians a gambling monopoly on blackjack and Vegas-style slots outside Broward and Miami-Dade. In return, the tribe pays Florida $150 million annually. Oh, and don’t forget, “… it will help education.”

Funny. That’s what the Florida Lottery claimed in order to dupe voters into legalizing state-operated gambling, or the Florida lottery. Today, the lottery has supplanted – or replaced – state funding for education and now Florida education and thousands of children are held hostage to the lottery’s uncertain performance!

Nobody told citizens that education would be DEPENDENT on unstable lottery proceeds, or else the bill never would have passed. States should not use education to justify the legalization of more gambling.  Don’t handcuff vice to virtue.

Many in the Florida Legislature expect this compact will fail. But what other types of gambling are looming in the shadows, waiting to be sold to the public to “help” education?

Citizens beware, there are a lot of gambling crooks selling “snake oil” to the Florida Legislature and to you, the citizens. Don’t buy into their lies about gambling profits. This is a losing bet! Gambling is in decline , and banking on gambling revenues could break the state.

Snake oil! Snake oil! Get your snake oil here! Snake oil, anyone?

Those trying to protect man-woman marriage in Maine have repeatedly cited the Massachusetts court decision Parker v. Hurley as a timely warning. In the decision—rendered after gay marriage was legalized in that state–a federal judge denied parents the right to opt elementary-age children out of lessons about same-sex marriage. 

But Maine’s Attorney General, Janet Mills, recently issued a statement brushing aside those warnings because, she claimed, the Parker case didn’t “turn on any provision of state law relating to marriage or education.”

But that’s simply untrue. Let’s examine the facts:

For instance, I wonder if the Attorney General took the time to read the first few paragraphs of the decision.  If so, surely she would have noticed the clear references to “Massachusetts law” granting special protection to “sexual orientation.”  The opinion specifically explained that, because of this law, the “Massachusetts Department of Education has issued standards which encourage instruction for pre-kindergarten through fifth grade students concerning different types of people and families.” (In other words, teaching about homosexuality and same-sex marriage.) So this obviously did “turn on state law”—and keep in mind that Maine also has at least one state law giving special protection to “sexual orientation.”

Furthermore, the Massachusetts judge clearly and repeatedly connected the dots between what is being taught in the classroom and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision, which mandated the legalization of gay marriage. “Students today must be prepared for citizenship in a diverse society. .. As increasingly recognized, one dimension of our nation’s diversity is differences in sexual orientation. In Massachusetts, at least, those differences may result in same-sex marriages,” said the judge [Emphasis added.]

Therefore, the judge concluded that parents cannot opt their kids out of instruction promoting gay marriage because “under the Constitution public schools are entitled to teach anything that is reasonably related to the goals of preparing students to become engaged and productive citizens in our democracy.”

And in Massachusetts those “goals” now include teaching “respect” for homosexuality and gay marriage. “It is reasonable for public educators to teach elementary school students about individuals with different sexual orientations and about various forms of families, including those with same-sex parents…”

Clearly, Maine is in danger of taking a path that leads to almost exactly the same scenario—one that robs parents of their parental rights and religious freedoms in public schools.

Warning: Graphic content included below.

In states where gay activists are pushing hard to legalize same-sex marriage, we keep hearing the same claim: This will not have an impact on our public schools.

That claim is simply untrue, and we need look no further than Massachusetts for evidence to the contrary.

Massachusetts was the first state to legalize full-fledged gay marriage. Not long after it was legalized, National Public Radio (NPR) featured an interview with an eighth-grade teacher, Ms. Allen, who was exuberant about her new-found freedom to talk about homosexuality in the classroom.

“In my mind, I know that, ‘OK, this is legal now.’ If somebody wants to challenge me, I’ll say, ‘Give me a break. It’s legal now,’ ” she told NPR.

The NPR reporter went on to explain that due to the gay marriage debate, Allen now discusses “gay sex” with students “thoroughly and explicitly with a chart.”

Allen explained in detail exactly how she explains this chart to kids: “All right. So can a woman and a woman kiss and hug? Yes. Can a woman and a woman have vaginal intercourse?, and they will say no. And I’ll say, ‘Hold it. Of course, they can. They can use a sex toy. They could use’—and we talk—and we discuss that. So the answer there is yes.” (From: "Debate in Massachusetts over how to address the issue of discussing gay relationships and sex in public school classrooms,” All Things Considered, National Public Radio, Sept. 13, 2004.)

It’s also disturbing to hear what’s happening at the elementary level in that state. Consider the parents in Lexington, Massachusetts, who complained that their kindergarten and second-grade age kids were exposed to storybooks introducing them to the idea of homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

Even more concerning were the school officials’ response to those parental concerns, as reported by The Associated Press: “Officials there say that since same-sex marriage is a part of life in Massachusetts, it comes up naturally and it’s impossible to notify parents every time the issue is discussed.”

“It certainly strengthens the argument that we need to teach about gay marriage because it’s more of a reality for our kids,”  Lexington Schools Superintendent Paul Ash said. (“Gay Marriage Foes Face Issue in Schools,” Associated Press, May 5, 2006.)

In light of these facts and public news accounts, is there really any serious question that legalizing gay marriage will tangibly and concretely affect our public schools? It’s simply disingenuous to claim otherwise.

There’s been a growing movement afoot for states to “voluntarily” adopt national curriculum standards. So far 47 states have signed up (the holdouts are Alaska, Texas and South Carolina).

“Voluntary” is a subjective word, since it’s becoming obvious how the Obama Administration intends to use federal funding as a stick to force contrarians into line.

While this is a concerning trend, it’s not really time for flashing sirens yet—because, so far, academics are still fighting amongst themselves over who exactly should have input into the final standards and what they should look like. It remains to be seen whether the states can agree.

So I guess you could say the threat level is yellow.  In the meantime, we can look to England for some insight into where this might lead.

In 1989, England implemented a national curriculum with a call for uniformity on core subjects. But what started as core standards, now includes compulsory sex education classes that teach kids about homosexuality and same-sex unions.   Apparently, faith-based schools are not exempt—they’ll have to engage in controversial teaching, while explaining that it “runs contrary to their religious beliefs.”

Others experts have expressed concerns that politically correct agendas are edging out core subjects and that student performance on national tests has stalled in recent years.

So before we embark on another failed experiment, perhaps we should learn a lesson from our friends across the ocean.