Tag Archives: Children

Mainstream print and cable news now covering the Kevin Jennings scandal

Story here from Gateway Pundit.

Here’s the video from Fox News.

And an article from the Washington Times. (H/T Gateway Pundit)

Excerpt:

The Obama administration is stonewalling serious inquiries about sexual filth propagated by a senior presidential appointee who is responsible for promoting and implementing federal education policy. Democrats clearly are terrified of ruffling the feathers of their activist homosexual supporters, who are an influential part of the Democratic party’s base. This scandal, however, is not merely about homosexual behavior; it is about promoting sex between children and adults – and it’s time for President Obama to make clear that abetting such illegal perversion has no place in his administration.

It is curious why White House officials and Education Secretary Arne Duncan believe it’s worth it politically to continue taking arrows for defending Kevin Jennings, who is Mr. Obama’s controversial “safe schools czar.” The evidence suggesting he is unfit to serve as a senior presidential appointee is startling and plentiful. It was revealed this week that Mr. Jennings was involved in promoting a reading list for children 13 years old or older that made the most explicit sex between children and adults seem normal and acceptable. This brought up anew Mr. Jennings’ past controversies, such as his seeming encouragement of sex between one of his high school students and a much older man as well as his praise for Harry Hay, a notorious supporter of the North American Man Boy Love Association.

But there is more. There are shocking new revelations this week of tape recordings from a youth conference involving 14-year-old students. The conference, billed as a forum to encourage tolerance of homosexuality, was sponsored by Mr. Jennings’ organization and was held at Tufts University in March 2000. Mr. Jennings was executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) from its founding in 1995 until August 2008. The conference sessions appear to have had less to do with promoting tolerance and more to do with teaching children how to engage in sex.

The new update is that GLSEN passes out location guides to gay bars to teenagers. (WARNING: Extremely graphic) This post also contains links to many other extremely graphic stories, so please exercise caution.

Organizations that fund GLSEN

Michelle Malkin has a list of companies that fund GLSEN:

Here are their listed sponsors:

American Federation of Teachers
Anonymous
Arcadia
Arcus Foundation
Calamus Foundation
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Citi Foundation
DaimlerChrysler Corporation
David Bohnett Foundation
Eastman/Kodak Company
Ernst & Young
Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund
Ford Foundation
David Geffen Foundation
Gill Foundation
George Gund Foundation
Heckscher Foundation for Children
Human Civil Rights Organizations of America: A CFC
IBM Corporation
International Association of Gay and Lesbian Country Western Dance Clubs
Johnson Family Foundation
KPMG LLP
Metropolitan Tennis Group, Inc.
Morningstar Foundation
National Education Association
New York Community Trust
The Overbrook Foundation
PepsiCo
Peter and Carmen Lucia Buck Foundation
Ted Snowdon Foundation
The Streisand Foundation
Time Warner
W. Clement and Jessie V. Stone Foundation
Working Assets/CREDO

Pepsi sponsors all of the major gay activism groups and has been targeted for a boycott by the American Family Association. And you can also see both of the major teacher unions are sponsors of GLSEN.

Comments to this post will be strictly monitored to respect the Democrat “hate crimes” bill signed into law by President Barack Obama.

MUST-READ: What books did Obama’s safe-schools czar promote to school children?

Obama nominated Keving Jennings, the founder of GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network), to be his “safe schools” czar.

Watch this video to find out a little about Kevin Jennings:

GLSEN has a set of recommended books for children listed on their web site. Scott Baker from Breitbart-TV.com has broken a story about what is actually in those recommended books.

WARNING. This material is so graphic that I cannot post it on my blog.

Here are the links:

This post contains other links to other previous stories on Kevin Jennings.

Please comment on Gateway Pundit’s site in their posts, not here. Gateway Pundit has suffered DOS attacks for posting on this story.

What helps kids to learn? Parents, teacher unions or education bureaucrats?

Christine Kim
Christine Kim

What’s the best way to help children do well in school?

On the one hand, social conservatives on the right favor the traditional family structure, complete with a father who lives in the home and is an involved parent. Parents have an incentive to help children do well in school because they are biologically linked to the children and they are paying all the bills at home. They are making sacrifices and they want to see some results.

On the other other hand, social liberals on the left favor raising taxes on working families, and funneling the proceeds to unionized public school teachers. Do teachers get paid more for improving the quality of education for students? Or do they get paid more for contributing to Democrats who will increase their salaries? Do they have an incentive to make children learn?

Parents vs teacher unions: Who does the best job?

Consider this research paper from Christine C. Kim of the Heritage Foundation, my favorite think tank.

Excerpt:

American taxpayers invest heavily in education. Last year, spending on public K–12 education totaled $553 billion, about 4 percent of gross domestic prod­uct (GDP) in 2006. For each child enrolled in a pub­lic elementary or secondary school, expenditures averaged $9,266 that year—an increase of 128 per­cent, adjusted for inflation, since 1970.

Despite this increase in public spending, student achievement and educational attainment over the last four decades has remained relatively flat. In 2007, a significant portion of students, disproportionately from disadvantaged backgrounds, scored “below basic” in reading and math on the National Assess­ment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Sadly, in many of the nation’s largest cities, fewer than half of high school students graduate.

While academic research has consistently shown that increased spending does not correlate with edu­cational gains, the research does show a strong rela­tionship between parental influences and children’s educational outcomes, from school readiness to college completion. Two compelling parental factors emerge:

  1. family structure, i.e., the number of parents living in the student’s home and their relationships to the child, and
  2. parents’ involvement in their children’s schoolwork.

Consequently, the solution to improving educa­tional outcomes begins at home, by strengthening marriage and promoting stable family formation and parental involvement.

The PDF is here. In the rest of the paper, Christine supports her conclusions using evidence.