NHEG-September-October2022

ISSUE 9-10

Education is not

the learning of

many facts, but

the training of the

mind to think.

- Albert Einstein

2022

SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER

NHEG EDGUIDE 2

EDITORIAL TEAM

EDITOR IN CHIEF

PRODUCTION MANAGER

PROOFREADERS/EDITORS

PHOTOGRAPHERS IN THIS ISSUE

Pamela Clark

NewHeightsEducation@yahoo.com

Marina Klimi

MarinaKlimi@NewHeightsEducation.org

Laura Casanova

Laura Casanova

William Atkinson

Frani Wyner

Pamela Clark

Contents

EDITORIAL TEAM

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THOUGHT OF THE MONTH

8-17

NHEG MEDIA PACK

18-19

MISSING CHILDREN

22-23

NHEG GROUP NAMED

BEST CHILDREN & ADULTS

LITERACY GROUP

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NEW COMIC STRIPS

CREATED BY

BARBARA BULLEN

40-41

VOLUNTEERS PAGES

42-49

NHEG INTERNET RADIO

PROGRAM

50-51

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

COACHING COURSES

58-61

NHEG BIRTHDAYS

& ANNIVERSARIES

62

VOLUNTEER REVIEWS

64-65

BOX TOPS

70-92

FEE ARTICLES

96

HSLDA ARTICLES

97

NATIONAL NEWS REPORTS IN

EDUCATION

98-103

RECIPES

104-105

NHEG PARTNERS &

AFFILIATES

52-53

THE WALK IN AND OUT OF DARKNESS

September October 2022

NHEG EDGUIDE September - October 2022

Thought for the Month

Welcome to the official

New Heights Educational Group store.

THE CURRENT STORE IS UNDER

CONSTRUCTION, PLEASE BE PATIENT

As we enter another year of learning,

we ask that if you have time to

volunteer please do so.

We already have a waiting list for

students in need of tutoring and

pre-recorded courses need to be

built, and there are many other

ways to help.

Consider volunteering; you will

find it a rewarding experience.

https://www.NewHeightsEducation.org/NHEG-store/

Pamela Clark

Founder/ Executive Director of

The New Heights Educational

Group, Inc.

Resource and Literacy Center


http://www.NewHeightsEducation.org

Learning Annex

https://School.NewHeightsEducation.org/

A Public Charity 501(c)(3)

Nonprofit Organization

New Heights Educational Group

Inc.

14735 Power Dam Road, Defiance, Ohio

43512

+1.419.786.0247

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NHEG EDGUIDE

September - October 2022

NHEG MEDIA PACK

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NCMEC: 1458845

NCMEC: 1458723

Extra Photo

Missing Aug 20, 2022

Since:

Missing Cleveland, OH

From:

May 30, 2005

DOB:

Age 17 Now:

Female

Sex:

Black

Race:

Hair Black

Color:

Eye Brown

Color:

5'1"

Height:

177 lbs

Weight:


Since:

Missing Mansfield, OH

From:

Nov 10, 2007

DOB:

Age 14 Now:

Female

Sex:

Black

Race:

Hair Brown

Color:

Eye Brown

Color:

5'6"

Height:

120 lbs

Weight:

Heaven Adams

Kaylisha Joohnsoon

Kaylisha was last seen on August 21, 2022.

Both photos shown are of Heaven. She was last seen on August 20, 2022.

Case handled by

Case handled by

ANYONE HAVING INFORMATION SHOULD CONTACT


NCMEC: 1458580

NCMEC: 1458239

Extra Photo


Since:

Missing Campbell, OH

From:

Sep 16, 2009

DOB:

Age 12 Now:

Female

Sex:

White

Race:

Hair Brown

Color:

Eye Brown

Color:

5'6"

Height:

Weight:

Missing Since: Aug 17, 2022

Missing From: Akron, OH

DOB: Nov 17, 2005

Age Now: 16

Female

Sex:

Black

Race:

Hair Brown

Color:

Eye Brown

Color:

5'2"

Height:

130 lbs

Weight:

Makayla Popio

Tanea Nolen

200 lbs

Both photos shown are of Makayla. She has a faded tattoo on her chest.

Tanea was last seen on August 17, 2022.

Case handled by

Case handled by



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New Heights Educational Group Named Best Children & Adults Literacy Group

New Heights Educational Group (NHEG) has been named a U.S. winner in Acquisition International’s 2022 Non-Profit Organisation

Awards. NHEG was awarded Best Children & Adults Literacy Group – Ohio.

This is the second win for NHEG from Acquisition International, a monthly digital business magazine with global circulation

published by AI Global Media Ltd, a publishing house based in the United Kingdom.

Pamela Clark, Founder/Executive Director of NHEG stated, “We extend a warm thank you to Acquisition International for

recognizing the work of our organization and its many volunteers. We are thankful for and appreciate your continued support.”

More information about the NHEG award and other award winners is available via the links below:

• Directory listing - https://www.acquisition-international.com/winners-list/?award=98329-2022

• The official press release - https://www.acquisition-international.com/acquisition-international-is-proud-to-announce-thewinners-of-the-2022-non-profit-organisation-awards/

• New Heights Educational Group - New Heights Educational Group 2022 (acquisition-international.com)

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NHEG EDGUIDE


https://www.collegexpress.com/reg/signup?campaign=10k&utm_campaign=NHEG&utm_medium=link&utm_source=NHEG

HTTPS://NEWHEIGHTSEDUCATION.ORG/NHEG-NEWS/HEROES-OF-LIBERTY-PARTNERSHIP/

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https://NHEG.Memberhub.gives/NHEG/Campaign/Details

https://nheg.memberhub.gives/nheg/Campaign/Details

https://careasy.org/nonprofit/NewHeightsEducationalGroup

NHEG EDGUIDE


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NHEG EDGUIDE


NATIONAL CSI CLASSES

VIRTUAL READING PROGRAM

https://school.newheightseducation.org/membership/national-csi-classes/

SCHOLARSHIP/GRANTS AND/OR

COLLEGE SEARCH & SUPPORT

https://school.newheightseducation.org/students/scholarship-opportunities/scholarship-search/

https://newheightseducation.org/nheg-educational-programs/virtual-reading-program/

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VOLUNTEER PAGES

NEW VOLUNTEERS

VOLUNTEERS OF THE MONTH

VIVIEN DINH

DATE OF HIRE: 3/21/2022

PROOFREADER/EDITOR

GARRETT MAYLEBEN

DATE OF HIRE: 7/8/2022

ATTORNEY

MICHAEL ANDERSON

VIVIEN DINH

NINA LE

RAMYASREE ARVA (RAMYA)

SARIKA GAUBA

GARRETT MAYLEBEN

ANGELICA BARBOSA

JACKSON HOCHSTETLER

VICTOR RODRIGUEZ

BARBARA BULLEN

RHONE-ANN HUANG

STEPHANIE SONG

LAURA CASANOVA

PADMAPRIYA KEDHARNATH

EMILY STAGG

CAROLINE CHEN

PRIYA

SEAN URKE

KRISTEN CONGEDO

MARINA KLIMI

JAVIER CORTÉS

JULIA LANDY

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THE INTERNET RADIO PROGRAM FROM

NEW HEIGHTS EDUCATIONAL GROUP

Internet Radio Show Spots now available

The New Heights Educational Group is now offering the opportunity for the public or businesses that promote education to purchase sponsor advertisement on our internet radio show.

All products, business and service advertisements will need to be reviewed by our research department and must be approved by NHEG home office.

All advertisements must be family friendly.

Those interested in purchasing packages can choose for our host to read the advertisement on their show or supply their own pre-recorded advertisement.

If interested, please visit our website for more details.

https://Radio.NewHeightsEducation.org/

The NHEG Radio Show is an internet radio program in which the hosts cover various topics of education for Home, Charter and Public School families in Ohio.

These Communities include Paulding, Defiance, Van Wert, Delphos, Lima, Putnam County, Wauseon and Napoleon.

For an invitation to the live show, visit us on Facebook or Twitter to sign up, or email us at info@NewHeightsEducation.org

If you are looking to listen to past shows, please check out this document

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oW5gxFB7WNgtREowSsrJqWP9flz8bsulcgoR-QyvURE/edit#gid=529615429

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT COACHING COURSES

ABOUT COURSE INSTRUCTOR & AUTHOR

Buffie Williams is a former Navy spouse, author and service entrepreneur. She is the owner of AWAKEN Holistic Counseling

& Psychotherapy Services, LLC and consulting agency in Troy, Alabama. She is also the creator of the World Knowledge Think

Tank Enrichment Program, a comprehensive life program designed as a guide to life and career exploration.

https://School.NewHeightsEducation.org/online-courses/personal-development-coaching-courses/

NHEG EDGUIDE

September - October

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September - October

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NHEG September Birthday

NHEG October Birthday

SEPT 02

Janene Kling

OCT 04

Garrett Mayleben

SEPT 13

Marina Klimi

OCT 07

Carmen Tachie-Menson

SEPT 17

Kyren Dougal

OCT 07

Jane Wen

SEPT 18

Caroline Chen

OCT 11

Ingrid Kambou-Tachim

SEPT 23

William Atkinson

OCT 15

Michael Anderson

SEPT 30

Sankalp (Sonny) Chauhan

OCT 18

Javier Cortes

OCT 19

Kristina Kafle

OCT 25

Sampan Chaudhuri

OCT 28

Vivien Dinh

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NHEG EDGUIDE

September - October

NHEG September Anniversaries

NHEG October Anniversaries

SEPT 20

Michael Anderson

OCT 25

Javier Cortes

SEPT 20

Victor Rodriguez

SEPT 22

Sheila Wright

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Volunteers Ratings

Ninale

Volunteer 08/04/2022

Rating:5

I am a volunteer at NHEG and after a year of being part of this amazing group, I have had an awesome experience, not only able

to practice my interest, but also help others along the way. NHEG is a place to help or to be helped.


HOW TO EARN

BOX TOPS MAKES IT EASY

All you need is your phone! Download the Box Tops app, shop as you normally

would, then use the app to scan your store receipt within 14 days of purchase. The

app will identify Box Tops products on your receipt and

automatically credit your school’s earnings online.

Twice a year, your school will receive a check and can use that cash to buy

whatever it needs!

DO YOU NEED TO ENROLL YOUR SCHOOL? FIND OUT HOW HERE.

https://www.boxtops4education.com/enroll

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NHEG EDGUIDE


PRESS RELEASE

NEW HEIGHTS EDUCATIONAL GROUP WINS SILVER AND BRONZE

STEVIE® AWARDS IN

2022 STEVIE AWARDS FOR SALES & CUSTOMER SERVICE

STEVIE WINNER PROVIDES LITERACY AND EDUCATIONAL

SUPPORT TO ADULTS AND CHILDREN

Defiance, Ohio – March 2, 2022 – New Heights Educational Group (NHEG)was presented with a

Silver Stevie® Award in the Best Use of Thought Leadership in Customer Service category and a

Their Mission: Stevie Award winner New Heights Educational Group, Inc. promotes literacy for children and

adults by offering a range of educational support services. Such services include assisting families in the

selection of schools, organization of educational activities, and acquisition of materials. They promote a

healthy learning environment and enrichment programs for families of preschool and school-age children,

including children with special needs.

Award-winning organization New Heights Educational Group (NHEG) was formed in 2006 by Mrs. Pamela

Clark. Mrs. Clark discovered that families needed to cooperate, especially in educating children with learning

difficulties such as ADHD, bipolar disorder, autism, and neurological disorders. NHEG has served over

350,000 students via online services and courses. Mrs. Clark leads a team of 92 volunteers who research

advancements and provide training to teachers and tutors exploring different learning styles.

Bronze Stevie® Award in the Best Use of Thought Leadership in Business Development category

in the 16th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service are the world’s top honors for customer service, contact

center, business development and sales professionals. The Stevie Awards organizes eight of the world’s leading

business awards programs, also including the prestigious American Business Awards® and International

Business Awards®.

Winners will be recognized during a virtual awards ceremony on May 11.

More than 2,300 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry, in 51 nations,

were considered in this year’s competition. Winners were determined by the average scores of more than

150 professionals worldwide on eight specialized judging committees. Entries were considered in more than

90 categories for customer service and contact center achievements, including Contact Center of the Year,

Award for Innovation in Customer Service, and Customer Service Department of the Year; more than 60

categories for sales and business development achievements, ranging from Senior Sales Executive of the

Year to Sales Training or Business Development Executive of the Year to Sales Department of the Year; and

categories to recognize new products and services, solution providers, and organizations’ and individuals’

response to the COVID-19 pandemic. New categories this year honor excellence in thought leadership in

customer service and sales.

Judges’ Comments

--Congratulations on an incredible and amazingly profound mission. Well done.

--Awesome to see enablement through education, developing support around kids for a better future

--Interesting method to meet the requirements and needs of the business

--Congratulations on your successful thought leadership focus on family education and those with special needs!

--Excellent initiative taken by the company. The company seems to have benefitted tremendously under Mrs. Pamela

Clark’s leadership. Well done on promoting literacy through various educational programs.Worthy of acclaim!

--Supporting your clients every step along the way is the key to building trust. And since people do business

with people they know, like, and trust, you can see how essential this is. You can also see how it’s the opposite

of trying to SELL. It’s about guiding them to find the best solution for their problem …based on where

they are in their Decision Journey.

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NHEG EDGUIDE


--True general leadership growth opportunities in an equitable social application. This will impact and assist in true across

the board growth in thought leadership

--Overall a good and innovative solution to a time tested problem.

--Congratulations NHEG on your valuable contributions to children’s education during the Covid crisis!

--New Heights Educational Group has a very fulfilling goal, which is to provide education to the children with learning

difficulties. The increase in the number of course offerings is commendable. Their partnerships with various online course

providers is a clear indication of their interest in the growth of the children.

Pamela Clark, Executive Director of NHEG, stated, “we are proud of our team of volunteers that work so hard to

bring opportunities to families in need. We are honored by these awards.”

“The nominations we received for the 2022 competition illustrate that business development, customer service,

and sales professionals worldwide, in all sorts of organizations, have continued to innovate, thrive, and meet

customer expectations during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Stevie Awards president Maggie Gallagher Miller.

“The judges have recognized and rewarded their achievements, and we join them in applauding this year’s winners

for their continued success. We look forward to recognizing them on May 11.”

Details about the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service and the list of Stevie winners in all categories are

available at www.StevieAwards.com/Sales.

About NHEG

New Heights Educational Group, Inc., promotes literacy for children and adults by offering a range of educational

support services. Such services include the following: assisting families in the selection of schools; organization

of educational activities; and acquisition of materials. We promote a healthy learning environment and

various enrichment programs for families of preschool and school-age children, including children with special

needs.

About The Stevie Awards

Stevie Awards are conferred in eight programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards,

the Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards®, The International Business

Awards®, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, and the Stevie

Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 12,000 entries each year

8/3/22

New Heights Educational Group (NHEG) held its 2022 Annual Recognition Day on July 30, 2022. The event recognizes

and celebrates volunteer impact and student success. Pamela Clark,Executive Director of NHEG, stated,

“Our volunteers and students have an exceptional work ethic and positive behavior that has a direct impact on

NHEG and our communities. I am thrilled to honor them on this day.’’

Volunteers of the Year 2022

Javier Cortes - Online Manager of the Year

Marina Klimi - Production Manager of the Year; Social Media Manager of the Year

Frani Wyner - Photographer of the Year

Padmapriya (Priya) Kedharnath - Accountant of the Year

Caroline Chen - HR Coordinator of the Year; Student Leader of the Year

Meghna Kilaparthi - Math Tutor of the Year

Sarika Gauba - Content Builder of the Year

Rhone-Ann Huang - Reading Ambassador of the Year

Julia Landy - Graphic Designer of the Year; New Media and Video Editing of the Year

Laura Casanova - Proofreader/Editor of the Year

Nina Le - Tutor of the Year - Live Lessons

Victor Rodriguez - Screenplay Writer of the Year

Barbara Bullen - Internet Radio Host of the Year

Ramyasree Arva - Google Classroom Course Updater of the Year

Vy Dinh - Instructional Video Creator of the Year; Google Classroom Course Creator of the Year

Alexandre Oliveira - Photo Editor of the Year

Students Nominated for NSHSS | National Society of High School Scholars

Caroline Chen

Allene Yue

Stephanie Song

Nina Le

Rhone-Ann Huang

from organizations in more than 70 nations. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind

them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie

Awards at http://www.StevieAwards.com.

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The Market Gave Kids Choice

And there is a fundamental historical error associated with all these nightmare images of the past. What the photos

don’t reveal is that it was the market, not the government that reduced and nearly eliminated full-time grueling child

labor. Corey Iacono lists the myth to the contrary as one of the greatest of all time, and cites the professional historian

consensus: “Industrialization and economic growth brought rising incomes, which allowed parents the luxury of keeping

their children out of the workforce.”

The laws against child labor didn’t achieve national codification until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, by which

time machines had largely displaced the labor children had done generations earlier. It was also a useful change in the

law from a political point of view. It helped shore up the power of labor unions against cheaper wage competition. An

entire demographic had been deleted from the workforce and pushed by compulsion into government holding tanks

for a full decade.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2016

JEFFREY A. TUCKER

Let the Kids Work

The Washington Post ran a beautiful photo montage

of children at work from 100 years ago. I get it. It’s not

supposed to be beautiful. It’s supposed to be horrifying.

I’m looking at these kids. They are scruffy, dirty, and

tired. No question.

But I also think about their inner lives. They are working

in the adult world, surrounded by cool bustling things

and new technology. They are on the streets, in the

factories, in the mines, with adults and with peers,

learning and doing. They are being valued for what they

do, which is to say being valued as people. They are

earning money.

Whatever else you want to say about this, it’s an exciting

life. You can talk about the dangers of coal mining or

selling newspapers on the street. But let’s not pretend

that danger is something that every young teen wants

to avoid. If you doubt it, head over the stadium for the

middle school football game in your local community, or

have a look at the wrestling or gymnastic team’s antics at

the gym.

And I compare it to any scene you can observe today at

the local public school, with 30 kids sitting in desks bored

out of their minds, creativity and imagination beaten

out of their brains, forbidden from earning money and

providing value to others, learning no skills, and knowing

full well that they are supposed to do this until they are

We look at pictures of newspaper boys from 1905 and say, “Oh how sad that these kids had

jobs. We are so much more humane now!”

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22 years old if they have the slightest chance of being a

success in life: desk after desk, class after class, lecture

after lecture, test after test, a confined world without

end.

Be Very Afraid

Yes, I know, the Washington Post montage is our

periodic reminder of the horrors and brutality of the

age of capitalism. Oh, look how exploitative it is! These

poor children are being chewed up and swallowed by a

powerful capitalist machine that cares nothing for their

health and well-being! For all you people who think that

government isn’t so wonderful, look at the world you

would recreate should kids be allowed to work again!

Let’s never go back, they say.

And, yes, I’m happy to grant that most every aspect of

life was worse in 1900 than it is today. Most people didn’t

have indoor heating. There were no washing machines or

air conditioning. Forget refrigerators. Actually, electricity

in homes was rare and dangerous. Travel was a luxury

of the rich. Cars and air travel were dreams. For that

matter, the standard of living today is vastly better than

it was in 1930, 1940, 1950, and so on, even up to the

latest Snapchat release with an improved clown face you

can superimpose on your cat selfie.

The market, not a Progressive armed with government

power, does these things. It inspires innovation and

disperses them to the masses. Why are we isolating

this one aspect of teen work and condemning it as hell

on earth? By comparison today, everything except the

absence of the income tax was hell on earth.

It’s not at all obvious to me why this should be something to celebrate.

And let’s be clear about the relationship between child labor and compulsory school. It is direct. It was at the very time

that governments at the state and local level were banning labor for kids that these same kids were subjected to force

in making them go to school. You can talk all you want about capitalist exploitation but it makes no sense to overlook

a situation surely as problematic: any kid not in his or her school desk was subjected to be kidnapped in the name

of enforcing laws against so-called truancy. A system that worked without coercion was displaced by a system that

depended fundamentally on coercion.

But Let’s Get Real

All those photos dig deep into the past and conjure up weird dystopian scenarios, none of which have anything to do

with today. If kids were allowed to work and compulsory school attendance was abolished, the jobs of choice would be

at Chick-Fil-A and WalMart. And they would be fantastic jobs too, instilling in young people a work ethic, which is the

inner drive to succeed, and an awareness of attitudes that make enterprise work for all. It would give them skills and

discipline that build character, and help them become part of a professional network.

These attitudes are rather missing from today’s young people just entering the workforce. They are forcibly kept out

and then we are shocked to discover that the average college graduate today has a hard time getting into his or her

groove at the age of 23. It’s because their human right to work and earn has been violated for a good part of their

lives, to the point that they have lost interest in and knowledge of what work is like at all.

When I was a kid, you could get around the laws if you knew the right people. Or you could just lie about your age. No

more. The laws are heavily enforced, and any employer who hires underage is subjected to terrifying penalties. In theory,

you can work from the age of 14, but the hours and tasks are so restricted, and the paperwork so vast, that it is

not practical. Same with 15. By 16 you can get a job, but the hours are still restricted and the type of work you can do

is still limited. You are not really free until you are 18 years old, and, by then, there is too much fun to be had by doing

something, anything, other than work. Is it any wonder that they turn to music, pop culture, drugs, alcohol, promiscuity,

internet trolling, and so on? Idle hands, as they say.

The Real Industrial Army

A century ago, we invented a system that imagined children as civic soldiers. Kids bolted to chairs with absolutely

no skin in the game have abstract “information” pounded into their heads by tax-paid instructors who teach from

state-approved books.

We push these kids through the system and deny them any chance to realize their human value in gainful employment

in a community of productivity and real learning. Then we tell them to scrape together $100,000 for yet another

degree that will somehow gain them entry into the workforce, but all these demoralized and cynical kids end up with

is an empty CV and 15 years of debt.

Then we look at pictures of newspaper boys from 1905 and say, “Oh how sad that these kids had jobs. We are so much

more humane now!”

It’s time we stop congratulating ourselves for taking away opportunity from kids. It’s time to let the kids work again.

Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

https://fee.org/

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In life, just as in economics, there are trade-offs. Most women realize they will likely not be able to be a successful

career woman, a dedicated mother, and a jaw-dropping homemaker all at the same time. There are choices to be

made here, and some women are simply deciding that motherhood is the role they can let go.

It’s important to point out that these are choices that used to be harder to make. In generations past, women were

shamed for not having kids, ostracized in society, or simply did not have the access to birth control they needed to

determine their own pathway. We’re moving away from that kind of culture, and the advancements in women’s healthcare

have empowered women to set their own course.

2. More Americans (Men and Women) Don’t Want to Have Kids

As a woman who has never wanted children, I’ve thought deeply about this topic. And I believe there are many others

who are looking at the same factors I am and reaching the same conclusion.

Motherhood is hard, physically, emotionally, and mentally. I personally never wanted to go through the pain of

childbirth, nor do I want to give myself the mental and emotional anxiety that comes with taking on this role. But as

pointed out above, this wasn’t always a calculation afforded to women.

MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2022

BY HANNAH COX

5 Reasons America’s Birthrate Is Plummeting

Elon Musk recently tweeted, “population collapse is th

biggest threat to civilization.”

The tweet included a link to an interview Musk gave

where he expanded on the subject. “Assuming there’s a

benevolent future with AI, I think the biggest problem

the world will face in 20 years is population collapse,”

Musk wrote. “Collapse. I want to emphasize this….Not

explosion, collapse.”

Musk has been known to raise this concern in the past

too. Last year he told the Wall Street Journal, “I can’t

emphasize this enough, there are not enough people.”

He also said that low and rapidly declining birth rates are

“one of the biggest risks to civilization.”

That the wealthiest and arguably one of the smartest

men on earth spends his days fixating on this issue

should be a signal to others that things might be more

dire than they think.

According to the US Census, “The US population grew at

a slower rate in 2021 than in any other year since the

founding of the nation.” And we’re not alone. According

to reporting by the BBC, “Researchers at the University of

Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation

showed the global fertility rate nearly halved to 2.4 in

2017 - and their study, published in the Lancet, projects it

will fall below 1.7 by 2100.”

Population replacement rates are important for a society

to sustain itself. We need people to be born so that

there are workers to fill the various needs of the whole.

Old men cannot do the labor young men can do, young

adults are needed to care for the dying and aging. Fewer

people means less economic activity, smaller GDPs, less

The simple truth is, there are fewer people who want to bring kids into the world. Though

the reasons are diverse, 44 percent of non-parents between 18 to 49 say it is not to or not

at all likely they will procreate.

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innovation, and less competition.

It also means we have less division of labor. As Adam

Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations, “The division of

labor is limited by the extent of the market.“ That means

people are less able to specialize and lean into their preferences

or areas of expertise in their work.

As a whole, the machine slows and then stagnates when

new firewood is not added to the furnace.

But while Elon Musk is absolutely correct about the problem

and the potential threat it poses to society, he has

not addressed (as far as I’ve seen) the underlying issues

creating it or discussed how they might be solved.

So, in an effort to address these issues, here are five reasons

people are increasingly choosing not to procreate,

along with the free-market responses that could address

them.

1. Higher Opportunity Costs for Women

The simple fact is, some people don’t want children. And

there are legitimate reasons for that choice.

No matter what Sheryl Sandberg wants you to believe,

women cannot have it all. “Leaning in” is a practice that

has left most women who attempt it barrelled over in

pain.

The reality is, while women tend to work outside the

home in most partnerships now, the vast majority of

childcare and household work continues to be laid at

their feet. This is an ongoing issue that causes many

women to choose not to have kids or not to have more

kids.

Furthermore, I love working—always have. And I’ve built a meaningful and impactful career I’d never be willing to give

up. While some women choose to work and have kids, that’s not a situation I’d choose for myself. I’d never put my

kids in government schools nor would I want them to spend their time with others in daycare. So when faced with the

choice of pursuing my work or raising kids, I simply choose the former. It’s where I want to spend my time. I’ve met

many others who feel the same way as me.

There are other factors as well. While the world has actually been improving (though you wouldn’t know it based on

the media), there are many people (myself included) who look around and still don’t find the world to be one they’d

want to bring kids into.

Thanks to birth control and the gains made under feminism, these are choices women now get to make that other generations

simply were not afforded. As a whole, this is a choice that should be accepted and even celebrated by society.

Are there free market solutions to these factors? Sure. School choice would make it easier for women to homeschool

or find other alternatives. Remote work would allow more people to balance child-rearing with their careers. And

improvements in our social climate would likely make people more optimistic about procreating.

Still, the simple truth is, there are fewer people who want to bring kids into the world. Though the reasons are diverse,

44 percent of non-parents between 18 to 49 say it is not to or not at all likely they will procreate. And that’s ok. But for

those who do want kids, we should strive to create a world where that option is as feasible as possible.

3. New Gender Norms Are … Complicated

While some women and men are simply choosing not to have kids, others wish to and cannot find adequate partners.

It’s important to remember that we are still merely a few decades into a new normal: the sexes having equal rights

and a fair playing field.

While this is long-overdue progress that should obviously be celebrated, it also means the social fabric of our society

is still fraught with landmines. For all of human history, women and men have not been in a situation where they were

equal under the law.

That means culturally and biologically women are programmed to look for partners who are stronger and wealthier

than they are, because those elements were essential for survival for most of our existence. But in recent decades,

women are largely surpassing men economically. They are more likely to obtain degrees, are catching up to men in

their earnings, and in 37 percent of US households, women pay the bills.

To this, many will say women should just lower their standards or not be so picky. But it’s not that simple. Again, to do

that requires overcoming significant evolutionary impulses on the part of women. And even when they do overcome

these factors, it still isn’t working out. In fact, marriages with female breadwinners are 50 percent more likely to end in

divorce. This illustrates that the power dynamic shift created between higher earning women and lower earning men

is one our society has not yet learned to live with.

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Furthermore, while men say they are fine with dating women who are smarter than them, psychological studies have

revealed otherwise. Men are also biologically inclined to be providers and to be competitive. But for the first time in

history, they’re having to compete with women, and outcome wise, they’re often ending up in second place. It turns

out they don’t find this so appealing in practice.

The fact that LDS and evangelical families are still having more children backs all of this up. Since gender norms are

changing more slowly in these communities, it would seem their relationships are not suffering the same growing

pains and therefore the number of children they are having is falling more slowly.

These are societal problems, not ones suited for public policy. And the harsh reality is that it will probably take decades

for us to sort out this new landscape for romantic relationships and for people to evolve past the male provider/

female nurturer gender stereotypes. But they are challenges worth examining and overcoming, and at an individual

level, we can all look for ways to foster romantic relationships that take these factors into consideration.

5. Demographic Transition Theory

Finally, many economists point to something called the demographic transition theory to explain the decrease in childbirth.

In short, because child mortality rates have dropped so precipitously under capitalism people don’t have to have

as many kids.

In generations past, as terrible as it was, parents would have a lot of kids with the assumption that several would die.

That is no longer the case. People can plan how many children they want to have with a high level of certainty that

those kids will live into adulthood.

Furthermore, as societies have become less male-centric, parents don’t have to keep having kids until they have a

boy. For inheritance, property, and societal reasons, this used to be a goal for many people, but it is one that is quickly

diminishing.

4. Raising Children Is Getting Super Expensive

Even for people who do want to have kids and manage to find the right partner, there are still a multitude of landmines

they must overcome before they can comfortably procreate, and they all trace back to affordability.

Many of these are issues we as a society can address through free-market solutions. It’s time we have that conversation.

A flourishing society would naturally incentivize people to procreate. But that requires a steady currency, good job

market, relatively safe communities, the promise of a good education, and economic factors that make it affordable to

have and raise a child.

According to Merrill Lynch, it currently costs $230,000 to raise a kid to age 18. That’s a jaw-dropping amount, especially

when one considers record-breaking inflation, wage stagnation, and economic uncertainty created by the reckless

printing and spending policies of the US government.


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The reasons for these high costs also trace back to the government. Childcare costs have been soaring for decades

thanks to extreme government regulations and restrictions on these services. In one survey, 85 percent of parents

reported spending 10 percent or more of their household income on child care.

Education is another major financial calculation in these decisions. There’s no way to sugarcoat it, government schools

are atrocious and private schooling or alternative options can be expensive or unfeasible. Many parents are also hesitant

to place their kids in government schools because of gun-free zones that make them sitting ducks.

And then there’s college. The price of higher education is astronomical, and that is solely due to government subsidies

and loans. But while evidence increasingly shows college is not a good investment for most, many parents still desire

to give their kids every opportunity they can and thus factor this in.

Additionally, healthcare costs continue to rise in the country thanks to the government increasingly taking over our

system. Insurance prices shot up after Obamacare and there is no end in sight for many.

Finally, there are the costs of infertility. A growing number of Americans are having trouble getting pregnant when

they want to. Some blame this on problems with our nutrition. Others say it’s because people are having kids later in

life. Likely there are multiple reasons. But whatever the cause, fertility assistance is extremely expensive and a cost

many cannot afford.

Relatedly, many economists point to the quantity-quality tradeoff theory which implies that a reduction in fertility

would lead to more human capital investment per child. Meaning, people would rather invest their love, finances, and

attention into a smaller number of children versus spreading it across a large family.

There are many public policy reforms that would bring these costs down. But for the time-being it is understandable

why for some the math is simply not adding up. People want to know they can give their kids a brighter and better

future than they themselves had, and for now, that simply isn’t true for a lot of people.

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Compare that price tag to that of college, where students on average pay about $30,000 per year when tuition, housing,

room and board, fees, and other expenses are factored in.

Unlike college, Google won’t just hand you a diploma and send you away, however. The company has promised to

assist graduates in their job searches, connecting them with employers such as Intel, Bank of America, Hulu, Walmart,

and Best Buy.

Graduates will also be eligible for one of the hundreds of apprenticeship opportunities the company is offering.

Is College ‘Worth It’?

In economics we use a simple term to talk about something’s worth: value. We know that value is subjective. But if

consumers freely purchase something, it suggests consumers place a value on that good higher than the price.

Judging the value of a degree is tricky, however. It’s not like buying steak at a grocery store. Buyers are mostly shielded

from the costs in the short term, and the benefits of the purchase are extended out over many years.

We know that for many students, college is a wonderful investment that increases their earnings, while for others it

will turn out to be a poor investment because they don’t graduate or they acquire job skills that do not translate into

increased earnings. (For example: I was a bartender after I received my undergraduate degree; I didn’t make more

money because I had a degree.)

MONDAY, AUGUST 24, 2020

BY JON MILTIMORE

Google’s Plan to Disrupt the College Degree Is Exactly

What the Higher Education Market Needs

My wife and I recently hired a financial advisor who is

helping us map out our financial future.

He seemed stunned that we didn’t want to take advantage

of the US tax code’s 529 provision, which helps

parents save for their children’s education.

“You have three kids,” he said. “Odds are at least one will

go to college. It’s a no-brainer.”

We nonetheless demurred. I like shaving my tax liability

as much as the next guy, but the truth is both my

wife and I have serious doubts about higher education.

Though we both attended college ourselves, options

today look less promising than they once did.

College might have been a “no-brainer” at one time for

parents and students who could afford it, but that is no

longer the case. Soaring costs, grade inflation, diminishing

degree value, the politicization of campuses, and a

host of other issues have made the once-clear benefits of

college less clear.

Despite all this, a large part of me still wants my kids to

go to college because it feels like so few other options

are available. That could be changing, however.

Google’s Effort to Disrupt the College Diploma

In July Kent Walker, Google’s Senior Vice President for

Global Affairs and Chief Legal Officer, announced on

Twitter that the company was expanding its education

A quick look at Google’s model shows why colleges should be worried.

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options.

It was a direct salvo at America’s higher education industry.

“College degrees are out of reach for many Americans,

and you shouldn’t need a college diploma to have

economic security,” Walker wrote on Google’s blog.

“We need new, accessible job-training solutions—from

enhanced vocational programs to online education—to

help America recover and rebuild.”

To be sure, it’s hard to imagine anyone taking on America’s

$600 billion higher education industry. Nevertheless,

a quick look at Google’s model shows why colleges

should be worried.

Google is launching various professional courses that

offer training for specific high-paying jobs that are in

high demand. Program graduates can earn a “Google

Career Certificate” in one of the following positions:

Project manager ($93,000); Data analyst ($66,000); UX

designer ($75,000).

While Google didn’t say how much it would cost to earn

a certificate, if it’s anything close to Google’s IT Support

Professional Certificate, the cost is quite low, especially

compared to college.

That Google IT support program costs enrollees $49 per

month. That means a six-month program would cost

about $300—about what many college students cough up

on textbooks alone in a semester, Inc points out.

We also know that the prices and value change over time. In the case of higher education, prices have increased

sharply in the last 30 years while the value has diminished.

As Arthur C. Brooks pointed out in The Atlantic in July, from 1989-2016 university costs in tuition and fees increased by

98 percent in real dollars (inflation-adjusted), about 11 times that of the median household income.

At the same time, there is compelling evidence that while the price of college is increasing sharply, the value of

degrees is diminishing because of a surplus of college diplomas.

For parents like myself, the idea of spending $350,000 to send my three children to university is, to be frank, slightly

nauseating. All things being equal, I don’t see the value there. (As I tell my wife, however, this doesn’t mean I won’t

send my child to Princeton if he or she is admitted and I believe college is the right fit for that particular child.) Over

the last couple of years, whenever I’d think about my children’s futures, I’d find myself growing more and more nervous.

If not college, then what? Why are there not better options? There’s a huge need.

The beautiful thing about free markets is that needs do not go unmet for very long. In a free system, innovation has a

way of filling the gaps to fulfill what consumers want.

Google’s expansion of its accreditation system offers two things young people (and their parents) highly value: 1) job

training skills; and 2) prestige.

Do not underestimate the power of the latter. Prestige mattes a lot. In fact, when you look at actual education many

college students receive today, prestige is what they’re purchasing, not education.

The value of degrees might have been diminishing for years, but parents and kids could still rationalize the excessive

costs because there was a certain amount of status and recognition conferred simply for being in college and then

graduating.

Major corporations like Google have more to offer than they realize. In today’s marketplace, having Google on a

resume can offer the same prestige as a university—and arguably far more in terms of job skills.

Once corporations figure out their brand can offer commodities consumers want—job-training and validation—it could

disrupt the current education model. It’s possible corporations could also bring on a resurgence of the once-popular

apprenticeship-style learning that can be traced back to the Code of Hammurabi in Ancient Babylon through to business-training

programs of today like Praxis and Google.

At the very least, programs like Google Career Certificates will offer much-needed competition to the university system

and additional options to young people looking to take their next step in the world.

Parents of the world, rejoice!


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KaiPod’s Boston-area location costs $220/week for a full-time, 5-day option or $95/week for two days a week, plus the

cost of whatever online curriculum the family chooses, making it one of the most affordable private education options

available in the area.

Still, the cost is prohibitive for many families and Kumar is expanding into school choice-friendly states, such as

Arizona, where an abundance of high-quality virtual charter schools, and the wide availability of education savings

accounts, make the KaiPod model much more accessible to more families.

KaiPod Learning is a pioneering educational model that blends online learning with in-person education in a way that

maximizes family autonomy and parental preferences. Parents decide what their children learn and monitor their progress,

while their children learn together with peers and adult mentors.

FEE founder Leonard Read wrote that “education is a peaceful, creative, productive pursuit” in the absence of government

force. “Remove the police force — govern ment as boss — and education is restored to the free, competitive

market,” he added.

It is in a fully free, competitive market of education that parents can peacefully choose from a variety and abundance

of learning options that best reflect their needs and preferences. In such a world, curriculum battles and school board

brawls would be a thing of the past.

SATURDAY, MAY 28, 2022

BY KERRY MCDONALD

With KaiPod, Parents Decide What Their Children Learn

Curriculum battles in public schools across the US have

reached a fever pitch in recent years, with parents and

politicians fighting about what children should and

should not be taught.

The Cato Institute’s Neal McCluskey keeps a running

list of these battles, explaining that “rather than build

bridges, public schooling often forces people into wrenching,

zero-sum conflict.”

Private education models, along with school choice policies

that enable parents to exit an assigned district school

if they are dissatisfied, help to avoid these public schooling

battles. Parents can choose the learning environment

for their children that best fits their individual needs and

preferences without fighting a political war on the school

board floor.

From curriculum to educational philosophy, private

education models offer the variety and personalization

of learning options that one-size-fits-all, government-run

schooling cannot. School choice policies that enable

education dollars to follow students directly, rather than

going to school districts, allow lower- and middle-income

families access to this diversity of options that higher-income

families have long enjoyed.

One education entrepreneur is trying to put parents back

in charge of their children’s curriculum, while creating a

collaborative, cost-effective space for learning.

One education entrepreneur is trying to put parents back in charge of their children’s curriculum,

while creating a collaborative, cost-effective space for learning.

78

Amar Kumar is the founder of KaiPod Learning, a venture

capital-backed education startup that brings together

the best of online learning with crucial, in-person social

experiences and adult mentorship. He joined me on this

week’s episode of the LiberatED Podcast.

Kumar, who worked in online product development at

Pearson before starting KaiPod, participated in the selective

Y Combinator startup accelerator program in Silicon

Valley last year while launching his flagship KaiPod learning

center just outside of Boston.

At KaiPod, parents choose whatever online curriculum

they want for their child. The curriculum possibilities are

endless, from faith-based options to the Ron Paul Curriculum,

Sora Schools to the Socratic Experience, parents

can choose a curriculum philosophy and approach that

respects their values and and honors their expectations.

If parents want help, KaiPod can offer suggestions, including

recommending tuition-free, public virtual schooling

options available in some states.

Small, multi-age groups of students then meet together

each week in a convenient, commercial location, parttime

or full-time depending on a family’s preferences,

to work through their individualized curriculum while

learning in a social setting with others. An adult educator

facilitates the pod, offering guidance and support as well

as hosting various interactive group enrichment activities.

“Real, high-quality, online learning paired with these

groups of pods could be one of the best solutions out

there,” Kumar told me during our podcast conversation.

Listen to the weekly LiberatED Podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, and Stitcher, and sign up for Kerry’s weekly LiberatED

email newsletter to stay up-to-date on educational news and trends from a free-market perspective.


https://fee.org/

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Still, the cost is prohibitive for many families and Kumar is expanding into school choice-friendly states, such as

Arizona, where an abundance of high-quality virtual charter schools, and the wide availability of education savings

accounts, make the KaiPod model much more accessible to more families.

KaiPod Learning is a pioneering educational model that blends online learning with in-person education in a way that

maximizes family autonomy and parental preferences. Parents decide what their children learn and monitor their progress,

while their children learn together with peers and adult mentors.

FEE founder Leonard Read wrote that “education is a peaceful, creative, productive pursuit” in the absence of government

force. “Remove the police force — govern ment as boss — and education is restored to the free, competitive

market,” he added.

It is in a fully free, competitive market of education that parents can peacefully choose from a variety and abundance

of learning options that best reflect their needs and preferences. In such a world, curriculum battles and school board

brawls would be a thing of the past.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 31, 2017

BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER

Five Huge Differences between Work and School

13 Reasons Why is a grueling emotional drama of how

high school student Hannah Baker ends up taking her

own life. The social scene at her school inflicts worsening

wounds and ever-deepening pain. The school itself

becomes associated with the torment of her heart and

soul, as her peers drive her ever further into the pit of

despair.

Life is not all grim. Her home is a respite. There are also

three commercial settings that play an ameliorating role.

Her father’s drug store is a happy place. A coffee shop

is where she tries to form genuine friendships. But I’m

particularly intrigued by the few scenes that show her

working at a commercial movie theater. Dressed in a

crisp uniform, she serves up popcorn to patrons. These

scenes are few but they are universally safe, affirming,

and happy.

The contrast raises the question: what are the differences

between work and school? It matters because many

young Americans put off remunerative work until after

they finish school. They enter real life outside of school

unprepared for what they are going to face, and carry

with them many of the bad habits and even pathologies

they picked up during 16 years of schooling.

Here are five key differences between work and school.

1. Obedience vs. Production

In school there are enforced rules that are supposed to

be obeyed by everyone, and there is very little room for

adjusting them in light of differences between individuals.

Compliance is an end in itself. So long as you adhere to

the rules, and especially if you are getting good grades –

which you can do if you say on tests precisely what you

It matters because many young Americans put off remunerative work until after they finish

school.

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are supposed to say, and learn what you are supposed

to learn – you are a success. There is nothing going on

beyond this. You are not paid to attend, and, after 12th

grade, you are expected to pay to attend.

In the workplace, by contrast, the ideal is productivity,

which ultimately means creating value for others. There

are rules but they are subject to a non-arbitrary test: are

we achieving the goal of production itself? You are paid

because someone thinks you can be a valuable contributor

to that goal. A portion of the company revenue

accrues to you, which also implies some return obligation.

The rules are adaptive, constantly changing according

to circumstances. They seek to reward good outcomes

according to the individual, the team, or the purpose.

2. Force vs. Choice

In school, no matter how bad the social environment gets,

how grim the hurt feelings, however much suffering you

face, you have to keep coming back day after day, year

after year. The same people, the same problems. This is

just taken for granted. It is your fate. You surrender to

the idea that there is no escape. And why do they believe

this? Because it is true: there is no escape. Compulsory

attendance laws – passed some 100 years ago – created

within the American schooling model an underlying structure

rooted in legal violence, because these laws are ultimately

enforced by the violence of the state. If you think

about it, that was the original sin of American schooling.

KaiPod’s Boston-area location costs $220/week for a

full-time, 5-day option or $95/week for two days a week,

plus the cost of whatever online curriculum the family

chooses, making it one of the most affordable private

education options available in the area.

Listen to the weekly LiberatED Podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, and Stitcher, and sign up for Kerry’s weekly LiberatED

email newsletter to stay up-to-date on educational news and trends from a free-market perspective.

On the other hand, in the workplace, for all the problems and interventions and even bad bosses and lame coworkers,

you are always free to quit and find another job. You enjoy the right of exit. You are a paid volunteer. That right

alone takes the sting out and incentivizes cooperative behavior. There are no truancy laws. You can shop around. You

can even choose not to work at all. It means that everyone there is there by choice and has that job because someone

wants to pay them to do it. There is no substructure of violence. There is choice at the heart of the workplace. That

alone changes the dynamic and the social environment.

3. Age-Based Tribe vs. the Individual

From preschool through final graduation, you are generally told to stay with your age-based tribe. This is your peer

group. You have no responsibilities to anyone younger. You are not directly and consistently influenced by people who

are more mature. It’s just you and your age-based friends ruled by external authority structures. You move together.

You age together. You will always be in that exact situation, with little to no prospects for mobility. You are in an artificial

environment that doesn’t exist in any other setting in life, and certainly not in the workplace. Then you graduate

and your social networks turn to dust.

The workplace includes people of varying ages, and it is completely normal for excellence to be rewarded with growing

salaries and responsibilities. Your peers are far more diverse than they ever were in school and that leads to different

expectations and opportunities. You can be lame or ambitious, lazy or aspirational, unproductive or super valuable.

Your future depends on the choices you make, and you are constantly interacting with a wider demographic of people

from whom you can learn and who you can influence. It is a much more fluid and natural social situation. What you do

makes a difference in the quality of your life and your place in the hierarchy.

4. Known Information vs. Discovery

In school, most everything you are tasked to learn is already known. There are textbooks, manuals, experts, committees.

You are part of a system that changes only slowly and according to the priorities of politics and bureaucracies. It’s

fine to be curious but only about what other people want you to know. There is only one reward for learning: a higher

grade. And what you learn has already been mastered better by others who are assigned to be your authorities. Your

job is to become the best-possible parrot. This is what it means to be an excellent student. Deviating from that course

makes you a problem student.

At work – again, under the ideal – creativity and discovery are valued and rewarded. People who look only for rules to

follow only rise so far. To disrupt the routine, to think of and try the unknown, is what every profit-seeking industry

demands. It is not always easy and the tendency toward inertia is always present. But every business must learn to

adapt to change and to reward those who are willing to step up and take risks to discover something new.

5. Cruelty vs. Civility

So long as you are getting the grades and adhering to the rules, there is no downside to misbehaving toward others

in a school setting. Despite the appearance of order, structures of authority, and endless rules, students end up

constructing their own underworlds, and those worlds have radically misaligned incentives that the adults cannot

manage, resulting in unchecked pathology: the kind of pathologies that always develop among groups of incarcerated

human beings.

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It’s not about what teachers do to the students; it’s what students do to each other. This follows the tendency in any

incarceration: fellow inmates are generally more threatening than guards and wardens. Cruelty becomes habitual,

though often hidden and quiet, something whispered about between good friends.

You choose your tribe. In prison, it’s never safe to be without a gang. You denounce former friends and choose new

ones. You join others in making fun of the person in the out-group or rewarding those in the in-group. You have no

obligations to be courteous, decent, or kind, and you are neither punished nor rewarded for your treatment of your

peers except by peers themselves. You have no concern for the larger consequences of your actions. This cultivates

a certain pettiness and leads students to believe that savvy social navigation, even at the expense of others, is their

main task. This is what they get good at, and dehumanizing others is not only not punished, it is often rewarded.

In a professional workplace, in contrast, all employees learn to separate workflow conflicts from personal conflicts.

People who personalize gripes (through gossip, backstabbing, or passive-aggressive performances) do not earn

the trust and respect of others, and thus do not succeed, do not rise, do not last. The shortest-term employees are

those who play politics as if it were middle school. Those who rise above personality to focus on productivity earn

the respect of others and rise in the company. And there are certain conventions: for instance, you never, under any

circumstances, use your position or title to wage personal battles that have nothing to do with work. You can get away

with this for a while, but it doesn’t last.

At the end of 13 Reasons Why, there is a highly symbolic moment in which Hannah walks into the movie theater, turns

in her uniform, and walks out the door. This scene shows what it means to give up on something at which you are succeeding

because you cannot handle the failures that exist outside that space. She was brutally victimized by the other

half of life, the part that exists outside the civilized, courteous, and adult environment of the workplace. Her work

provided her solace, but it was not enough to overcome the impossible odds against her in school.

The story of Hannah is an extreme case with a terrible ending. But the case is neither purely fictional nor entirely isolated,

and it serves as a stand-in for the emotional sufferings of millions. All the anti-bullying campaigns in the world

will not fix the problem. Behavioral controls and counselling will not either. The core problem has to be addressed:

schooling as we know it is an institution built by force, funded by force, and populated through force, thus insulating

students from regular incentives toward civilized life and leaving them unprotected from unchecked exploitation and

abuse.


https://fee.org/

SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 2022

BY KERRY MCDONALD

Welcome to America: How One Education Entrepreneur

Is Transforming Refugee EducationEducation. How Do

They Do It?

Like so many entrepreneurs, Luma Mufleh saw a problem state’s educational voucher program. “We wouldn’t exist

and created a solution. In 2004, when she began coaching

a soccer team of young refugee boys in the suburbs of

Atlanta, she soon discovered that the local public schools

they attended were failing them. They would be passed

along to the next grade level without any literacy skills

and with no ability to master the academic content being

presented. They were also struggling socially.

An immigrant herself, Luma Mufleh decided to take action by creating the first American

school designed specifically for the distinct needs of refugee and immigrant children.

without school choice,” says Mufleh, explaining during our

conversation that school choice policies should be simplified

to make them more accessible to more students.

In Mufleh’s powerful new book, Learning America: One

Woman’s Fight for Educational Justice for Refugee Children,

she details her personal story of coming to the

United States, serendipitously connecting with refugee

children, and embracing the can-do American entrepreneurial

spirit. She writes:

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“Students were bullied and made fun of because of their

names or because of the fact that they don’t know anything.

It was just really hard to watch,” she told me during

this week’s episode of the LiberatED Podcast.

An immigrant herself who grew up in Jordan and is the

daughter and granddaughter of Syrian refugees, Mufleh

decided to take action by creating the first American

school designed specifically for the distinct needs of refugee

and immigrant children. In 2007, she launched Fugees

Academy as a tuition-free private school with six refugee

students and a teacher in a church basement in Clarkston,

Georgia. The first Fugees grew quickly, became an

accredited private school, and now operates as a Georgia

charter school.

In 2018, Mufleh expanded Fugees Academy by opening

a second location in Columbus, Ohio. There, refugee

and immigrant students attend tuition-free through the

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“There was never a grand plan. There wasn’t a moment when

I thought to myself—This is what I do now; I lead a school for

refugees. I saw kids being deprived of an education, families

struggling despite their coveted American addresses, and I did

what I could to make their lives better. No school I found was

considering the specialized needs of my community. It was

easier and more effective just to do it myself. I had grown up in

such a suffocating, restrictive culture. In America, the freedom

I had to fix the problem I saw in front of me was an irresistible

privilege.”

Mufleh has advice for other prospective education entrepreneurs

who may be contemplating getting started. “Do

it,” she urges in this week’s podcast. “There are problems.

We can’t just take time to overthink, overthink, overthink.

Sometimes the simplest solution is right in front of you.”



FRIDAY, JUNE 17, 2022

BY KERRY MCDONALD

College Enrollment Drops As Students Seek

Alternatives

The past two years have been marked by major education

disruption at the K-12 level, as more families questioned

the schooling status quo during prolonged school closures

and remote learning. They left district schools in

droves, choosing instead to become independent homeschoolers,

join learning pods and microschools, or find

high-quality virtual learning platforms.

Public school enrollment plummeted during the

2021/2021 academic year, and continued its decline

this academic year in many areas, despite the fact that

schools reopened for full-time, in-person learning.

Higher education is seeing a similar trend. College enrollment

dropped in the 2020/2021 school year as many

colleges and universities turned to remote learning, and it

has also not rebounded.

In fact, The New York Times recently reported that the

college enrollment decline may indeed be worsening this

year. According to the National Student Clearinghouse

Research Center, undergraduate enrollment this spring is

down 662,000 students compared to last year, or a drop

of 4.7 percent. Graduate school enrollment also declined

this year compared to last year.

“Prospective college students may be weighing the relative

value of jobs that require or expect a college degree

against equally attractive opportunities that do not,”

wrote the Times.


More young people are recognizing that the conveyor belt to college, and the debt they assume

along the way, may not be the best option.

84

These students are smart. They are recognizing that the

conveyor belt to college, and the debt they assume along

the way, may not be the best option. They are weighing

the benefits of a college degree against the costs, both

financial costs and opportunity costs, and determining

that perhaps another pathway to adulthood might make

more sense.

On this week’s episode of the LiberatED Podcast, I interviewed

Cameron Sorsby, CEO of Praxis, about alternatives

to college. Praxis is an apprenticeship boot camp program

that helps young people to develop skills and experience

that make them valuable to prospective employers.

Over the past couple of years, Sorsby has been seeing

increased interest in Praxis, along with a growing cultural

acceptance of alternatives to college. “As soon as it

became more socially acceptable to pursue other options

outside of the typical higher ed track, you see more people

flocking to it,” said Sorsby.

More individuals and families are questioning the conventional

K-12 and college pathway, and are exploring other

options. Their demand for both schooling and college

alternatives will continue to dramatically reshape education

for years to come.

Listen to the weekly LiberatED Podcast on Apple, Spotify,

Google, and Stitcher, and sign up for Kerry’s weekly LiberatED

email newsletter to stay up-to-date on educational

news and trends from a free-market perspective.

https://fee.org/

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2020 The lesson of 1989 is that today’s culture and ideas are tomorrow’s politics and policies.

BY JON MILTIMORE

The New York Times Reported ‘the Mainstreaming of

Marxism in US Colleges’ 30 Years Ago. Today, We See

the Results

In August 1989, Poland’s parliament did the unthinkable.

The Soviet satellite state elected an anti-communist as its

new prime minister.

The world waited with bated breath to see what would

happen next. And then it happened: nothing.

When no Soviet tanks deployed to Poland to crush the

rebels, political movements in other nations—first Hungary,

followed by East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia

and Romania—soon followed in what became known as

the Revolutions of 1989.

The collapse of Communism had begun.

‘Marx’s Ideological Heirs’

On October 25, 1989, a mere two months after Poland’s

pivotal election, the New York Times published an article,

headlined “The Mainstreaming of Marxism in US Colleges,”

describing a strange and seemingly paradoxical

phenomenon. Even as the world’s great experiment in

Marxism was collapsing for all to see, Marxist ideas were

taking root and becoming mainstream in the halls of

American universities.

“As Karl Marx’s ideological heirs in Communist nations

struggle to transform his political legacy, his intellectual

heirs on American campuses have virtually completed

85

their own transformation from brash, beleaguered outsiders

to assimilated academic insiders,” wrote Felicity

Barringer.

There were notable differences, however. The stark,

unmistakable contrast between the grinding poverty of

the Communist nations and the prosperity of Western

economies had obliterated socialism’s claim to economic

superiority.

As a result, orthodox Marxism, with its emphasis on economics,

was no longer in vogue. Traditional Marxism was

“retreating” and had become “unfashionable,” the Times

reported.

‘’There are a lot of people who don’t want to call themselves

Marxist,” Eugene D. Genovese, an eminent Marxist

academic, told the Times. (Genovese, who died in 2012,

later abandoned socialism and embraced traditional conservatism

after rediscovering Catholicism.)

Marxism wasn’t truly retreating, however. It was simply

adapting to survive.

Watching the upheaval in Poland and other Eastern bloc

nations had convinced even Marxists that capitalism

would not “give way to socialism” anytime soon. But this

would cause an evolution of Marxist ideas, not an abandonment

of them.



‘’Marx has become relativized,” Loren Graham, a historian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the

Times.

Graham was just one of a dozen of the scholars the Times spoke to, a mix of economists, legal scholars, historians,

sociologists, and literary critics. Most of them seemed to reach the same conclusion as Graham.

Marxism was not dying, it was mutating.

‘’Marxism and feminism, Marxism and deconstruction, Marxism and race - this is where the exciting debates are,’’ Jonathan

M. Wiener, a professor of history at the University of California at Irvine, told the paper.

Marxism was still thriving, Barringer concluded, but not in the social sciences, “where there is a possibility of practical

application,” but in abstract fields such as literary criticism.

A Strategic Shift

Marxism was not defeated. The Marxists had just staked out new turf.

And it was a highly strategic move. “Practical application” of Marxism had proven disastrous. Communism had been

tried as a governing philosophy and had failed catastrophically, leading to mass starvation, impoverishment, persecution,

and murder. But, in the ivory tower of the American university system, professors could inculcate Marxist ideas

in the minds of their students without risk of being refuted by reality.

Yet, it wasn’t happening in university economics departments, because Marxism’s credentials in that discipline were

too tarnished by its “practical” track record. Instead, Marxism was thriving in English departments and other more

abstract disciplines.

In these studies, economics was downplayed, and other key aspects of the Marxist worldview came to the fore. The

Marxist class war doctrine was still emphasized. But instead of capital versus labor, it was the patriarchy versus

women, the racially privileged versus the marginalized, etc. Students were taught to see every social relation through

the lens of oppression and conflict.

After absorbing Marxist ideas (even when those ideas weren’t called “Marxist”), generations of university graduates

carried those ideas into other important American institutions: the arts, media, government, public schools, even

eventually into human resources departments and corporate boardrooms. (This is known as “the long march through

the institutions,” a phrase coined by Communist student activist Rudi Dutschke, whose ideas were influenced by early

twentieth-century Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci.)

Indeed, it was recently revealed that federal agencies have spent millions of taxpayer dollars on programs training

employees to acknowledge their “white privilege.” These training programs are also found in countless schools and

corporations, and people who have questioned the appropriateness of these programs have found themselves summarily

fired.

A huge part of today’s culture is a consequence of this movement. Widespread “wokeness,” all-pervasive identity

politics, victimism, cancel culture, rioters self-righteously destroying people’s livelihoods and menacing passersby: all

largely stem from Marxist presumptions (especially Marxism’s distorted fixations on oppression and conflict) that have

been incubating in the universities, especially since the late 80s.

As it turned out, what was happening in American universities in 1989 was just as pivotal as what was happening in

European parliaments.

Especially in an election year, it can be easy to fixate on the political fray. But the lesson of 1989 is that today’s culture

and ideas are tomorrow’s politics and policies.

That is why the fate of freedom rests on education.

To advance the cause of freedom for today and tomorrow, please support the Foundation for Economic Education.

Correction: This article originally stated that Gramsci coined the phrase “the long march through the institutions.”


https://fee.org/

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FRIDAY, JULY 1, 2022

BY JON MILTIMORE

Student Debt Forgiveness Is Already Happening

Because of the Payment “Freeze”

In March of 2020, Donald Trump paused federal student

loan payments and “froze” interest accumulation in an

effort to help borrowers through the difficulty of pandemic

shutdowns.

The Oval Office has changed occupants, pandemic shutdowns

have ended, but the payment and interest freeze

has been extended several times. As Friedman quipped,

“there’s nothing so permanent as a temporary government

program.”

When Brad Polumbo and I wrote about temporary pandemic

programs (including the student-loan payment

freeze) becoming permanent in September, I noticed

some criticism in the line of “the programs are still here

because the pandemic is still here.”

Well, for what it’s worth, Fauci now says we’re out of the

pandemic phase. Of course, some may simply disagree

with Fauci. To some, we may never be.

In any case, the student loan payment freeze has certainly

outlasted the government shutdown. And, although

there are many problems in the economy right now, it

wouldn’t be hard to point to worse economies in the past

when student loan payments were still being collected.

So I think it’s safe to say that the payment freeze has

Student loan forgiveness is already here. And it’s already helping the rich at the expense of

the poor.

87

moved on from being temporary relief, and it can now be

better classified as “student loan forgiveness”.

Whose Interest?

Why would a pause on payments and interest accumulation

fall under the category of student loan forgiveness?

Well, every day this program continues, borrowers are

exempted from paying interest they agreed to pay. Or,

put differently, the federal government is taking the hit

for the monthly interest payment in terms of lost cash

inflows.

Ultimately, this means taxpayers are the generous ones

picking up the tab. Why? Well, when the federal government

chooses not to charge interest it is owed, the revenue

of the government is lower than it would be.

All government spending must ultimately be financed

with government revenue. So when the government

spends money or borrows money, it must ultimately

come from the taxes it collects (for the sake of simplicity

we’ll ignore revenue via seigniorage).

So if the government decides to spend the same amount

it budgeted to spend before freezing interest, and it

receives less money from interest due to the freeze, it

must take more money from present or future taxpayers.



Alternatively, even if the government decided to spend less money to offset the lack of interest received (an otherworldly

scenario), taxpayers would still be worse off because they’d be paying the same taxes for less government

services provided.

In either case, taxpayers are left holding the bag. Student loan holders who don’t have to make payments or deal with

interest accumulation are better off. Interest is forgiven on the public’s dime.

How Much Have We Forgiven?

If you’re not a finance person, this might seem minor. How much could this really be costing? Well, in the first few

months, it was probably not that much. But the thing about interest is, it compounds.

To estimate the total revenue the federal government has forgone with this freeze, let’s do a simple back-of-the-envelope

estimate.

Student loan interest compounds daily, but the rate on the loans is represented in annual terms. In other words, a 4%

interest rate on your federal student loans means your balance will be 4% larger at the end of the year if you didn’t

pay anything toward the initial loan amount itself.

For simplicity’s sake, imagine you had a loan of $100, and a 4% interest rate in annual terms. At the end of the year,

you’d owe 100*1.04=$104. Next year the 4% interest would accumulate on the balance of $104 so your new balance

would be $104*1.04=$108.16.

In reality, this understates the growth of the loan balance because of factors dealing with how annual interest rates

are expressed compared to how interest compounds, but this simplification will do for a conservative estimate.

So to find the total amount of interest forgone, we need the balance of federal loans and the average interest rate

(weighted by loan amount).

Average interest rate data are difficult to come by. Educationaldata.org claims the average rate for Federal Student

Loans is 4.12%. But this number is just an average of interest rates since 2013, not a weighted average. It also uses

only undergraduate loans which have lower interest rates. If you extend that back to 2007, you get an unweighted

average of 4.66%.

I also did some quick calculations using Federal Reserve Data on outstanding student loans to determine the weight

of different years. This gave me a weighted average of 4.69%. Lastly, If I use only the last 10 years, I get a weighted

average of 4.03%.

Since most federal student loans are paid off in 10 years, let’s stick with the lower 4.03%, which will provide a more

conservative estimate anyways. (My guess is this is much lower than reality, but it provides some guidance.)

We have an interest rate, but what about an amount? Well, outstanding Federal Student Loan debt is $1.61 trillion.

Finally, as a last simplifying assumption, I’ll be calculating the forgiveness over two years. It’s been 2 years and 3

months, but not including the last 3 months of forgiven interest provides a more conservative estimate.

So, compounding 4.03% interest on $1.61 trillion twice leaves a total balance of $1.74 trillion. This means a total of

over $130 billion dollars in interest has been forgiven. Since there are 43 million borrowers, this comes out to an average

of around $3,078 of interest forgiveness per borrower.

In other words, we’re already 30% of the way to Biden’s $10,000 forgiveness dream

Forgiving Who?

As a recent FEE article summarized, student loan forgiveness tends to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor

and middle class. Economists call this sort of policy regressive (not to be confused with the “going backward” meaning

of the term).

It’s clear why. Those with large student loan balances tend to be people pursuing higher-paying careers with an expensive

education. Being a doctor or a lawyer is lucrative but becoming one is expensive. And top liberal arts schools

charge higher tuition than state schools.

The student loan payment freeze is in some ways even more regressive. Remember, the $3,078 of forgiveness was an

average. That means some borrowers are benefiting more than that and some are benefiting less. Unlike a flat $10,000

forgiveness, which at least forgives all borrowers equally, the interest freeze is most beneficial for those with large

loan balances.

Bankrate claims the average lawyer graduates with $165,000 in student loan debt. At the interest rate of 4.03% this

translates to over $13,000 in forgiven interest. In fact, anyone with student debt more than $125,000 has already

received more than the $10,000 in forgiveness Biden has promised.


https://fee.org/

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WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2021 It would be for your own good, of course.

BY JON MILTIMORE

Should the Government Get To Decide What You Do

after High School?

f you’re in high school, you probably get asked a lot

about what you plan to do after you graduate. Maybe the

answer is obvious for you. Perhaps you’re planning on

going to college or trade school, or you want to get a job

right away. Or maybe you don’t know quite yet. Maybe

you’re still exploring your options and trying to figure out

what kind of career you really want to pursue.

No matter what you end up choosing, the first steps you

take after high school can be kind of a big deal. After all,

this is your entry into the real world. The options before

you are vast. For the first time in your life, you get to

choose your own future.

But what if you couldn’t choose? What if the government

decided for you what your post-graduation plans would

be, at least for a year or two? Would you be happy about

that? Would you appreciate being told how and where to

take your first steps as an adult?

I know I wouldn’t be. After slaving through 12 years of

compulsory schooling, the prospect of spending even

more of my life doing what someone else tells me to do

would be, to put it mildly, disconcerting.

Sadly, this is exactly the kind of thing that some people

are trying to make a reality.

Obama and former US diplomat, the piece suggests that

this is the best way to address political polarization, and

that it would also give young people valuable skills and

experience.

“A program of mandatory national service, if designed

effectively, would bring together young Americans from

across the country and all socioeconomic groups,” Carden

writes, “to work on public interest projects and accomplish

common goals for the good of the country.”

Carden suggests a number of projects that could be

part of the program, such as “tutoring and mentoring...

improving environmental conservation...building public

housing...and helping in the construction, rehabilitation,

and maintenance of public parks and facilities.” In return,

participants would be given substantial benefits, such as

government-covered tuition and living expenses for college

or trade school. Service would be for a fixed period of

one or two years, and Americans would need to complete

the requirements at some point between the ages of 18

and 24.

Addressing the Polarization Problem

In theory, one of the main benefits of this program would

A recent article in Foreign Policy, for example, argues be less divisiveness and a greater respect for others.

that America needs a mandatory public service program.

Americans from vastly different backgrounds and locations

could come together in common causes, building

Authored by David Carden, a long-time friend of President

comradery and being exposed to new ideas and people.

89



In many ways, these arguments parallel those that are used in support of public schools, which are also designed to

foster interaction between people from different backgrounds.

There’s just one problem. As anyone who has attended a public school can tell you, these institutions can be some of

the most divisive places in the country. Why is this the case? Well, one plausible explanation is that it has to do with

the very fact that people with different values are forced to participate in the same system.

For example, think about religious institutions. In the past, there was no separation of church and state, so people

were regularly forced to practice religions they didn’t agree with. As a result, religion became incredibly divisive, causing

lots of war and persecution.

But today, though religious disagreements still exist, they aren’t nearly as antagonistic as they used to be, largely

because people who disagree can go their separate ways. With schools, on the other hand, people are still forced to

follow the values of the state, so it’s no wonder that fights over what those values should be are ubiquitous (the recent

conflicts over masks and critical race theory are just the latest examples of this phenomenon).

A mandatory public service program would almost certainly breed similar divisions, except instead of fighting over

sex-ed and school uniforms, people would fight about which projects should be prioritiezed and what expectations

should be set for the participants. So really, this is a recipe for discord and antagonism, not a cure.

“It’s For Your Own Good”

A second argument for the program is that it would help young people with their personal and professional development.

This may sound unobjectionable on the surface, but note the tone with which this is presented.

“The work opportunities should be designed to help inform and facilitate participants’ career goals as much as possible,”

Carden writes. “This would allow participants to develop real-life skills in their areas of interest. The objective

would be balancing this with the need to push participants outside of their comfort zones: That might look like, for

instance, letting a participant choose their area of focus but not their geographic location or vice versa.”

This is nothing short of paternalism. He says he’s interested in helping young people, but what he means by that is

forcing them to do what he believes is in their best interest.

If you take issue with this approach, you’re not alone. There’s something singularly sinister about coercing people to

do things “for their own good.” Indeed, C.S. Lewis saw this paternalistic disposition as one of the gravest dangers to

liberty.

“Of all tyrannies,” he wrote, “a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It

would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may

sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment

us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

But is a program like this really tyranny? Carden dismisses the objection.

“Some would argue Americans should have the right to decide what’s in their own self-interest without government

interference—and thus should not be required to participate,” he writes. “But this line of thinking, of prioritizing the

rights of citizenship over its obligations, is one of the main reasons the program is needed in the first place.”

In other words, if standing up for your rights is more important to you than humbly submitting to your government,

you clearly need to be re-educated in a mandatory government program.

Right...

Carden’s comments aside, it’s important to recognize the extent to which this kind of program would violate civil liberties.

If this were truly mandatory, it would essentially constitute forced labor, which is really a form of involuntary

servitude. Indeed, if a private entity did this, we’d rightly call it slavery.

With that said, this line of reasoning raises an interesting question. If you should get to choose what you do after you

turn 18, why not before? After all, school is also a kind of forced labor, and it’s poorly suited for many students. So

what if we let people choose their own course even earlier in life, allowing them to pursue jobs, apprenticeships, or

education as they see fit? What if we didn’t presume to know what’s best for others, but instead we allowed them to

explore what’s best for themselves?

It almost makes you wonder whether school should be compulsory at all.


https://fee.org/

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THURSDAY, JUNE 30, 2022

BY KERRY MCDONALD

Arizona’s New School Choice Bill Moves Us Closer to

Milton Friedman’s Vision

“Our goal is to have a system in which every family in the

U.S. will be able to choose for itself the school to which its

children go,” the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton

Friedman stated in 2003. “We are far from that ultimate

result. If we had that, a system of free choice, we would

also have a system of competition, innovation, which

would change the character of education.”

Last week, Arizona lawmakers moved us much closer

to that ultimate result. Legislators in that state, which

already had some of the most robust school choice policies

in the US, passed the country’s first universal education

savings account bill, extending education choice to

all K-12 students.

The education savings accounts, or Empowerment Scholarship

Accounts as they are known in Arizona, had previously

been available to certain Arizona students who met

specific criteria, including special needs students and children

in active-duty military families. This new bill, which

the Governor Doug Ducey is expected to sign, extends

education choice to all school-age children throughout

Arizona.

Every family will now have access to 90 percent of the

state-allocated per pupil education dollars, or about

$7,000 per student, to use toward approved education-related

resources, including private school tuition, tutors,

curriculum materials, online learning programs, and

The education disruption over the past two years has re-energized parents and taxpayers

alike.

91

more.

“Arizona is now the gold standard for school choice,”

Corey DeAngelis, senior fellow at the American Federation

for Children, told me this week. “Every other state should

follow Arizona’s lead and fund students instead of systems.

Education funding is meant for educating children,

not for protecting a particular institution. School choice is

the only way to truly secure parental rights in education.”

Several states have introduced or expanded school

choice policies over the past couple of years, enabling

taxpayer funding of education to go directly to students

rather than bureaucratic school systems. In this week’s

LiberatED podcast episode, I spoke with one education

entrepreneur, Michelle McCartney, whose homeschool

resource center is an approved vendor for New Hampshire’s

Education Freedom Accounts, an education savings

account program for income-eligible students that was

implemented last year.

While McCartney sees a fully private, free market in

education as the ideal circumstance, she recognizes that

education choice policies are an important first step

toward expanding education options for more families,

and reducing government involvement in the education

sector.

“If it was up to me we wouldn’t pay any money to the

government and school would be entirely privatized,” said

McCartney. “That’s how I believe it should be, but it’s not.



So I think we can all sit here and have discussions about what would be the ideal circumstance, but I think sometimes

we’ve got to roll with what we have, and if we can get any of that money back to the families I think that’s an important

first step.”

Indeed, Milton Friedman also saw school choice policies such as vouchers as a first step in education reform, not a

final one. Friedman popularized the idea of school choice policies, specifically universal school vouchers, in his 1955

paper, “The Role of Government in Education,” and elaborated on his views over the following decades up until his

death in 2006 at the age of 94.

Friedman and his economist wife Rose wrote in their influential book, Free To Choose: “We regard the voucher plan as

a partial solution because it affects neither the financing of schooling nor the compulsory attendance laws. We favor

going much farther.”

While Arizona’s new legislation now makes it the forerunner in education choice policies across the country, West

Virginia is close behind and begins to address compulsory attendance. Lawmakers there recently passed legislation

that loosens state compulsory school attendance laws for participants in learning pods and microschools, two emerging,

decentralized K-12 learning models that are gaining popularity across the country. West Virginia also passed an

education savings account program last year, known as the Hope Scholarship, that extends education choice to nearly

all K-12 students.

The education disruption over the past two years has re-energized parents and taxpayers alike. They are demanding

more options beyond an assigned district school, embracing innovative learning models, and loosening the government

grip on education. As Friedman envisioned, a choice-based system of education weakens the government

monopoly on schooling and sparks innovation and competition to ultimately “change the character of education.”

We are seeing that change occur right before our eyes.


https://fee.org/

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NHEG EDGUIDE


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National News Reports in Education

telecompetitor

By Carl Weinschenk

June 10, 2022

FCC ANNOUNCES $262M IN EMERGENCY CONNECTIVITY FUND

SUPPORT

https://www.telecompetitor.com/fcc-announces-262m-in-emergency-connectivity-fund-support/

Daniel Beasley,Esq.LLM

June 02, 2022

DISTRICTS IGNORE STATE POLICY, DENY SPECIAL NEEDS SERVICES TO

HOMESCHOOLER

https://hslda.org/post/districts-ignore-state-policy-deny-special-needs-services-to-homeschooler?utm_

source=hslda&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6-2-2022&utm_id=WU

Darren Jones, Esq.

June 08, 2022

VETERANS AFFAIRS DENIES BENEFITS TO ELIGIBLE HOMESCHOOL PARENTS

https://hslda.org/post/veterans-affairs-denies-benefits-to-eligible-homeschool-parents?utm_source=hslda&utm_

medium=email&utm_campaign=6-8-2022&utm_id=WU

Thomas J. Schmidt, Esq.

June 29, 2022

OFFICIALS THREATEN HOMESCHOOL FAMILIES WHO LEFT NEW YORK

Thomas J. Schmidt, Esq.

July 13, 2022

DISTRICT INVENTS DEADLINE FOR ANNUAL EVALUATION, THREATENS TO

TERMINATE PROGRAM

https://hslda.org/post/officials-threaten-homeschool-families-who-left-new-york?utm_source=hslda&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6-29-2022&utm_id=WU

https://hslda.org/post/district-invents-deadline-for-annual-evaluation-threatens-to-terminate-program?utm_source=WU&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=7-13-2022&utm_id=HSLDA

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https://hslda.org/post/hslda-president-mike-smith-announces-his-retirement?utm_source=hslda&utm_

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CHICAGO STYLE DEEP DISH PIZZA RECIPE

Ingredients

Dough:

• 1 (28-ounce)

• 3 1/4 cups (16 1/4 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour

• 1/2 cup (2 3/4 ounces) yellow cornmeal

• 1 1/2 teaspoons table salt

• 2 teaspoons sugar

• 2 1/4 teaspoons instant or rapid-rise yeast

• 1 1/4 cups water (10 ounces), room temperature

• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus 4 tablespoons,

softened

• 1 teaspoon plus 4 tablespoons olive oil

Sauce:

• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

• 1/4 cup grated onion, from 1 medium onion (see note)

• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano

• Table salt

• 2 medium garlic cloves, minced or pressed through garlic

press (about 2 teaspoons)

can crushed

tomatoes

• 1/4 teaspoon

sugar

• 2 tablespoons

coarsely

chopped

fresh basil

leaves

• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

• Ground black pepper

• Toppings:

• 1 pound mozzarella cheese, shredded (about 4 cups) (recommended,

whole mozarella. Don’t use pre-shredded, as

it doesn’t melt well.)

• 1/2 ounce grated Parmesan cheese (about 1/4 cup)

Directions

FOR THE DOUGH:

degrees.

1. Mix flour, cornmeal, salt, sugar, and yeast in bowl of stand 14. Using rubber spatula, turn dough out onto dry work surface

mixer fitted with dough hook on low speed until incorporated,

and roll into 15- by 12-inch rec-tangle.

about 1 minute.

15. Using offset spatula, spread softened butter over surface

2. Add water and melted butter and mix on low speed until

of dough, leaving 1/2-inch border along edges.

fully combined, 1 to 2 minutes, scraping sides and bottom 16. Starting at short end, roll dough into tight cylinder. With

of bowl occasionally.

seam side down, flatten cylinder into 18- by 4-inch rectangle.

3. Increase speed to medium and knead until dough is glossy

and smooth and pulls away from sides of bowl, 4 to 5 minutes.

17. Cut rectangle in half crosswise.

(Dough will only pull away from sides while mixer is 18. Working with 1 half, fold into thirds like business letter;

on. When mixer is off, dough will fall back to sides.)

pinch seams together to form ball. Repeat with remaining

4. Using fingers, coat large bowl with 1 teaspoon olive oil, rubbing

half.

excess oil from fingers onto blade of rubber spatula. 19. Return balls to oiled bowl, cover tightly with plastic wrap,

5. Using oiled spatula, transfer dough to bowl, turning once

and let rise in refrigerator until nearly doubled in volume,

to oil top; cover tightly with plastic wrap. Let rise at room 40 to 50 minutes.

temperature until nearly doubled in volume, 45 to 60 20. Coat two 9-inch round cake pans with 2 tablespoons olive

minutes.

oil each.

FOR THE SAUCE:

21. Transfer 1 dough ball to dry work surface and roll out into

6. While dough rises, heat butter in medium saucepan over

13-inch disk about 1/4 inch thick.

medium heat until melted.

22. Transfer dough to pan by rolling dough loosely around

7. Add onion, oregano, and 1/2 teaspoon salt; cook, stirring

rolling pin and unrolling into pan.

occasionally, until liquid has evaporated and onion is 23. Lightly press dough into pan, working into corners and

golden brown, about 5 minutes.

1 inch up sides. If dough resists stretching, let it relax 5

8. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds.

minutes before trying again. Repeat with remaining dough

9. Stir in tomatoes and sugar, increase heat to high, and bring ball.

to simmer.

24. For each pizza, sprinkle 2 cups mozzarella evenly over

10. Lower heat to medium-low and simmer until reduced to 2 surface of dough.

1/2 cups, 25 to 30 minutes.

25. Spread 1 1/4 cups tomato sauce over cheese and sprinkle 2

11. Off heat, stir in basil and oil, then season with salt and

tablespoons Parmesan over sauce.

pepper.

26. Bake until crust is golden brown, 20 to 30 minutes.

12. TO LAMINATE THE DOUGH:

Remove pizza from oven and let rest 10 minutes before

13. Adjust oven rack to lower position and heat oven to 425 slicing and serving.

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CUBAN-STYLE STEAKS IN GARLIC-LIME MARINADE RECIPE

MRS. HARVEY’S WHITE FRUITCAKE RECIPE

Ingredients

Ingredients

• For the marinade:

• 6 cloves garlic

• 1 1/4 tsp salt

• 3/4 tsp ground cumin

• 3/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper

• 1/2 cup sour orange juice or lime juice (I mixed 1/3

cup of lime juice and 1/6 cup of orange juice to simulate

the sour orange juice)

• 2 Tbsp olive oil

• For the steaks

• 4 (6-8 ounce) beef steaks, cut 1/2 inch thick (bottom

round, top round, sirloin, etc.)

• 2 large onions cut into 1/2 inch slices (optional)

• 2 Tbsp olive oil

• 4 cups shelled pecans (approx. 1 lb.)

• 8 ounces candied cherries (original recipe had 1 lb. but

I took the liberty to reduce the ratio to half that of

candied pineapple; I just liked it better - sorry, Mrs.

Harvey!)

• 1 pound candied pineapple

• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, divided

• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

• 1/2 pound butter

• 1/2 to 2 ounces vanilla extract (1 to 4 tablespoons is

quite a range for flavorings, but it is all personal

preference. I used 2 tablespoons each of vanilla and

lemon and it was just fine.)

• 1/2 to 2 ounces lemon extract (see note above)

• 1 cup sugar

• 5 large eggs

Directions

1. Preheat grill to high

2. Prepare the adobo (marinade) by combining the garlic, salt, cumin, and pepper in a mortar and grind slowly with

a pestle gradually working in the lime juice and olive oil until you have a smooth paste. Or, to save time, put all

these ingredients in a blender and process to a smooth paste. Brush some of the adobo on the steaks 10 minutes

in advance of placing on the grill. This is not necessary, but will impart additional flavor to the steaks.

3. When grill is ready, oil grill grate. Brush onions with oil and place on the hot grate. Grill for 4 minutes on each side,

seasoning with salt and pepper.

4. Once the onions are on the grill, brush the steaks with the adobo and place on the grill alongside the onions. Grill

for 3 minutes per side for medium rare, basting with the adobo.

5. Transfer the steaks to a platter or individual plates and brush one final time with the remaining adobo using all of

Directions

1. There are endless possibilities for pans or tins to bake fruitcake. You can use one 10-inch tube pan or large fruitcake

tin for the whole recipe; 2 or 3 medium loaf pans; 6 or 7 mini loaf pans 5 1/2 x 3 1/2, or 18 to 24 petite loaf

pans 4” x 2 1/2, depending on desired fill amount.

2. Whichever you choose, it is best to line them with parchment paper, clean brown paper bag paper cut to size, foil,

or for smaller loaf sizes, commercial paper liners. I don’t find the need to grease them or spray. The liner helps

them release from pan without tearing, and protects fruits and nuts.

3. Chop nuts and fruit into medium-size pieces (see photo for approximate size). Dredge with 1/4 cup of the flour

(see photo); set aside.

4. Beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, vanilla and lemon extracts.

5. Stir together remaining 1 1/2 cups flour and baking powder in medium bowl; fold into butter-egg mixture. Using

strong wooden spoon, blend in fruit and nuts (batter will be stiff.)

6. Push batter into prepared pan(s).

7. Place in cold oven and turn the oven to 250 degrees.

8. When done, the fruit cake will be golden and firm on top with no wetness, and golden brown on sides and bottom

(see photos).

9. Remove from oven; cool in pans on cake rack. Remove wrappers or liners if desired and re-wrap in plastic wrap or

foil. (Batter has a lot of butter so liners might be greasy.)

10. Approximate baking time:

11. FOR 10-INCH TUBE PANS OR LARGE FRUIT CAKE TIN: Bake 2 1/2 to 3 hours. Check cake 1 hour before earliest

done time and again 30 minutes before to make sure it doesnât over bake.

12. FOR MEDIUM LOAF PAN SIZES: 1 3/4 to 2 hours; check one half hour before earliest time to make sure it

doesnât over bake.

13. MINI LOAF PANS: About 1 to 1 1/4 hours total; check after 50 minutes.

14. PETITE LOAF PANS: About 45 - 50 minutes total; check after 35 minutes.

15. Yield: 4 1/2 pounds of fruitcake, or 24 servings (3-ounce generous slice size.)

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101

CREOLE SPICED PORK CHOPS RECIPE (GLUTEN FREE)

Ingredients

• 4 pork chops, 1 inch thick

• 1 tsp sweet paprika

• 1/4 or more cayenne pepper

• 1/4 tsp dried thyme

• 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

• 2 - 3 T canola oil

• 1 - 2 T all-purpose (or gluten-free) flour

• 2 C pork or beef stock

• 1/8 tsp Worcestershire sauce

• 1 bay leaf

• salt & fresh black pepper to taste

• chopped parsley and minced garlic for garnish

• Hot rice

PUMPKIN MUFFINS RECIPE (GLUTEN FREE)

Ingredients

• 1 cup brown rice flour

• 1 cup white rice flour

• 1 Â½ â 2 Tbsp gluten free baking powder

• Â½ tsp baking soda

• 1 tsp xanthan

• Â½ tsp fine Celtic sea salt

• Â¼ tsp nutmeg

• Â¼ tsp cinnamon

• Â½ cup agave nectar

• 1 cup sultanas/raisins

• 1 organic egg

• Â¼ cup cold pressed canola oil

• Â½ cup to a cup of plain mashed pumpkin

• Â½ cup organic almond milk or soy milk

Directions

1. Combine the dry ingredients - the thyme, cayenne, red pepper , salt and black pepper, paprika with the

whisk and shake

2. Sprinkle evenly over the chops

3. Saute the chops over med-high heat in a little oil until done

4. Remove the chops to a plate

5. Sprinkle the flour into the saute pan and whisk until you have a roux, adding oil and flour to get that paste

consistancy

6. Add the stock to the roux, the worcestershire sauce and the bay leaf

7. Slide the chops into the pool and simmer for about 5 minutes

8. Serve on rice, garnished with the parsley and garlic

9. [NOTE: For those who want to present a more ‘upscale’ plating, you can deglaze the pan with 3/4 C of

cream sherry, and let that reduce a bit just prior to making the roux. I also remove the finished chops to

a warming station, then thicken the sauce with 1 Tbs of cornstarch and 1/4 C of water. When thickened, I

remove from the heat and stir in 2Tbs of sweet butter. Then I plate up.]

Directions

1. Sift flours, baking powder, baking soda, xanthan, salt and spices in a bowl and stir together mixing evenly.

2. Break an egg into the mixer and gradually add in the oil, milk, and then the pumpkin, until mixed through.

3. Add in the dry ingredients and mix until a thick batter forms.

4. Fold in the raisins and spoon into well greased muffin pots.

5. Bake in a moderate oven â about 170C/325 F for approximately 20 minutes.

6. Serve warm, with butter and honey, eat cold as a snack, or enjoy with a warm bowl of soup or zesty salad.

7. These muffins will keep in the fridge for a few days, or freeze really well in an airtight sealed bags for school

lunches or work snacks.

https://cookeatshare.com

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NHEG EDGUIDE


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105

New Heights Educational Group Inc.

14735 Power Dam Road, Defiance, Ohio 43512

+1.419.786.0247


https://www.NewHeightsEducation.org

NHEG-September-October2022

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