NHEG EDGuide-May-June 2023

ISSUE 5-6 

“Summer bachelors like summer breezes, are 

never as cool as they pretend to be.” 

—Nora Ephron 

2023 

MAY - JUNE

NHEG EDGUIDE 2 

EDITOR IN CHIEF 

PHOTOGRAPHERS IN 

THIS ISSUE 

EDITORIAL TEAM 

PRODUCTION MANAGER 

PROOFREADERS/EDITORS 

Pamela Clark 

NewHeightsEducation@yahoo. 

com 

Nina Le 

Ninal@NewHeightsEducation.org 

Marina Klimi 

MarinaKlimi@NewHeightsEducation.org 

Laura Casanova Laura Casanova 

Brendan Kelly 

Frani Wyner 

Contents 

EDITORIAL TEAM 

4 

THOUGHT OF THE MONTH 

8-9 

LETTER FROM OUR 

DIRECTOR PAMELA CLARK 

10-19 

NHEG MEDIA PACK 

24-25 

MISSING CHILDREN 

30-31 

NHEG GROUP NAMED 

BEST CHILDREN & ADULTS 

LITERACY GROUP 

46-47 

VOLUNTEERS PAGES 

48-53 

NHEG INTERNET RADIO 

PROGRAM 

56-61 

NHEG FREE BOOK 

PROMOTIONS 

62-65 

NHEG BIRTHDAYS AND 

ANNIVERSARIES 

68-69 

EARN BOX TOPS 

74-100 

FEE ARTICLES 

102 

HSLDA ARTICLES 

106-107 

GREAT COMPANIES 

108-113 

RECIPES 

114-115 

NHEG PARTNERS & 

AFFILIATES

May-June 2023 

NHEG EDGUIDE May-June 2023 

Thought for the Month 

Welcome to the official 

New Heights Educational Group store. 

With all the problems and hardships 

in the world, family should be the 

center of our lives, spending time 

together and nurturing relationships. 

https://NHEG.memberhub.com/store 

NHEG Store | New Heights Educational Group, Inc. 

Pamela Clark 

Founder/ Executive Director of 

The New Heights Educational 

Group, Inc. 

Resource and Literacy Center 

NewHeightsEducation@yahoo.com 

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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Letter from our Director Pamela Clark 

Dear Readers, Supporters, Families, and Wonderful Volunteers, 

This has been one of the most challenging years I’ve ever faced personally and professionally, and it’s been hard on our organization 

as well. We are still struggling but fighting to survive the year. I want to say thank you to all of you. We would not have survived this 

year without our incredible volunteers, and it reconfirms that this is the people’s organization and not just mine. 

NHEG is for anyone looking for a more successful life through education—real education, lifelong education—and a deep love for it. 

It’s for everyone, and I believe it is a human right. 

I have been through a lot in my life, but surviving a serious car accident along with my husband is up there with the top challenges. 

It’s a miracle that we both walked away from a semi-truck trailer accident, yet due to the injuries we sustained the incident has 

dragged on and on. We are thankful, but continually deal with the repercussions. This has brought us to a point in our history when 

we require immediate funding so I can hire local and remote staff to help continue our work and cement our legacy in history. 

Most importantly, though, I’m writing this to thank those of you who have been behind the scenes making a difference this year. I’m 

in awe and so appreciate you and your belief in my dream to make education affordable and accessible to everyone through our a la 

carte learning programs. 

THANK YOU. 

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NHEG EDGUIDE 



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1/2/23 

NHEG is going through some big changes this year and a lot of things will start to look different in 

the coming months. To move forward with NHEG’s goals and dreams, we need funding for an annual 

budget. Pamela Clark can no longer run NHEG without a paid staff. What does this mean for volunteers 

and families in need of services? 

The website will become free and searchable. NHEG will no longer take on new students for live 

lessons or tutoring. We will no longer answer phone calls for informational services, and families will 

need to use the search tool on our websites to find the answers they need. Most, if not all, of them will 

be on the site, and we will add any information that people might need. The website will stay intact and 

up to date as long as there is a volunteer to manage it and money to fund the hosting costs. Your 

donations are appreciated to help us keep it available. 

We hope the website will remain a valuable resource and blessing for those who need it and will 

honor the many hundreds of volunteers who have helped build the organization. We want to make sure 

that the information and work of the last 16 years don't go to waste. Your donations are appreciated to 

help us keep it available. We ask that, if possible, you donate at least $25 or more to help offset these 

costs. We will be required to pay $705 per year for these basic expenses. If we can’t raise these funds the 

site might go inactive by 2024. 

● 

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NHEG will no longer take on new students for live lessons or tutoring. 

All tutoring has come to an end, due to low funds and teacher/tutor shortages. 

NHEG’s pre-recorded courses will all be available for free, but families will need to contact us by 

enrolling or emailing us for access to specific classes. 

The website will become free and searchable, and it will stay intact and up to date as long as 

there is a volunteer to manage it and funds to cover the hosting fees. 

Our phone number will stay the same, but there may be longer response times. We ask that you 

search the site first before calling for information. 

We will no longer answer phone calls for informational services, and families will need to use the 

search tool on our websites to find the answers they need. Most, if not all, of them will be on the 

site, and we will add any information that people might need. 

The comic book issue currently being worked on, once published, will be our last (unless funding 

is acquired). All scripts that weren’t made into a comic book will be shared on our comic book 

page. 

The radio shows may or may not continue depending on circumstances out of our control. 

The Reading Program will stay active and pre-recorded as long as a volunteer is available to run 

the program. 

Any offerings from program partners will be shared with those who are signed up for our email 

list. 

The student leadership groups can still meet and plan for their future. 

There will be no further Recognition Days, but all volunteers will receive annual certificates of 

appreciation and a letter from NHEG if they do a good job volunteering. 

● 

● 

● 

● 

We need help with HR, as well as a cartoonist, professional fundraisers, publicists, grant writers, 

social media/marketing, graphic design, data compilation and organization/moving information 

to new systems, proofreading, and managing the radio show. 

A complete list of open positions can be viewed here. 

https://NewHeightsEducation.org/volunteer-with-NHEG/NHEG-volunteer-opportunities/ 

NHEG EDGuide will continue as long as Marina Klimi and Pamela Clark can devote time to it. 

We will no longer have a Research Department or review new products or programs. 

We are hoping that volunteers will stay on to organize and share NHEG information with families 

in need. NHEG’s pre-recorded courses will all be available for free, but families will need to contact us for 

access to specific classes. We ask that you don't share these classes; each person using them must 

request them by contacting he NewHeightsEducation@yahoo.com email address or by enrolling to 

receive a specific course. The reason for this is because we have paid for some curriculum from other 

companies for these classes, and we don't want to disrespect those companies in any way by openly 

offering their information for free. 

If you want to advocate for our organization and its dream of a fair and equal education for all 

who are willing to work for it, then I ask that you contact the following and tell them you want and 

expect their support for our services. 

Here is a script that you can use by phone or email, or to submit via online contact form: 

Hello, I’m contacting you as a [student, parent, volunteer, teacher/tutor] and I want to share my 

concern about the New Heights Educational Group. The organization is falling dormant because it isn’t 

receiving the support it needs to stay active. It would be a great loss to not only Defiance and the State 

of Ohio but also to the world to lose this organization and its services. It needs funding and media 

support, and we want you to make it happen. (Share what the organization has meant to you.) 

● Ohio Governor Mike DeWine: (614) 644-4357, https://governor.ohio.gov/contact 

● Representative Craig Reidel’s office: (614) 644-5091, 

https://ohiohouse.gov/members/craig-s-riedel/contact 

● Representative Bob Latta's office: (419) 782-1996, https://latta.house.gov/contact/ 

● Defiance Mayor Mike McCann: (419) 784-2101, https://cityofdefiance.com/contact/ 

● Defiance Area Foundation: (419) 782-3130, https://defianceareafoundation.org/contact-us/ 

Local Defiance leaders don’t believe that our services are needed and think they duplicate 

what the public schools offer, although we do and want to offer an educational and affordable service 

center serving all families regardless of school choice, a sensory room, a daycare for young parents, 

and our radio show. We would appreciate you sharing our information with anyone who can fund this 

dream. We can't continue to operate on a small to non-existent budget. Thank you for the blessing of 

allowing us to serve you for the last 16 years and helping us become the most awarded nonprofit on 

the planet. 

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NHEG EDGUIDE May-June 2023


Have professional 

genealogy research 

done for only 

$ 

65 

per hr 

Genealogy costs cover the genealogist’s time 

and there may be extra charges for expenses 

that include photocopies, travel, website fees 

(Ancestry, MyHeritage, and public library fees) 

and postage if necessary. 

For more information, please visit https://School.NewHeightsEducation.org/affordable-genealogy/ 

To sign up: https://NHEG.MemberHub.com/store/items/838457 

New Heights Educational Group is now offering pre-recorded 

Genealogy and DNA courses 

Genealogy & Education 

In this free course, students will explore the history of genealogy 

and be inspired to learn about their family history 

and its connection to their community. 

Course topics: 

• History of genealogy 

• Family history and its ties to their environment 

• Significance of learning about family history 

• Steps to researching family history 

• Sites to help organize a family tree 

• Steps to downloading and moving a family tree 

DNA & Education 

In this free course, students will explore the world of genetics 

and DNA testing and be inspired to learn about their 

genetic makeup and their connection to others. 

Course topics: 

• Significance of learning about family history 

• Introduction to genetic testing 

• Overview of DNA 

• DNA testing options 

• Steps to take after DNA testing 

• Value of adding DNA results to other websites 

• Using Gedmatch 

• Comparing DNA in multiple systems 

• Comparing DNA relatives 

• DNA results and social media 

https://www.readandspell.com/home-course 

Discount: NHE10 

For more information, please visit https://School.NewHeightEducation.org/online-courses/genealogy-dna-course/ 

Contact Us 

419-786-0247 

NewHeightsEducation@yahoo.com • http://www.NewHeightsEducation.org


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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https://NewHeightsEducation.org/NHEG-news/heroes-of-liberty-partnership/ 

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

medium=link&utm_source=NHEG 

More Scholarship opportunities: 

-https://School.NewHeightsEducation.org/students/scholarship-opportunities/scholarship-search/ 

- https://School.NewHeightsEducation.org/students/scholarship-opportunities/ 

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https://NHEG.memberhub.gives/NHEG/Campaign/ 

Details

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

https://careasy.org/nonprofit/NewHeightsEducationalGroup 

Call: 

855-550-4483



https://school.newheightseducation.org/online-courses/personal-development-coaching-courses/ 

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https://www.nshss.org/ 

https://School.NewHeightsEducation.org/ 

membership/national-csi-classes/ 

https://School.NewHeightsEducation.org/online-courses/discounted-and-free-online-classes/ 

https://NewHeightsEducation. 

org/NHEG-educational-programs/virtual-reading-program/ 

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VOLUNTEER PAGES 

NEW VOLUNTEERS 

VOLUNTEERS OF THE MONTH 

LOGAN MORELAND 4/6/23 

CARTOONIST/COLORIST 

Michael Anderson 

Rhone-Ann Huang 

Victor Rodriguez 

JENNI SCHREIBER 

PRODUCTION MANAGER ASSISTANT OF NHEG EDGUIDE 

Laura Casanova 

Caroline Chen 

Kristen Congedo 

Padmapriya Kedharnath 

Priya 

Marina Klimi 

Jenni Schreiber 

Sheila Wright 

Javier Cortés 

Julia Landy 

Sarika Gauba 

Nina Le 

Chloe Gebers 

Rachel Mathurin Lisa 

Jackson Hochstettler 

Benjamin Parsons Mercury 

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THE INTERNET RADIO PROGRAM 

FROM NEW HEIGHTS EDUCATIONAL GROUP


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NHEG May Birthday 

NHEG June Birthday 

MAY 13 

Peter Gordon 

JUN 13 

Rachel Fay 

MAY 17 

Logan Moreland 

JUN 14 

Benjamin Mercury Parsons 

MAY 24 

Jarrett Sharpe 

JUN 18 

Ramyasree Arva 

MAY 24 

Jyoti Dave 

JUN 20 

Tammy Barham 

MAY 25 

Greta Gunnarson 

JUN 30 


MAY 26 

Hamsatu Bolori 

MAY 28 

Laksmi Padmanabhan 

MAY 29 

Emersyn Sharpe 

MAY 30 

Georgia Woodbines 

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NHEG May Anniversaries 

NHEG June Anniversaries 

MAY 04 

Leah Sedy 

JUN 21 


MAY 18 

Caroline Chen 

JUN 21 


MAY 21 

Sarika Gauba 

MAY 25 


MAY 28 

Katie Buchhop 

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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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An elementary school in Cupertino, California, “force[d] third-graders to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities, 

then rank themselves according to their ‘power and privilege.’” 

In a presentation, “Seattle Public Schools tells teachers that the education system is guilty of ‘spirit murder’ against 

black children and that white teachers must ‘bankrupt [their] privilege in acknowledgement of [their] thieved 

inheritance.’” 

In an elementary school in Philadelphia where 87 percent of kids will not achieve basic literacy by graduation, “fifthgraders 

[were forced] to celebrate ‘Black communism’ and simulate a Black Power rally to ‘free Angela Davis’ from 

prison.” 

These are some of the most radical examples, but they are by no means isolated. The ideology underlying much of this 

has become even more widespread over the past year or so. In fact, the two largest teachers unions in the country 

have both come out in strong support of this type of race-essentialist education, signaling that they want to bring it 

into as many classrooms as possible. 

This approach of infusing education with far-left politics is dangerous not only because it leads to state-sponsored 

indoctrination of our nation’s youth, but also because it violates the most basic rights of parents. After all, when did 

they approve of this curriculum for their kids? 

This is what you get when you put Terry McAuliffe’s words into action. 

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2021 

JACK ELBAUM 

Should Parents Have Any Say in What Their Kids Learn in 

School? Virginia Voters May Soon Decide 

n November 2, Virginians will head to the polls to vote 

for their new governor. In the race between Democrat 

Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin, an 

unexpected issue — schools and education — has taken 

center stage. I say unexpected because even though 

education didn’t even make it onto Pew Research’s list of 

the 12 most important issues to voters ahead of the 2020 

election, recent polling shows that, in this race, it has 

become a top-three priority. 

It’s not hard to see why. In the final debate before the 

election, while discussing parents who have objected 

to sexually explicit material in Fairfax County schools, 

McAuliffe made a shocking statement: “I don’t think 

parents should be telling schools what they should 

teach.” 

While McAuliffe’s statement has been seen by some as 

just another political gaffe with no deeper meaning, it 

seems far more likely that it was, in fact, a rare moment 

of honesty. 

Education Extremism Rising 

Over the past year, it has become clear that McAuliffe’s 

statement represents a widely held attitude towards 

parents’ role in their child’s education. Further, many 

now believe that the role of government in education is 

not merely to teach children, but to shape them. 

Terry McAuliffe’s statement about parents and schools has been seen by some as just another 

political gaffe. But the comment is much more than that. 

70 

One of the ways this has been done is by implementing 

what is known as “action civics.” This type of civics is 

not merely about learning the functions of government, 

basic history, and the ideas our country was founded 

on. (In the past, I have written about the serious lack 

of knowledge many young people have today, and the 

importance of learning about such topics). Rather, 

“action civics” is characterized by a focus on, well, action 

— as in activism. The USC School of Education says 

that “action civics” aims to “[Meet] Student Interest in 

Activism.” In practice, this often means campaigning for 

left-wing causes ranging from gun control to the Green 

New Deal. 

Illinois has taken this idea one step further. The Joint 

Committee on Administrative Rules (JCAR) of the 

Illinois General Assembly officially enacted “Culturally 

Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards” earlier this 

year. These standards mandate that teachers instruct 

“through an equity lens” while “leverag[ing] asset 

thinking toward traditionally marginalized populations” 

and “integrate the wide spectrum and fluidity of 

identities in the curriculum.” 

Most people would be hard-pressed to explain what any 

of that actually means in practice. However, the ways 

in which identity-focused curricula have already been 

implemented in schools across the country may give us 

a clue. Chris Rufo, who is a contributing editor at City 

Journal, has done penetrating reporting on this. Here are 

a few of the things he found: 

To tell parents that they do not have the right to have a say in what their children learn is to tell them that their 

children are nothing more than government property. It is to tell them that their children are mere widgets that are to 

be programmed in the exact right way — in the way state bureaucrats decide is best. 

But far from promoting diversity and inclusion, this line of thinking destroys it. It squashes the spirit of free inquiry, 

discovery, and questioning that leads to a productive society. It creates a world in which everybody thinks the same. 

School Choice Is Winning In America 

Most parents recognize just how important the education of their children is, and they are witnessing its integrity 

being systematically attacked in real-time. It should therefore be no surprise that more and more Americans are not 

only supporting school choice, but choosing alternatives to the traditional public school system for their children. 

A recent poll conducted by the American Federation for Children found that support for school choice has reached 

74 percent, an all-time high. This included 70 percent of Democrats, 69 percent of independents, and similarly high 

numbers across all races and ethnicities. 

Yet while rhetorical support is important, parents have also acted on their displeasure by turning to alternatives for 

their children. The US Census Bureau has found that homeschooling has increased by 11 percent over the past year 

and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools recently reported that enrollment has gone up by 7 percent during 

the pandemic. 

In short, school choice is winning. Even with teachers’ unions and the politicians who support them doing everything in 

their power to prevent educational freedom, parents are increasingly supporting it because they know what’s best for 

their children better than any state bureaucrat could. 

For Many, Monopolies Are Bad… Until It Comes To Education 

Most Americans, both on the right and left, can generally agree that monopolies hurt consumers. When choice and 

competition are limited or non-existent in the private sector, we understand that companies will get away with 

inefficient practices, and consumers will be stuck with bad products and high prices. 

In a competitive market, on the other hand, the consumer has the power in the relationship between himself and the 

firm. As Ludwig von Mises’s explains in his book, Bureaucracy: 

The real bosses [under capitalism] are the consumers. They, by their buying and by their abstention from buying, 

decide who should own the capital and run the plants. They determine what should be produced and in what quantity 

and quality. Their attitudes result either in profit or in loss for the enterpriser. They make poor men rich and rich men 

poor. They are no easy bosses. They are full of whims and fancies, changeable and unpredictable. They do not care a 

whit for past merit. As soon as something is offered to them that they like better or is cheaper, they desert their old 

purveyors. 

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This is only possible because the consumer can choose between numerous firms. If Firm A jacks up its prices or has 

poor customer service, for example, the consumer is at liberty to take his business to Firm B. However, when there is a 

monopoly, the consumer has no such ability. He is forced to do business with Firm A no matter what. In consequence, 

the monopoly firm has little incentive to do anything for the benefit of the consumer. After all, where else would he go? 

But, for some reason, when it comes to education, this idea — which is nearly universally agreed upon in the private 

sector — is simply forgotten. This is a tragedy because of just how crucial education is. If we understand the harms of 

monopoly when it comes to industry X, Y, and Z, it is hard to see why anyone should be fighting to maintain an education 

system that forces students into a given school based solely on their zip code, irrespective of their needs, desires, 

or values. 

Of course, there are indeed private schools that parents can send their kids to if they are dissatisfied with their traditional 

public school. However, parents are still forced to fund the public school through their taxes even if they send 

their kids to private school. Therefore, in practice, private schools are only accessible for students from high-income 

families. 

What the school choice movement aims to do is afford all families, regardless of income, similar opportunities by allowing 

parents to decide where the money for their child’s education goes. 

If we did that, then educational entrepreneurs could develop new and creative ways to help students, parents could 

choose the school that best aligns with their values, and the presence of true competition would keep prices down and 

quality up. 

Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) 

https://fee.org/ 

WED, NOVEMBER 17, 2021 

KERRY MCDONALD 

New Harvard Study: Homeschoolers Turn Out Happy, Well- 

Adjusted, and Engaged 

Researchers at Harvard University just released findings 

from their new study showing positive outcomes for 

homeschooled students. Writing in The Wall Street 

Journal last week, Brendan Case and Ying Chen of the 

Harvard Human Flourishing Program concluded that 

public school students “were less forgiving and less apt 

to volunteer or attend religious services than their homeschooled 

peers.” 

The scholars analyzed data of over 12,000 children of 

nurses who participated in surveys between 1999 and 

2010 and found that homeschooled children were about 

one-third more likely to engage in volunteerism and have 

higher levels of forgiveness in early adulthood than those 

children who attended public schools. Homeschooled 

children were also more likely to attend religious services 

in adulthood than children educated in public schools, 

which the researchers noted is correlated with “lower 

risks of alcohol and drug abuse, depression and suicide.” 

The new findings offer a stark contrast to the portrayal 

of homeschoolers by Harvard Law School professor 

Elizabeth Bartholet, who notoriously called for a 

“presumptive ban” on homeschooling last year—just 

before the US homeschool population ballooned to more 

than 11 percent of the overall school-age population, 

Homeschooled children fared better than children who attended public schools in many 

categories. 

or more than five million students, in the wake of the 

coronavirus response. 

In their Journal Op-Ed, Case and Chen challenged their 

colleague. 

“The picture of the home-schooled student that emerges 

from the data doesn’t resemble the socially awkward 

and ignorant stereotype to which Ms. Bartholet and 

others appeal. Rather, home-schooled children generally 

develop into well-adjusted, responsible and socially 

engaged young adults,” they wrote. 

The Harvard researchers also discovered that 

homeschooled students were less likely to attend 

college than their public school peers. Some media 

outlets latched onto this finding in their headlines, 

while ignoring the Harvard scholars’ speculation that 

this could be due to a variety of factors. Homeschoolers 

could be choosing alternatives to college as a pathway to 

adulthood, and college admissions practices may create 

barriers for homeschooled students. 

I reached out to Case and Chen for additional comments 

on their study’s findings, including how they think the 

homeschooling data and outcomes might have changed 

since 2010, when their data set ended. 

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“We are also glad to see that some colleges, including some top-tier colleges, have become more flexible in their 

admission policies for homeschoolers over the past years,” Chen responded. 

Indeed, more colleges and universities have implemented clearer guidelines and policies for homeschooled students in 

recent years, and many are now eager to attract homeschooled applicants. In 2015, Business Insider noted that homeschooling 

is the “new path to Harvard,” and in 2018 the university profiled several of its homeschooled students. 

The researchers also suspect that the well-being gap between homeschoolers and public school students has widened 

over the past decade, with homeschoolers faring even better. 

“For instance, social media apps have come to smartphones over the past few years, leading to their widespread 

adoption by teenagers and even younger children,” Chen told me this week. “Some prior studies suggested that such 

increasing smartphone use may have contributed to the recent huge spikes in adolescent depression, anxiety, and 

school loneliness. Cyberbullying, sexting and ‘phubbing’ have also become more common in children’s daily lives, 

especially in school settings. We might expect that these issues may be less common among homeschoolers than their 

public school peers.” 

As more families experimented with homeschooling last year, and many of them decided to continue this fall, the new 

Harvard data should help them to feel confident about their education choice. In terms of human flourishing, homeschoolers 

are doing well—perhaps even better than their schooled peers. 

“Many parents opted to try homeschooling during the COVID pandemic,” said Chen. “Hopefully, the public awareness 

about homeschooling and the related practices and support for homeschoolers will be improved in the long run.” 



FRIDAY, MARCH 10, 2023 

JOSHUA GLAWSON 

How Two California Parents Are Using Coins to Teach Their 

Children Entrepreneurship 

“A free society is one in which individuals are free 

to discover for themselves the available range of 

alternatives.” -Israel Kirzner 

An interview with Viking Foundry owners Jordan and Carrie Eiler. 

and Carrie’s vision. 

JG: How did you get started buying, selling, or trading 

gold or silver? 

74 

Teaching children how to become entrepreneurs early 

is a great way to set your children up for success. 

Entrepreneurship teaches children many skills beyond 

merely making a living for themselves. Children who 

learn entrepreneurship learn: 

Critical thinking 

Overcoming objections and obstacles 

Business operations and financial management 

Applying knowledge with an eagerness to learn more 

For these reasons and more, Jordan and Carrie Eiler 

of Orange County, California, have started a business, 

Viking Foundry, with their two children, Noah and Zoe 

ages 13 and 12, respectively. The business consists of 

buying, selling, and trading precious metals such as gold 

and silver in the form of bars, bullion, and coins. 

Jordan Eiler comes from a long line of family bankers 

and investors, so it was important for him that he 

passes along that knowledge to his children. With the 

deterioration of the dollar, he wanted to instill basic 

economic principles in his children, including the value of 

gold and silver, while creating real generational wealth. 

I sat down with Jordan and gained some insight into his 

75 

Jordan: We introduced our kids to precious metals and 

coin collecting by attending different coin trade shows. 

Not many kids go to these, and most of the people in 

attendance are significantly older people. When they see 

children at these coin shows, they are often excited to 

give them free books, pamphlets, and even free coins! 

Noah and Zoe became super intrigued by this welcoming 

industry. Noah became our reference and grading expert, 

and Zoe became our creative director and inventory 

specialist. Of course, Carrie and I became the purchasing 

experts. I’ve always been into precious metals and coins 

since I was a boy. 

JG: Why buy, sell, and trade gold or silver? 

Jordan: The dollar is extremely volatile because it is 

fiat. It does not hold value over the long term the way 

gold and silver do. When I was growing up, a common 

Christmas gift was receiving a silver Morgan dollar. 

Although a Morgan dollar has a legal face value of a 

single dollar, due to the 90 percent pure silver it can 

fetch a much larger return in melt or trade.



For example, a 1921 Morgan dollar may get anywhere from $28 to $45, and sometimes more, depending on the rarity, 

mintage, striking mistakes, condition, demand, and so forth. In the US, dimes and quarters made from 1964 and prior 

have 90 percent silver, so even a 1964 dime is worth around $2 today. And this is just silver, the long-term gains for gold 

can be even greater. So, we buy the coins while considering the current market prices of the precious metals, and we 

either sell them at a significantly higher margin or we hold on to them for the long haul. 

JG: Why hold on to gold and silver coins for the long term? 

Jordan: We could easily sell the coins and make a few dollars, but that is not our ultimate goal. We want to teach Noah 

and Zoe how to establish generational wealth while understanding delayed gratification. Back when the infamous 

dot-com bubble popped, the world was for sale, and we saw major wealth redistribution and companies going under. 

Investors lost significant amounts of money who were banking on short-term quick gains instead of long-term gains. 

When people buy precious metals through these companies, there is always a premium to pay. However, if you own the 

physical specimen of gold or silver, you create your own safeguard against those losses. By removing the convenience 

factors, you tend to secure greater returns. 

JG: Why not hold gold or silver in safety deposit boxes? 

Jordan: For one, safety deposit boxes have a monthly premium cost, and this cost will probably not outpace the value 

of the precious metals you’re stashing away. When you buy gold or silver, you’re probably already paying more than 

market value due to the limited number of companies that are even approved to buy, sell, or trade precious metals— 

as there is a government-controlled monopoly on that, unless you know a benevolent miner who is willing to sell it to 

you at cost. Second, there have been numerous instances where police and the FBI have raided safety deposit boxes, 

seizing the coins, jewelry, precious metals, and all other contents, while the courts have not forced them to be returned 

and stated that no constitutional violations were made. It is also a known fact that the US government since the 1930s 

has sent agents to people’s homes and seized what gold and silver they had declared owning. 

JG: How does holding on to precious metals create generational wealth? 

Jordan: We hold a high value in family. Carrie and I instill as many foundational principles as we can within Jordan and 

Zoe, including our faith, liberty, and community. This is, in part, why we homeschool our children. Much like the value 

of money, it requires these principles to be appreciated, or you see the deterioration of it all. By passing along the 

physical precious metals and coins, along with these inner values, all we can do is hope and pray they do the same for 

their children and generations to come. If they do, the $1 coin will multiply in value, and the steps will be replicated, 

creating far more wealth for later and later generations should they need to sell or trade. 

JG: What has entrepreneurship taught your children? 

Jordan: Knowledge is everywhere, and you can learn for free almost anywhere. Our kids love learning now, and we try 

to find subjects where they will flourish the most. Carrie and I wanted our children to learn a trade, understand basic 

economics, and appreciate personal responsibility. People tend to be more responsible with what they earn rather than 

what is given to them. Since 2020, when we began this entrepreneurial project, our kids have become a part of a growing 

community of like-minded individuals, learned to make profits, and are now helping others do the same. We are 

proud of them and their accomplishments, and we believe they will continue to utilize the lessons of entrepreneurship 

and all they have learned throughout their lives while continuing to pass that along to generations to come. 



76 

SUNDAY, MARCH 5, 2023 


Why Can’t This Retired US Navy Officer and Engineer Open a 

Private School in Nevada? 

James Lomax knew he wanted to fly in Navy fighter jets 

from the first time he watched the original Top Gun 

movie as a seven-year-old child. It was the mid-80s and 

he committed then to excelling academically, eventually 

earning admission to the United States Naval Academy 

and becoming a Weapon Systems Officer (WSO) in 

the FA-18F Super Hornet. Lomax earned an MBA and, 

after leaving active duty military service, worked as an 

engineer supporting electronic warfare system testing 

for military aircraft. 

When he became a father, Lomax was dissatisfied with 

the education options available for his own children. 

His young daughter was enrolled in a Las Vegas-area 

private preschool that had a reputation for academic 

excellence, but Lomax felt it was lacking in encouraging 

creativity and curiosity. At the same time, he noticed that 

the young engineers with whom he worked had stellar 

academic records, but also lacked critical thinking skills 

and a sense of personal agency. 

He wanted something better for his daughters, so he 

decided to build it. Lomax discovered Acton Academy, a 

decentralized network of learner-driven private schools 

that reflected Lomax’s preferred educational philosophy. 

Acton Academy was founded more than a decade ago 

by Jeff and Laura Sandefer in Austin, Texas and now 

Nevada is an outlier with these licensing regulations that limit the supply of education 

options available to families and constrain the private education sector. 

77 

includes nearly 300 schools across the U.S. and around 

the world. 

Lomax applied for and was accepted into the Acton 

Academy affiliate network that places a high value on 

entrepreneurial school leaders with accomplished and 

varied professional backgrounds, but he wasn’t going to 

be able to open his school in Nevada. 

“I was not qualified to open a private school because 

I don’t have a teaching degree or a teacher or 

administrator license in the state,” Lomax told me in a 

recent interview. 

Listen to my entire LiberatED podcast interview with 

Lomax: https://www.liberatedpodcast.com/ 

Nevada has some of the strictest regulations on private 

schools in the country, making it particularly difficult to 

start a secular private school in the state. Individuals 

who want to open a non-religious private school in 

Nevada are required to have a state administrator’s 

or teacher’s license, and teachers in the school must 

be licensed by the state or have related education 

qualifications and teaching experience. Religious private 

schools that are operated by churches or related faithbased 

organizations in Nevada are exempt from these 

occupational licensing regulations.



Despite his MBA and a B.S. degree from the U.S. Naval Academy, as well as a prestigious career as a naval officer and 

flight test engineer, Lomax was prohibited from opening a secular private school in the state of Nevada due to occupational 

licensing regulations. 

Nevada is an outlier with these licensing regulations that limit the supply of education options available to families and 

constrain the private education sector. Reducing restrictions on secular private schools to allow individuals like Lomax 

to open and operate their schools, as they can in most other states, would lead to more choices for families. 

“Why do we limit private schools to only be started by licensed teachers?” asked John Tsarpalas, president of the 

Nevada Policy Research Institute that works to promote greater educational choice for families. “Requiring private 

schools to only be started by licensed teachers seems like a way to have less private schools. Is the real goal to protect 

the teacher union’s control over Nevada schools?” 

Not only would reducing occupational licensing requirements for secular school founders catalyze the growth of more 

school options, it would also be aligned with the Nevada governor’s overall deregulatory vision. 

“Nevada’s current regulatory structure is too often unfocused and inefficient, contains regulations that are obsolete 

and includes regulations that are unnecessarily onerous, thereby limiting the economic potential of the State,” wrote 

Governor Joe Lombardo in an executive order that he signed last month. 

The governor signed an additional executive order to streamline occupational licensing, stating that “Nevada has been 

identified nationally as having among the nation’s most onerous occupational licensing requirements.” While that 

order did not address occupational licensing for school founders, it is a step in the right direction toward removing 

regulatory barriers that limit economic opportunity. 

Occupational licensing requirements may be the biggest barrier to expanding private education options in Nevada but 

there are others as well. Like Iowa, Nevada has some of the most rigid school accreditation rules in the country that 

prevent new education models from emerging. Seat time requirements in the state also prevent flexible school schedules 

for private schools, despite the fact that some public school districts in Nevada have adopted a four-day school 

week. Reducing those barriers, as well as eliminating occupational licensing requirements, would lead to more education 

entrepreneurship and greater learning options for families. 

As for Lomax, he is hoping that secular private schools in Nevada are granted the same occupational licensing exemptions 

that religiously-affiliated private schools enjoy. For now, he runs his Life Skills Acton Academy as a tutoring 

resource center which limits its overall reach and impact. His goal is to make learner-driven education more widely 

available and accessible to more local young people. “If I could put an Acton Academy in the East Side of Las Vegas in 

a lower-economic area, those children would thrive in this environment and with the opportunities we could provide,” 

said Lomax. “I want to make this type of learning more accessible to more people.” 

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2023 


How a Former Football Star Is Trying to Break the School-To- 

Prison Pipeline 

When star football player Turan Rush returned home 

to Charleston, West Virginia after graduating from 

Eastern Michigan University in 2021, he knew he wanted 

to make a positive impact on the young people in his 

community. Growing up on Charleston’s West Side, 

where he attended the city’s district schools, Rush 

became concerned about the school-to-prison pipeline. 

He witnessed friends get caught up in this pipeline, in 

which extreme disciplinary practices in schools cascade 

into a pathway toward mass incarceration. 

Turan Rush says that school itself has “prison vibes.” 

“That’s not your job. Your job is to sit, face the wall, and 

do your work.” 

For Rush, the experience was jarring. “These are 10, 11, 

12-year-old kids we’re talking about,” said Rush, who 

learned that his brother spent most of the day in this 

classroom. “You shouldn’t take a kid’s freedom away like 

that. It reminded me of a prison form, making someone 

face the wall all day. Just imagine what they’re doing to 

a 10-year old’s brain. Then you wonder why a kid is so 

rebellious to the school system.” 

Making it easier for education entrepreneurs like Lomax to launch their innovative schools will go a long way toward 

expanding that access. 



78 

Rush explained that school itself has “prison vibes.” 

The coercive, command-and-control environment 

that characterizes much of today’s standard schooling 

subjects young people to far more restrictions on their 

freedom than most adults would ever tolerate. Rush 

experienced this as a student, but it wasn’t until he saw 

his younger brother confronting harshness at school that 

he decided to build something better. 

He was visiting a district middle school in Charleston as 

a special guest and entered a 7th grade classroom where 

he saw his brother and all of the other children sitting at 

their desks, facing the wall. Rush heard one student ask 

the teacher if he could use the bathroom. The teacher, 

who didn’t know that Rush’s brother was a student in his 

classroom, responded harshly to the student, stating: 

79 

Rush knew there were other, more humane ways to deal 

with student discipline problems. Yet, he saw the same 

cruel disciplinary tactics being used now that he and his 

friends experienced when they attended these schools. 

“That really triggered me, seeing that nothing improved,” 

said Rush. 

He joined Harvard-educated pastor Jeff Biddle in 

launching the Midian Leadership Project, an after-school, 

sports-focused community center for Charleston youth 

that incorporates basketball and weight training, along 

with mentoring, leadership development, and academic 

support. The program is open every weekday afternoon 

from 2:00 to 8:30, but that wasn’t enough for Rush.



He wanted to create a full-time educational solution for West Side youth, not just supplemental services. So he and 

Biddle raised funds to purchase and renovate a dilapidated building on the same property as the community center, 

with plans to open an all-boys private school there in the fall of 2024. 

“The school to prison pipeline is something that we are trying to beat, especially in our community,” said Rush. “The 

idea of building a private school is to put our men in our community in a safer space so they can grow.” 

I was introduced to Rush and Biddle by Jamie Buckland of West Virginia Families United for Education, a non-profit that 

helps to encourage education entrepreneurs to create new learning options and connects parents to these options. 

When I visited the warm and welcoming community center and saw the amount of work it was going to take to renovate 

the other, old building on the property, I asked Biddle why he and Rush needed to wait 18 months to open the 

private school. Why not open now in their community center building? “At this time, interpreting what might or might 

not be permissible from a building standpoint can be a pretty significant barrier,” said Biddle, referring to various local 

building codes. The community center, like similar after-school or enrichment programs, is able to welcome students 

from 2:00 to 8:30, but somehow not able to have students from 8:30 to 2:00 as a “school” program. 

These outdated and often arbitrary building code regulations exist nationwide and can unnecessarily limit or delay the 

supply of new and varied education options for families. One organization is trying to minimize these barriers. “The 

Cardinal Institute is working to identify regulatory bottlenecks and unnecessary licensing hurdles and restrictions in 

West Virginia so education entrepreneurs can focus on their most important goal: educating children and serving families,” 

said Garrett Ballengee, executive director of the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy. 

Reducing these entrepreneurial barriers is particularly important now in West Virginia as the state rolls out its new, 

near-universal education savings account program, Hope Scholarship. The scholarship program provides more than 90 

percent of West Virginia K-12 students with a portion of state-allocated education dollars, or about $4,300 per student 

each year, to use on approved educational expenses, including tuition at microschools and private schools, curriculum 

materials, supplies and related educational services. 

Rush is a huge supporter of the Hope Scholarship Program, and of school choice policies more generally. “I think that 

was wonderful that they got that passed because giving a person the opportunity to choose what education they want, 

that’s freedom,” said Rush. “Some people can’t thrive in certain environments so some people need different education 

opportunities. What we’re offering is something that is going to impact our community. And we want to offer that 

because around here for a long time the resources have definitely been slim to none. We just want to provide opportunity 

because with opportunity the world is yours.” 

The youth of Charleston may need to wait a bit longer than they should for that opportunity due to unnecessary regulatory 

constraints on education entrepreneurs, but when the Midian Leadership Project’s school opens next year it will 

be a major step forward in breaking the school-to-prison pipeline and providing a high-quality education to West Side 

boys. 

“I’m hoping that they gain a solid education for one. That’s the most important thing,” said Rush of his future students. 

“And also a space to grow and be safe.” 



80 

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2023 “When I saw the change in my kids I said I want to be a part of that,” said Maria Castaneda. 


Microschools Are Proving to Be a Winning Option in Las Vegas 

Tears filled Maria Castaneda’s eyes as she recalled 

students in the fall of 2020 and growing to now nearly 

moving her son from a Las Vegas charter school to a 100 students, with a long waiting list. 

microschool in 2020. She explained that in the charter 

school, her 7th grader was excelling academically but The popularity of microschools in the Las Vegas valley 

was growing increasingly withdrawn and angry. “I pulled reflects increasing interest in this learning model 

him out because in that situation it brought out the nationwide, accelerated by the education disruption 

worst of him, not the best of him,” she told me when I since 2020. While microschooling has been around 

visited her son’s microschool, TCMI Academy. 

for more than two decades, and national microschool 

networks, such as Acton Academy, Wildflower 

Now in the microschool, her son has completely 

Montessori, Liberated Learners and Prenda, emerged 

changed. He is happy and engaged, involved in many long before the pandemic, more parents are now flocking 

extracurricular activities and clubs, and has a much more to microschools and more entrepreneurial educators are 

open, respectful relationship with his mother. In fact, the launching them. 

turnaround in her son, along with his younger brother 

who she also enrolled in the microschool, led Castaneda Listen to Sarah Tavernetti and Yamila De Leon talk on 

to leave her job in the construction field, and take a pay the LiberatED Podcast about their experience launching 

cut, so that she could help with administrative tasks for Bloom Academy, a Las Vegas microschool that embraces 

the microschool. “When I saw the change in my kids I said self-directed education. 

I want to be a part of that,” she said. 

Estimates by EdChoice suggest that up to two million 

students across the U.S. may now be learning full-time in 

a microschool. Additionally, a new survey conducted by 

I’ve spent this week visiting some of the approximately 

the National School Choice Week organization of nearly 

25 microschools within a 10-mile radius of the Las Vegas 

4,000 parents of school-age children found that many 

Strip, serving roughly 300 students. These microschools, 

parents are continuing to seek different learning options 

or intentionally small, often mixed-age, personalized for their kids. According to USA Today’s interpretation of 

learning communities, operate either as recognized the survey data: “A majority of Hispanic, Latino and Black 

private schools or as education centers offering full-time parents – about 65% – said they were looking into or 

and part-time options for homeschoolers. TCMI decided 

thinking about a new learning environment for their kids, 

on the latter, opening with 30 full-time homeschooled 

compared with 46% of all white parents.” 

81



Ashley Soifer, cofounder of the Las Vegas-based National Microschooling Center, says parents want educational environments 

for their children that prioritize individualized learning and student well-being. “More and more parents 

are choosing a microschool for their child’s education because microschools are able to meet children where they are 

and customize an educational plan for each child in a way that matters to families,” said Soifer. “Parents tell us often 

how much of a change they see in their child once they attend a microschool: they’re happy, they’re learning, they’re 

thriving.” 

Christina Threeton witnesses this change almost immediately. Threeton and her husband Eric, who were both longtime 

teachers and administrators in Las Vegas-area district and charter schools, opened their middle school microschool, 

Nevada School of Inquiry (NVSI), last fall. Threeton says parents come to NVSI because other schools are 

draining their children of a love of learning. “They want their children to be happy again. They want them to be smiling 

again, to be eager to go to school and to learn,” she said. 

How long does this change usually take? “Often it’s within 15 minutes, but one week for sure,” said Threeton. She 

recalled the story of one mother who brought her child to NVSI for a trial day and within the first few minutes said, 

“That’s it. I’m driving over right now to unenroll from the other school.” 

Tuition at microschools is typically much lower than other local private school options. At TCMI where Castaneda 

sends her sons, annual full-time tuition is $6,700, while at the Nevada School of Inquiry, annual tuition is $10,000, or 

less than half the cost of traditional private schools in the area. The Threetons’ microschool is licensed as a recognized 

private school so that they can accept funds through the Nevada Choice Scholarship Program that provides greater 

education choice to low-income families. 

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2023 

BY LAWRENCE W. REED 

Slavery cannot be justified or excused by enlightened people, but it can be studied, 

explained, put in context, and understood—if all the facts of it are in the equation. 

The History of Slavery You Probably Weren’t Taught in School 

Like the microschools that are sprouting across the country, the Las Vegas-area microschools I visited are incredibly 

diverse. They represent a wide variety of educational philosophies and approaches, from traditional learning models 

and methods to more unconventional, self-directed ones. They include faith-based microschools such as TCMI and secular 

microschools like NVSI. This variety allows families to choose the education option that is best aligned with their 

individual needs and personal preferences. 

One thing that is consistent and strikingly apparent across the diverse spectrum of microschools is joy. The learners 

in these programs, whether traditional or nontraditional, are happy, engaged, empowered and thriving. As a result, 

more entrepreneurial educators are planning to open microschools in Las Vegas this fall, and current microschools 

continue to grow as more parents hear about these programs and choose more joyful learning environments for their 

children. 

Soifer from the National Microschooling Center expects the number of children who attend microschools in the Las 

Vegas area to more than double within the next 18 months, and she sees similar trends nationwide. “This is such an 

exciting time for microschools,” said Soifer. “As this momentum builds, we will see more, and varied, opportunities for 

children to thrive.” 



n “Recognizing Hard Truths About America’s History With Slavery,” 

published by FEE on February 11, 2023, I urged an assessment 

of slavery that includes its full “historical and cultural 

contexts” and that does not neglect “uncomfortable facts that too 

often are swept under the rug.” 

The central notion of both that previous essay and this follow-up 

is that slavery was a global norm for centuries, not a peculiar 

American institution. America is not exceptional because of 

slavery in our past; we may, however, be exceptional because of 

the lengths to which we went to get rid of it. In any event, it is 

an age-old tragedy abolished in most places only recently (in the 

past two centuries or so). As British historian Dan Jones notes in 

Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages, 

Slavery was a fact of life throughout the ancient world. Slaves— 

people defined as property, forced to work, stripped of their 

rights, and socially ‘dead,’ could be found in every significant 

realm of the age. In China, the Qin, Han, and Xin dynasties 

enforced various forms of slavery; so too did ancient rulers of 

Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, and India. 

Milton Meltzer’s Slavery: A World History is both comprehensive 

and riveting in its presentation. He too recognizes the ubiquity of 

human bondage: 

The institution of slavery was universal throughout much of 

history. It was a tradition everyone grew up with. It seemed 

essential to the social and economic life of the community, and 

man’s conscience was seldom troubled by it. Both master and 

slave looked upon it as inevitable…A slave might be of any color—white, 

black, brown, yellow. The physical differences did not 

matter. Warriors, pirates, and slave dealers were not concerned 

with the color of a man’s skin or the shape of his nose. 

The indigenous populations of both North and South America, 

pre-European settlement, also practiced slavery. Meltzer writes, 

The Aztecs also made certain crimes punishable by enslavement. 

An offender against the state—a traitor, say—was auctioned 

off into slavery, with the proceeds going into the state 

treasury…Among the Mayans, a man could sell himself or his 

children into slavery…The comparatively rich Nootkas of Cape 

Flattery (in what is now northwestern Washington state) were 

notorious promoters of slaving. They spurred Vancouver tribes 

to attack one another so that they could buy the survivors. 

Perhaps because it conflicts with race-based political 

agendas, slavery of Africans by fellow Africans is one of 

those uncomfortable truths that often flies under the 

radar. Likewise, industrial-scale slavery of Africans by 

nearby Arabs as well as Arab slavery of Europeans are 

historical facts that are frequently ignored. Both subjects 

are explored in The Forgotten Slave Trade: The White 

European Slaves of Islam by Simon Webb and Slavery and 

Slaving in African History by Sean Stilwell. 

82 

83


May-June 

May-June 



Slavery cannot be justified or excused by enlightened people, but it can be studied, explained, put in context, and 

Most of the slaves shipped across the Atlantic were purchased, rather than captured, by Europeans. Arabs, however, captured 

understood—if all the facts of it are in the equation. It’s a painful topic, to be sure, which is even more reason to leave 

their own slaves and penetrated far deeper into Africa than Europeans dared venture…. 

nothing out and to prevent political agendas from getting in the way. 

The widespread sin of “presentism” poisons our understanding of such hot-button topics as slavery. As I wrote in 

_____ 

August 2020, 

Over the centuries, untold millions of human beings from sub-Saharan Africa were transported in captivity to other parts 

of the world. No exact statistics exist covering all the sources and all the destinations, and scholarly estimates vary. However, 

Terms for this way of looking at the past range from intertemporal bigotry to chronological snobbery to cultural bias to historical 

over the centuries, somewhere in the neighborhood of 11 million people were shipped across the Atlantic as slaves, 

quackery. The more clinical label is “presentism.” It’s a fallacious perspective that distorts historical realities by removing them 

and another 14 million African slaves were sent to the Islamic nations of the Middle East and North Africa. On both routes, 

from their context. In sports, we call it “Monday morning quarterbacking.” 

many died in transit. 

Presentism is fraught with arrogance. It presumes that present-day attitudes didn’t evolve from earlier ones but popped fully 

formed from nowhere into our superior heads. To a presentist, our forebears constantly fail to measure up so they must be disdained 

or expunged. As one writer put it, “They feel that their light will shine brighter if they blow out the candles of others.” 

Our ancestors were each a part of the era in which they lived, not ours. History should be something we learn from, not run from; 

if we analyze it through a presentist prism, we will miss much of the nuanced milieu in which our ancestors thought and acted. 

Watch this 8-minute video, Facts About Slavery Never Mentioned in School and you might ask, “Why didn’t I hear this 

before?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyPWjjWs7-w 

The answer may simply be that the facts it lays out are politically incorrect, which means they are inconvenient for the 

conventional wisdom. They don’t fit the “presentist” narrative. 

What I personally find most fascinating about slavery is the emergence in recent centuries of ideas that would transform 

the world’s view of it from acceptance to rejection. Eighteenth Century Enlightenment ideals that questioned 

authority and sought to elevate human rights, liberty, happiness, and toleration played a role. So did a Christian 

reawakening late in the 18th and early 19th Centuries that produced the likes of abolitionists William Wilberforce and 

others. 

The Declaration of Independence pricked the consciences of millions who came to understand that its stirring words 

were at odds with the reality many black Americans experienced on a daily basis. And as capitalism and free markets 

spread in the 19th Century, slavery faced a competition with free labor that it ultimately could not win. Exploring the 

potency of those important—indeed, radical—forces would seem to me to be more fruitful and less divisive than playing 

the race card, cherry-picking evidence to support political agendas, or promoting perpetual victimhood. 

The prolific economist and historian Thomas Sowell has written about slavery in many of his voluminous articles and 

books. For Conquests and Cultures: An International History, he devoted fifteen years of research and travel (around 

the world twice, no less). Though the book is about much more than slavery, the author reveals a great deal about the 

institution that few people know. 

I close out this essay with excerpts from this Sowell classic, and I strongly urge interested readers to check out the 

suggestions for additional information, below: 

_____ 

The horrors of the Atlantic voyage in packed and suffocating slave ships, together with exposure to new diseases from 

Europeans and other African tribes, as well as the general dangers of the Atlantic crossing in that era, took a toll in lives 

amounting to about 10 percent of all slaves shipped to the Western Hemisphere in British vessels in the eighteenth century—the 

British being the leading slave traders of that era. However, the death toll among slaves imported by the Islamic 

countries, many of these slaves being forced to walk across the vast, burning sands of the Sahara, was twice as high. Thousands 

of human skeletons were strewn along one Saharan slave route alone—mostly the skeletons of young women and 

girls…In 1849, a letter from an Ottoman official referred to 1,600 black slaves dying of thirst on their way to Libya. 

_____ 

The prime destination of the African slave trade to the Islamic world was Istanbul, capital of the Ottoman Empire, where 

the largest and busiest slave market flourished. There women were paraded, examined, questioned, and bid on in a public 

display often witnessed by visiting foreigners, until it was finally closed down in 1847 and the slave trade in Istanbul 

moved underground. In other Islamic countries, however, the slave markets remained open and public, both to natives 

and foreigners…This market functioned until 1873, when two British cruisers appeared off shore, followed by an ultimatum 

from Britain that the Zanzibar slave trade must cease or the island would face a full naval blockade. 

_____ 

From as early as the seventeenth century, most Negroes in the American colonies were born on American soil. This 

was the only plantation society in the Western Hemisphere in which the African population consistently maintained its 

numbers without continual, large-scale importations of slaves from Africa, and in which this population grew by natural 

increase. By contrast, Brazil over the centuries imported six times as many slaves as the United States, even though the 

U.S. had a larger resident slave population than Brazil—36 percent of all the slaves in the Western Hemisphere, as compared 

to 31 percent for Brazil. Even such Caribbean islands as Haiti, Jamaica and Cuba each imported more slaves than the 

United States. 

_____ 



Inland tribes [in Africa] such as the Ibo were regularly raided by their more power coastal neighbors and the captives 

led away to be sold as slaves. European merchants who came to buy slaves in West Africa were confined by rulers in 

these countries to a few coastal ports, where Africans could bring slaves and trade as a cartel, in order to get higher 

prices. Hundreds of miles farther south, in the Portuguese colony of Angola, hundreds of thousands of Africans likewise 

carried out the initial captures, enslavement and slave-trading processes, funneling the slaves into the major 

marketplaces, where the Portuguese took charge of them and shipped them off to Brazil. 

84 

85



What is Credential Inflation? 

The signaling function of college degrees may have been distorted by the phenomenon known as credential inflation. 

Credential inflation is nothing more than “… an increase in the education credentials required for a job.” 

Many jobs that previously required no more than a high school diploma are now only accepting applicants with bachelor’s 

degrees. This shift in credential preferences among employers has now made the 4-year degree the unofficial 

minimum standard for educational requirements. This fact is embodied in the high rates of underemployment among 

college graduates. Approximately 41 percent of all recent graduates are working jobs that do not require a college 

degree. It is shocking when you consider that 17 percent of hotel clerks and 23.5 percent of amusement park attendants 

hold 4-year degrees. None of these jobs have traditionally required a college degree. But due to a competitive job 

market where most applicants have degrees, many recent graduates have no means of distinguishing themselves from 

other potential employees. Thus, many recent graduates have no other option but to accept low-paying jobs. 

The value of a college degree has gone down due to the vast increase in the number of workers who possess degrees. 

This form of debasement mimics the effect of printing more money. Following the Law of Supply and Demand, the 

greater the quantity of a commodity, the lower the value. The hordes of guidance counselors and parents urging kids 

to attend college have certainly contributed to the problem. However, public policy has served to amplify this issue. 

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2021 

BY PETER CLARK 

Why College Degrees Are Losing Their Value 

The concept of inflation (the depreciation of purchasing power 

The signaling function of college degrees may have been distorted by the phenomenon 

known as credential inflation. 

Various kinds of loan programs, government scholarships, and other programs have incentivized more students to 

pursue college degrees. Policies that make college more accessible—proposals for “free college,” for example—also 

devalue degrees. More people attending college makes degrees even more common and further depreciated. 

Of course, this not to say brilliant students with aspirations of a career in STEM fields should avoid college. But for the 

average student, a college degree may very well be a malinvestment and hinder their future. 

of a specific currency) applies to other goods besides money. 

Inflation is related to the Law of Supply and Demand. As the supply 

of a commodity increases, the value decreases. Conversely, 

as the good becomes more scarce, the value of the commodity 

increases. This same concept is also applicable to tangible items 

such as vintage baseball cards and rare art. These are rare 

commodities that cannot be authentically replicated and therefore 

command a high value on the market. On the other hand, 

mass-produced rookie cards and replications of Monet’s work are 

plentiful. As a result, they yield little value on the market. 

Outside of a few notable exceptions, a bachelor’s degree serves a 

signaling function. As George Mason economics professor Bryan 

Caplan argues, the function of a college degree is primarily to 

signal to potential employers that a job applicant has desirable 

characteristics. Earning a college degree is more of a validation 

process than a skill-building process. Employers desire workers 

that are not only intelligent but also compliant and punctual. The 

premise of the signaling model seems to be validated by the fact 

that many graduates are not using their degrees. In fact, in 2013; 

only 27 percent of graduates had a job related to their major. 

Incurring large amounts of debt to work for minimum wage is not a wise decision. When faced with policies and social 

pressure that have made college the norm, students should recognize that a college degree isn’t everything. If students 

focused more on obtaining marketable skills than on credentials, they might find a way to stand out in a job market 

flooded with degrees. 



Inflation and the opposite principle of deflation can also apply to 

intangible goods. When looking at the job market, this becomes 

quite evident. Jobs that require skills that are rare or exceptional 

tend to pay higher wages. However, there are also compensating 

differentials that arise because of the risky or unattractive 

nature of undesirable jobs. The higher wages are due to a lack of 

workers willing to accept the position rather than the possession 

of skills that are in demand. 

Since bachelor’s degrees carry a significant signaling function, 

there have been substantial increases in the number of job seekers 

possessing a 4-year degree. Retention rates for 4-year institutions 

reached an all-time high of 81 percent in 2017. In 1940, 

4.2 million Americans were 4-year college graduates. Today, 99.5 

million Americans have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher. 

These numbers demonstrate the sharp increase in the number of 

Americans earning college degrees. 

The Signaling Function of College Degrees 

Over the past couple of decades, credentialing of intangible 

employment value has become more prevalent. Credentials can 

range from college degrees to professional certifications. One of 

the most common forms of credentialing has become a 4-year 

college degree. This category of human capital documentation 

has evolved to take on an alternate function. 

Today, nearly 40 percent of all Americans hold a 4-year degree. 

Considering the vast increase in college attendance and completion, 

it’s fair to question if a college degree has retained its “purchasing 

power” on the job market. Much of the evidence seems 

to suggest that it has not. 

86 

87



Compelling research by Corey DeAngelis and Angela Dills shows a striking correlation between more school choice and 

better mental health. They found that in states with generous school choice options, like charter schools and vouchers, 

the teen suicide rate was lower than in states without these options. 

When parents have greater access to education choices beyond their assigned public school, their children are happier. 

This is good news for those children—and for the rest of us who don’t need to worry that their depression may turn 

deadly. 



TUESDAY, JANUARY 8, 2019 

BY KERRY MCDONALD 

School Security Is Now a $3 Billion Dollar Annual Industry. 

Is There a Better Way to Protect Kids? 

US taxpayers spend nearly $700 billion each year on K-12 public 

schooling, and that eye-popping sum shows no sign of slowing. 

In fact, as more non-academic programs are adopted in schools 

across the country, the price tag for mass schooling continues to 

swell even as achievement lags. 

The signaling function of college degrees may have been distorted by the phenomenon 

known as credential inflation. 

many people assume, especially in the glare of heart-wrenching 

news coverage after an event like Parkland. And it’s far lower 

than almost any other mortality risk a kid faces, including traveling 

to and from school, catching a potentially deadly disease 

while in school or suffering a life-threatening injury playing 

interscholastic sports.” 

The Cost of School Security 

One ballooning school expenditure is the vast amount of money 

allocated to school safety. US schools now spend an estimated 

$2.7 billion on security features, from automatically locking 

doors to video surveillance and facial recognition software. That 

amount doesn’t include the additional billions of dollars spent 

on armed guards at schools. Federal spending on school security 

is also rising, with the US Department of Homeland Security 

recently awarding a $2.3 million grant to train high school 

students how to act like first responders in the event of a mass 

casualty, like a school shooting. 

These enhanced security and training mechanisms may seem 

justified, particularly in the wake of deadly mass school shootings 

like the massacre in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead. 

But school shootings are exceedingly rare. As Harvard University 

instructor David Ropeik writes in The Washington Post: 

“The chance of a child being shot and killed in a public school is 

extraordinarily low. Not zero — no risk is. But it’s far lower than 

Still, it’s natural for us to want to protect children from harm— 

and to get angry when our preferred method of protection 

doesn’t gain traction. Advocating for increased gun control 

measures, reporter Nestor Ramos writes in the Boston Globe: “In 

a nation unwilling to take even modest steps to prevent the next 

Columbine or Parkland massacre, schools have begun training 

students to patch up their classmates’ gunshot wounds.” 

Gun control is only one possible policy prescription—and even 

respected researchers doubt that it would do much good in halting 

gun deaths. There are other “modest steps” we could take, 

aside from increased regulations and restrictions, that may more 

effectively reduce gun-related mortality in children—and they 

cost much less than current school security measures. 

A Simple Solution 

A simple but powerful step in saving young lives is to 

expand school choice options for families. If children feel 

trapped in an assigned district school and are subjected to 

daily bullying or humiliation with no escape, it can lead to 

severe depression and suicidal tendencies. Let’s remem- 

88 

89

SATURDAY, JANUARY 28, 2023 


The (Further) Case for the Free Market in Education 

In 1964, Leonard Read wrote a powerful essay celebrating the 

free market in education. Read, who founded FEE nearly two 

decades prior to promote individual and economic freedom, 

recognized the ways in which government control of the K-12 

education sector constrained choice and prevented diversity and 

abundance of learning options. 

In “The Case for the Free Market in Education,” Read asked us 

to imagine that education had been freed from government 

interference and was instead “restored to the free, competitive 

market.” 

“What would happen?” wondered Read. “No one knows!” he 

answered. 

Rather than a flaw, Read recognized that the unknown of what 

would inevitably emerge from this restoration would be its 

strongest feature. In a free market, education would become 

an entirely decentralized sector based on voluntary association 

and exchange, with entrepreneurial individuals creating various 

learning opportunities and families deciding for themselves 

which ones they prefer for their children. Consent would replace 

coercion in education, sparking endless possibilities. 

As Read put it: 

“Creative thought on education would manifest itself in millions 

of individuals. Such genius as we potentially and compositely 

pos sess would assert itself and take the place of deadening 

restraints. Any person who understands the free market knows, 

without any qualification whatsoever, that there would be more 

In 1964, FEE founder Leonard Read made the case for the free market in education. 

His words are even more relevant today. 

90 

education and bet ter education. And a person with a faith in 

free men is confident that the costs per unit of learning accomplished 

would be far less…The free market is truly free: it 

is free of restraints against creative action; it presup poses free 

exchange; its services are as free as the sun’s energy.” 

Some might argue that we already have a free market in education 

outside of government-run schools, with private schools 

free to operate and compete for families who have the means 

to exit an assigned district school for private options. Yet, here 

too the government interferes in the private sector to varying 

degrees. Compulsory schooling laws in all states mandate school 

attendance, and most states require private schools to be registered 

with local or state officials. Some states influence private 

education more directly with various curriculum and evaluative 

requirements. And in a few states, such as Iowa, private schools 

can’t even exist without being accredited by the state department 

of education or one of only a few accrediting organizations 

approved of by the state. ber that mass shootings and suicide 

are intertwined. 

How this works in practice is heartbreaking. I wrote 

recently about a Sudbury-model school in Des Moines, 

Iowa that spent months trying to get launched but finally 

had to give up in 2021 because state regulators would not 

allow such an out-of-the-box educational model to exist 

in their state. Sudbury schools, modeled after the wellknown 

Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts, are found 

across the US and around the world. 



I featured the Sudbury model and Sudbury Valley throughout my Unschooled book. These schools embrace an educational 

philosophy of democratic self-governance and non-coercive, self-directed learning, with no adult-imposed 

curriculum requirements, classes, or evaluations. Sudbury Valley continues to operate today, more than 50 years after 

its founding, and has many successful alumni, including the Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, Laura 

Poitras. 

Yet, states such as Iowa won’t allow certain types of schools, like Des Moines’s Sunrise Sudbury School, whose 

cofounder is a former high school physics teacher with a graduate degree in teaching, to open their doors. 

Beyond such outright coercion in the private education sector are more subtle overreaches. Many states erect regulatory 

hurdles for private education providers, especially those that challenge the conventional schooling status quo. 

Zoning and occupancy restrictions can prevent experimental models, such as microschools and learning pods, from 

getting off the ground or growing, as can restrictive child care licensing laws that can ensnare non-traditional programs 

aimed at school-age children in a daycare regulatory morass. I talk more about these regulatory roadblocks in 

my State Policy Network report. Advocates in some states, such as Utah, are trying to push back against government 

overreach in the private education sector to encourage greater education entrepreneurship and innovation. 

By removing both the overt and subtle government control of education, and unleashing a free, competitive education 

market, a panoply of educational models will emerge, representing a wide assortment of different educational philosophies 

and approaches. As in any healthy, dynamic market, some of these models will succeed and others will fail. 

Quality programs that are responsive to parents and learners will gain popularity and traction, while undesirable and 

unresponsive programs will wither. 

We see early glimpses of a free, competitive education market in states such as Arizona, which has comparatively low 

private education regulations and has cultivated a culture of choice over the past several years, aided by expansive 

school choice policies that enable parents to opt out of a government school assignment. In Arizona, and increasingly 

elsewhere, parents are regaining responsibility for their children’s education and finding the best educational fit. This 

might include enrolling in one of many private school, learning pod, or microschool options, collaborating with others 

on homeschooling efforts, taking advantage of tutoring services, using individualized curriculum resources and materials, 

and exploring a host of learning supports. 

Auspiciously, Read spoke about this more than a half-century ago when he predicted the positive outcomes of a free 

market in education: 

“While one cannot know of the brilliant steps that would be taken by millions of education-conscious parents were 

they and not the government to have the educa tional responsibility, one can im agine the great variety of coop erative 

and private enterprises that would emerge. There would be thousands of private schools, large and small, not necessarily 

unlike some of the ones we now have. There would be tutoring ar rangements of a variety and in genuity impossible 

to foresee. No doubt there would be corporate and charitably financed institu tions of chain store dimensions, 

dispensing reading, writing, and arithmetic at bargain prices. There would be competition, which is cooperation’s most 

useful tool! There would be a parental alertness as to what the market would have to offer. There would be a keen, 

active, parental respon sibility for their children’s and their own educational growth.” 

Read would likely say, and I would agree, that today’s school choice policies that redistribute taxpayer funds from 

government-run school systems to individual students to use as they choose are still rooted in government compulsion 

and distort the restoration of a fully free, competitive education market. Indeed, without vigilance, it’s possible that 

these policies could lead to even greater government regulation of private education—a tragic potential consequence. 

But these policies, especially in low-regulation states such as Arizona, are showing that they can help to loosen the 

government’s grip on education, which is the first step in restoring a free, competitive education market. These policies 

help to put parents back in charge of their children’s education, and encourage the proliferation of new and 

diverse learning options through entrepreneurship and innovation. They don’t go nearly far enough, though. As Read 

explained, the only way to achieve a truly free education market is to eliminate compulsory attendance laws, remove 

government influence over curriculum, and end forced taxation of education. 

Read concluded his influential essay by stating that the “myth of government educa tion, in our country today, is an 

article of general faith. To ques tion the myth is to tamper with the faith, a business that few will read about or listen to 

or, if they do, calmly tolerate.” Today, more parents, educators, and entrepreneurs are tampering with that faith and 

challenging the government’s outsized role in education. They are increasingly seeking new and different education 

options, and building what they cannot find. They are pushing ahead despite many regulatory barriers, and creating 

bottom-up education solutions that outshine top-down incumbents. 

These parents, educators, and entrepreneurs are becoming champions of a truly free market in education. And, as 

Read reminded us in his final line, “becoming is life’s prime purpose; becoming is, in fact, enlightenment — self-education, 

its own reward.” 


91 

https://fee.org/



Oklahoma teachers accrue new pension benefits each year, with a present value equal to 30 percent of their annual 

salaries. Subtract Oklahoma teachers’ own contribution of 7 percent, and employer-paid retirement benefits are worth 

23 percent of annual salaries. By contrast, the typical private-sector employer contribution to a 401k plan amounts 

only to about 3 percent of employee pay. 

Many teachers also qualify for retiree health coverage, now practically extinct in the private sector. In some states, 

retiree health care is modest: Oklahoma teachers get an insurance supplement of about $100 per month. But for 

teachers in Illinois, future retiree health benefits are worth an additional 8 percent of annual pay, while in North Carolina, 

retiree health benefits are worth an additional 12.5 percent. 

As the New York Times recently reported, public-employee retirement and health benefits are bleeding dry state and 

local budgets. Neither the public nor teachers fully appreciate the costs of these programs. We forget the value of benefits 

when considering how teacher pay compares with private-sector work. And research suggests that teachers value 

deferred compensation less than upfront salary. 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 2, 2018 

BY ANDREW BIGGS/ JASON RICHWINE 

No, Teachers Are Not Underpaid 

Salaries lag in some states, but nationally, wages and benefits outpace the private 

sector. 

the federal government’s General Schedule (GS). At the lowest 

Possible Reforms 

This opens the possibility of a constructive reform. States could offer newly hired teachers higher pay, coupled with 

switching those teachers to a generous, well-designed 401(k)-type retirement plan. In Oklahoma, for instance, the state 

could give new teachers an 11 percent raise—costless to the taxpayer—by providing a 401(k) plan with an employer 

contribution, which would still be four times greater than private-sector levels. 

For areas with legitimate teaching shortages—such as in STEM fields or special education—districts could offer targeted 

salary increases. A strategic approach to filling teacher shortages is particularly important to poorer states such 

as West Virginia and Oklahoma, where resources are limited. 

Recent protests across the country have reinforced the perception 

that public school teachers are dramatically underpaid. 

They’re not: the average teacher already enjoys market-level 

wages plus retirement benefits vastly exceeding those of private-sector 

workers. Across-the-board salary increases, such as 

those enacted in Arizona, West Virginia, and Kentucky, are the 

wrong solution to a non-problem. 

Comparing Salaries 

Most commentary on teacher pay begins and ends with the 

observation that public school teachers earn lower salaries than 

the average college graduate. This is true, but in what other 

context do we assume that every occupation requiring a college 

degree should get paid the same? Engineers make about 25 

percent more than accountants, but “underpaid” accountants are 

not demonstrating in the streets. 

Wages are not determined by years of schooling but by the 

supply and demand for skills. These skills vary by field of study. 

About half of teachers major in education, among the least-rigorous 

fields at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. 

Incoming education majors have lower SAT or GRE scores than 

candidates in other fields, but—thanks to grade inflation—they 

enjoy the highest GPAs. Data from the Collegiate Learning Assessment 

indicate that students majoring in social science, humanities, 

and STEM fields not only start college with greater skills than 

education majors but also learn more along the way. 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) analyzes the skill requirements 

of different jobs, assigning each a pay grade based on 

92 

skill levels—a GS-6 on the federal scale—teachers earn salaries 

about 26 percent higher than similar white-collar workers. At 

GS-11, the highest skill level, teaching pays 17 percent less than 

other white-collar jobs. This explains how shortages can exist for 

specialized positions teaching STEM, languages, or students with 

disabilities, while elementary education postings may receive 

dozens of applications per job opening. 

The average public school teaching position rated an 8.8 

on the federal GS scale. After adjustment to reflect the 

time that teachers work outside the formal school day, 

the BLS data show that public school teachers on average 

receive salaries about 8 percent above similar private-sector 

jobs. 

Contrary to myth, teachers are generally not foregoing 

higher salaries by staying in the classroom. Data from the 

Survey of Income and Program Participation show that 

teachers who change to non-teaching jobs take an average 

salary cut of about 3 percent. Studies using administrative 

records in Florida, Missouri, Georgia, and Montana 

showed similar results; the Georgia study found “strong 

evidence that very few of those who leave teaching take 

jobs that pay more than their salary as teachers.” 

It’s Not Just Wages 

It’s true that teacher salaries in several states are lagging. 

Teachers in Arizona, West Virginia, and Oklahoma have 

good reason to be dissatisfied: their salaries rank near the 

bottom nationally, even after controlling for cost of living. 

Even in these seemingly underpaying states, though, pensions 

can more than make up the difference. 

Across-the-board pay increases, by contrast, are expensive and inefficient. Arizona governor Doug Ducey’s promised 

20 percent teacher salary increase will cost $400 million annually before a single new teacher is hired. Such efforts 

create no incentive for prospective teachers to specialize in areas where shortages exist. And if the salary boost winds 

up reducing teacher retirements, fewer spots will open up for better-qualified new teachers. Research has found that 

better pay has only a modest impact on teacher quality. 

Teachers enjoy widespread public favor, and their desire for higher pay is understandable. But no nationwide crisis 

of teacher compensation exists. Most teachers receive market-level salaries and generous retirement benefits. Local 

hiring problems can and should be addressed without granting windfall benefits to teachers whose compensation is 

already better than adequate. 



93



Kevin wrote in his introduction: 

“Like every other kid, I’ve had people tell me I can’t do something because I’m ‘just a kid.’ This silly, adult idea that being young 

makes us incapable and incompetent has discouraged so many kids from learning what they’re capable of and pursuing their 

dreams. But one of the biggest blessings in my life has been that every time I’ve heard that nonsense said to me, I can be sure of 

two things. First, it’s never my parents that said it. Second, my parents will not only allow me to work to prove whoever said it 

wrong, but they encourage me to do so.” 

Kevin’s book is an argument for letting kids drive their own education and for letting them tackle life head-on in any 

arena they find interesting. His own story is proof that it works. 

From first grade on, Kevin’s education was built around what he was interested in. First he wanted to know how people 

make money. After he and his dad started listening to Warren Buffet videos, they pivoted into mental models and 

learning how to think. 

When he wanted to try making money for himself, he convinced his parents to let him start his rabbit farm, and he 

learned about business and math through bookkeeping and setting up his business’s legal entity. 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, 2022 

BY HANNAH FRANKMAN 

Unschooler, Entrepreneur, Prodigy: The Story of Cole Summers 

Kevin Cooper, known to the internet as Cole Summers, was taken 

“Don’t Tell Me I Can’t” by Kevin Cooper (aka Cole Summers) deserves a place in the 

alternative education canon. 

Kevin Cooper was the most ambitious and inspiring unschooler I 

After paying taxes for the first time, Kevin heard about Amazon’s $0 tax bill, and decided he wanted to learn about 

corporate tax law for 5th grade math so he could learn how to pay no taxes too. That was the first time he realized he 

was different: 

from this world far too soon—he tragically died on June 11 in a 

kayaking accident. But in his 14 years of life, he accomplished 

more than most of us do in a lifetime. 

At age 6, his parents handed him the reins to his own education, 

giving him the freedom to choose what to study. (He chose Warren 

Buffet videos on YouTube, because he wanted to learn how to 

get rich). 

At age 7, he started his own business, breeding meat rabbits and 

selling them to restaurants. He set up a corporation and became 

the majority shareholder, just like a Silicon Valley startup. 

At age 8, he got his first truck through trade with a neighbor— 

and discovered that an 8-year-old can in fact get a vehicle titled 

in their name. 

At age 9, he bought a 350-acre ranch for $130 per acre to expand 

his business into breeding meat goats. 

have ever met. 

I found Kevin on Twitter this past spring, and I knew immediately 

he was an unschooling legend in the making. He was successfully 

running a holding company controlling multiple LLCs, including 

one for his rabbitry and one for his properties. He was helping 

support his disabled parents and brother. And he was working 

on a plan to tackle the environmental problems of industrial hay 

farming and aquifer depletion, which were threatening to make 

the valley where he grew up uninhabitable. 

He was an unschooling success story, an alternative education 

inspiration, a shining example of what is possible for kids to 

accomplish. At 14, he had already done more for education than 

many education professionals do in their whole lives, just by 

being living proof of how far someone can go when they let their 

interests drive their education. 

That’s what Kevin’s book is all about. 

“On the ride to Cub Scouts one time, my friends started talking about what they were doing in school. They were all joking around 

about having to memorize the names of all the planets in order. [My friend] Michael said “it’s stupid. Like, when will I ever need to 

know that?” Then they asked me what I was studying. I started talking about how companies can pay certain expenses, like payroll, 

in stock, creating paper losses that reduce their taxes and maybe even create net loss carry forward. Wow, the looks I got from everyone. 

They told me they had no clue what I was talking about. I just shrugged it off and said “yeah, I’m weird,” but I was confused. 

I still thought back then that they did all the same stuff I did.” 

This stark difference in Kevin’s education is what led to his extraordinary life. Because he was free to chase the things 

he cared about, he was able to achieve outcomes far beyond what most people think is possible for somebody who’s 

“just a kid.” 

Kevin’s book was released in May of 2022. Less than a month later, the world lost more than we’ll likely ever know. 

Kevin was a giant in the making. He would have accomplished feats on a geographic scale, like reversing the disappearance 

of the Great Basin Desert’s supplying aquifer. He had ambitions to spearhead environmental change and advocate 

for unschooling, so more kids could be set free to chase their passions like he was – an endeavor his parents plan 

to carry on, as they shared when they broke the news of Kevin’s heart-breaking, untimely death. 

Kevin’s book deserves a place in the unschooling and alternative education canon: an honest and beautiful case study 

of what’s possible when parents trust their kids, and when kids let their passions become the driving force of their 

education. 

At age 10, he bought a house, which he then renovated and sold 

for a profit. He learned flooring, roofing, cabinet making, painting, 

and electrical work – again, from YouTube. 

I started reading Don’t Tell Me I Can’t while I was waiting for a 

takeout order. I imagined I would read the introduction while I 

waited for my food and then go home. Instead, I ended up sitting 

at the restaurant counter reading the entire book cover-to-cover 

At age 14, he wrote an autobiography about his education called 

while my food grew cold (much to the amusement of the wait 



Don’t Tell Me I Can’t, a fitting title for what is essentially an ode to 

staff, I imagine). I was captivated. Kevin’s book was the most 

kids pushing the limits of what adults think is possible. 

compelling story of homeschool possibility I had ever read. 

94 

95



Vladimir Lenin, a man whose inclinations towards class and production were much different than the Prussians is 

popularly, possibly apocryphally, quoted as saying: “give me four years to teach the children, and the seed I have sown 

shall never be uprooted.” Whether the verbiage is precise or not, it is certainly consistent with the maximization of the 

state requisite for his socialism to take root. What Lenin and the Prussians had in common was the state; whatever 

their differences, they were both arch-statists and sought to instill the state’s ethics into the next generation. 

The state instilling obedience and fomenting socialism through schools is hardly surprising. What is relatively new is an 

all out assault on the norms of western civilization. 

In the past it was held that the color of one’s skin was irrelevant, and what truly counted was the content of one’s character. 

Indeed, if there is to be a racially neutral society, there is no other way to proceed, but as of late, activists and 

public intellectuals have brought race back with a vengeance. 

The 1619 Project, which posits among other things that the American Revolution was not a libertarian secession event 

for the rights of man, but was somehow a defense of slavery, that President Lincoln was a fanatical racist, and that 

capitalism, the free system of labor, was built on the unfree system of labor, slavery, is now taught in schools across 

the country. Instead of good scholarship giving reasoned debates, the 1619 Project finds no redeeming quality in 

Americans, singles out those who happened to have been born with white skin for racial abuse, and counsels the only 

answer to be a mephistophelian tearing down of everything that exists. 

FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 2023 

The public school system is a failure and ripe for replacing. 

BY CRUZ MARQUIS 

It’s Time to Separate School and State 

The state-run school system as it stands is a one-size-fitsall 

monstrosity which crowds out private alternatives and 

spreads socialistic and anti-Christian propaganda. It’s time 

to think bigger than Friedman’s school vouchers, it’s time 

to separate school from state. 

Crowding Out 

If there is any stigma against private schools, it is their 

cost versus the public system. This leaves room for the 

public-school supporter to claim: “if there was a market 

for low cost, private education, it would be provided but 

since it is not widely met, the general consensus must 

remain with the public system.” The argument would be 

correct but for one detail: the market is being distorted 

by the political power of the state, preventing the entry of 

the firms needed to fill the void. 

Public schools are funded through the taxes of a city’s 

citizens, which necessarily means that taxpayers without 

children enrolled will also pay for their upkeep; even taxpayers 

without children at all are subsidizing the public 

education of those using the system. As a result, the cost 

of public education is artificially low to the parents using 

it, a situation that could not be replicated in a free market. 

If the state system was a private enterprise, it would 

not last one year before going bankrupt since it can only 

survive on the subsidies provided by taxation, by political 

power. 

96 

Private enterprise is enormously competitive, and when 

unleashed, it can nearly work miracles, but what it cannot 

do is compete effectively with state-run firms which can 

bankroll their losses with taxation. As a result, it is not 

currently possible for private schools to fill the same niche 

as the public ones, they must branch out and specialize to 

offer a fundamentally different good than the one offered 

by the state. KIPP charter schools as explored by Thomas 

Sowell in his new book Charter Schools and their Enemies 

promise better academic results, and Parochial schools 

promise a traditional and religious education. All of these 

are fundamentally different goods than the one provided 

by the state system, and this is a place to start. 

So long as the public system is able to pass on its losses 

to the taxpayers, there will be few cracks in the state’s 

monopolistic control of the industry. Should the edifice 

finally break and a state decides to take the plunge into 

full privatization, the market will surge back with a vengeance 

and provide more options, and do so more affordably 

than is currently available. 

Instilling the Ethics of the State 

The state always and everywhere aims at monopolizing 

education and there is a non-benevolent reason for this: 

youth are impressionable and ideas inculcated early are 

difficult to uproot. If the state can decide what the next 

generation learns, it can instill a statist ethic and worldview 

which quells resistance before it would take hold. 

State-run education is not an act of charity in practice so 

Children being uniquely impressionable are vulnerable to having their minds harnessed and hearts filled with hate by 

this curriculum. Parents by keeping their children in public schools risk having their offspring be turned against them 

by the hate mongering activists. It should not be controversial to allow there to be options which do not indoctrinate 

children with racial hatred or gender confusion, and this is the niche of the free market. Stopping the ahistorical and 

hateful 1619 Project from being a common curriculum is a step in the right direction but it is not the solution to rising 

racial tension: the real answer is the privatization of education to allow for other options. In essence, if parents do not 

want their children subjected to race and gender talk at school, they are entirely within their right to demand that, and 

more private alternatives would deliver the goods. 

Friedman’s Vouchers 

In many libertarian and conservative circles, Milton Friedman’s voucher plan is considered to be the gold standard in 

free market school solutions. Instead of the current system, Friedman suggested giving a voucher for each student 

which could be used at public or private schools, thus opening the latter up to federal funding and presumably, helping 

them proliferate. 

State money comes with strings attached. One can hardly imagine the state not coming out with guidelines of institutions 

eligible for the vouchers which presupposes the state setting universal standards and guidelines for all schools 

public and private. A consequence of the Friedman plan is total control by the state on what is and is not acceptable 

anywhere, not just for public schools. This would start out with relatively benign concerns about safety and mathematics 

standards, but would undoubtedly extend into peripheral areas which there is much disagreement about. Schools 

which do not provide separate bathrooms for transgender students, fail to teach a curriculum of racialized history, or 

even all boys or all girls schools would sooner or later find themselves on the chopping block. 

If vouchers are introduced into the economics of private schools not now accustomed to this cash inflow, they will 

quickly build it into their operating costs, and soon it will not be a windfall but a necessity for operation. Work expands 

to fit the budget allowed for it. It follows that losing these vouchers would be a calamity, even if the institution had 

previously operated without them, and many if not most, would bend their rules and principles to keep the state dollars 

flowing. Surely there would be some obstinate private schools content to lose funding rather than accommodate 

the state’s demands, but this cannot be expected of the majority, since this is, after all, a business. 

Libertarians and conservatives taken with the Friedman model are not thinking boldly enough. The answer is not get 

the state to fund the private schools too, but privatize the public school infrastructure, remove the regulatory burden 

on starting up a new school, and achieve the total separation of education and state. 

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The Separation of Education and State 

By removing the state from education, a number of things will happen: the absolute size of the behemoth will shrink, 

teacher’s unions will have less power over the student’s educational continuity, different sorts of education will be 

offered, and Christians, rightists, libertarians, anti-statists, and free thinkers will not be forcibly subjected to the state’s 

propaganda. 

Without the need to oversee the education of most children in the third largest country on earth, the size of the state 

will decrease. There will be no need for legions of teachers to be employed by the state, but most of them will not be 

out of the job. They will form the backbone of the new, private teaching workforce. 

Without massive public school districts, strikes by teacher’s unions will be less likely and less destructive, making the 

recent Los Angeles teacher’s strike—which took 420,000 students out of the classroom—next to impossible. Presumably, 

with the regulatory environment lightened, there will be a return of yellow dog contracts which would prevent 

school employees from joining unions at all as a condition of employment. 

In industries as complicated as education, no two firms will be alike (as opposed to snowplowing firms, which are quite 

alike). This diversity ensures that a greater variety of goods will be offered, allowing parents to have more control over 

what and how their children learn. Some schools will hone mathematics and raise engineers quicker and cheaper, others 

will bring the humanities to the forefront and build a new cadre of well-rounded citizens to think up tomorrow’s big 

ideas, still others will provide a strictly Christian or otherwise religious education and offer a whole host of classes on 

theology. The possibilities are as endless as they are exciting. 

Finally, those who dissent from the statist, racialized, and anti-Christian outlook which has seized the public schools 

will not be compelled to attend them. There will be schools modeled on free men and free markets, God and country, 

or any other motifs there is a market for. America’s vibrant Church community will undoubtedly get in on the action 

and build self-funding schools of their own as the Catholics have been doing for over a hundred years. As a bonus, 

with the multiplicity of firms, it will be impossible for the socialistic, racialized, and anti-Christian mindset to invade all 

schools as it currently does under the state system. How would it do so without an easy point of entry at the administrative 

level and with renewed resistance from empowered private schools? 

Considering all these points, the case for total liberty in education is not a hard one to make. Indeed, the hard sell is 

maintaining the statist system as it currently stands. In light of failing schools, teacher’s strikes, anti-Christian propaganda 

across the board, and skyrocketing costs, a reasonable person might say the statist system is a failure and ripe 

for replacing. Total liberty in education is an idea whose time has come, America deserves it. It is time for a separation 

of education and state.would be new pathways to adulthood that 



TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2019 

BY PAUL BOYCE 

The Teacher Shortage Is Real and about to Get Much Worse. 

Here’s Why 

One of the main stressors of teaching is the sheer amount 

of testing. Students are tested as frequently as twice per 

month and an average of once per month. 

While testing has been around for decades, its increased 

involvement returned in 2002. As a result of the No Child 

Left Behind Act (NCLB), teachers are “teaching to test.” 

These tests were designed to standardize the process and 

track progress. Schools must make accommodations for 

children failing to make progress. 

There was a slight change to the law under the Obama 

administration. Passed in December 2015, the Every Student 

Succeeds Act (ESSA) gives greater control to states. 

However, children are still consistently tested through 

grades three to eight for literacy and math. According 

to Harvard professor Daniel Koretz, ESSA does little to 

relieve the pressure of testing. 

Is standardized testing to blame for increased teacher stress and workforce dropout? 

(EPI), the teacher shortage could reach 200,000 by 2025, 

up from 110,000 in 2018. This shortage of workers is due 

to a number of factors. Among them are pay, working 

conditions, lack of support, lack of autonomy, and the 

changing curriculum. 

The shortage is crucially important to educational outcomes. 

Class sizes are rising, causing a detrimental effect 

on these outcomes. As the number of available teachers 

declines, class sizes have to increase to compensate. 

Having more kids in a class can also affect teacher performance—more 

books to mark, more children to monitor, 

more children’s behavior that needs managing. The 

pressure on teachers to obtain high test scores amps up 

stress further. It creates a vicious cycle, and it is starting 

to snowball. The shortage is only set to increase unless 

something changes. 

Why is testing bad? Well, it’s causing teachers stress. And 

that stress is leading many qualified teachers to leave the 

profession. Over 40 percent of teachers leave in the first 

five years. Though not all of this is linked to testing, it is a 

significant factor. 

Testing has become the be-all and end-all for teachers. 

Their salary and job stability are linked to test scores. This 

has a drastic impact on the health and well-being of both 

teachers and students. 

Impact on Quality 

The shortage of teachers will inevitably cause a decline 

in educational standards. Principals face a shortage of 

highly qualified teachers. The natural response for them 

is to hire less qualified teachers, hire teachers trained in 

another field or grade, or make use of unqualified substitute 

teachers. This means students are being taught by 

teachers who lack sufficient skills and knowledge. 

According to the National Commission on Teaching and 

America’s Future: 

Teacher Shortage 

According to research by the Economic Policy Institute 

98 

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Studies discover again and again that teacher expertise is one of the most important factors in determining student achievement, 

followed by the smaller but generally positive influences of small schools and small class sizes. That is, teachers who know a lot 

about teaching and learning who work in environments that allow them to know students well are the critical elements of successful 

learning. 

Teachers matter more to student achievement than any other factor. In fact, research by Chlotfelter, Ladd, & Vigdor 

states that teacher qualifications predict more of the difference in educational gains than race and parent education 

combined. 

Narrowing the Teacher Shortage 

Highly qualified teachers are crucial to educational outcomes. The issue is with the fact that many are leaving the profession. 

Roughly 8 percent leave every year, with the vast majority leaving pre-retirement. That’s over double that of 

Finland, Canada, and Singapore (as low as 3 to 4 percent). 



MONDAY, JUNE 24, 2019 

BY JAMES AGRESTI 

Blaming the Wrong Culprit for Rising College Costs 

lizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and certain media outlets 

are blaming steep rises in college costs on reduced 

government funding for higher education. The reality is 

that inflation-adjusted government spending per college 

student has risen by about three times since the 1960s 

and is now at an all-time high. In spite of this, college 

graduation rates, academic time investment, and the 

learning of practical skills are all suffering. 

The True Costs of College 

Over the past several decades, college tuitions have 

ballooned, negatively impacting parents, students, and 

recent grads who are struggling to pay back student 

loans. The inflation-adjusted average sticker price for public 

college has doubled since 1980. For private colleges, it 

has nearly tripled: 

Whatever the ultimate causes may be, the facts are clear that students, parents, and 

taxpayers have paid increasingly more for higher education, with dubious results. 

Many students pay less for college than published sticker 

prices because of discounts, scholarships, and financial 

aid. Thus, David Leonhardt of the New York Times argues 

that sticker prices exaggerate the cost of college. However, 

the truth is that society pays for all of these costs 

and more. Whatever students and parents don’t pay, 

taxpayers and donors do. 

In fact, the full costs of college far exceed the sticker 

prices. The average annual sticker price at four-year public 

colleges is $20,050 for in-state students and $25,657 for 

out-of-state students. In contrast, the average spending 

per student at these colleges is now $44,965 per year— 

roughly twice their sticker prices. 

For in-state students at public two-year colleges, the 

difference is much larger. Their average annual sticker 

price is $3,243, while the average spending per student is 

$16,512—five times their sticker price. 

The difference declines considerably at four-year private 

non-profit colleges, but the costs to society still surpass 

consumer prices. Their average sticker price is $43,139 per 

year, while the average spending per student is $58,794— 

36 percent higher than the sticker price. 

The soaring costs of college are also evidenced by the fact 

that outstanding student loan debt is now larger than 

any other type of consumer debt except for mortgages. 

Further, the 90-day delinquency rate for student loans 

surpassed that of credit cards for the first time, and it is 

now 47 percent higher than any other major type of loan. 

100 

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Taxpayer Funding of Higher Education 

Full-time students allocated 40 hours per week toward class and studying in 1961, whereas by 2003, they were investing about 27 

The burden of paying for higher education is becoming a major campaign issue, and Democrat contenders like Elizabeth 

hours per week. Declines were extremely broad based and are not easily accounted for by framing effects, work or major choices, 

Warren and Bernie Sanders are blaming the situation on reduced government funding. Media outlets like The Washington 

Post and the Associated Press are telling the same story. In the words of the AP, “Year after year, colleges say they 

or manner of human capital production on college campuses. 

or compositional changes in students or schools. We conclude that there have been substantial changes over time in the quantity 

have to raise tuition to offset state funding cuts. Students have shouldered the cost by taking out loans, pushing the 

country’s student debt to nearly $1.6 trillion this year.” 

Notably, these institutions have become dominated by Democrats and progressives. A paper published in 2018 by the 

journal Academic Questions found that among 8,688 full-time, PhD-holding professors at 51 of the 66 top-ranked liberal 

arts colleges, the ratio of registered Democrats to registered Republicans is 10.4 to 1. Among the college academic 

Like the AP, Warren, Sanders, and the Post focus on state funding, which declined after the Great Recession. However, 

they fail to mention that federal funding rose more than state funding declined. Looking at the big picture, data from 

departments examined, 78 percent had “either zero Republicans, or so few as to make no difference.” 

the US Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that inflation-adjusted government spending per college student has risen by 

nearly three times over the past century and is currently greater than it has ever been: 

Determining the root causes of increasing college costs can be difficult because association does not prove causation. 

Beyond the actions of people who manage higher education, other variables are almost certainly at play. 

In 1959, the earliest year of available data, taxpayers contributed $3,550 per student. This climbed to $10,182 per student 

in 2017, the latest year of 

One of these factors may be increased government spending on colleges, which creates a cost disconnect with consumers. 

Normally, people will not buy products or services unless they receive adequate value for their money. How- 

data. These figures reflect the 

inflation-adjusted averages for 

ever, when taxpayers pick up part or all of the tab, this can create an effective monopoly because the costs don’t fall 

all higher education students, 

directly on consumers. Per the academic textbook Antitrust Law: 

not just those who receive the 

money. 

Monopoly pricing confronts the consumer with false alternatives: the product that he chooses because it seems cheaper actually 

requires more of society’s scarce resources to produce. Under monopoly, consumer demands are satisfied at a higher cost than 

Also, the portion of recent high 

necessary. 

school graduates (aged 16–24) 

enrolled in college rose from 45 

Along similar lines, Deborah J. Lucas, director of the MIT Center for Finance and Policy and former chief economist of 

percent in 1960 to 67 percent in 

the Congressional Budget Office explains: 

2017. Hence, taxpayers are not 

only paying more per student, 

[S]ome observers point to the easy and low-cost access to federal student loans as fueling the steep rise in the cost of higher 

but they are also paying for more 

education in the last decade. Easier access to credit markets is not always advantageous to program participants. Unsophisticated 

students. 

borrowers, such as some college students and first-time homebuyers, may not be fully aware of the costs and risks associated with 

Large portions of these students 

accumulating high debt loans. 

are not graduating, especially 

those who attend highly subsidized 

schools like community 

Whatever the ultimate causes may be, the facts are clear that students, parents, and taxpayers have paid increasingly 

colleges. This lessens the societal 

more for higher education, with dubious results. Yet, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and various media outlets are 

benefits of investing in education. 

Among full-time, new college students who entered a two-year public college in 2014, 25 percent graduated from 

misleading the public about these issues while calling for taxpayers to provide even more money. 

the same institution within 150 percent of the normal time required to do so. 

Perhaps most importantly, even among graduates of four-year colleges, many are not learning practical skills that 

increase their productivity, which is the main driver of living standards. In 2014, Professor Richard Arum of New York 

University and Assistant Professor Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia published a study using the Collegiate 

Learning Assessment to measure the “critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills” of 1,666 full-time students 

who entered four-year colleges in the fall of 2005 and graduated in the spring of 2009. The authors found that if the test 

“were rescaled to a one-hundred-point scale, approximately one-third of students would not improve more than one 

point over four years of college.” 

Cost Drivers and Outcomes 

Contrary to the Democrat/media narrative, students and parents aren’t paying more for college because government 

funding has declined. They are paying more because colleges have become more costly. 

Along with these cost increases, academic time investment by full-time college students has fallen. During the school 

year, they are now spending about 50 percent more time on leisure activities and sports than on academics. As reported 

in a 2011 paper in the Review of Economics and Statistics: 

102 

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On the day I visited, the children learned about impressionist 

painters and did a lesson on bird habitats. Those 

lessons led into personalized learning time in which 

students worked peacefully on their individual curriculum 

goals, geared toward their own level of mastery. 

Parents select the curriculum, with Dellenbach offering 

suggestions when requested and supplementing with 

theme-based lessons for the entire group. “I really want 

the parents to have the choice to decide what program 

works best for their student,” said Dellenbach. “And I’m 

just coming along as a guide to help and facilitate that.” 

Some students read books in quiet corners while others 

used instructional software on laptops. Dellenbach 

moved from student to student, checking on their progress 

and offering support. Lesson and curriculum times were interspersed with abundant outdoor play, and group 

walks to the local post office or nearby senior center. 

SATURDAY, APRIL 8, 2023 


Entrepreneurial Teachers Create New Education Options For Rural 

Families 

On a quiet street in the tiny town of Abbyville, Kansas, 

population 83, lies Re*Wild Family Academy. Founded 

earlier this year by former Kansas public school teacher 

Devan Dellenbach, this rural microschool about an hour 

outside of Wichita currently serves 10 homeschooled 

children of varying ages from the local community. It is 

expanding this fall to include more children and more 

offerings. 

I recently visited Dellenbach’s microschool that she runs 

from the main level of her home, a beautifully renovated 

small church with tall ceilings and bountiful natural light. 

She and her husband, who is also a Kansas public school 

teacher, purchased and restored the building over a decade 

ago after their previous home in a nearby town was 

destroyed by a tornado. 

When her oldest child, now 14, was born, Dellenbach 

decided to leave teaching to be a stay-at-home mom. As 

kindergarten approached, she didn’t like the idea that 

her five-year-old would have to spend 45 minutes on a 

bus ride each way to get to the nearest public elementary 

school. Homeschooling seemed like a better idea. 

“Just the thought of putting her on the bus at 6:45 in the 

morning and not seeing her again until 4:30 in the afternoon, 

it really began to pull at me,” Dellenbach told me. 

“And I thought, well, I’ve been taught how to do this, certainly 

I can do this. So my journey began as a homeschool 

mom.” 

Founded earlier this year by former Kansas public school teacher Devan Dellenbach, 

this rural microschool currently serves 10 children. 

104 

That journey has been deeply rewarding for Dellenbach. 

She quickly connected with other local homeschooling 

families, forming deep friendships and gathering regularly 

for shared learning experiences. 

Then last year she was at a crossroads. She felt the financial 

need to re-enter the workforce and thought about 

taking on a role as a substitute teacher in the local school 

district. “Living on one income is difficult. I mean, that’s 

a sacrifice that you do as a homeschooling parent,” said 

Dellenbach. 

But a dear friend of hers, Dalena Wallace, who is also a 

homeschooling mom, saw things differently. Rather than 

teaching elsewhere, Dellenbach should open her own 

school, Wallace urged. 

“She had a vision for me before I did,” said Dellenbach. “As 

I let that idea sink in, I began to get excited about what it 

would be like to be an educator that could teach however 

they wanted in an environment that they wanted without 

all the constraints of the public school. And that got 

me really excited again about teaching, which is what I 

believe I was really born to do.” 

The atmosphere in Dellenbach’s microschool is calm and 

nurturing. Classical music plays in the background. Light 

streams through the large windows. There are cozy nooks, 

comfortable couches and rustic tables and chairs. A fire 

glows in the living room fireplace. 

Dellenbach currently charges $25 a day per student, which includes drop-off instructional time, enrichment and curriculum 

support from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm. It also includes a nutritious, homemade lunch that Dellenbach prepares. 

Her program is currently offered one day a week but will be growing to three days a week this fall. Dellenbach tried 

to price her program based on what local families could afford, and she offers flexible options, but $25 a day is still 

financially out of reach for many families. 

School choice policies that enable education funding to follow students can help to make programs like Re*Wild 

more accessible to more families. Expansive education savings account (ESA) programs, such as those recently created 

in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Utah and West 

Virginia, enable families to find the right educational fit 

for their children. 

Last month, the Kansas legislature also passed a 

major school choice bill that would provide an ESA up 

to $5,000 per student each year to use on approved 

tuition expenses, as well as tutoring and related fees. 

If the bill included microschools like Dellenbach’s, that 

amount would enable families to attend her program at 

no cost. 

“I definitely think it would take down so many boundaries 

and limitations financially,” said Dellenbach about 

school choice policies. “Even the amount that I charge 

is still difficult so I’d love for them to have the freedom 

and finances to come here. Also, for students who have significant disabilities, like dyslexia, tutoring outside of the 

public school system can be very expensive as well. So just all of that would be so much more accessible with the 

financial help.” 

School choice policies would also catalyze the growth of education entrepreneurship and increase the supply of various 

education options, including in rural areas like Abbyville. More educators would have the opportunity to create 

small schools and similar programs that serve the distinct needs of their community. School choice not only empowers 

parents and learners, it empowers teachers too. “I’ve already met with some teachers who are eager to get out of 

the current system,” said Dellenbach. “They love the teaching, but it’s the system that they want to leave.” 

Even without school choice policies, everyday entrepreneurs like Dellenbach are expanding learning options for families 

living in rural areas. With school choice, these options would be even more diverse and abundant. 

105



Education advocates in Kansas are committed to encouraging entrepreneurship and promoting greater access to 

new learning models. “The trend of educational decentralization has only accelerated since the pandemic and Kansas 

should be doing more to encourage this kind of innovation,” said James Franko, president of Kansas Policy Institute, a 

Wichita-based think tank that supports student-focused education. “Everything from the ESA and other choice programs 

in the legislature to zoning or simply knowledge of existing non-conventional educational opportunities is essential 

to making sure that our kids have a chance at educational excellence.” 

Dellenbach is optimistic, not only for the ongoing growth of her small program, but also for the positive educational 

changes she sees emerging in Kansas and across the country. “The whole landscape of education is changing,” she said. 

“It’s exciting because I know parents and teachers alike have been frustrated for so long.” 

To hear more about Dellenbach’s experience running a rural microschool, listen to our recent podcast conversation: 

https://www.liberatedpodcast.com/podcast/episode/39483646/rural-microschools-why-a-former-public-school-teachercreated-a-microschool-in-her-small-kansas-town 



106 

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Shawn O’Dell 

Mar. 1, 2023 

A LOCAL HOME SCHOOL CO-OP TALKS ABOUT HOMESCHOOLING 

https://www.newschannel6now.com/2023/03/01/local-home-school-co-op-talks-about-homeschooling/ 

Cameron B. Gunnoe 

Mar. 1, 2023 

HOUSE REJECTS AMENDMENT RESTRICTING RIGHTS OF HOMESCHOOLING 

PARENTS 

https://www.lootpress.com/house-rejects-amendment-restricting-rights-of-homeschooling-parents/ 

Dave Dentel 

March 14, 2023 

HOMESCHOOL GRAD BLAZES TRAIL TO BECOME TOP EXECUTIVE’S 

BODYGUARD 

https://hslda.org/post/homeschool-grad-blazes-trail-to-become-top-executive-s-bodyguard?utm_ 

source=Weekly+Update&utm_campaign=3-15-2023&utm_id=HSLDA 

HSLDA 


Libby Cathey 


HOMESCHOOLING WITH ASL: CREATE SPACE FOR YOUR UNIQUE 

LEARNER TO THRIVE | EP.104 

104?utm_source=Weekly+Update&utm_campaign=3-15-2023&utm_id=HSLDA 

SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS SIGNS SWEEPING EDUCATION BILL, TO PRAISE 

AND PROTESTS 

Dave Dentel 

April 03, 2023 

HOMESCHOOL ARCHERS OVERCOME FIRE ANTS AND STOLEN GEAR TO 

CLAIM STATE TITLE 

https://hslda.org/post/homeschooling-with-asl-create-space-for-your-unique-learner-to-thrive-ep- 

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sarah-huckabee-sanders-signs-sweeping-education-bill-praise/story?id=97708033 

https://hslda.org/post/homeschool-archers-overcome-fire-ants-and-stolen-gear-to-claim-state-title?utm_source=Weekly+Update&utm_campaign=4-5-2023&utm_id=HSLDA 

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other articles 

MAINE’S RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS’ ‘HANDS ARE TIED’ EVEN AFTER SUPREME COURT RULING OPENING 

DOOR TO STATE TUITION FUNDING 

The Lion - Perspectives and News for the American Family, Educators, and Leaders (readlion.com) 

NEW STYLE OF COLLEGE ENVISIONED BY MIT PROFESSORS 

Five professors at Massachusetts Institute of Technology are proposing a new style of college that incorporates the new 

technology used during the pandemic with an emphasis on work skills. The new model also would rely less on a big campus 

and make use of curriculum from other schools. 

N.Y. UPS AGE LIMIT FOR SPECIAL-EDUCATION SERVICES 

As schools gear up to help students bridge learning gaps that resulted from pandemic-related education interruptions, 

lawmakers in New York have passed state legislation to help students with disabilities access much-needed services. 

Under the measure, students who would have aged out of services at 21 can now access those services until age 23. Full 

Story: WRGB-TV (Albany, N.Y.) (9/10) 

EPA DOUBLES MONEY FOR ELECTRIC SCHOOL BUSES AS DEMAND SOARS 

By Carl Weinschenk 

STATE AND LOCAL EDUCATION NEWS 

School report cards out Thursday; change from letter grade to star system 

DAYTON DAILY NEWS 

For the first time in two years, school districts will receive a rating when state report cards are released Thursday, but it 

will look different than years past — the Ohio legislature changed the school report card rating system from A-F grades 

to a 1-5 stars system. The last time schools were given a grade was the 2018-2019 school year. The state said it would be 

unfair to schools to grade them in the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years amid COVID disruptions. Schools still will be 

evaluated on how well their students are doing on state tests, reading proficiency in kindergarten through third grade, 

graduation rates, how students are progressing year over year, how well schools are able to close gaps for underprivileged 

students such as English language learners or disabled students, and how ready a student is to enter the workforce, college 

or the military after graduation. 

97 MILLION TIKTOK VIEWS = 1 YEAR OF PAY FROM YOUR DAY JOB 

By Carl Weinschenk 

https://apnews.com/article/business-education-pollution-air-quality-climate-and-environment-ad9dc72b1ad662dfb618fcc317728f27 

https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/97-million-tiktok-views-1-year-of-pay-from-your-day-job?utm_term=61627431- 

9B44-4420-8791-699678DD7F98&utm_campaign=AC59823B-4C3C-4F57-8D2A-7EDD2B31AA42&utm_medium=email&utm_ 

content=A482D203-3A35-4433-8A2B-31F83D79A148&utm_source=SmartBrief 

MIT PROFESSORS PROPOSE A NEW KIND OF UNIVERSITY FOR POST-COVID ERA 

By Jeffrey R. Young Sep 28, 2022 

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2022-09-28-mit-professors-propose-a-new-kind-of-university-for-post-covid-era 

https://www.dea.gov/stories/2022/2022-02/2022-02-16/fentanyl-deaths-climbing-dea-washington-continues-fight 

HURRICANE IAN CAUSES 2.5M STUDENTS TO MISS SCHOOL 

About 2.5 million students across Florida have missed at least one day of 

school due to Hurricane Ian, with 1.7 million missing three days or more. 

Officials say they are concerned about lost instructional time and ask for 

patience as they prepare to reopen as soon as possible. Full Story: Tampa 

Bay Times (St. Petersburg, Fla.) (tiered subscription model) (9/29), National 

Public Radio (9/29) 

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PAMELA CLARK, FOUNDER/EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AT 

NEW HEIGHTS EDUCATIONAL GROUP 

GREAT COMPANIES: HOW DID YOU GET YOUR IDEA OR CONCEPT FOR THE BUSINESS? CONCEPT FOR THE BUSINESS? 

Pamela Clark: Originally, I was a home school mom and other moms would come to me for advice. Then after homeschooling 

for about four years, I learned about charter schools. I became a parent leader for a charter school for some time. During 

that time, I helped many families from all school backgrounds. I 

advocated for families to receive a fair education. Once I discovered 

that families needed to cooperate, especially in educating children 

with learning difficulties such as ADHD, bipolar disorder, autism, 

and neurological disorders. When I left the charter school I had a 

meeting with a few moms I had served. One of the first things I told 

them was that I wanted to create a group that helps all families. I 

had served so many families from multiple school backgrounds at 

this time, I didn’t understand the strict lines drawn by those in the 

education system. Everyone pays taxes whether they have children 

in public school, yet there was minimal, or no support offered to the 

homeschoolers asking for access to the art, music, and other programs. 

Charter school students receive help only from the charter 

they belong too, and traditional schools only care about the students 

in their classrooms. I didn’t want to combine them into one 

school but truly believe that everyone willing to work for it deserves a fair and equal education. NHEG wants families to 

reach their dreams and goals. When a family and student reach their full potential, we all benefit as a society. 

GREAT COMPANIES: WHAT ARE THE VARIOUS SERVICES PROVIDED BY NEW HEIGHTS EDUCATIONAL GROUP? 

Pamela Clark: New Heights Educational Group is the first one-stop-shop in education. 

NHEG has served over 550,000 students via online services and courses via its site and affiliate and partner sites. I lead 

a team of 73 volunteers who research advancements, provide training to teachers and tutors, create courses and tutor 

students. The organization has many internal departments including education, research, graphics, photography, HR, 

social media and marketing, proofreading/editing, authors/writers/script writers, comic book, production management for 

magazine, content builders, internet radio show/podcast, accounting and more. 

NHEG provides fill-in-the-gap tutoring to reach students who have been left behind by traditional schools. It offers classes, 

an educational magazine called the NHEG EDGuide and the E.A.S.YToons comic books that has over 100,540 Views. 

The organization has published two books: Unraveling Reading and Unraveling Science. Both books are part of the Unraveling 

series, which provides strategies to parents, teachers and tutors to help them support children’s learning processes. 

The series will include a book for each subject. One Nonprofit’s Journey to Success, written by an NHEG volunteer, was 

released worldwide in March 2015 and tells the organization’s story. NHEG’s internet radio show, New Heights Show on 

Education, has had over 357,841 listens and is on 29 networks and became a syndicated show in 2019. 

NHEG and its partners/affiliates offer over 1,200 low-cost and high-quality courses on its website, and it makes national 

and international leadership opportunities available to its students. 

In 2020, NHEG grew its reach by over 90,000 people. In 2021, through new partnerships with Stack Social, Skillwise, 

National CSI Camp, Citizen Goods and The Hip Hop Healthy Heart Program for Children and Natural Born Leaders, it has 

more than tripled its previous course offerings with the over 1,280 free and discounted unique courses mentioned above 

and another 284 classroom resources for all subject matters. The in-person reading program switched to an online reading 

program with the help of one of NHEG’s partners (The 2nd & 7 Foundation), and it went from a 2-tier to a 5-tier reading 

program within the last year. 

GREAT COMPANIES: WHAT MAKES NEW HEIGHTS EDUCATIONAL GROUP DIFFERENT FROM HUNDREDS OF OTHER SIMILAR 

SERVICE PROVIDERS? 

Pamela Clark: NHEG is the only organization that offers a range of educational services and resources under one business. 

We excel at it; we are the best in the world at it. This is proven by the many awards and recognition the organization has 

won since its creation and the many families that have benefited from this dream. 

GREAT COMPANIES: WHAT ARE THE STRUGGLES AND CHALLENGES YOU FACE? 

Pamela Clark: Every step of the way there has been struggles and challenges. It is a struggle to reach those in the educational 

system that see us as a threat instead of what the organization can do for the community. Many in power have 

biased thinking and keep us a secret from the families in need of our services. Instead, they send families to for-profit 

businesses that they can’t afford and, in turn, cause more difficulties for these very families; it’s a vicious cycle. 

Funding is our biggest roadblock; everything NHEG has built, all the work it has done is yet to be fully funded. It would cost 

$457,567.00 to fund the first year of the organization’s entire dream. That amount is less than is spent on two school dropouts 

over a lifetime of receiving public assistance, and yet NHEG struggles to receive funding. It is very frustrating. 

Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What do 5 years down the line look like for New Heights Educational 

Group? 

Pamela Clark: NHEG envisions building a computer lab and learning center 

Purpose: The lab and learning center will provide a space for academic research, academic studies, school assignments, 

educational planning, testing and tutoring services and other educational options. The lab can be used by families with 

students enrolled in any type of school or afterschool programs, for homeschool resources and as a teaching space for 

themed co-op/enrichment classes. The facilities will enable NHEG to teach, assist and provide technology resources to 

families for self-learning. 

Genealogy program - NHEG is looking to create a genealogy program with the goal of building students’ self-esteem and 

further connecting them to their community and country. 

NHEG GED Program / Testing Site and implementing a sensory room for those with disabilities and creating a daycare for 

young mothers and fathers. 

Creation of a sensory room in the hopes of reaching students with disabilities/special needs. This is very important for 

those with special needs and can open a new world for these students and their families. 

Support for Teenage Parents 

NHEG works with many teen parents that are struggling with the traditional education settings. Those that have children 

while still in high school or college, can still have a successful life if they have access to a support system. They are encouraged 

and treated with fairness and respect. NHEG recognizes the value of self-esteem and works towards building theirs 

by listening to their dreams and helping them achieve them. The organization provides a support system with affordable 

child-care, fun activities and learning opportunities, promotes student leadership, and teaches them to value themselves, 

so they can continue their educational endeavors. NHEG excels at providing this support that helps them reach their goals 

and this must be done if we want to effect change in society. 

GREAT COMPANIES: IF YOU HAD ONE PIECE OF ADVICE TO SOMEONE JUST STARTING OUT, WHAT WOULD IT BE? 

Pamela Clark: Don’t just start a business, start a passion. If starting a charity, find someone in your community doing 

something similar and volunteer for a while. Never think of any job as beneath you; do everything and learn everything, so 

you can mentor others. 

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LOUISANA CORNBREAD DRESSING RECIPE 

Ingredients 

• The Cornbread: 

• 3 tablespoons bacon drippings or butter 

• 2 large eggs 

• 1-1/2 cups corn meal 

• 1 teaspoon salt 

• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 

• 1 teaspoon baking powder 

• 1-1/4 cups buttermilk 

• The Dressing: 

• 1 9x13-inch pan of cornbread, crumbled 

• 10 pieces white or whole wheat bread, heels are good (left out overnight) 

• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 

• 3 large stalks celery, chopped 

• 1 large onion, chopped (2-1/2 to 3 cups) 

• 1 large green pepper, chopped 

• 3/4 cup butter (1-1/2 sticks) 

• 4 cups chicken broth, canned or homemade 

• 3 large eggs, slightly beaten 

• 2 tsp poultry seasoning 

• 1/2 tsp rubbed sage 

Directions 

1. Preheat oven to 450°F. Put the bacon drippings/butter in a 9x13-inch baking dish and put it in the oven while it is 

preheating. It will melt while you’re mixing up the batter. 

2. Preheat oven to 375°F. Crumble the cornbread and white bread into a very large baking dish or pan (This is the 

pan you will cook your dressing in, and you need room to stir it while it’s cooking). Combine the vegetables with 

the bread crumbs and mix well. Melt the butter and add it and the beaten eggs, chicken broth and stir. (You may 

need a little more chicken broth – its better if it’s too moist than too dry; the uncooked dressing should be a little 

on the slushy side.) Add poultry seasoning, rubbed sage, black pepper, and mix thoroughly. 

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PATO TIM (STEWED WHOLE DUCK) RECIPE 

Ingredients 

• 1 whole duck, dressed 

• 1 liter Sprite or 7 up 

• 1/2 cup brown sugar 

• 1 tsp salt 

• 5 cloves garlic 

• 3 bay leaves 

• 1 tsp peppercorns, crushed 

• 1/2 cup onion leaves (cut into 1 inch long) 

• lemon grass 

• 1 can pineapple tid bits 

• 2 pcs carrots 

GOOD STUFF DESSERT (A CHOCOLATE PUDDING TRIFLE) RECIPE 

Ingredients 

• 1 cup chopped pecans 

• 1 1/2 cups flour 

• 3/4 cup melted butter 

• 1 8-ounce cream cheese, softened 

• 1 cup powdered sugar 

• 12-ounce container frozen whipped topping, thawed and divided 

(such as Cool Whip) 

• 1 3.9-ounce box chocolate instant pudding (4 ½ cup serving size) 

• 1 3.4-ounce box vanilla instant pudding (4 ½ cup serving size) 

• 3 1/2 cups cold milk 

• Optional toppings: shaved chocolate, chocolate non-pareils, 

Directions 

Directions 

1. Stuff duck with lemon grass. 

2. Mix remaining ingredients in a pot and cook duck over medium heat. 

3. Cook until duck is tender. Simmer until sprite mixture thickens. 

4. You can add a cup of coconut vinegar (Tuba) if you are using Sprite/7 Up and wants your Patotin have a reddish 

color 

5. You can also use Coke instead of Sprite/7 Up. Don’t add Tuba as Coke will already give your dish a redish tint. 

6. Don’t cook over high heat especially towards the last part of cooking. This may make your sauce bitter. 

7. Adjust measurements according to your taste preference 

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F. 

2. Mix together pecans, flour and melted butter. Press evenly into a 9” x 13” baking pan or dish. Bake 20 minutes 

until lightly golden brown. Cool on wire rack to room temperature, then chill until ready to add cream cheese 

layer. 

3. Beat cream cheese with powdered sugar til well blended. Fold in 1 1/2 cups of the whipped topping. Spread mixture 

onto cooled crust and refrigerate while preparing pudding filling. 

4. Combine chocolate and vanilla pudding mixes with cold milk in mixing bowl. Mix 2 minutes until well blended. 

Spread mixture evenly on top of cream cheese layer. 

5. Smooth enough of remaining whipped topping over top to make a layer about 1/2 inch thick. 

6. Refrigerate 4 hours or overnight before serving. Sprinkle servings with any of the optional toppings. 

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PIONEER WOMAN’S CHICKEN STREET TACOS (GLUTEN FREE) RECIPE 

Ingredients 

• 6 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into pieces 

• 2 Tbs. olive oil 

• 3 garlic cloves, minced 

• 1 onion, chopped 

• 2 Tbs. chili powder 

• 2 tsp. paprika 

• 1 Tbs. cumin powder 

• Salt and pepper, to taste 

• 1 Tbs. taco seasoning 

• 14 oz. can tomato sauce 

• 1/2 cup water (or more) 

• 1 pkg. corn tortillas 

• 1-2 cups shredded cheese 

• Tomatoes, diced (or salsa) 

• Fresh cilantro, chopped 

• Sour cream or salsa ranch 

Directions 

1. Cut the chicken breasts into small pieces and set aside. Dice the onion into small pieces. Heat a large saute 

pan to high heat. Add the olive oil to the pan. Add the chicken pieces to the pan. Let the chicken pieces 

heat in the oil, until it’s golden brown. Toss the chicken and continue to cook on the other side. Add the 

onions and seasonings and continue to saute. Turn the heat down to medium heat and then add the 

tomato sauce and water to the mixture. Simmer the chicken until it thickens and the chicken is cooked 

through. 

2. For the tacos, heat a griddle to medium heat. Place several corn tortillas onto the griddle. Add some shredded 

cheese on to the tortillas. Add some chicken onto the tortilla. Once the cheese is melted, remove the 

tacos from the griddle. Serve with chopped cilantro, tomatoes, salsa, etc. If you like a creamy aspect to 

your tacos, mix together ranch and salsa and serve the tacos with this sauce. 

MOROCCAN POACHED PEARS WITH PRUNES (GLUTEN FREE) RECIPE 

Ingredients 

• 1-1/4 C granulated sugar 

• 1/2 a navel orange, skin on, sliced 1/2 an inch thick 

• 1 3-inch stick of cinnamon 

• 1 large clove 

• 1 small bay leaf 

• 1 Tbs fresh lemon juice 

• 4 to 6 Bartlett or Bosc pears 

• 12 pitted prunes 

• 8 C water 

Directions 

1. Combine the water, sugar, orange slices,cinnamon stick, clove, bay leaf and lemon juice in a large saucepan. Bring 

to a boil. Remove from the heat. 

2. Meanwhile, using an apple corer or long thin knife, remove the core from the bottom of one pear, but do not pierce 

the top of the pear and keep the stem intact 

3. Peel the pear and add to the sauce pan 

4. Repeat with the remaining pears 

5. Return the pan to the stove and set over medium heat 

6. Add the prunes and simmer about 20 minutes - until the pears are tender, but not soft. 

7. Remove the pan from the heat and allow to cool slightly 

8. With a slotted spoon, carefully remove the pears and prunes to a bowl 

9. Boil the remaining syrup over medium-high heat until reduced to 1 1/2 Cs - about 15 minutes 

10. Strain the syrup over the pears and prunes 

11. Cover and refrigerate 

12. Prior to serving, return the pears to room temperature 

13. SERVE with a light cookie or a dollop of real vanilla bean custard 

https://cookeatshare.com 

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NHEG EDGuide-May-June 2023

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