EUGENE, Ore. – Oregon students posted the worst graduation rate in the country for the class of 2013, moving down the list from number 46 last year.

Idaho was the only state to rank below Oregon’s 69 percent on-time graduation rate for students in 2013, simply because that state could not calculate its graduation rate, according recently released U.S. Department of Education data cited by OregonLive.com.

Oregon was ranked 46th  for its percent of graduates for 2012, with Nevada ranked last and three states that could not provide accurate figures.

“Nevada improved its rate from 63 percent in 2012 to 71 percent in 2013, leaving Oregon far behind,” according to the news site. “After Oregon, the next-worse rate for the class of 2013 was in New Mexico, where 70 percent of students earned a diploma.”

Oregon’s dismal graduation rate is due mostly to pockets of students in certain areas that failed to graduate high school in four years, including “low-income students in Portland Public Schools, 43 percent of whom did not graduate in four years; Eugene students not in the gifted and talented program (38 percent did not graduate); low income students in Beaverton (38 percent); low income students in Salem-Keizer (36 percent); and male students in Portland Public Schools (36 percent),” Oregon Live reports.

Oregon education officials contend part of the state’s graduation rate problem is how it’s calculated, so they intend on changing those definitions to boost its numbers. Next year, state officials will include special education students who earn modified diplomas, as well as students who delay graduation to remain in high school to attend community college at public expense – two factors that when combined could increase the graduation rate by as much as 3 percent, though that won’t be enough to move it up the list.

“If Oregon’s graduation rate for the class of 2013 had been 3 percentage points higher, by including special ed graduates and students who had earned diplomas but deferred receiving them, the state’s graduation rate still would have been in the national basement,” according to the news site.

For 2013 graduates, an additional 3 percentage points would put Oregon tied with Georgia for the third-worst graduation rate in America, Oregon Live reports.

The news site points to another factor that is also likely playing into Oregon’s graduation problems: chronic student absenteeism. Previous reports by The Oregonian show the Beaver State was the fourth-worst in the nation for students with more than 10 absences per year, with only Oklahoma, New Mexico and Montana with more chronically absent students.

But there is at least one school district in the state that’s showing schools can effectively improve graduation rates of low-income students, which seem to be the least likely to graduate on time.

“Oregon’s best on-time graduation rate for low-income student in a school or district with at least 400 low-income graduates was in Hillsboro, where 74 percent of them earned diplomas in four years,” Oregon Live reports.

“The Oregonian has written many times about Hillsboro’s highly effective approach to monitoring students who are frequently absent and using a multi-agency ‘care team’ to help keep students in school and on track to graduate.”

via Oregon has lowest on-time graduation rate in the country – EAGnews.org.

By Michael Snyder

When you want to discover what an organization is really all about, it is important to dig down to the roots.  And when you uncover the roots of the Bilderberg Group, you find some very unsettling things.  It turns out that the Bilderberg Group has had Nazi connections from the very beginning, and it continues to advance the agenda of the Nazis to this very day.  This year, the Bilderberg Group is meeting from June 11th to June 14th at the Interalpen Hotel which is near the city of Telfs, Austria.  This organization has so much power that even several days before the event police are keeping everyone (including reporters) 10 kilometers away from the hotel.  If this is just a group of private citizens getting together to chat about world issues, why all the security?  What is so special about this group of people that rates such extraordinary measures?  And why are they so bound and determined to keep all of the rest of us away from them?

During World War II, the Nazi effort to unite all of Europe (and ultimately the rest of the world) through war failed miserably.  When the war ended, those that believed in that dream decided that another approach would be necessary.  Instead of war, a united Europe dominated by Germany would be achieved through international treaties and diplomacy.  In 1957, the European Economic Community was established, and it began with just six countries: Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany.  Since that time, it has expanded to 28 nations and has become known as “the European Union”.

The idea for the common currency that the European Union uses today, the euro, was conceived and developed by the Bilderberg Group.  This organization has always been at the forefront of European unity, but most people have no idea where it came from.

Well, the truth is that the Bilderberg Group first met in 1954, and one of the key founders of the group was Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.  Not only was he a founder, Prince Bernhard actually served as the organization’s chairman until 1976.  So why is this important?  Most people do not realize this, but Prince Bernhard actually belonged to the Nazi Party at one time.  The following is an excerpt from an article that appeared in the Telegraph…

“Bernhard, a secret history” has revealed that the prince was a member of the German Nazi party until 1934, three years before he married Princess Juliana, the future queen of the Netherlands.

Annejet van der Zijl, a Dutch historian, has found membership documents in Berlin’s Humboldt University that prove Prince Bernhard, who studied there, had joined Deutsche Studentenschaft, a National Socialist student fraternity, as well as the Nazi NSDAP and its paramilitary wing, the Sturmabteilung.

He left all the groups on leaving university in December 1934, when he went to work for the German chemical giant, IG Farben.

And Prince Bernhard’s association with IG Farben also links him to the Nazis.  The following comes from a book entitled “The Nazi Hydra In America” by Glen Yeadon…

“The Bilderberg group, founded by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, held its first meeting in 1954.  The prince, a former officer in the SS, had worked in IG Farben’s notorious NW7 group, which served as spies for the Third Reich.  Bernhard belonged to the Dutch branch of the Knights Templar.  In 1954, he was appointed to govern the Dutch order.  John Foster Dulles was one of the most helpful Americans in setting up the Bilderberg group.  Incidentally, in 1954 Dulles testified in favor of a bill designed to return vested enemy assets, such as GAF, to their previous owners.”

As the quote above just pointed out, John Foster Dulles was instrumental in helping the Bilderberg Group get established.  His brother, Allen Dulles, was responsible for Operation Paperclip which enabled large numbers of Nazi scientists (among others) to come into the United States and start working for the U.S. government in various capacities.  Allen Dulles was so passionate about this program that it continued even when two presidents tried to shut it down…

Dulles’ CIA Operation Paperclip assimilated Nazi scientists into the American establishment by obscuring their histories and preventing efforts to bring their true stories to light. The project was led by officers in the United States Army. Although the program officially ended in September 1947, those officers and others carried out a conspiracy until the mid-1950s that bypassed both law and presidential directive to keep Operation Paperclip going. Neither Presidents Truman nor Eisenhower were informed that their instructions were ignored.

The “godfather” of the Bilderberg Group is a former U.S. Secretary of State named Henry Kissinger.  He has attended the gathering almost every single year, and he will be there once again in 2015.  This is a man that is so committed to globalization that he even wrote a book entitled “World Order“.  But what hardly anyone knows is that he actually discussed overthrowing the West German government with a group of “disgruntled Nazis” back in the 1970s…

A German academic has unearthed evidence showing former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once discussed a coup with disgruntled Nazis to overthrow the West German government in the 1970s.

Kissinger and Richard Nixon were aggrieved at the left-leaning government of the day’s burgeoning friendship with the hardline East German government.

Kissinger became the contact man for a secret spy network made up of old Nazis and elite aristocrats aimed at torpedoing the plans formulated by Chancellor Willy Brandt.

The guys behind this movement have been at it for a very long time.

And they are still advancing the values and principles at the heart of the Nazi movement to this very day.  The following are just a few examples of this…

Just like the Nazis, they advocate for highly centralized national governments that are heavily socialized.

Just like the Nazis, they are deeply committed to globalization.  The Nazis sought to establish their empire through war, while these guys seek to do it through diplomacy and negotiation.

Just like the Nazis, they believe in strict gun control for the general population, centralized government-controlled education and the removal of organized religion (especially Christianity) from public life.

Just like the Nazis, they believe that they are the elite of the world, they are anti-Israel, and they believe in using military power to advance their cause when necessary.

And just like the Nazis, they are deeply committed to eugenics and population control.  These days, they use language that is more “politically correct”, but most of them are absolutely convinced that the number one problem in our world is overpopulation.  For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled “46 Population Control Quotes That Show How Badly The Elite Want To Wipe Us All Out“.

Of course nobody associated with the Bilderberg Group would ever use the word “Nazi” to describe themselves.  That term has become so associated with evil that nobody wants anything to do with it.  But the values and the principles of the Nazis endure in organizations such as the Bilderberg Group.

The ultimate goal, of course, is a one world government that dominates the entire planet.

Let us hope and pray that they are never able to achieve that.

Michael T. Snyder is a columnist, author, and publisher at End Of The American Dream.

by Cevin Soling

From the Director of the Acclaimed Documentary ‘The War on Kids’:

REVOLUTIONARY GUIDE FOR KIDS TO REBEL AGAINST THEIR SCHOOL

–Author reveals how children can reclaim their civil rights

“Learning without liberty is always in vein.” – John F. Kennedy

School’s out – civil disobedience is in.

Cevin Soling, the director of ‘The War on Kids,’ a provocative documentary that reveals how American public schools have become modeled after prisons, has just released an equally thought-provoking, engaging work, The Student Resistance Handbook.

“The main lesson taught in schools does not come from a textbook – it is for students to always obey authority,” says Soling. “Everything else that takes place in school is secondary. There are adverse consequences to being powerless and captive in this environment including depression, anxiety, stress, and aggressive behavior. Teaching children to resist is not simply essential for their development – it is humane.”

The Student Resistance Handbook maps out how children can effectively fight back against their school, reversing its course as an oppressive institution that denies them their most basic civil rights. Soling illustrates how staging such a coup to fight for their liberties is the only way to attain a real education, one that honors, rather than hinders, those rights. The Student Resistance Handbook presents legal, non-violent tactics designed to disrupt the operation of school and substantially increase costs involved in its operation. Ultimately the book is designed to give those who work for and support schools a dose of their own medicine – a level of misery that students suffer on a daily basis.

“Those who expect students to willingly endure compulsory schooling, and the associated deprivation of rights and assault on dignity, have no regard for the human spirit and no respect for the souls of children,” adds Soling.

Controversial, rousing and rebellious, The Student Resistance Handbook reveals that:

• Children are harmed by forcing them to adapt to autocratic environments
• The struggle for liberty is a basic instinct and noble pursuit
• Everything taught in school is irrelevant and repellant to a population that is held against their will. Ultimately, this adversely affects children’s interest in learning
• Schools are the reason children do not effectively learn anything
• Schools are factories of human rights abuses
• The oppressive environment is a catalyst for antisocial behavior including bullying
• Everyone who supports compulsory schooling or works in a compulsory school is guilty of a kind of child abuse

Cevin Soling is the director of the acclaimed documentary ‘The War on Kids’, winner of the best educational documentary award at the New York Independent Film and Video Festival, receiving accolades from The New York Times, Variety, and The Huffington Post. He was featured as a guest on the Colbert Report, and the film was broadcasted internationally on The Sundance Channel. Soling regularly lectures and writes about the human rights abuses of compulsory education. He has a degree in Education Policy and Management from Harvard University.

Learn more about The Student Resistance Handbook at www.studentresistance.com and connect on Facebook.

The Student Resistance Handbook can be purchased from www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com and through all major booksellers

By John Lyon –

LITTLE ROCK — A group that opposes the Common Core State Standards is telling parents it is their right to boycott standardized tests aligned with Common Core — but officials in at least one Arkansas school district say refusing to take the tests could have severe consequences.

This spring, Arkansas schools for the first time will administer tests that are aligned with the Common Core standards, which the state has gradually implemented over the past three school years. The tests were developed by a coalition of states, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC.

Grace Lewis of Mount Vernon, chairman of Arkansas Against Common Core, said the group is not calling for a boycott of the PARCC tests, but it has heard from parents who want to keep their children out of the tests.

“We tell them that’s completely their right to do that,” she said.

But Cabot School District officials say the tests are mandated by state law and that students can be held back a grade or kept from graduating if they refuse to take them.

“We’ve already started getting calls from parents about the PARCC assessments that will be coming up in spring … saying ‘my kid is not going to take that test,’ … for whatever reason they might have,” Cabot Superintendent Tony Thurman said during a Dec. 16 Cabot School Board meeting.

Thurman said students in grades 3-8 who refuse to take the tests could be “retained” at their current grade level in the following school year.

Linda Payne, director of professional development and testing for the district, said at the same meeting that high school students can be denied credits needed to graduate if they have refused the PARCC assessments.

“The law says you cannot receive graduation credit, or graduate, if you have not taken the test,” she said.

Payne cited Arkansas Code Annotated 6-15-2009, which states in part, “A student in grades three through eight identified as not passing a benchmark assessment and who fails to participate in the subsequent academic improvement plan shall be retained and shall not be promoted to the next appropriate grade” until the student either is deemed to have participated in the academic improvement plan or has passed the benchmark assessment.

The law also states, “A student who is identified as not meeting the requisite scale score for a general end-of-course assessment shall not receive academic credit on his or her transcript for the course related to the general end-of-course assessment until the student is identified as having participated in remediation through an individualized academic improvement plan.”

Cabot school officials also said parents cannot simply keep their children home on testing day to avoid the PARCC tests, because a student who is absent on testing day can still take the test at any time in the next six weeks.

The Arkansas News Bureau asked state Department of Education officials whether school districts have the authority to hold students back a grade or deny them the credits needed to graduate if they refuse to participate in the PARCC tests. The officials noted that the language of Arkansas Code Annotated 6-15-2009 has been written into Education Department rules.

Department spokeswoman Kimberly Friedman declined to comment on whether Cabot officials are interpreting the rules correctly,

“It’s a local district issue,” she said.

Payne told the Arkansas News Bureau last week she stands by her comments at the Dec. 16 meeting. Thurman did not return calls Tuesday and Wednesday seeking comment.

Lewis said she has heard from parents across the state who said they told their superintendents that their children would not be taking the PARCC test and were not told that the students would be held back or prevented from graduating.

“If I had a child in (the Cabot) district, I would still go forward with opting my child out and standing up against the system,” she said.

Common Core was initiated by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers and later embraced by President Barack Obama, whose administration allowed states to receive extra points in the competition for Race to the Top grant program if they adopted Common Core or other college and career readiness standards.

Forty-five states initially adopted Common Core, but lawmakers who oppose the standards in a number of those states, including Arkansas, have advocated repealing them. In June, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin signed legislation repealing the Common Core standards in that state.

Supporters of the standards say they seek to ensure that a child does not receive an inferior education because of where he or she happens to live. Opponents say Common Core opens the door to a federal takeover of education and that the PARCC assessments could become a venue for intrusive data collection.

“It’s what it could lead to,” Lewis said. “You’re going to be losing privacy.”

Debbie Jones, the state Education Department’s assistant commissioner of learning services, told the Arkansas News Bureau in a recent interview that the department collects only “minimal” information on students and never shares with the federal government or anyone else information that could identify individual students.

via Arkansas Schools May See Boycott Of Tests Aligned With Common Core | Times Record.