The totalitarian-minded education establishment and its extreme left-wing allies are starting to freak out as conservatives abandon futile efforts to “reform” government schools in favor of a mass-exodus strategy. Even powerful union bosses are starting to panic.

The trend has been building quietly for years. But it has accelerated rapidly in recent months as a trickle of families fleeing the system became a tidal wave amid face-mask edicts, vaccine mandates, Critical Race Theory, Marxist indoctrination, extreme “sex education,” and other controversies.

The first major shoe to drop in response came on September 30, when the fringe left-wing magazine New Republic released a major article claiming Republicans were now out to destroy the public-school system instead of “reform” it.

“Republicans Don’t Want to Reform Public Education. They Want to End It,” blared the headline in the far-left magazine, famous for lying about and even praising the mass-murdering Soviet dictatorship. “Florida’s recent struggles over masks in schools augur a terrifying shift in the right’s approach to education policy.”

According to the article, conservatives are increasingly abandoning the idea of “reforming” public schools. Instead, the article argues, the new approach is to get as many children as possible out of the system and into private schools or homeschooling.

The article begins by examining a speech by Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran at Hillsdale College. Corcoran noted, correctly, that education will be the key to winning other issues, too. But Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the article claims, is at the helm of pursuing the strategy to destroy government education.

“Trading in the decades-old, substantially bipartisan education reform agenda, a formula that was born in Florida, he is mustering a naked attack on the very existence of public schools,” the magazine claimed, arguing that this shift is taking place in the broader Republican Party in general as well.

And bigwigs of the trillion-dollar-per-year “education” regime are getting nervous. For instance, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) boss Randi Weingarten, who is quoted in the New Republic article, blurted out her concerns on Twitter.

“This isn’t just about masks or about Governor DeSantis’ political aspirations,” she said as state-level union bosses parroted her comments as well. “It’s about the complete destabilization of public education so that parents will choose private schools.”

And it is true: Conservative leaders nationwide are increasingly advocating an exit from government schools altogether. Just this weekend, conservative heavyweight Candace Owens urged parents to remove their children from government schools on Fox News.

“Pull your children out of public schools,” Owens told the cable network on Sunday. “The time is now, remove your children from these indoctrination camps, they’re not learning to be smart,  they’re not focused on hard academics, they are being brainwashed and and systematically controlled and what they want to produce, by the way, are failures.”

Before that, Evangelical leader Franklin Graham, conservative pundit Dennis Prager, talk-radio titan Rush Limbaugh, and many others also called for parents to remove their children in recent years.

Some have been sounding the alarm for decades. Exodus Mandate Director Lt. Col. Ray Moore (Ret.), the godfather of the exodus movement, was thrilled by the shift in the conversation. “After decades of futile efforts to reform government schools, conservatives and Christians are permanently opting out,” Moore told us by phone.

“The dam is about to break,” added Moore, who is also chairman of Public School Exit (where this writer serves as executive director) and the Christian Education Initiative (CEI). “When this happens, on a large scale, Christians and conservatives will become good neighbors again, by providing Christian education services for our nation. This is the great hope for renewal of our families, churches and our nation.”

Conservatives and Christians now have the momentum — the wind is in their sails when it comes to rescuing millions of children from the dumbing down, sexualization, and indoctrination in government schools. The exodus is already happening, and it will accelerate in the years ahead.

As the forces of liberty advance, the next challenge will be to keep the same “education” establishment from destroying homeschooling and private school by providing tax funding with strings attached or other subversive methods. The future of America depends on the outcome of this fight.

This article was originally published by FreedomProject Media.

We want to thank you for your response to our summertime matching challenge, which was offered to help fund our “Rescuing Our Children” initiative. This Matching Challenge was launched in mid-July and will end on Labor Day, and we are happy to report  that we have raised just over 50 percent of our goal so far.

We still need to raise approximately $20,000 over the next four weeks in order to realize the full matching challenge.

Any donation given or mailed by September 6th will go toward this challenge
and will be fully tax-deductible, lowering your 2021 tax burden.

Rev. Ceasar LeFlore, the Field Director of our Public School Exit initiative, put together this short two-minute video to appeal to our supporters to help us take advantage of this amazing matching challenge opportunity. Please watch or listen to his request:

Here are some ways you can give your tax-deductible donation:

• Contribute online HERE.
• Give a gift of stock or appreciated assets. Contact Colleen Garcia, IFI’s Financial Administrator, at (708) 781-9328 or email her HERE.
• Mail your gift to: Illinois Family Institute, P.O. Box 876, Tinley Park, IL, 60477
• We also accept credit card donations over the phone at (708) 781-9328 during normal business hours.

Thank you for considering this matching challenge. Your financial support and prayers are what makes our mission to protect and preserve life, marriage, family and liberty in Illinois possible.  THANK YOU!

Sincerely,

David E. Smith
Executive Director

Don’t delay, please donate today!

One month ago, the IFI Team set off on a five day, eight stop tour of the state of Illinois. Our mission was to reach parents, grandparents and church leaders with an urgent message.  These “Rescuing Our Children” forums featured bold presentations about the perpetual academic failures of our public schools, and worse, the intentional anti-Christian indoctrination that intensifies year after year.

One has to look no farther than the Illinois Capitol for evidence of this malfeasance. The 102^nd General Assembly finished their spring session on May 31st. State lawmakers have introduced more than 7,000 bills this year, 600 of them have or are making their way to Governor Pritzker’s desk. It grieves me to report that our state lawmakers actually approved legislation to place female hygiene products in boys bathrooms in schools state wide. Yes, you read that correctly.

They passed legislation requiring county clerks to issue new marriage certificates to reflect legal name changes for transgender and non-binary individuals.

They approved of “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards,” which will infuse the assumptions of Critical Race Theory/ identity politics/BLM into all teacher-training programs, all Professional Education Licensing (PEL), and indirectly into all public school classrooms.

So instead of focusing on academic standards, our government schools are making sure that teachers are trained in Marxist and sexual social engineering.

Let me draw your attention to this pamphlet that we’ve prepared for you. This list of the largest 40 school districts in Illinois clearly demonstrates how our government schools are failing students in English Language Arts, Math and Science while spending an enormous amount of your tax dollars per student. The proficiency rates are embarrassing. But even worse, the graduation rates in most school districts far exceed the academic performances of students.

Perhaps the most troubling bill that state lawmakers passed this year was SB 818 – “Comprehensive” sex education for K-12. The term “comprehensive” as a way to describe legislation should alarm you. It is a indication that government officials have big plans to invade a new corner of your childrens’ lives beginning in kindergarten.

This proposal requires that highly objectionable sex ed material be forced on the impressionable minds of children who attend public school, as young as 5 years-old! This new legislation would require all public schools—including charter schools—to align teaching on “personal health and safety” with the “National Sex Education Standards,” Some of the contributing organizations that helped devise these standards are really all you need to know:  Planned Parenthood, Human Rights Campaign, GLSEN, Gender Spectrum, PFLAG, LGBTQIA Resource Center, Intersex Society of North America, Race Forward, SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change, Trans Student Educational Resources, and the World Health Organization.

The intention of global elites is to create “world core” standards. Alex Newman, Executive Director of Public School Exit, points out in his 40 minute presentation that these include socialism and communism–both failed experiments in other parts of the world–as well as the ever-expanding sexual education. Having laid the groundwork in sex ed classes and drag queen story hours at libraries, now schools are attempting to hide sex change services from parents, and educational materials go so far as to teach about the pedophilia present in ancient Greece.

Furthermore, these schools are teaching Islamic and Buddhist principles, while banning prayer in schools, as part of the “global education” that schools are moving toward. Ultimately, they hope for a “world core curriculum” that will have the same standards for every child in every school in the world. This is why government schools were created and has always been the goal, Newman says, and is a sign to parents: get your children out of government schools.

Please take time to listen to Mr. Newman’s entire video presentation:

The Rev. Ceasar LeFlore followed Mr. Newman’s presentation to urge attendees to consider Christ-centered education choices.

In his presentation, Rev. LeFlore discusses the many options that parents have for educating their children if they take them out of public schools. The public schools are indoctrinating our children, he reminds us, with liberal, sexually perverted, postmodern agendas, and the time they spend there far outweighs the short time that they spend in church on Sundays. While it is important for them to know reading, writing, and arithmetic, it is far more important that they know the truths of the Kingdom of God, and this is not something that they will ever learn in public schools. With this in mind, Rev. LeFlore speaks on numerous resources for educating our children with a focus on teaching them God’s ways.

Please take time to listen to Rev. LeFlore’s entire video presentation:

Between now and Labor Day, you can double the impact of your tax deductible donation
while helping us fund this critical effort!

Please help us meet and/or surpass a rare summertime matching challenge that has been made through the generosity of faithful supporters. These donors are working with us to offer a $40,000 dollar-for-dollar matching challenge to help us raise $80,000 for “Rescuing the Children” initiative here in Illinois!

Children and families under siege in Illinois are getting a lifeline! A national organization working to rescue children from the increasingly radical indoctrination and sexualization in public schools recently announced a new partnership with the non-profit Illinois Family Institute (IFI) to help get as many kids out of the system as possible.

The nationwide group, known as Public School Exit (PSE), was formed last year by a team of concerned Christian leaders, attorneys, pastors, educators, and advocates. The goal: Facilitate an exodus of as many children into the safe sanctuary of homeschools and good private schools.

In pursuing that mission, PSE is joining forces with IFI — the state’s premier pro-family organization — to deal with the urgent situation in Illinois. From mandating LGBTQIA indoctrination in government schools to forcing teachers to accept and promote highly controversial “progressive” ideology in the classroom, the state is at the forefront of the escalating educational abuse in America.

“Illinois is one of the worst states in the nation when it comes to imposing anti-American, anti-Christian extremism on captive children in public schools,” said PSE President Dran Reese, a homeschool mom with many years of experience in ministry. “However, even conservative states are moving in that direction, so we hope the lessons we learn in Illinois will help in our nationwide efforts as well.”

As part of the partnership between PSE and IFI, which was formalized in early March with an agreement between the two, the well-respected Illinois organization will utilize PSE materials, its powerful line-up of experts in the field, and its own vast network to encourage pastors and parents to get children out of the deteriorating public schools.

“It’s high time for Christian parents and grandparents to recognize the fact that government schools are undermining and supplanting Judeo-Christian faith,” said IFI Executive Director David E. Smith. “The nonsense and profane values they are teaching students are the antithesis of what the Bible teaches us. Parents and grandparents cannot afford to allow these secular ideologies and destructive philosophies to mislead our children from what is good, honest and virtuous.”

Consider that the government’s own data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) prove conclusively that the overwhelming majority of children in Illinois are not even proficient in core subjects. Meanwhile, the moral values being imposed on children in public schools would shock most parents, IFI and PSE leaders said.

“Taxpayer-funded schools have all but rejected academics as their principal responsibility,” added Smith. “Instead, at the behest of Big LGBTQ Inc, BLM and Planned Parenthood, their focus has shifted toward indoctrinating our children. And children are being taught to hate America.”

Government school systems, Smith continued, are broken. “It’s time for parents and grandparents to take action to protect their children’s spiritual, mental and physical wellbeing,” he said. “It’s time to get our kids out of government schools.”

PSE and IFI leaders point to the Bible, which clearly instructs parents to teach their children Biblical truths “diligently” throughout the day, every day. (Deut. 6:4-9). Parents are also instructed to “train up a child in the way he should go.” “We dare not allow left-wing agents of deception do that training in our government schools,” noted Smith, celebrating the partnership with a well-established national organization to deal with the crisis.

On the church front, IFI and PSE will work together to help pastors and churches understand the problem. Then, they will work together with pastors and churches to help set up Christian schools, homeschool co-operatives led by parents, micro-schools, scholarship programs, independent learning academies, or other options to help protect the children in their congregations. PSE’s list of renown church and education leaders are standing by ready to assist.

“The Bible speaks very clearly to all these issues, and Christians across the nation are starting to realize that something must be done,” explained PSE Chairman Lt. Col. E. Ray Moore (Ret.), a longtime ministry leader who has been promoting a Christian “Exodus” from public schools for decades. “We are so grateful to be able to work with IFI — known as one of the top pro-family groups in America — on this critically important mission. The timing could not be better.”

PSE’s world-class team of advisors includes leading attorneys, educators, pastors, celebrities, and experts who — combined — have all the expertise needed to get the job done, and to do it well. With help from the boots on the ground, depending on the needs of particular communities or churches, PSE and IFI will assemble the necessary expertise to ensure that every parent in a congregation or community has options.

The team even includes, among other stars, Diane Douglas, who served as Arizona’s superintendent of Public Instruction until 2019, when she recognized that the government schools were now rotten to the core and were not safe for children. Now she is working to get victims out as quickly as possible. “Parents must act to protect their children, because public schools are not going to do it,” she explained.

The tide is rapidly shifting on this issue, too. Just in the last year, the number of homeschooling families has doubled from 5 percent to 10 percent of families with school-age children as people flee from government schools in unprecedented numbers. Some school districts have seen more than a 10 percent decline in enrollment as families seek other options.

Top voices are joining in as well. Before he passed away this year, talk-show titan Rush Limbaugh repeatedly urged parents to get their children out of public schools. Responding to LGBT mandates in New Jersey schools, evangelical leader Rev. Franklin Graham urged parents to withdraw from the system, too.

Even former President Donald J. Trump repeatedly urged parents to protect their children from what he described as “failing government schools,” noting that indoctrination in public education was responsible for the “mayhem” in America’s streets last summer.

Christian actress and leading homeschool advocate Sam Sorbo, a fervent campaigner on the issue and a member of PSE’s advisory board, celebrated the new partnership, too. “More and more people are waking up to the tragic state of what we currently call education, but what is, essentially, only schooling. Training. Conditioning,” Sorbo said in a statement about the news. “We welcome partnering with all enlightened organizations!”

Similar arrangements with other state-level pro-family organizations are already being explored. Many millions of families have already made the choice to pursue better education alternatives for their children. And in Illinois, that movement is about to be supercharged.

Special Events: Consider attending one of the eight events being held in different areas of Illinois beginning on June 28th. A complimentary meal will be served. Reservations are required. You can email Kathy HERE or call the IFI office at 708-781-9328. Reservations are due by tomorrow, so don’t hesitate!

More information:

Reasons to Exit Illinois Government Schools

Illinois School Proficiency FAILURE

Did You Know?

How to Rescue Our Children

“Comprehensive” Sex Education

For Parents, Grandparents and Church Leaders

Overcoming Objections

While claiming they don’t believe homoerotic attraction is biologically determined, far too many conservatives act as if they do so believe. If conservatives really disbelieved the assertion by leftists that homoerotic attraction is biologically determined, they—that is, conservatives—would be far more vigorously opposed to their children being “educated” in public schools. If conservatives really believed that a child’s environment can contribute to the development of homoerotic attraction (and later to volitional homoerotic activity), then they would remove them immediately from any context that introduces them to positive ideas and images of homoeroticism, including especially public schools.

Here in Illinois, such propaganda starts in kindergarten and continues every year throughout elementary, middle, and high school. How do conservative parents think a 5-year-old will process the lies their teachers spread about homoeroticism, including through heartstrings-pulling tales about children with two mommies, or about allegedly homosexual penguins, or about “gay” children being bullied? Are conservative parents absolutely sure their young children won’t start wondering if the natural love they feel for their best same-sex buddies is a sign that they are “gay”? Ideas have consequences, folks.

Don’t be duped by the mockers who will claim it’s absurd to think ideas about homoeroticism can create feelings. Ideas absolutely can create feelings that then shape actions. By allowing young children to be exposed year after year to homosexuality-affirming ideas, parents are playing with fire—the fire of sexual desire ripped from its moral moorings.

In the book Male Colors: The Construction of Male Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan, Gary Leupp demonstrates the effect of culture in constructing homoerotic desire:

Nanshoku [male homoeroticism] … arose largely to compensate for men’s lack of female companionship, but at some point its culture came so to influence the structure of male desire that its vitality no longer required the absence of women. Indeed, it remained a vigorous tradition in Tokugawa [Tokugawa period: 1603-1868] cities even as the institution of the female courtesan throve. … The iro [sexual desire] of most Tokugawa men was bisexual.

This eros was specifically constructed to mirror the hierarchical relations specified in Confucian thought and in feudal society; males were socialized to desire to penetrate younger males and to be penetrated by older males.

Anyone who believes homoerotic desire cannot be constructed or created by culture is naïve or ignorant.

Homoerotic desire can be shaped not only by childhood sexual molestation, early exposure to pornography, peer ostracism, and familial dysfunction but also by cultural values that spread like disease contagions. In fact, there is a term for such a phenomenon: “social contagion” or “group contagion.”

“Social contagion” or “group contagion” is defined by the American Psychological Association as,

the spread of behaviors, attitudes, and affect through crowds and other types of social aggregates from one member to another. … [S]tudies suggest that social contagion is sustained by relatively mundane interpersonal processes, such as imitation, conformity, universality, and mimicry.

Social contagions include anorexia, bulimia, cutting, and even suicide. Homoeroticism and cross-sex identification (i.e., “transgenderism”) are the newest contagions to emerge in our deviant sex-saturated public square and infect our children.

There’s a reason the rates of homosexual, bisexual, and “trans”-identification are rising, and the reason is not that humans are biologically evolving or that these higher percentages always existed but were hidden due to cultural disapproval. The reason is that culture is constructing disordered sexuality.

In 2018, The Telegraph reported  that this social contagion had infected children in the United Kingdom, leading a member of Parliament to call for an investigation into the reasons for the shocking increase in children rejecting their biological sex:

An explosion in the number of children wanting to change sex has prompted an inquiry by ministers.

Penny Mordaunt, the Minister for Women and Equalities, wants to understand the reasons behind a 4,400 per cent increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment in the past decade.

Officials will look into the role of social media and the teaching of transgender issues in schools as part of their inquiries. …

In 2009/10 a total of 40 girls were referred by doctors for gender treatment. By 2017/18 that number had soared to 1,806. Referrals for boys have risen from 57 to 713 in the same period. …

Some educationalists have previously warned that the promotion of transgender issues in schools has “sown confusion” in children’s minds and that encouraging children to question gender has “become an industry”.

Dr Joanna Williams, author of the book Women vs Feminism, has said that schools are “encouraging even the youngest children to question whether they are really a boy or a girl”.

Just as in England, government schools in the United States play a significant role in sowing gender confusion.

The government schools Americans fund are an integral part of the metastasis of these social contagions. Schools are providing a distorted lens through which children are misinterpreting experiences, and this in turn can lead to the construction of disordered desires and “identities.” Socially distancing our children from those who would intentionally mainline contagions into them is the best way to protect them during their most vulnerable developmental years.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/A-Plea-to-Exit-Public-Schools-ASAP.mp3

Please support the work and ministry of IFI.  

Your tax-deductible donation is greatly appreciated!

With coronavirus keeping children home from public schools around the world, a growing coalition of Christians and conservatives is working to make sure that once the crisis is over, millions of children never go back. Instead, the coalition, known as Public School Exit (PSE), hopes to facilitate a massive exodus into the safe sanctuary of homeschooling and high-quality private schools.

Founded by a team of Christian and conservative leaders including this writer, PSE is working on two fronts during this crisis. On the one hand, the group is encouraging parents to try out true homeschooling — not government school at home — during the coronavirus shutdown. At the same time, the group is urging parents to closely examine the material public schools are using. Most parents would be appalled.

There are many compelling reasons for parents to protect their children from government schools, according to PSE and its leadership. That is especially true in Illinois. Consider that state law now mandates LGBT indoctrination of all children in government school. Radical “sex education” with roots in absolute evil, meanwhile, begins in Kindergarten. And that is just the start.

As this writer reported in February for the Illinois Family Institute, the government itself admits that government schools are failing children academically — with devastating results. College professors in the state, for instance, expressed shock that many of their students lack even basic literacy skills. Over two thirds of new students in Chicago community colleges needed remedial education even on basics.

Standardized tests, meanwhile, reveal a disaster of unprecedented proportions across the Prairie State. In Illinois, 2018-2019 test scores showed that just 38 percent of students met or exceeded basic proficiency in English Language Arts (ELA). In math, less than a third were proficient or better. And keep in mind, these standards are hardly difficult or advanced.

Former Superintendent of Public Instruction for Arizona Diane Douglas, one of the experts who serves on the advisory board of Public School Exit, highlighted the irony of Illinois requiring homeschoolers to provide adequate instruction in a broad range of subjects, even as the state is incapable of providing anything close to “adequate instruction” in even the two most basic subjects.

“God gave children to parents, not to government bureaucracies, no matter how well-intended the bureaucracy professes to be,” Douglas told the Illinois Family Institute, adding that the system cannot be reformed. “The government education system does not and cannot have the best interests of an individual child first and foremost. Only a parent can.”

Government schools, by contrast, are more concerned with “social change on the left” and making children into “human capital” for industry, she explained. Unfortunately, government schools do not care “about education for the acquisition of knowledge and the discernment of truth,” added Douglas, whose term as education chief for the state of Arizona ended last year.

Another key reason for Christians, at least, to consider removing their children from public schools, is what the Bible says on these issues. According to Lt. Col. E. Ray Moore, a pastor and retired military chaplain, God in the Bible assigns the education of children to the family primarily, with assistance from the church — not government.

Among other key verses, Moore pointed to Deuteronomy 6:1-9, Psalm 78:4-7, Proverbs 22:6, and Matthew 19:14, to name a few.

He also blasted the idea that Christian children should be put in government school to serve as “salt and light” there. “This is not a command to put children in the pagan and godless public school system,” he said. “To use Matthew 5:13-14 in this way is an abuse of Scripture.”

While some parents and pastors try to argue that children could serve as missionaries in government schools, Moore says that is absurd. “While there are some exceptions, the greatest missionary work is being practiced on Christian children in public schools by the secularists, evolutionists and humanists,” he said, adding that Christians should not be unequally yoked with an anti-Christian system. “They are winning over Christian children to humanism in most cases.”

Another founding director of PSE, Dr. Duke Pesta, is a tenured university professor and academic director at FreedomProject Academy, an online K-12 school rooted in biblical values and truth. All day every day, the prominent academic and educator with a powerful media presence sees firsthand the fruit of government schools and the damage it does to children.

Consider that in surveys of his incoming college students, he found that the majority believe America invented slavery. This despite the fact that slavery was ubiquitous throughout the world all across human history — at least until America’s Founding Fathers laid the foundation for it to be abolished not just in America, but worldwide. This misconception is a direct result of indoctrination at school.

Salt & Light Council President Dran Reese, also a founding director of PSE, is working with a national network of churches and pastors across a wide range of issues. But like other PSE leaders, Reese realized that if Christian parents continue sending their children to public schools — where God cannot even be mentioned, much less worshiped or glorified — the future is bleak for the church in America.

Indeed, one of PSE’s advisory board members, Dan Smithwick of the Nehemiah Institute, has studied worldview for decades. What he found through his research is that the overwhelming majority of Christian children from Christian homes who attend public school will end up leaving the church. The numbers are getting worse, too.

As this writer has documented extensively in a series on the history of public schools for The Epoch Times, that was the plan all along by the architects of the government takeover of education. Men such as Robert Owen, Horace Mann, and John Dewey — each of whom played a key role in the establishment of government control over education in America — hoped the system would crush Christianity. It is doing a good job on that front, data show.

In addition to encouraging and helping parents to ditch government schools for good, PSE is working to break down barriers that prevent families from making the right choice. One service offered by the group, for instance, is a list of vetted and recommended private schools across the nation, including several in Illinois. That list is growing quickly.

Of course, PSE leaders recognize that choosing homeschooling or private schools can require a significant financial sacrifice. But it is worth it, and with enough effort, most families in America can find a way to do it. In the months ahead, PSE will also be establishing a scholarship fund to help truly needy families protect their children, too.

The shutdown brought about by coronavirus has created millions of new temporary homeschool families around the world. Now is the time to strike. If you think children deserve better than the godless and poor quality “education” offered by government schools, PSE leaders hope you will help spread the word. Visit Public School Exit online here to learn more.

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