The official title is Executive Director of White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans and the task is to reduce “racial isolation and resegregation of elementary and secondary schools.” Despite decades-old desegregation laws, “substantial obstacles” to equal educational opportunities still remain in America’s public school system, according to the president. Therefore the academic performance of black students has for decades lagged behind whites and other ethnic minorities.

So last summer the commander-in-chief issued an executive order to create a special White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans. The goal is to tackle a rampant crisis of perpetually low academic performance and high dropout rates among black students. African Americans lack equal access to highly effective teachers and principals, safe schools and challenging college-preparatory classes and they disproportionately experience school discipline and referrals to special education, according to the executive order.

President Obama also threw this often-cited statistic into his race-based educational excellence executive order: “African American males also experience disparate rates of incarceration.” Presumably, his new initiative will bring the numbers down. The effort includes the creation of a new President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans and a special “working group” consisting of senior officials from the departments of Justice, Education, Labor and White House Domestic Policy Council.

The idea is to provide the support that will enable African American students to improve their level of educational achievement through rigorous and well-rounded academic and support services that will prepare them for college, a career, and a lifetime of learning.” The new black education czar, David J. Johns, will work to identify evidence-based best practices to improve African American student achievement from cradle to career, according to an announcement issued by the Education Department.

Of interesting note is that the administration is actually paying states to set new academic achievement targets based on race and income, with lower goals for black, Hispanic and poor kids and higher ones for whites and Asians. Washington D.C. became the first American public school system to adapt the new race-based standards last fall. A federal education official explained in a mainstream newspaper that the administration is just “trying to be realistic about what’s achievable.”

A few weeks later Florida adopted the unprecedented race-based achievement targets for all of the 2.6 million students that attend the state’s 3,629 public schools. Like the area surrounding the nation’s capital, the Sunshine State set higher reading and math achievement standards for Asians and white students and lower goals for blacks and Hispanics. This seems to contradict the president’s executive order to improve educational outcomes for African Americans of all ages by, among other things, eliminating “substantial obstacles to equal education” and offering “challenging college-preparatory classes.”

Obama keeps pushing the federally-funded universal preschool program known as Head Start even though his own Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has determined that it’s ineffective. Remember how he cited “study after study” showing that the government’s investment in universal preschool pays for itself during the State of Union earlier this month?

It turns out that one of those studies, published last fall by his own HHS, reveals that Head Start isn’t working despite its whopping $8 billion a year price tag. In fact, children who participated in Head Start did worse in math and had problems with social interactions by third grade than those who didn’t go through the federal program.

“There were initial positive impacts from having access to Head Start, but by the end of 3rd grade there were very few impacts….in any of the four domains of cognitive, social-emotional, health and parenting practices,” according to the HHS study. “The few impacts that were found did not show a clear pattern of favorable or unfavorable impacts for children.”

Yet the president is committed to the program and will keep pouring more money into it. His White House education web site explains that Head Start “helps prevent achievement gaps before they start” because the program will provide children from disadvantaged backgrounds with a strong start and a foundation for school success. “Expanding access to high quality early childhood education is among the smartest investments that we can make,” according to the White House site.

Public education— from kindergarten through 12^th grade—has long been available for free in the U.S., but parents must pay to send their children to preschool. This creates a disadvantage for those who can’t afford it, according to the Obama administration. So the government must step in with the federally-funded Head Start.

The goal is to “boost the school readiness of low-income children.” The program is based on the “whole child” model and also provides “comprehensive services” such as medical, dental, mental health care and nutritional services designed around a family’s ethnic, cultural and linguistic heritage. Thank you Uncle Sam!

The feds stepped in because the nation’s third largest public school district “has been impacted by the city’s violence this past year,” according to a DOE announcement. “Numerous students have been shot on their way to and from their schools, and reactions and responses to the violence have resulted in high rates of disciplinary infractions, gang incidents, and fights and arrests.”

The statement goes on to say that there has also has been an increase in the amount of instructional time lost due to an increased number of suspensions and high absenteeism rates. Evidently, the Obama DOE is clumping both of these issues together even though the latter has been an ongoing problem for years. In fact, Chicago has long had one of the worst performing public school districts in the nation despite two decades of reform efforts and programs targeting low-income families.

Violence has also been a major factor for some time and officials saw a substantial increase in the action in the past year. Two dozen students were fatally shot during the last school year, according to area’s largest newspaper, and the district reported a total of 319 shootings. The figure marked the highest in four years and an astounding 22% spike from the previous academic year. This goes hand in hand with the city’s alarming homicide rate increase, which jumped 38% in 2012 compared to 2011.

With that said, there is no doubt that violence is a huge issue in the entire city, not to mention its long struggling public schools. The question is should the federal education agency—whose very existence is dubious—be the one doling out money for this cause? “These grants provide support to students, educators and communities impacted by these senseless shootings,” says U.S. Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, who knows the beast all too well because he served as chief executive of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) before Obama named him to the federal post.

Duncan goes on:  “Tragic events damage students and entire communities, and disrupt teaching and learning. These funds will support Chicago schools as they continue to recover from these acts of violence and work to make the community safer so all children can live free of fear.”

The money will go to programs designed to “restore the learning environment and immediately respond to any acts of violence that would affect teaching and learning.” Chicago school officials propose to expand an existing behavioral intervention project that integrates the principals of psychological first aid, conflict resolution and trauma-informed practice. Under the plan, coping and healing will be promoted and teaching and learning will be facilitated.

The story comes out of northern California where teachers at one of the area’s toughest middle schools assert the principal is a bully who physically detains and upsets students. We’re not talking about cute little kids here. The San Francisco campus of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Academic Middle School stands out for its pattern of violence that has resulted in multiple staff injuries and skyrocketing student suspensions. Read details in this local news report published a few months ago.

A former school security guard, who underwent two surgeries after trying to physically restrain a student last year, reveals in the article that fights and threatening behaviors are daily occurrences on the campus. “We call the police about two or three times a week,” the guard said, adding that students often return after suspensions to engage in more delinquent behavior.  

To say the principal, Natalie Eberhard, has a challenging job is a tremendous understatement. The school has burned through five principals in the last five years and Eberhard is in her second year at the helm. She has strong support from school district officials as well as the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which has spent time at the campus observing her technique.

But a group of teachers and staff claim the principal is a bully and they want her fired. This week they marched in front of the city’s Hall of Justice holding signs protesting Eberhard’s “reign of bullying and violence.” Among their bullying claims is that the principal sat on a student during a confrontation that incidentally required emergency police response.

As far-fetched as this campaign may sound, it’s likely fueled by the Obama Administration’s obsession with bullying in schools. This has ignited an aggressive federal campaign to conquer bullying, which the Department of Education (DOE) asserts is an urgent social, health and education concern that has moved to the forefront of public debate on school legislation and policy. Bullying is an extremely serious and often neglected issue facing youths and local school systems, according to the DOE.

The Obama Justice Department is also a big part of the campaign to eradicate bullying in schools and “ensure equal educational opportunity for all students.” In fact, last month the agency celebrated National Bullying Prevention Month. “School bullies become tomorrow’s hate crimes defendants, while victims of bullying are more likely to drop out of school, struggle in class, engage in illegal drug use or become involved in the criminal justice system,” according to the agency’s bloated civil rights division.

Just a few weeks ago the District of Columbia announced a similar plan that also includes lower academic achievement goals for poor kids in addition to blacks and Hispanics. Like Florida, the area surrounding the nation’s capital has also set higher reading and math achievement standards for Asian and white students.

This appears to be part of a national trend implemented by the Obama Administration, which is paying states to adopt an assortment of education achievement goals for different groups of children. The administration is just “trying to be realistic about what’s achievable,” according to a U.S. Department of Education (DOE) official quoted in the mainstream newspaper that reported the dramatic shift in policy.

This week the Florida Board of Education approved the new race-based standards for all of the 2.6 million students that attend the state’s 3,629 public schools. The mandate says that by 2018, 90 percent of Asian students, 88 percent of white students, 81 percent of Hispanic students, and 74 percent of black students are to be reading on grade level.

At least two members of Florida’s Board of Education questioned the move in the media. One said that, as a matter of philosophy, the state should have the same goal for all categories of citizenry. The other said that an Asian child and Hispanic child should be held to the same standard. Never the less, the race and ethnicity-based learning targets have been implemented in the Sunshine State.

Offering states incentives to lower academic standards for minorities may seem like a contradiction for the Obama Administration considering it has vowed to end the “educational inequities” long suffered by blacks and Latinos in the U.S. In fact, earlier this year the DOE issued civil rights equity data to makes this argument by, among other things, revealing that minorities have less access to rigorous high school curricula. Teachers in schools that serve minorities also tend to get less pay, according to the DOE’s findings.

Last spring the agency published a report that essentially said America’s progress is impossible if Hispanics keep lagging in education. That’s because their success is of “immediate and long term importance” to the U.S. economy, according to the report, which vowed to enhance opportunities for the “Latino community.” There was no mention of lowering academic standards as a way to achieve this goal, however. 

Washington D.C. officials are simply following a national trend implemented by the Obama Administration, which is paying states to adopt different education achievement goals for different groups of children. The administration is just “trying to be realistic about what’s achievable,” according to a U.S. Department of Education (DOE) official quoted in the mainstream newspaper that reported the dramatic shift in policy this week.

Besides D.C., more than two dozen states have set special academic targets for different groups of students, which the news story points out represents a sea of change in national education policy that for years prescribed blanket goals for all students. Evidently, the Obama Administration believes this new approach will speed achievement for black, Latino and low-income students.

Officials in the area surrounding the nation’s capital took the bull by the horns, setting specific race-based goals for the next five years, even though some parents view it as a form of prejudice. The plan sets goals according to demographics. For instance the reading proficiency level at an almost exclusively black school in an impoverished area is expected to be much lower than an already high-performing magnet school across the city. One D.C. parent calls the plan “disgraceful.”

Lowering academic standards for minorities may seem like a contradiction for an administration that has vowed to end the “educational inequities” long suffered by blacks and Latinos in the U.S. In fact, earlier this year the DOE issued civil rights equity data to makes this argument by, among other things, revealing that minorities have less access to rigorous high school curricula. Teachers in schools that serve minorities also tend to get less pay, according to the DOE’s findings.

Last spring the agency published a report that essentially said America’s progress is impossible if Hispanics keep lagging in education. That’s because their success is of “immediate and long term importance” to the U.S. economy, according to the report, which vowed to enhance opportunities for the “Latino community.” There was no mention of lowering academic standards as a way to achieve this goal, however.  

It’s almost as if the president is on a mission to stick American taxpayers with the exorbitant tab to educate illegal aliens or, as the administration likes to call them “young people brought to the United States through no fault of their own as children.” A handful of states— including Texas, California, Utah, Washington and New York—already subsidize their college education and the feds want to help out.

The Department of Education (DOE), the brilliant creation of Jimmy Carter, will give nine states $5.9 million to support high school and college students who are migrants or seasonal farm workers, or the children of such workers. The money will “help hard working farm workers and their families obtain the quality education that they need to compete in the 21^st century global economy,” according to Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

The generous allocation will also help migrant youth gain employment at a time of record-high unemployment for American youngsters. Thanks to Uncle Sam, around 5,000 migrants will benefit from this particular program with free counseling job placement, healthcare and housing. An additional 2,000 will get their undergraduate and graduate college courses paid for. Sweet deal!

It’s all part of the Office of Migrant Education, a special division within the DOE that administers programs that provide academic and supportive services to the children of families who come to the U.S. to find work in the agricultural and fishing industries. The programs are designed to help migrant children, who are uniquely affected by the combined effects of poverty, language, cultural barriers, and the migratory lifestyle, to meet the same challenging academic content and student academic achievement standards that are expected of all children.

Among the division’s most popular programs is a Binational Migrant Education Initiative between Mexico and states with a “student population that migrates regularly between Mexico and The United States.” The goal is to work with Mexico to improve primary, secondary and postsecondary education in both counties. There is also a college assistance migrant program, a high school equivalency program and a project designed to help break the cycle of poverty and improve the literacy of participating migrant families by integrating early childhood education, adult literacy or adult basic education, and parenting education into a unified family literacy program.

Only in America would a federal judge rule that a U.S. taxpayer-funded institution can get sued for refusing to provide such a divisive program that one instructor denounced for igniting racial hostility. The case involves the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican Raza Studies program, nixed after state legislators banned funding for ethnic studies curriculums that advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government.

Tucson’s controversial La Raza curriculum was created in 1998 to promote the Chicano agenda. Years later it was renamed “Mexican-American Studies” to sound less extremist. In 2010 Arizona’s legislature passed a measure (HB 2281) banning taxpayer-funded schools from offering classes that are designed for students of a particular race and promote resentment toward a certain ethnic group (in this case whites).

A group of Tucson district teachers sued in federal court to keep the Chicano program, claiming that it would be unconstitutional to eliminate it because it would restrict free speech. In their complaint, the teachers said their free speech had been impermissibly infringed by the state. They further asserted that students who take the La Raza courses score higher on standardized tests, graduate from high school at higher rates, improve their overall grades and have better school attendance records.

A federal judge rejected the teachers’ claims, but this week ruled that students have a standing to sue the district for killing the La Raza studies program because they’ve made a “plausible showing of a First Amendment violation” based on allegations that “viewpoint-discriminatory criteria” are being used to remove texts and materials from the curriculum. The Clinton-appointed judge, A. Wallace Tashima, also said that “at some point in the future students may be able to make a stronger showing that irreparable harm is likely….” though they have not yet met the criteria.

The Tucson program first gained national attention when a Hispanic history teacher who taught in it denounced the curriculum’s biased theme that Mexican-Americans are victims of a racist American society driven by the interests of middle and upper-class whites. Kids were taught that the southwestern United States was taken from Mexicans because of the insatiable greed of the Yankee who acquired values from the corrupted ethos of western civilization, the teacher wrote in a newspaper opinion piece.

Students also learned that California, Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Colorado and Texas are really Aztlan, the ancient homeland of the Aztecs, and still rightfully belong to their descendants, people of indigenous Mexican heritage. Also, the former Tucson teacher said, students were told that few Mexicans took advanced high school courses because their “white teachers” didn’t believe they were capable and wanted to prevent them from getting ahead.

The curriculum engendered racial irresponsibly, demeaned America’s civil institutions, undermined public servants, discounted any virtues in western civilization and taught disdain for American sovereignty, according the teacher. He also revealed that many of the instructors who taught the courses were not certified to teach.

A district with two elementary schools—one with a large enrollment of students from households with “higher than average annual incomes” and the other with a population of kids from “lower than average annual incomes”—should mix pupils, according to the new guidelines.

This will help achieve racial diversity and ultimately prevent “racial isolation,” the administration claims. A joint venture between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Education (DOE), the guidelines are expected to be implemented by the nation’s elementary and secondary schools as well as colleges and universities that receive taxpayer dollars.

Educators are encouraged to consider a student’s race in “carefully constructed” plans to promote diversity or reduce racial isolation, which is far too common and increasing in America’s classroom’s, according to Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan. The racial isolation has bred “educational inequity,” Duncan says, adding that this is inconsistent with America’s core values.

Besides, diverse learning environments promote development of analytical skills, dismantle stereotypes and prepare students to succeed in an increasingly interconnected world, says Attorney General Eric Holder. The new guidelines his agency helped craft will aid educational institutions in their efforts to provide “true equality of opportunity,” Holder assures.

Let’s take a quick look at the guidelines for elementary and secondary schools, which are referred to as K-12 because they go from kindergarten to 12^th grade. First off, they let schools off the hook by saying that districts are required to use “race-neutral approaches only if they are workable.” Assuming that they are not “workable,” the administration is pushing drawing new attendance boundaries, grade realignment and a restructuring of feeder patterns.

The postsecondary guidelines aren’t much different and encourage colleges to consider race in admissions, recruitment, mentoring, tutoring and retention programs. As a “race-neutral” approach (when workable), the DOE and DOJ suggest considering students’ socioeconomic status. Regardless, diversity must be attained because “postsecondary institutions play a unique role in opening doors for all segments of American society, including people of all races and ethnicities.”

The settlement marks the conclusion of the first lawsuit filed by Obama’s Department of Justice (DOJ) as part of a pilot program designed to ensure “vigorous enforcement” of civil rights in the workplace. “Employees should not have to choose between practicing their religion and their jobs,” said Thomas Perez, the open borders advocate Obama appointed as Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.  

The math teacher (Safoorah Khan) sued the Berkeley Illinois district when her middle school denied the leave request because she was the only math lab instructor and her absence would come at a crucial time right before exams. To further back its case, the district pointed out that the union contract did not allow that sort of leave for any teacher.

So Khan, who had worked at McArthur Middle School for barely a year, resigned and sued the district for religious discrimination. The DOJ’s bloated civil rights division quickly moved to help her. In a December lawsuit, the DOJ accuses the Berkeley School District of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by failing to reasonably accommodate Khan’s religious practices. By denying Khan a “religious accommodation”, the district compelled Khan to choose between her job and her religious beliefs, the DOJ claimed.

Feeling the wrath of the powerful and much wealthier federal government, the district agreed this month to pay Khan $75,000 for lost back pay, compensatory damages and attorney’s fees. It also caved into the DOJ’s demand of creating a new “religious accommodation policy” to “reasonably accommodate the religious beliefs, practices and/or observances of all employees and prospective employees.”  

The new program will also provide mandatory training on religious accommodation to all board of education members, supervisors, managers, administrators and human resources officials who participate in decisions on religious accommodation requests made by its employees and prospective employees. “We are pleased that Berkeley School District has agreed to implement a training program that puts into place an interactive process to ensure that each request for a religious accommodation will be considered on a case-by-case basis and granted if it poses no undue hardship on the school district,” Perez said.

A former Maryland Labor Secretary, Perez has made a number of controversial moves at the DOJ to protect minorities, including illegal immigrants. In June he ordered Colorado to protect the interests of “language minority populations” by strengthening a Court Interpreter Oversight Committee that assures immigrants who don’t speak English get free translators. Before that he launched an initiative to eliminate written tests that discriminate against minorities in the workplace and sued a public college system for discrimination because it requires job applicants to furnish proof of residency before getting hired.

Last year Perez lied to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission to cover up that political leadership was behind the dismissal of the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party. Judicial Watch obtained records that prove top political appointees were intimately involved in the decision to drop charges against the radical black revolutionary group for bullying voters with racial insults, profanity and weapons during the 2008 presidential election.