After public school officials solve the major problems in “public schools” (Ignorance Factories) then we can discuss whether it is constitutional for them to force secular accreditation and teacher certification upon Christian schools.

It is very audacious of public school officials (or legislators) to force control upon our schools, and it is about control. It is not about quality of education; after all, most public schools are “mini-nuthouses where kids graduate with a “counterfeit diploma” according to U.S. News and World Report.

We don’t need accreditation and certification. We don’t want it, and we would not accept it if it were offered to us. At least that is the position of most Christian schools leaders.

In recent years, certification (of teachers) has become only a piece of paper which says a teacher can, without breaking the film more than one time out of three, run a projector, and has been able to give 70% of the most recently accepted multiple-guess answers in educational psychology. That is the modern day equivalent of the witch doctor’s bag of chicken bones and hippopotami dung. (I’m not sure who said that, but it is true whoever should get the credit.)

If some over zealous legislator were to introduce a bill to regulate newspapers and broadcast outlets, there would be a great hue and cry from the redwood forests of California to the New York Island accompanied with ominous gnashing of teeth. Wonder why the media do not gnash their teeth when public officials make noises about “regulating” Christian schools? (Of course, they can’t even regulate the schools they have taken over from the public.) The same amendment that protects church schools also protects the media!

Christian leaders should oppose accreditation and certification because it is the proverbial camel’s nose inside the tent. Various assistant attorneys general have publicly said that after the Christian school is regulated, the Sunday school is next! No state has any more authority over church schools than they have over Sunday schools. Both are ministries of the churches.

Another reason Christian schools should not be involved in accreditation and certification is because court ruling have said: Whenever an entity goes to government for any benefit, however slight, that entity comes under the jurisdiction of government. Christ is sovereign over everything, so it is incredible that church leaders would choose to place themselves under the state rather than under Christ.

Regulation of Christian schools is a power grab by the state. It is a kick in the face of pastors and school administrators as the state puts its foot on the neck of our churches. While I will turn my other cheek, I will not lie down and permit government to put its hob-nailed boot on my neck without opposition.

Edmund Burke’s statement is apropos in this matter: “The leading vice of the French monarch…was good intention ill-directed, and a restless desire for governing too much. The hand of authority was seen in every place…and as it always happens in this kind of officious universal interference, what began in odious power ended always, I may say without exception, in contemptible imbecility.” “Imbecility” is a good description of accreditation and certification of Christian schools and teachers.

Christian school leaders who may be considering accreditation should consider the following facts:

   (1) Informed public educators are aware that testing of Christian school students as a group and in individual schools has consistently shown the superiority of Christian education.
   (2) Dr. Russell Kirk, an expert witness, testified in a Michigan court about certification that, as a general proposition, certification requirements “do positive harm” by demanding pedagogy at the expense of subject knowledge. Ingham, (Michigan) County circuit court Judge, Ray C. Hotchkiss, agreed, saying, “The over-whelming weight of evidence…shows that teacher certification does not ensure teacher competence and may even hinder teacher competence.” A similar decision was reached in a Kentucky court and was upheld on appeal.
   (3) It is a fact that accreditation and certification are not working in one of the 50 states! In a few public schools where they are doing an outstanding job, they have copied Christian school principles or have returned to the schools of 50 years ago. (Even in those few exceptional schools, the curriculum is always corrupt, and most of the teachers are unsaved.)
   (4) This great Republic was built upon the foundation of the one-room school—without driver education, tennis courts, athletics, shop, swimming pools, sex education, death education, values clarification, etc.—taught by teachers who had an eighth grade and sometimes twelfth grade education.

We taxpayers have provided multi-million dollar school buildings, the most modern gadgets, and the highest degreed teachers—and far more administrative personnel than needed, and we are not getting our money’s worth. We are paying more and more to get less and less for public education. Why then would Christian schools seek to emulate the public school failure by seeking accreditation or certification? 

Accreditation and certification are unnecessary, unconstitutional, and unenforce-able. Any attempt to implement these twin evils (usually Siamese twins), should result with them being strangled in the crib before it becomes a raging beast that wreaks havoc all over the nation.

Tags: accreditation, christian schools, education, NEA