SPOTLIGHT: Good Soil, Good Seed

Written by Alyssa Sonnenburg

“Every Home a School. Every Church an Academy.”

Reverend Ceasar LeFlore is the pastor of Spirit of Liberty Church of God, is an IFI Board Member, is the field director for Public School Exit in Illinois, and is the executive director of the Good Soil Good Seed Christian Education Foundation.

Good Soil, Good Seed is an education foundation that is dedicated to enabling families to take their children out of the public school system, and they accomplish this through generous grants and scholarships.… Continue Reading

Taking Education Back From The Bureaucrats

Written by Dr. Everett Piper

[Last] week, Randi Weingarten, president and CEO of the American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest education union in the nation, said that her members “really don’t care” whether President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his promise to abolish the Department of Education. She went on to say that she was much more interested in “level[ing] up [educational] opportunities for children” than she is in supporting any “bureaucracy.”

Let’s assume we can take Ms. … Continue Reading

SPOTLIGHT: The Price Tag of Sex with Pam Stenzel

Written by Alyssa Sonnenburg

Does sex outside of marriage have any consequences?

Pam Stenzel answers this vital question during her keynote remarks at Illiana Right To Life’s 2024 Fall Banquet. Pam Stenzel has been a pro-life advocate since the 1980s and currently helps to operate four pregnancy resource centers in the state of Florida.

She is the author of “Sex Has a Price Tag” and co-author of the book, “Nobody Told Me: What You Need to Know About the Physical and Emotional Consequences of Sex Outside of Marriage”.… Continue Reading

Trump Should Keep His Promise to Scrap Department of Education

Written by Dr. Everett Piper

One of the first things President-elect Donald Trump says he will do when he returns to the Oval Office is close and disband the Department of Education. He said:

“We are going to send all education, [along with its corresponding] work and needs, back to the states. We want them [i.e., the states] to run the education of our children because they’ll do a much better job of it. … We spend more money per pupil, by three times, than any other nation, and yet we are [approaching] the bottom; we’re one of the worst.

SPOTLIGHT: Banned Books Week & Parents’ Concerns

Written by Alyssa Sonnenburg

In case you missed it, the week of September 22nd was announced as Banned Books Week according to the American Library Association (ALA). The ALA wants the public to believe that raising concerns about obscene material in children’s books is the same as Nazi book banning.

Thomas Hampson sits down with Monte Larrick to combat this false narrative. Thomas Hampson is a contributing writer for IFI serving as an intelligence analyst, U.S.… Continue Reading

Is The Educational Tide Turning?

Written by Robert Knight

For the last 30 years, E. Ray Moore has been persuading Christian parents to get their children out of government schools and into homeschooling or private education.

“I was swimming upstream for years, but I’m now swimming with the tide,” he told me recently while preparing for an educational summit in Lynchburg, Virginia. “I can’t keep up with it. There is too much going on.”

What began as a trickle when Mr. … Continue Reading

SPOTLIGHT: Creation and Culture

Written by Alyssa Sonnenburg

This special episode of Illinois Family Spotlight features an interview with Ken Ham at the 2024 Illinois Christian Home Educators conference.

Ken Ham is the CEO and founder of Answers in Genesis, a Christian organization aimed at giving Christians real answers to deep questions about the world. He is the author of over thirty books and is also the founder of the two popular attractions: The Creation Museum and The Ark Encounter.… Continue Reading

SPOTLIGHT: How Can You Mess with Success?

Written by Alyssa Sonnenburg

This episode of Spotlight focuses on the topic of homeschooling.

Kirk Smith, ICHE’s (Illinois Christian Home Educator) executive director, gives encouragement to parents who don’t know how to homeschool, gives direction on how to choose good curriculum, and much more.

Parents, especially moms, feel like they’re unworthy- that they are not capable of homeschooling… if it’s [homeschooling] is a principle of God, it works– regardless of how good or how unprepared we feel as parents.

What’s The Big Deal About The Ten Commandments?

Written by Dr. Everett Piper

Did you know that the 11 words inscribed on the Liberty Bell, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the Land Unto all the inhabitants thereof,” were written by Moses?

Did you know that Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams originally proposed that the Great Seal of the United States include an image of Moses with the motto “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God”?

Did you know that when the nine justices of the U.S.… Continue Reading

Success in Classrooms

Written by John Stossel

Government-run schools keep failing. It shouldn’t surprise us. Monopolies rarely serve customers well.

People call them “public schools,” but “government-run” is more accurate. After all, charter schools are available to the public. Privately run supermarkets are open to the public for more hours than “public” schools are.

International tests show American kids don’t learn as much as kids in other countries. During the pandemic, they did even worse because our teachers unions kept schools closed.… Continue Reading