Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

107 [Ed. Note: As a former school board member, this writer can relate to the above quote. Princi pals who resisted innovation eventually ended up being forced out of the system undergoing radical change. Their trials and tribulations were known only to them, and what they under went during the change agents’ activities in their schools could be described as inhumane treatment.] T HE T RI -C OUNTY K–12 C OURSE G OAL P ROJECT , THE RESULTS OF WHICH WERE LATER PUB lished by the Northwest Regional Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Education and used extensively throughout the nation as the formulaic sample for “goals setting,” was initiated in 1971. In the appendix entitled “Classification System for the School Curriculum” for her Practitioner’s Implementation Handbook [series] : The Outcome-Based Curriculum (Outcome Associates: Princeton, N.J., 1992), Charlotte Danielson, M.A., a prominent educator and proponent of outcome-based education, said: “The knowledge and inquiry and problem-solving skills sections of this taxonomy were first developed by the Tri-County Goal Development Project, Portland, Oregon.” 3 Assistant superintendent Victor W. Doherty, Evaluation Department of the Portland Public Schools in Portland, Oregon, in a November 2, 1981 letter to Mrs. Opal Moore, described this Goal Development Project as follows: The Tri-County Goal Development Project was initiated by me in 1971 in an effort to develop a resource for arriving at well-defined learning outcome statements for use in curriculum planning and evaluation. At that time the only language available was the behavioral objec tive, a statement which combined a performance specification with a learning outcome often in such a way as to conceal the real learning that was being sought. By freeing the learning outcome statements from performance specification and by defining learning outcomes of three distinctly different types (information, process skills, and values), we were able to produce outcome statements that served both the planning and evaluation functions. The project was organized to include 55 school districts in Multnomah, Clackamas, and Wash ington Counties and writing was done initially by teachers whose time was donated to the project by member districts. [Ed. Note: The writer believes that this very controversial project which provided the goals framework for OBE was illegal—in clear violation of the 1970 GEPA prohibition against federal government involvement in curriculum development.] The Serious Seventies : c. 1972 T HE N EWPORT H ARBOR E NSIGN OF C ORONA DEL M AR , C ALIFORNIA CARRIED AN ARTICLE entitled “Teachers Are Recycled” in its January 20, 1972 issue. The following are excerpts from this important article: Education in California is finally going to catch up with the “innovative” Newport-Mesa Unified School District. With the passage of the Stull Bill, AB 293, all school districts are mandated to evaluate their classroom teachers and certificated personnel through new guidelines. Another portion of the bill will allow a district to dismiss a teacher with tenure, without going to court. A teacher will no longer have the prerogative of having his own “style” of teaching, 1972