Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

219 than test scores in an article entitled “A Cooperative Effort Is Needed: Can Our Schools Get Better?” (originally published in Phi Delta Kappan , January, 1979 when Dr. Goodlad was dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Los Angeles, and re-pub lished in Education Digest on November 1, 1984.) Excerpts follow: It seems to my associates and me that how a student spends time in school and how he feels about what goes on there is of much greater significance than how he scores on a standardized achievement test. But I am not sure the American people are ready to put a criterion such as this ahead of marks and scores. And so it will be difficult for schools to get better and more difficult for them to appear so.... Adherence to norm-referenced [competitive] standardized test scores as the standard for judging student, teacher, and school performance has led to a stultifying approach to accountability. I N A PERSONAL LETTER TO C HARLOTTE I SERBYT FROM S TEVEN M. H ERSEY , EXECUTIVE DI rector of the Maine Association of Christian Schools dated November 17, 1984, 14 Hersey enclosed portions of a testimony by Kevin Ryan, professor at Boston University, regarding Boston University, the country of Portugal and the World Bank. Professor Ryan was called to testify for the Maine State Department of Education in a legal hearing against the Maine Association of Christian Schools. The following excerpts from Ryan’s testimony are important due to the disclosure by Ryan of his role in the development of a teacher-training faculty system—modeled after that of the United States—for Portugal immediately after the communist takeover of that country. One might ask why a communist country like Portugal should choose the American teacher education curriculum to accomplish its political and philosophical goals. Portions of Ryan’s testimony follow: A. I [Ryan] am a professor of Education [at Boston University] and I teach graduate courses and supervise dissertations. But I’m there primarily now to work on a proj ect to help a Portuguese Minister of Education develop a teacher-training faculty system.... Q. …Could you describe what it is you’re doing? A. Well, the Portuguese nation had a social revolution [communist takeover] in 1974, and at that time they decided that their educational system was very inadequate, that it was not democratic, that the mandatory compulsory age of education was only to the fourth grade, and they mandated a system of education not unlike the United States in terms of compulsory education up to grade 12 and an elementary through high school division. The country was very interested in this. They also wanted to be part of the European Economic Community. But, unfortunately, Portugal was a poor country, and the World Bank said to them, you will not be admitted into the European Economic Community until you get in place a modern school system. And they [the World Bank] have come through with a good deal of financial sup port for that. The "Effective" Eighties : c. 1984

An important part of that is the development of a teacher training infrastructure. Now, what that means is that Portugal, which has, as of right now, a very small and very sort of casual teacher education method, is establishing 12 regional teacher education institutions at the university level positions; and they looked to the rest of the world for help on this, and they put out a request for proposals.... Boston