Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

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Hunter: What did the smart-aleck want? Teacher: Attention. Hunter: Have you ever heard of Pavlov? Teacher (amazed): What do slobbering dogs have to do with it?

In the same Education Update article, under subtitle “Toward Dialectical Thinking,” Hunter’s presentation reported: Hunter advised educators to move toward dialectical thinking, which means, she said, that with empathy, you “embrace the most convincing argument... against your own conclusion. Dialectical thinking will move us from right and wrong to better in this set of circumstances.” Moving into this “thoughtful uncertainty,” Hunter said, does not mean obligatory abandon ment of one’s own position, but she said, the advantage is that “where we take an opposing point of view and hold it in tension with our own point of view, each builds correction into the other.” Hunter nudged educators to come out of “armed camps... where we’re not col laborating” so that “I understand why you think it’s right for your students to line up while I think it’s better for them to come in casually.” And she concluded, “To respectfully address another person’s point of view is a master, master step. Until we accomplish it in our own profession... I see very little hope for it in our community, in our cities, in our nation, and in the world.” The validity of Hunter’s claims of success for her ITIP mastery teaching program was questioned by Robert Slavin of Johns Hopkins University in his paper entitled “The Napa Eval uation of Madeline Hunter’s ITIP: Lessons Learned,” published in Elementary School Journal (Vol. 87, No. 2: University of Chicago, 1986). Slavin says in part, “Although teachers in the program changed their behavior and students’ engaged rates improved, program effects on student achievement were minimal.” Robert Slavin followed up on his critique of Hunter’s claims of success for her mastery teaching program with his report funded by the U.S. Department of Education entitled Mas tery Learning Reconsidered , published by the Center for Research on Elementary and Middle Schools, Johns Hopkins University (Report No. 7, January 1987). An excerpt from the abstract of the report follows: Several recent reviews and meta-analyses have claimed extraordinarily positive effects of mastery learning on student achievement, and Bloom (1984a, b) has hypothesized that mastery-based treatments will soon be able to produce “two-sigma” (i.e., two standard deviation) increases in achievement. This article examines the literature on achievement effects of practical applications of group-based mastery learning in elementary and second ary schools over periods of at least four weeks, using a review technique, “best evidence synthesis,” which combines features of meta-analytic and traditional narrative reviews. The review found essentially no evidence to support the effectiveness of group-based mastery learning on standardized achievement measures. On experimenter-made measures, effects were generally positive but moderate in magnitude, with little evidence that effects main tained over time. These results are discussed in light of the coverage vs. Mastery dilemma posed by group-based mastery learning. [Ed. Note: Slavin’s critiques echo the negative results of mastery learning discussed else where in this book. Unfortunately, ten years later Slavin received his mastery learning/direct instruction crown in 1999 when Slavin’s program “Success for All,” which also uses mastery