Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

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The "Effective" Eighties : c. 1986

project to develop prototypes of the kinds of assessments the task force’s proposed National Board for Professional Teaching Standards might use to certify teachers.... …According to David A. Hamburg, president of the corporation [psychiatrist and negotiator of the Carnegie-Soviet Education Agreements], the grants illustrate Carnegie’s commitment to the task force’s work.... The 15-month Stanford study is the “opening gambit in a long and complex campaign to develop assessments for use by the national board,” said Lee S. Shulman [deeply involved with the Chicago Mastery Learning debacle, ed.], principal investigator for the study and a professor of education at Stanford.… “Two major ‘products’ will come out of the Stanford study,” said Mr. Shulman. First, it will create, field test, and critique several “prototype” assessments—most likely in the areas of elementary-school mathematics and secondary-school history. Second, it will develop a protocol for how to develop such assessments in the future.... As part of its work, the Stanford project will do the following: • Commission about 20 experts to write papers summarizing the knowledge and skills that the prototype assessments should measure. • Conduct “wisdom of practice” studies of outstanding teachers to determine through interviews and observations what it is that they know and can do.… • Bring together people from around the country who are doing state-of-the-art as sessments in other fields, such as those for airplane pilots and foreign-service jobs, to determine what assessment techniques are applicable to teaching. • Bring together experts in the fields to be tested—such as elementary-school math teachers, teacher educators, and mathematicians—to get their advice on what the assessments should measure and how. In addition, the project will have a steering committee representing key stakeholders in the creation of such assessments as well as experts in testing and in the subject areas to be tested. Members of the Task Force included: Lewis M. Branscomb, Chairman, Vice President and Chief Scientist of the International Business Machines Corporation; Alan K. Campbell, Executive Vice President and Vice Chairman of A.R.A. Services, Inc. of Philadelphia; Mary Hatwood Futrell, President of the National Education Association; John W. Gardner, former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare and founder of Independent Sector; Fred M. Hechinger, President of the New York Times Company Foundation, Inc.; Bill Honig, Cali fornia State Superintendent of Public Instruction; James B. Hunt, former Governor of North Carolina, former Chairman of the Education Commission of the States and a lawyer with the firm of Poyner and Spruill; Vera Katz, Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives; Governor Thomas H. Kean of New Jersey; Judith Lanier, Dean of the College of Education at Michigan State University; Arturo Madrid, President of the Tomas Rivera Center of Claremont (California) Graduate School; Shirley M. Malcolm, program head, Office of Opportunities in Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science; Ruth Randall, Commis sioner of Education in Minnesota; Albert Shanker, President of the American Federation of Teachers.

A N ARTICLE IN THE M AY 21, 1986 ISSUE OF E DUCATION W EEK ENTITLED “R ESEARCHERS Leery of Federal Plans for Collaboration—Fear ‘Cooperative’ Link a Path to ‘Intervention’” by James Hertling discussed possible federal control of education research. Some excerpts follow: