Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

294 “B EIJING J OURNAL : P ERSONAL F ILE AND W ORKER Y OKED FOR L IFE ” BY N ICHOLAS D. K RISTOF was published in The New York Times on March 16, 1992. This article described the Chinese dangan as part of a web of social controls that ensures order in China. Excerpts follow: B EIJING —As part of China’s complex system of social control and surveillance, the authorities keep a dangan, or file, on virtually everyone except peasants. Indeed, most Chinese have two dangans: one at their workplace and another in their local police station.... “School records and grade transcripts,” she began, offering a foreigner a rare look into the dangan system, “Entry into the Communist Youth League and the Communist Party. Family members and photo. Promotions and level of work. Performance evaluations. That kind of thing. About 10 times.” A file is opened on each urban citizen when he or she enters elementary school, and it shadows the person throughout life, moving on to high school, college and employer. Particularly for officials, professors and Communist Party members, the dangan contains political evaluations that affect career prospects and permission to leave the country.... The dangan affects promotions and job opportunities, and it is difficult to escape from because any prospective employer is supposed to examine an applicant’s dangan before making a hiring decision. [Ed. Note: Sounds like the U.S. Secretary of Labor’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills resumé for “Jane Smith” which grades Jane on a 1–10 basis on honesty, etc., and which includes her community service activities. Oregon’s legislation stating that employers could not hire potential employees unless they had a Certificate of Initial Mastery did not pass. However, the very idea that it was proposed means that that is exactly what is intended. The above article is important because of U.S. educators’ official visits to China and the fact that the U.S. Department of Education’s contract for the SPEEDE Express (an electronic data ex change system to be used for transfer of student records, etc.) is the beginning of the transfer of personal data on students to various agencies, prospective employers, etc.] F ILLING THE G APS : A N O VERVIEW OF D ATA ON E DUCATION IN G RADES K THROUGH 12 WAS pub lished by the National Center for Educational Statistics (U.S. Department of Education, Of fice of Educational Research and Improvement: Washington, D.C. [NCES 92–132], 1992). On page 5 one finds a most extraordinary and revolutionary definition of teacher “quality” which transfers the responsibility for learning from the student to the teacher. Excerpts from Filling the Gaps follow: TEACHERS Beginning in the 1980s, NCES collected detailed information on the characteristics and qualifications of teachers.… But the term “qualifications” is not synonymous with “quality.” The characteristics that contribute to good teaching are many, and no single configuration of traits, qualifications, or behaviors unvaryingly produces optimal student outcomes in all situations. NCES teacher surveys have concentrated on collecting data on “qualifications,” rather than trying to define “quality.” In order to define and measure “quality,” characteristics and qualifications of teachers must be related to growth in student achievement. [Ed. Note: If the bottom line regarding “quality teaching” is “growth in student achievement” one must assume that extraordinary measures will be necessary to bring about such “growth