Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

296 NCES maintains a series of Educational Records Series handbooks containing the computer coding numbers, categories, and specific pieces of information gathered and recorded about anything connected with schools—including Handbook VIII: The Community . This handbook, while having its contents merged into later versions of others in the series, originally con tained the coding for all community “quality of life” information, including factors producing socio-economic status data and a chapter entitled “Attitudes, Values and Beliefs.” This hand book provided the vehicle for profiling a “community”—defined as a “school district” by the Census Mapping Project—for planning of programs by Community Education practitioners. ( Community Education’s Effect on Quality of Life by W. James Giddis, Diana Page, and George L. Mailberger [Center for Community Education at the University of West Florida: Pensacola, Fla., 1981], p. 8.) Profiling a community for “Attitudes, Values and Beliefs” is useful for those education change agents steeped in the methods taught in Ronald J. Havelock’s The Change Agents’ Guide to Innovation in Education , regularly taught at the National Training Laboratory’s programs and other leadership training seminars for teachers, administrators, board members, elected or appointed officials, and other “first-level adopters” of new education reform/restructuring proposals. The data gathered through the Census Mapping Project, among other things, assists in identifying those in a local community defined as “resisters” to controversial programs. Efforts to require “accountability” based on “measurements of teacher quality” have much broader consequences than most policy makers have imagined. Defining terms can lead to un derstanding that some recent reform efforts are based on faulty premises, to say the least.] C OMMUNITY L EARNING I NFORMATION N ETWORK , I NC . (CLIN) WAS INCORPORATED IN 1992. CLIN’s 22-page publicity packet stated in part: CLIN was incorporated in April of 1992, with a bi-partisan “Blue Ribbon” board of directors to implement a community-linked learning technology and information delivery system. CLIN has attracted a following in a substantial number of communities and involves a broad range of industries and interests (including educators, small and large businesses, hospitals, National Guard and Reserves, various government agencies, public housing, and inner city organizations and telecommunication providers) in implementing the CLIN concept. CLIN has been recognized by the White House and senior members of Congress and currently has legislation marked for testbed projects. CLIN has also developed international projects to include an approved project with the People’s Republic of China sponsored by the highest levels of the Chinese government. 21 [Ed. Note: United States government assistance to the Chinese Communist government will ensure an even tighter control of that government over every aspect of its citizens’ lives. The transfer of medical records, personal information, etc. over CLIN networks should be of great concern to Americans who value their right to privacy. U.S. Senator Phil Gramm of Texas (R.) has been the chairman of the board of directors for CLIN—a public-private venture.]

T EXAS RESEARCHER B ILLY L YON WROTE C ONNECTIONS AND C ONFLICTS OF I NTEREST (O R , There Ought To Be an Investigation! ) in 1992. 22 This extraordinary piece of research, which discusses in detail the private, for-profit design team projects selected by the New American School Development