Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

298 Executive Management Council Chairman Kearns says the two working in partnership “will provide systemic change in education.” (“NASDC FACTS,” New American Schools Devel opment Corp., no date, received 9/13/93).... In a Wall Street Journal (6/5/92) article Benno Schmidt, president of the Edison Project, discussing what is wrong with present schools and how projects such as the Edison Project might improve things, claims that “schools have wavered from liberal educational purposes... leav[ing] little room for the free play of young people’s curiosity... and the cultivation of the imagination....” He asked, “What might result if children came to school as toddlers or even earlier, rather than as five- or six-year-olds? What if parents were systematically involved and actually worked regularly in schools? What if students taught other students much more? What if schools were open 12 hours a day, 12 months a year? What if... a school system across the nation was completely tied together technologically, and could take advantage of systemwide experimentation?...” [What if we just taught students how to read and write well and compute 2 plus 2 without a calculator? B. Lyon] CHESTER FINN: Dr. Dennis Cuddy, in Now is the Dawning of the New Age New World Order ,... said: “In the book We Must Take Charge , not only does Finn advocate a national curriculum, but he also writes: The school is the vital delivery system, the state is the policy setter (and chief paymaster), and nothing in between is very important. This formulation turns on its head the traditional American assumption that every city, town, and county bears the chief responsibility for organizing and operating its own schools as a municipal function. That is what we once meant by local control, but it has become an anachronism no longer justified by research, consistent with sound fiscal policy or organizational theory, suited to our mobility pat terns, or important to the public. Every student must meet a core learning standard or be penalized, according to Finn, who says perhaps the best way to enforce this standard is to confer valuable benefits and privileges on people who meet it, and to withhold them from those who do not. Work permits, good jobs, and college admission are the most obvious, but there is ample scope here for imagination in devising carrots and sticks. Drivers’ licenses could be deferred. So could eligibility for professional athletic teams. The minimum wage paid to those who earn their certificates might be a dollar an hour higher. Cuddy refers to a U.S. Department of Education “White Paper” (probably prepared largely by Finn)... with a cover letter saying “Assessment can be used as both a carrot and stick”.... Under the White Paper’s section “Intervening in Academic Bankruptcy” it indicates that some school districts may be unwilling to meet their educational responsibilities, and in those cases, state intervention may mean “replacing district superintendents and local school boards with state-appointed officials.” This is the same “state takeover” of local schools not meeting certain state standards that Carnegie persuaded the National Governors’ Association to recommend when Lamar Alexander was its chairman in 1986. Dr. Cuddy then reminds us that “Leading conservatives around the country were warned about the Alexander/Finn educational philosophy, but most refused to oppose the nomination of Lamar Alexander as Secretary of Education.” JOHN CHUBB: Team member John E. Chubb, senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, was a participant at the 1989 White House Workshop on Choice in Education at which he also introduced speaker Governor Rudy Perpich of Minnesota. Chubb is on the Executive Com mittee of the Center for Educational Innovation, “an independent project of the Manhat-