Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

331 ments, teachers reward them with tokens that can be used to buy products such as beads, basketballs and T-shirts at the Sylvan “store”—a display counter that stands in one corner of the classroom. [Ed. Note: This is the school system in which William Spady and Thomas Sticht served as consultants in the implementation of the now infamous Mastery Learning program in 1978, and which in 1996 had the lowest test scores in the nation. Interesting that Washington, D.C. schools—like Chicago which experienced the “human tragedy” due to mastery learning—is again implementing the same Skinnerian rat training method for “tutoring” its inner city chil dren. (See Appendix XXV.)] T HE C ONFERENCE B OARD PUBLISHED B USINESS AND E DUCATION R EFORM : T HE F OURTH Wave—A Research Report (CB Report No. 1091–94–RR) in 1994. Founded in 1916, the Conference Board was established with a two-fold purpose: 1) to improve the business enterprise system and 2) to enhance the contribution of business to society. To accomplish this, the Conference Board strives to be the leading global business membership organization that enables senior execu tives from all industries to explore and exchange ideas of importance concerning business policy and practices. The Board has offices in New York City, Brussels, Belgium, and Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Some excerpts from this extremely important, 41-page document from The Conference Board follow: A study of business involvement in systemic education reform shows that such reform: • is a long-term, complex and politically charged process requiring on-going com mitment • demands that business collaborate with other important stakeholders to effect real reform • requires clearly stated and explicit goals that place children first • emphasizes structural changes within schools, communities and the public policy process. …Data show that during more than 10 years of dedicated effort to improve the U.S. educational system, the business community has invested significant financial, human, and time resources in schools. But business executives have often been frustrated as they have discovered that most of the initiatives, while well-intended and often quite useful to small groups of students, have failed to effect major changes in the ways schools operate or in the overall performance of the education system. The business community now stands at a critical juncture in its involvement in school reform, with two significantly different pathways developing. The first, evidenced by the emergence of charter schools, privatization initiatives, and emphasis on school choice involves stepping outside the current system and attempting to improve education by starting anew. Businesses that choose this path accept the premise that the current system is irretrievably broken and cannot possibly be repaired by those working within it. The second path, collaboration for systemic reform, in which many Conference Board companies are deeply involved and upon which this report focuses, assumes that signifi cant competencies exist within schools and that systemic changes can be made to improve performance. Collaboration involves formal working relationships among business and school offi cials, social and human service agencies, parents and other relevant stakeholders to reform The Noxious Nineties : c. 1994