Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

333 KERA represents a long-term and systemic approach to school reform. Among other things, the act guarantees a certain level of funding on a per-student basis, establishes mech anisms to equalize school financing, and introduces school-based management at each school along with major curriculum revisions and an entirely new primary school program. One of the more innovative approaches embedded within KERA is the establishment of family resource centers and youth services centers within schools in poor areas. This “one stop shopping” approach is meant to ensure that children are able to learn when they are in school because their families are receiving needed services. Additionally, all four-year-olds are required to attend preschool. A strict accountability system accompanies and supports the implementation efforts. One characteristic of KERA is its emphasis on high expectations for children. KERA, coupled with the Business Roundtable’s efforts to involve the business com munity in state-level advocacy, galvanized the business community into action. In the fall of 1990, the CEO’s of three companies, John Hall of Ashland Oil, David Jones of Humana, and Kent C. “Oz” Nelson of United Parcel Service, established the Partnership of Kentucky School Reform. With the inaugural meeting held in March 1991, more than 50 leaders joined together to solidify their support for successful implementation of the innovative KERA. The group represented a non-partisan cross-section of business, government, civic, and education leaders, all making a commitment to improve the quality of education in the state through a statewide information campaign combined with local activities to support the reform movement. [Ed. Note: KERA has become a case study in how educational reform went astray in a state that “was on the leading edge of the school restructuring and reform movement,” and how it brought grief to parents, students, teachers and legislators. It was also a case study that in volved a key, if not the key education change agent—who is not even an educator—David W. Hornbeck, who took his marching orders from Marc Tucker’s National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE). To add insult to injury, Hornbeck left Kentucky’s sinking KERA ship to become super intendent of the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania school system where his tenure in Pennsylvania was equally controversial and destructive, resulting in the school system’s being declared un able to function, wanting the state to take it over pending its “re-establishing” itself. Is it the role of the Hornbecks of this world to de structure schools, enabling them to be re structured according to the needs of the global economy? Are the Hornbecks of the world brought in specifically for that purpose? Additionally, one could ask why The Conference Board, and business interests in general, find the work of particular change agents and their tactics so appealing and positive? Is it because the change agent puppets are performing perfectly for their puppeteers who consider our children “human capital resources” to be trained, allowing the multinational corporations to spin off profits as a result? Take the case of a school system in New Mexico; the local school board rejected the Re:Learning Project only to be heavily pressured by the governor and a CEO of a multinational corporation—and others—who absolutely insisted on the implementation of Re:Learning. These folks had just returned from the “Charlottesville Summit” where they had received their marching orders under America 2000 . 37 ] The Noxious Nineties : c. 1994

I N T HE R EADING (P ENNSYLVANIA ) E AGLE /T IMES ON J UNE 25, 1994 AN ARTICLE BY S TEPHANIE Ebbert entitled “School Exams Likely to Have Russian Origin” stated the following: