Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

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The Noxious Nineties : c. 1994

Educational Reconciliation and Reform—an endeavor that colleagues across the country tell us is badly needed.... We would be delighted to discuss the feasibility of working with you and your con stituents to bring this program to your state and to generate a broad base of support for reconciliation and reform. This could be done either under the auspices of the Goals 2000 initiative or through other sponsorship.

C OTTAGE G ROVE , O REGON ’ S S OUTH L ANE S CHOOL D ISTRICT PLOUGHS AHEAD AS THE NATION ’ S cer tificate in mastery pack leader. According to an article entitled “Cottage Grove Endures Trials, Triumphs as It Tests New School Plan” in the December 13, 1994 issue of The Oregonian : Parents are still fighting the changes. Students will mutter about being guinea pigs. Teach ers—even those who back the reforms—groan about the workload. Last spring, Cottage Grove High School handed out the state’s first certificates of ini tial mastery to 81 sophomores. The certificate, keystone in the 1991 reform act, is designed to measure students on what they’ve learned and what they can do, as opposed to what courses they have taken. Much of the criticism arises from the way ninth-graders were thrust cold into the new program two years ago. They worked on team projects that would be graded jointly, took more responsibility for their own learning and developed portfolios of their classwork. And, more significantly, they had to meet higher academic standards. Timm Wagner, 16, failed to get his certificate last year because, he says, his teammates on a group project didn’t get their work done. “I don’t like it,” he says. “If I’m doing a job, I should get fired if I do something wrong, not if somebody else does something wrong.” Some of the nation’s leading corporate executives last week announced that they have formed a group to promote business involvement in school-to-work programs. Members of the National Employment Leadership Council will work with the U.S. Education and Labor departments to implement school-to-work programs in their own companies and encourage other firms to do the same. Whether many businesses take them up on the offer could determine the prospects for work-based learning in the United States. The new council provides the strongest signal to date that the private sector may be ready to support such programs.... But the council stopped short of releasing numeric goals for how many firms it hopes to recruit or how many training slots they would provide.... Jerome Grossman, the chair man and C.E.O. of the New England Medical Center, said the council hopes to set numeric objectives within the next two months. The council’s staff is housed at the Institute for Educational Leadership, a non-profit group based in Washington. The following companies and C.E.O.’s are charter members of the council: Ford Mo tor Co., Alan Trotman; American Express Travel Related Services Co, Inc., Roger Ballou; Atlanta Life Insurance Co., Jesse Hill, Jr.; BellSouth Corp., John Clendenin; Charles Schwab S CHOOL - TO - WORK PROGRAMS PROMOTED BY BUSINESS IS THE SUBJECT OF AN ARTICLE EN titled “Leading Business Executives Create Council to Promote S-T-W Programs” in the December 14, 1994 issue of Education Week . Some excerpts follow: