Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

356 and the Economy); Ted Sizer’s Coalition of Essential Schools (funded by Carnegie’s Education Commission of the States and multi-millionaire Walter Annenberg); inner cities—most of which used Mastery Learning—especially Washington, D.C.; and Secretary of Education Riley’s home state of South Carolina (lowest test scores in the nation). These failures and troubling conse quences were reported in major newspapers, magazines and education-related journals. [Ed. Note: The writer predicts that once schools have been manipulated into substituting non competitive criterion-referenced testing for competitive norm-referenced testing, the dismal test score scenario will be a thing of the past, as a result of the proposed “quality” teach-to-the test measures of educational achievement being put in place. Then, all parents can plaster their cars with “My Child Is an Honor Student” bumper stickers.] T RI -C ITIES F OUNDATION FOR A CADEMIC E XCELLENCE (TFAE) OF P ASCO , W ASHINGTON IS sued a press release in 1995 entitled “Survey of Former Pasco, Washington Teachers Gives Outcomes-Based Education Insights” which read as follows: In 1988 the Pasco School District piloted OBE and has since been used as an OBE role model for education reform across Washington State and the nation. During the 1992–93 and 1993–94 school years, the Pasco School District lost more than one hundred teachers. Tri-Cities Foundation for Academic Excellence (TFAE) surveyed these former teachers to obtain their insights on the OBE program and establish whether or not the OBE philosophy and the manner in which it was implemented were influential factors in their leaving the District. Are teachers currently being coerced or forced to leave the Pasco School District if they are not using the Outcomes-Based Instructional Model? The following results represent responses from teachers in a district used as a model for Washington state’s now-mandated Outcomes-Based Education and OBE across the nation: • 68% responded children did not benefit from Outcomes-Based Education; • 86% responded Outcomes-Based Education divided teachers and created polarized camps; • 27% stated that they were asked to leave if they didn’t agree with Outcomes-Based Education. [Ed. Note: Barbara McFarlin-Kosiec, Ph.D. in Educational Leadership, a veteran teacher in the Pasco School District, has filed suit against the district due to its non-renewal of her con tract. The non-renewal was based on the vice-principal’s opinion that she failed to use the instructional process of OBE in the classroom. Ms. Kosiec’s suit is based upon her belief that her constitutional rights have been violated; i.e., in order to continue teaching in the district she was required to go along with an alien philosophy and to hold certain politically correct attitudes and beliefs. 47 ] The survey was designed for complete confidentiality and anonymity. 46

N ATIONAL I SSUES IN E DUCATION : G OALS 2000 AND S CHOOL - TO -W ORK EDITED BY J OHN F. Jen nings, general counsel for education for the Committee on Education and Labor of the U.S. House of Representatives (Phi Delta Kappa: Bloomington, Ind., and Institute for Educational