Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

368 and local school boards. The text of the pamphlet follows in its entirety.

FIVE MAGIC QUESTIONS ENABLE PARENTS TO DEBATE THE ISSUES

Education regulations or laws state which standards or outcomes your child needs to meet to graduate. Many of the outcomes are vague and subjective. Look at the verbs. This shows why these outcomes are impossible to measure objectively. An example under a cat egory like “Citizenship” states, “All students will negotiate and cooperate with others.” The Five Magic Questions parents can use to win the debate when outcomes reflect subjective or vague areas are: 1. How do you measure that outcome? If an outcome states that “all children must have ethical judgment, honesty, or integrity,” what exactly is going to be measured? How do you measure a bias in a child in order for him to graduate? Must children be diagnosed? Will they be graded by observation or pencil or paper tests? How will performance or behavior be addressed? 2. How is that outcome scored or what is the standard? What behavior is “Appropriate” and to what degree? For example, how much self-esteem is too much or not enough to graduate? Can government score the attitudes and values of its citizens? 3. Who decides what that standard will be? The state has extended their mandated graduation requirements or exit outcomes down to the individual child. This bypasses all local autonomy. What about locally elected school directors? Will they become obsolete? Are we talking about a state or government diploma? 4. How will my child be remediated? What are you going to do to my children to change them from here to there in their attitudes and values in order to graduate? How do you remediate ethical judgment, decision-making, interpersonal skills, environmental attitudes? What techniques will be used? What risks are involved? What justification does the state have to change my children’s attitudes? 5. What if parent and state disagree on the standard or how it is measured in the classroom? Who has the ultimate authority over the child? What about privacy? Can parents opt out of a graduation requirement of the state? All children must meet the same fixed standard of “future citizen” or not graduate, go to college, or get a job. Your child is human capital. This is why the state wants control of the graduation requirement—and that is why local school boards must create policy to stop the state from exerting power over elected officials. Ask this question: Do you want equity in opportunity, or do you want equity in standards? A MERICAN F AMILY A SSOCIATION L AW C ENTER IN T UPELO , M ISSISSIPPI ISSUED A PRESS release on September l3, 1996 which read in part: On behalf of concerned parents, students and school board members in two Oregon school districts, the American Family Association Law Center and National Legal Foundation teamed up to file a lawsuit in federal district court today challenging Oregon’s statewide education reforms adopted in conjunction with Goals 2000 . The momentous lawsuit alleges three claims of constitutional violations by the Oregon State Board of Education, Superintendent of Public Instruction and two school districts, resulting from Oregon’s adoption and implementation of the radical transformational ideas