Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

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The Noxious Nineties : c. 1998

was going to write a column saying so. But I have been persuaded not to jump to conclusions. I have been urged to wait for this first MCAS to play itself out, to see whether students report being asked anything dubious or improper. I have been reminded that this year’s tests will only set a bench-mark—that not until 2003 will the tests actually have an impact on students’ ability to graduate. So, I’ll hold my doubts in abeyance. For now. I can always write that column another time. “S OUTH C AROLINA T AKES TO H EART C OACH ’ S S HOT AT ‘H ORRIBLE ’ S CHOOLS ” WAS AN article with a Clemson, South Carolina dateline which appeared in the May 15, 1998 Atlanta Journal-Con stitution . Some excerpts follow: Educators and politicians screeched when they heard former Clemson University basketball coach Rick Barnes say he was packing up his family and moving to Austin, Texas in part because South Carolina schools are “horrible.”... Ever since the late 1970s, when current U.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley became governor, education reform has been a top issue in South Carolina. Yet, over nearly two decades, the state has remained—along with several other Southern states—at the bottom of national rankings.... Moreover, South Carolina schools regularly win the U.S. Department of Education’s Blue Ribbon, showing excellence in student achievement and teacher performance. Three elementary schools in fast-growing Greenville County won the award last year. [Ed. Note: South Carolina can claim the dubious distinction of having been the home state of Effective Schools Research change agent Donald Thomas, promoter of U.S.-Soviet pedagogy exchanges, and U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley, former state school superintendent and governor of South Carolina during the adoption phase of the state’s OBE/school-to-work experiments. The above article is most telling in that it proves that the southern states which adopted the late Professor Ron Edmonds’s Effective Schools Research and its components (mastery learning/direct instruction/outcome-based education/cooperative learning, etc., etc.) in the mid-1970s have the lowest test scores in the nation. The philosophy behind Effective School Research, that “all children can learn if provided with the necessary ‘environment’ and enough time” is no more, no less than the outcome-based education philosophy which has by 1998 been implemented “in all schools of the nation.” How can South Carolina have the lowest test scores and win Blue Ribbons? The Effective School Report , the journal from which this writer has frequently quoted— and the one and only journal which consistently deals with OBE, TQM, Effective Schools, etc.— was born in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1980s. Former Secretary of Education T.H. Bell served on the board of directors of its parent company, Kelwynn, Inc., the Effective Schools training company which published The Effective School Report . It should come as no surprise that Jackson, Mississippi schools served as the first guinea pig schools for implementation of Effective School Research. The fact that South Carolina and Mississippi, two of the southern states most deeply involved in mastery learning over a long period of time, have such low academic test scores should be adequate justification for Congress to call for an investigation of the consequences of adopting effective school research and outcome-based education, if , and the writer repeats if ,