Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

394 academic performance is what is being sought by the education bureaucracy and the Congress which funds public education. Surely, if the departments of education in those southern states which implemented effective school research had performed longitudinal studies tracking the children who went through those schools, education policy planners would have evidence that effective school research falls far short of the claims made by its proponents, most of whom benefit financially from such promotion. (See Appendix XXVI.) This writer has a question for Coach Barnes: Couldn’t his family’s move to Austin, Texas, which is implementing the same Skinnerian method under another label (direct instruction), be a wonderful example of jumping from the frying pan into the fire—especially since Austin, Texas is also deeply involved (a leader) in non-academic school-to-work?] A VERY INTERESTING ARTICLE ENTITLED “T AKING T ECHNICAL A SSISTANCE ON THE R OAD ” was pub lished in the Spring 1998 issue of Early Developments (Vol. 2, No. l), a publication of the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 58 This center is funded in part by UNC and partly by PR/Award No. R307A60004 administered by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education. Ex cerpts from the article follow: By the early 1990s, Frank Porter Graham’s researchers were at work in the People’s Republic of China, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. For example, in 1995 Shelley deFosset and Pat Trohanis began working with the privately financed Step by Step program which was aimed at creating early childhood education demonstration projects initially in 17 emerging democracies of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Step by Step founder and sponsor, George Soros, through his Open Society Foundation, wanted to create a childhood education project that would ultimately lead to a new partici patory citizenry beginning with the youngest members of society, its children. 59 Educators and parents in the countries involved have been enthusiastic—and, by the end of the second year Step by Step was in 1,500 classrooms serving over 37,500 children and families. Most countries have been successful in getting local funding for the programs. Through a subcontract with Children’s Resources International of Washington, D.C. which is the Open Society’s technical assistance arm for the Step by Step project, de Fosset and Trohanis have hosted two groups of Russian teachers and administrators in the United States, and deFosset estimated that she’s visited Russia “16 or 17” times. While in the U.S. Russians received training and visited numerous preschool programs. “When we’re in Russia, we do training in the cities in Russia—and then we visit programs and provide feedback on existing programs,” said de Fosset. M ARILYN P EASE OF N EW B EDFORD , M ASSACHUSETTS WROTE AN ARTICLE FOR THE M AY 22, 1998 issue of The Standard-Times of New Bedford entitled “MCAS Tests Undermine Rights of Par ents” which deals with the same subject covered by Mr. Jacoby’s May 7 column, but from a parent’s perspective. Excerpts follow: Once upon a time, Americans lived in a republic, where the voice of the minority carried as much weight as the voice of the majority because of a representative government. Laws and rights applied to individuals whether one, one hundred, or more people exercised their rights as opposed to marching lockstep or allowing themselves to be herded.