Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

G–4

tional and industry-recognized skills according to skill proficiencies for students in career preparation programs; placement in, retention in, and completion of secondary education; placement and retention in military service; and increased literacy skills. It is expected that States will develop additional benchmarks.

Block Grants. Part of the New Federalism movement of the early eighties, block grants send federal assistance, with all its federal regulations, directly to the local level, bypassing the traditional constitutional oversight of the state legislature. Block grants are a necessary part of unconstitutional regional government. They are sold to the citizens as enhancing local control when in fact they do just the opposite by removing an important elected official check at the state level. The 105th Congress (1998) Republican-backed Dollars to the Classroom Act is a good example of how this state legislative bypass is effected. Career Transcript. The SCANS 2000 Center at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore has developed something called a “career transcript,” the purpose of which is to provide quick, more accurate summaries of applicants’ education and work experiences. A career transcript “can be thought of as a certified resumé of lifelong learning,” SCANS 2000 Chair man Arnold Packer wrote in a recent paper on the proposal. “The problem with academic transcripts,” Packer said, “is that they’re designed for students going on to other schools; they have little currency in the workplace.” The career transcript “sort of fits between” resumes and school records, Scott Brainard, a SCANS/2000 program evaluator, said. It would contain a job applicant’s scores on standardized tests such as the SAT or tests from national vendors like Microsoft. The transcript also would include an assessment of workplace performance based on supervisors’ evaluations, and an assessment of school performance based on benchmarked classroom tasks. The common language of the career transcript would be provided by SCANS (Labor Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills), a 1991 panel that identified skills workers need in such areas as planning, communicating, working with others and using technology. [The above information was excerpted from a report of the Association for Career and Technical Education, which was downloaded from the Internet, January 24, 1999 (http://www.avaonline.org/Weekly.html), ed.] Carnegie Unit. A system developed in 1905 for standardizing the high school curriculum. Tra ditionally, students were required to complete a certain number of Carnegie Units (seat time in a specific subject area) in order to graduate (i.e., 4 units of English, 4 of math, 4 of history, 4 of science, etc.). The restructuring of American education from inputs to outputs (outcome-based education) requires the removal of the Carnegie Unit as an indicator of academic exposure in order to graduate. Certificates of Initial and Advanced Mastery (CIM and CAM). These certificates are a result of the 1990 report America’s Choice: High Skills or Low Wages! produced by a commis sion appointed by the National Center on Education and the Economy. This group, led by Marc S. Tucker, was co-chaired by former U.S. Secretaries of Labor and chaired by Ira C. Magaziner, close friend and advisor to the Clintons. [Marc Tucker’s organization holds trademark ownership of “Certificate of Initial Mastery” and “Certificate of Advanced Mastery.” That being the case, why are states and localities issuing what amounts to a privately validated diploma? ed.]