Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

Glossary G–5 The following excerpts regarding School-to-Work (STW) and CIM and CAM have been taken from The School-to-Work Revolution by Lynn Olson (Perseus Books: Reading, Massachusetts, 1997), pp. 191–193. [The writer recommends Olson’s book for those inter ested in the history of school-to-work activities in the United States, without necessarily endorsing her views, ed.]

The report advocated creating an Americanized version of the European systems, beginning with a radical restructuring of the American high school. All students would have to demonstrate that they had met a high standard of academic achievement during the first stage of their secondary school education. Those who did would earn something called a “certificate of initial mastery,” typically at around age 16. [The CIM also requires mastery in the various attitudes and citizenship skills declared necessary for employment and citizenship, ed.] During the upper stage of secondary school, students could either enter college directly, spend additional time preparing for the more competitive colleges and universi ties, or begin to pursue a professional and technical certificate, which most likely would require some postsecondary education. At the time, Vera Katz was vice chairman of the House Education Committee in Oregon and a member of the National Center’s board of directors. Katz saw an opportunity to apply the adage that “all politics is local.” From her offices in Salem, she decided to put the commission’s recommendations to the test. The bill that she sponsored in the Oregon legislature mirrored many of the recommendations in America’s Choice . It passed in 1991 with little opposition and with the strong backing of both the governor and the state’s business community. It called for all students to earn a certificate of initial mastery [CIM] in the core academic subjects by grade 10. After that, all students would pursue a “certificate of advanced mastery” (or CAM) in one of six career pathways for their last two years of high school. Within each pathway (in arts and communications, business and management, health services, human resources, industry and technology, and natural resources) students could earn either a college-preparatory endorsement or a professional-technical endorsement, or both. Supporters of the new law hailed it as the end of tracking in the high schools. Because all students would have to meet a common academic standard to receive a certificate of initial mastery, all would have to demonstrate command of high level academic content. Opponents of the new law depicted it as tracking writ large. They claimed that because students at the age of 16 would have to select a career pathway and decide whether they were pursuing entry in a four-year college or not, their opportunities would be limited. They also worried that the law would encourage students to drop out of high school once they had earned the certificate of initial mastery. The Oregon Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, came down hard against the new law. “Schools should not be forged as a service industry for business, nor should we be misdirected by the assumption that our economic ills are somehow the fault of the public schools,” the union protested. The majority of parents and students surveyed also opposed having to choose a career focus by the middle of high school, particularly if young people could not change their minds. However, they liked the idea of providing both col lege-bound and non-college-bound students with a sense of how their academic courses applied to the real world, and they thought high schools should provide