Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

Glossary G–13 States.” From Communities and Their Schools by Don Davies, Ed. (McGraw-Hill: New York, 1981), Miriam Clasby, longtime Community Educator, makes the statement: “ ...Unless considerations of schooling are placed within the contexts of... world society, they run the danger of unwittingly affirming a past that no longer exists.” Lower-Order Skills. These include knowledge, comprehension, and memorization, the cor nerstones of traditional education. HR 6—the 1993 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 —recommended the abandonment of the so-called “lower-order skills,” to be replaced by ones which engage students in more “complex tasks.” (See 1993 HR 6) Magnet Schools. A public school focused on a specialized area of learning, often in partnership with a private organization. They were originally promoted as a way to bring about racial integration. In the context of a socialist full employment, planned economy, magnet schools have traditionally been associated with the Soviet polytech system and its quotas for engi neers, ballet dancers, etc. Charter schools can also serve the same purpose by providing specialized training. (See 1991 NASDC article, Charter Schools and Appendix XII) Mastery Learning (ML). Proponents of ML believe that almost all children can learn if given enough time, adequate resources geared to the individual learning style of the student, and a curriculum aligned to test items. Mastery learning and direct instruction use Skin nerian methodology (operant conditioning) in order to obtain “predictable” results. The critical teacher behaviors found to correlate directly with high levels of achievement are: specifying learning objectives, setting high standards for mastery, modeling, practicing, eliciting responses from all students, reinforcing correct responses, setting up systems for frequent and consistent rewards, and time on task. Benjamin Bloom, the father of ML, says “the purpose of education is to change the thoughts, actions, and feelings of students,” and he developed his mastery learning to do exactly that. (See 1968 Mastery Learning entry, Direct Instruction , Effective School Research , Individually Prescribed Education , Outcome-based Education , Appendix VI and XIX) National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). “The Nation’s Report Card” which measures student progress by testing different subject areas in alternate years, carried out from 1965 to 1981 by the Education Commission of the States and since 1983 by the Educational Testing Service under contract to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Educational Statistics. Also gathers personal data on children and families in order to fill out longitudinal profiles that include information on students’ and parents’ attitudes, values, and beliefs. (See Appendix IV and XI) National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE). Founded by Marc Tucker, NCEE conceived the CIM and CAM in a 1990 report called America’s Choice: High Skills or Low Wages! [Note: NCEE’s subsidiary, the National Alliance for Restructuring Education, has been renamed “America’s Choice for School Design.”] (See Certificates of Initial and Advanced Mastery , New Standards Project and Appendix XV and XVIII) National Skills Standard Board (NSSB). NSSB, an independent authority acting under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Labor, has authority to identify occupation clusters and define the student skill level required for certification to work within these clusters. Both schools and businesses would be expected to follow government guidelines and adopt