Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

A–19 the ten proposed goals of education, (3) to see what usable measures might be available for measuring input and the variables that condition output, (4) to see how the several measures might be related and combined to produce the necessary performance criteria. The outcomes of these studies suggest (1) that good cooperation can be expected from the school systems in conducting such studies in the future, (2) that reliable measures of some aspect of each of the ten kinds of output implied by the ten goals is possible, (3) that the validity of many of the available measures, however, is open to question, (4) that there are many measures still to be developed if all the most important aspects of educational output are to be effectively appraised, (5) that it is feasible to express performance criteria in a form which takes into account conditions under which schools work and which at the same time constitute a challenge to the majority of schools to improve their programs. THE DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATION OF PERFORMANCE CRITERIA Out of the work of the two illustrative studies a design for a study to develop performance criteria has emerged. It has five characteristics as follows: 1. It would provide multiple performance objectives for schools of any given type. 2. It assumes that pupils at seven different grade levels will be tested twice, two years apart, first, to establish levels of input and second, to establish levels of output. [This was, for many years, the NAEP schedule, ed.] 3. It envisages a testing program which consists of a core program made up of tests which have already been proved to be dependable and an experimental program made up of tests to be developed to a state of dependability in the course of the study. 4. It would be carried out on a ten per cent sample of the schools of the Commonwealth and would probably involve about 7,000 classrooms and 200,000 pupils. [This is the NAEP sampling method used for many years, ed.] SUPPORTING RESEARCH At all stages of this planning study it has become increasingly apparent to us that any program to evaluate the quality of education in Pennsylvania which was unaccompanied by a strong program of research would be sterile. Two kinds of research are essential: • Research specially designed to invent, develop, and validate the measures needed by the evaluation program—especially measures of the kinds of educational output assumed by such goals as self-understanding, tolerance, citizenship, attitude toward school and learning, and creativity. • Research to identify those educational processes and those modifiable conditions of learning that hold the greatest possibilities for improving the educational output in schools of varying types. …The four studies were concerned (a) with measures of the ways children think and solve problems, (b) with the test-taking motivation of students in culturally deprived areas, (c) with the measurement of creativity, and (d) with the attitudes of primary school pupils toward school. What have the studies shown? • They have shown that ordinary achievement tests leave untouched many important intellectual qualities of students, but that with a concentrated program of research it should be possible to develop measures of these qualities. Appendix IV