Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

Appendix VII

Excerpts from Performance-based Teacher Education

Performance-based Teacher Education: What Is the State of the Art ?, Stanley Elam, Ed. (Phi Delta Kappan Publications: Washington, D.C., 1971). Paper prepared for the Committee on Performance-based Teacher Education of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education pursuant to a contract with the U.S. Office of Education through the Texas Education Agency, Austin, Texas. The Association is pleased to offer to the teacher education community the Committee’s first state-of-the-art paper. In performance-based programs performance goals are specified, and agreed to, in rigorous detail in advance of instruction. The student must either be able to demonstrate his ability to promote desirable learning or exhibit behavior known to promote it. He is held accountable, not for passing grades, but for attaining a general level of competency in performing the essential tasks of teaching…. Emphasis is on demonstrated product or output. Acceptance of this basic principle has program implications that are truly revolutionary. Probably the roots of PBTE [Performance-based Teacher Education, ed.] lie in general societal conditions and the institutional responses to them characteristic of the Sixties. For example, the realization that little or no progress was being made in narrowing wide inequality gaps led to increasing governmental attention to racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic minority needs, particularly educational ones. The claim that traditional teacher education programs were not producing people equipped to teach minority group children and youth effectively has pointed directly to the need for reform in teacher education. Moreover, the claim of minority group youth that there should be alternative routes to professional status has raised serious questions about the suitability of generally recognized teacher education programs. Confronted with the ultimate question of the meaning of life in American society, youths have pressed for greater relevance in their education and a voice in determining what its goals should be. Thus PBTE usually includes a means of shared decision-making power... [T]he student’s rate of progress through the program is determined by demonstrated competency rather than by time or course completion.... Instruction is individualized and

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