Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

Appendix X

Excerpts from “The Next Step: The Minnesota Plan ”

“The Next Step: The Minnesota Plan ” by Paul Berman, Executive Director, Center for Policy Alternatives, and President of BW Associates, a consulting firm specializing in policy research and analysis in Berkeley, California ( Phi Delta Kappan : Washington, D.C.) November 1985, p. 40. Elementary and secondary education in America are in need of more than just repair and maintenance; the challenge is to move to “a new plateau of learning.” The necessary struc tural reforms for such a move appear to be under way in Minnesota.... Although Minnesota’s schools are among the best in the nation, the evidence shows that they have been unable to keep pace with the rapidly increasing need for more students to learn more…. Various groups in the state, as well as reform-minded legislatures and state officials, have been asking basic questions about the future of education in Minnesota. One such group is the Minnesota Busi ness Partnership which contracted with me and my associates to examine K–12 education and suggest reforms, if necessary.... The result was The Minnesota Plan , a document that has altered the nature of the debate in Minnesota. Gov. Rudy Perpich and Ruth Randall, his superintendent of public instruction, used the Plan, as well as the work of others when they proposed to the state legislature reform measures based on concepts in the Plan. ...[T]he usual six years of comprehensive secondary education in junior and senior high schools, with their multiplicity of courses and student tracking, should be phased out. Instead, all students should attend a four-year secondary school that concentrates on core academic subjects. Then they should have opportunities to specialize for two years. Though the Minnesota Plan has many unique elements, it has derived specific reforms from three sources. First, various state-level proposals over the past few years influenced what went into the Plan as well as what was omitted. My experience in developing reforms for what became California’s omnibus education reform legislation (S.B. 813) was particularly valuable. Second, recent and earlier literature on schooling was extremely helpful, particularly the work of Benjamin Bloom, John Goodlad, and Theodore Sizer…. Under “Restructuring Schooling”:

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