Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

A–91 is implementing DI. Doug Carnine, Director of the federally funded National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators, in Eugene, Oregon, has written Ms. Moran, California’s Commission for the Establishment of Academic Content and Performance Standards, regarding the Center’s work with Virginia on aligning their state assessment with their standards and in developing their accountability system. What is of interest here is that Carnine, who is close to Engelmann, the father of DI—DISTAR, and who was involved in the Follow Through Direct Instruction Evaluation (1970–76), known as the “largest and most expensive social experiment ever launched,” has surfaced 20 years later as a key player in education restructuring. You will be told Direct Instruction is “back to basics” and if you squawk hard enough about the outcomes or standards of learning, or whatever they call your objectives, the educrats may recommend Virginia’s Standards of Learning [Is this E.D. Hirsch? ed.] which are pretty clean—for now—but don’t forget those standards can be interpreted by the educrats any way they want, and some fine day, they could be completely changed. The problem is not the outcomes, but the Skinnerian method essential for workforce training, and Direct Instruction is just as bad, for the same reasons, as Mastery Learning, which has been a disaster in all the inner city schools in which it was used. Last night on the Jim Lehrer Show there was a panel discussion on the sorry state of education during which John Chubb of the liberal Brookings Institute, who heads up the Edison Project (charter schools), recommended Direct Instruction as the solution to the nation’s education problems. Chubb et al., with strong ties into the international business community, support publicly funded charter schools, which, as all of you know, will be used for workforce training. The Skinnerian Method, be it ML or DI, is of vital importance to the implementation of workforce training. ML and DI are not the same thing as teacher-initiated or driven instruction of basic content material (traditional education). Curriculum in script form using operant conditioning, i.e. Programmed Learning, be it Ethna Reid’s ECRI Mastery Learning (ML) or Engelmann’s SRA (DISTAR). Direct Instruction (DI) is not the same as teacher-initiated or driven instruction of basic content material (traditional education). PLS PUT ON INTERNET! Appendix XVII January 29, 1997 Memo To: Supporters of Direct Instruction From: Charlotte Iserbyt Regarding: The Role of Siegfried Engelmann, developer of DISTAR/Reading Mastery, in teacher training for federally funded ECRI (Skinnerian Mastery Learning) On April 12, 1980 the Maine Facilitator Center (National Diffusion Network) held a conference to train teachers in Ethna Reid’s mastery learning program known as “The Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction.” A teacher friend of mine gave me the 125-page teacher training manual used at the conference. Although I had always suspected that Engelmann’s DISTAR/Reading Mastery was in some way connected to the ECRI program since the techniques were similar, I was unable to make a direct connection. When I first read the training manual ten years ago, I did not know who Engelmann was so his name meant nothing to me. Now that I know who he is, you can imagine how shocked and sickened I was to find him referenced in Reid’s rat lab