MEDUSA
April 8, 2016
MEDUSA
Multi-fad Education Dooms USA
By Lucy Wells
THE LATEST FAD
Educational fads usually have names that sound like perfect solutions to our failing educational system. People are inclined to assume good intentions, so they give these fads a chance. Yet the fads, tragically, victimize generation after generation.
The latest fad is Common Core. Like past fads, it involves a lot of money. For one thing it requires enormous investments in new curriculum, which greatly benefit publishing and tech companies. Common Core requires not only new books, but also new laptop computers (Chromebooks). These Chromebooks collect data for a Statewide Longitudinal Data System, or SLDS, which is maintained by the government. Right now, Washington State is one of fifteen western states that have SLDSs.
The justification for SLDSs is to collect and disseminate information about a student’s educational history, including courses, attendance, grades and test scores. But student profiles also include more personal information.1 Profiles will accompany students indefinitely and could affect future decisions such as college admissions, hiring and promotions.
The 1974 Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) required written permission from a parent before releasing a child’s educational information, and it put strict limits on the release of testing data to federal agencies. In 2012, however, The U.S. Department of Education (not Congress!) amended FERPA. According to The National Law Review, the amendments “allow for greater disclosures of personal and directory student identifying information.”2
According to the Department of Education, schools do not need parental consent to share student records with any “school officials,” who can include private companies hired by the school. Once a student’s information is released to third parties, however, there is no sure way to keep it confidential.
THE BIG PICTURE
About thirty years ago, some educators began to move away from knowledge-based education and toward social engineering. We generally assume that the goal of educators is to help each child grow in knowledge and fulfill his or her unique potential. But there is growing evidence this is not the central goal of educational fads.
Cheri Yecke, former Director of Teacher Quality and Public School Choice for the U.S. Department of Education, published a powerful book about this in 2003: The War against Excellence.3 Yecke revealed troubling philosophical trends, especially among middle school reformers.
According to Florida State University professor and middle school reformer Paul S. George, middle schools must have goals beyond educational ones. He wrote in 1988 that middle schools should be the “focus of social experimentation, the vehicle for movement toward increased justice and equality in the society as a whole.”4 So students, unbeknownst to themselves or their parents, became subjects for social experimentation.
Two critics of the middle school reform movement, John Feldhusen and Sidney Moon, wrote in 1992 that the movement was “calling for a cultural revolution in America starting with schools but eventually permeating all aspects of American society. The homogenization of educational experiences is advocated primarily as a means to social change. The rush to heterogeneous grouping [mixing all abilities] and cooperative learning is probably heavily influenced by social and political value systems.”5
Arguing in favor of heterogeneous grouping in 1995, Paul George wrote that programs for gifted students were the wrong way to go. According to George, “What I hope we’re becoming aware of is that gifted programs involve costs that I’m not sure other children should be asked to pay… Schools are about the redistribution of future wealth. That’s what they’re about. They’re not about talent development. They’re not about taking each child as far as he or she can go. They’re about redistributing the wealth of the future.”6
So schools became laboratories for social experimentation. Tom Erb, editor of Middle School Journal, wrote in 1996 that “‘school’ no longer means what you thought.”7
GETTING OUR MINDS RIGHT
So, one must wonder, what’s the purpose of leveling all talents and abilities? Does No Child Left Behind really mean “no child gets ahead”? Is this what educators really mean when they say “we need to close the gaps”?
Egalitarianism, or the homogenizing of all abilities, is behind the push for cooperative learning, for equality of outcomes through leveling of achievement. Competition is thought to be unfair to those less talented. The collective is considered to be more important than the individual. This explains the push for “human rights” as opposed to unalienable individual rights—those protected by our Constitution.
Although Common Core does not mandate heterogeneous grouping, its “one size fits all” approach to curriculum is consistent with it. By establishing a curriculum that all students will follow, and by collecting both personal and academic information about students that is made available to anyone who can pass as a “school official,” Common Core reveals itself to be part of the social experimentation that began in the 1980s. The first priority is to control and manipulate students rather than help them develop their potential.
We only need to look at our current college campuses to see the results.
The public desperately needs to call out the social manipulators’ domination of our educational system, and stop being intimidated by the relentless assault on the ability of our children to aspire to greatness.
It’s time we went back to find educational models that can be successful. As C. S. Lewis once wrote, “If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”8
NOTES
1. National Center for Education Statistics, “SLDS Technical Brief,” November 2010.
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011602.pdf.
2. Stephen A. Mendelsohn, “U.S. Department of Education Amends its FERPA Regulations to Allow for Certain Additional Student Disclosures,” The National Law Review (January 2, 2012). http://www.natlawreview.com/article/us-department-education-amends-its-ferpa-regulations-to-allow-certain-additional-student-dis.
3. Cheri Pierson Yecke, The War Against Excellence (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003).
4. Paul S. George, “Education 2000: Which Way The Middle School?”
The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas
62:1 (1988): 14-17. doi:10.1080/00098655.1988.10113996
5. John F. Feldhusen and Sidney M. Moon, “Grouping Gifted Students: Issues and Concerns,” Gifted Child Quarterly 36:2 (1992): 63-67. doi:10.1177/001698629203600202.
6. Paul S. George, “In balance: Gifted education and middle schools,” in Gifted Education and Middle Schools (Reston, VA: Council for Exceptional Children, 1995), 48. Quoted in Yecke (2003), 40.
7. Tom Erb, “‘School’ No Longer Means what you Thought,” Middle School Journal 27:4 (1996): 2. doi:10.1080/00940771.1996.11495900
8. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 2015), 28-29.
Tags: Common Core State Standards, History of Ed "Reform", data, federal
MEDUSA
Multi-fad Education Dooms USA
By Lucy Wells
THE LATEST FAD
Educational fads usually have names that sound like perfect solutions to our failing educational system. People are inclined to assume good intentions, so they give these fads a chance. Yet the fads, tragically, victimize generation after generation.
The latest fad is Common Core. Like past fads, it involves a lot of money. For one thing it requires enormous investments in new curriculum, which greatly benefit publishing and tech companies. Common Core requires not only new books, but also new laptop computers (Chromebooks). These Chromebooks collect data for a Statewide Longitudinal Data System, or SLDS, which is maintained by the government. Right now, Washington State is one of fifteen western states that have SLDSs.
The justification for SLDSs is to collect and disseminate information about a student’s educational history, including courses, attendance, grades and test scores. But student profiles also include more personal information.1 Profiles will accompany students indefinitely and could affect future decisions such as college admissions, hiring and promotions.
The 1974 Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) required written permission from a parent before releasing a child’s educational information, and it put strict limits on the release of testing data to federal agencies. In 2012, however, The U.S. Department of Education (not Congress!) amended FERPA. According to The National Law Review, the amendments “allow for greater disclosures of personal and directory student identifying information.”2
According to the Department of Education, schools do not need parental consent to share student records with any “school officials,” who can include private companies hired by the school. Once a student’s information is released to third parties, however, there is no sure way to keep it confidential.
THE BIG PICTURE
About thirty years ago, some educators began to move away from knowledge-based education and toward social engineering. We generally assume that the goal of educators is to help each child grow in knowledge and fulfill his or her unique potential. But there is growing evidence this is not the central goal of educational fads.
Cheri Yecke, former Director of Teacher Quality and Public School Choice for the U.S. Department of Education, published a powerful book about this in 2003: The War against Excellence.3 Yecke revealed troubling philosophical trends, especially among middle school reformers.
According to Florida State University professor and middle school reformer Paul S. George, middle schools must have goals beyond educational ones. He wrote in 1988 that middle schools should be the “focus of social experimentation, the vehicle for movement toward increased justice and equality in the society as a whole.”4 So students, unbeknownst to themselves or their parents, became subjects for social experimentation.
Two critics of the middle school reform movement, John Feldhusen and Sidney Moon, wrote in 1992 that the movement was “calling for a cultural revolution in America starting with schools but eventually permeating all aspects of American society. The homogenization of educational experiences is advocated primarily as a means to social change. The rush to heterogeneous grouping [mixing all abilities] and cooperative learning is probably heavily influenced by social and political value systems.”5
Arguing in favor of heterogeneous grouping in 1995, Paul George wrote that programs for gifted students were the wrong way to go. According to George, “What I hope we’re becoming aware of is that gifted programs involve costs that I’m not sure other children should be asked to pay… Schools are about the redistribution of future wealth. That’s what they’re about. They’re not about talent development. They’re not about taking each child as far as he or she can go. They’re about redistributing the wealth of the future.”6
So schools became laboratories for social experimentation. Tom Erb, editor of Middle School Journal, wrote in 1996 that “‘school’ no longer means what you thought.”7
GETTING OUR MINDS RIGHT
So, one must wonder, what’s the purpose of leveling all talents and abilities? Does No Child Left Behind really mean “no child gets ahead”? Is this what educators really mean when they say “we need to close the gaps”?
Egalitarianism, or the homogenizing of all abilities, is behind the push for cooperative learning, for equality of outcomes through leveling of achievement. Competition is thought to be unfair to those less talented. The collective is considered to be more important than the individual. This explains the push for “human rights” as opposed to unalienable individual rights—those protected by our Constitution.
Although Common Core does not mandate heterogeneous grouping, its “one size fits all” approach to curriculum is consistent with it. By establishing a curriculum that all students will follow, and by collecting both personal and academic information about students that is made available to anyone who can pass as a “school official,” Common Core reveals itself to be part of the social experimentation that began in the 1980s. The first priority is to control and manipulate students rather than help them develop their potential.
We only need to look at our current college campuses to see the results.
The public desperately needs to call out the social manipulators’ domination of our educational system, and stop being intimidated by the relentless assault on the ability of our children to aspire to greatness.
It’s time we went back to find educational models that can be successful. As C. S. Lewis once wrote, “If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”8
NOTES
1. National Center for Education Statistics, “SLDS Technical Brief,” November 2010.
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011602.pdf.
2. Stephen A. Mendelsohn, “U.S. Department of Education Amends its FERPA Regulations to Allow for Certain Additional Student Disclosures,” The National Law Review (January 2, 2012). http://www.natlawreview.com/article/us-department-education-amends-its-ferpa-regulations-to-allow-certain-additional-student-dis.
3. Cheri Pierson Yecke, The War Against Excellence (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003).
4. Paul S. George, “Education 2000: Which Way The Middle School?”
The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas
62:1 (1988): 14-17. doi:10.1080/00098655.1988.10113996
5. John F. Feldhusen and Sidney M. Moon, “Grouping Gifted Students: Issues and Concerns,” Gifted Child Quarterly 36:2 (1992): 63-67. doi:10.1177/001698629203600202.
6. Paul S. George, “In balance: Gifted education and middle schools,” in Gifted Education and Middle Schools (Reston, VA: Council for Exceptional Children, 1995), 48. Quoted in Yecke (2003), 40.
7. Tom Erb, “‘School’ No Longer Means what you Thought,” Middle School Journal 27:4 (1996): 2. doi:10.1080/00940771.1996.11495900
8. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 2015), 28-29.
Tags: Common Core State Standards, History of Ed "Reform", data, federal