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Dec. 2007Edition 100

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Part 4: The Dynamics of Power

This is a full length book and will be presented in five installments.

Part 5 Will be Posted In January

A Chronological Paper Trail

"LEARNING TO READ THE ECRI WAY" BY DENNIS BAILEY WAS PUBLISHED IN THE MAINE Times on January 8, 1982. In the article Bailey points out that Patrick Groff, an education professor, wrote in a 1974 issue of Today’s Education: "So far, mastery learning has not presented the empirical evidence necessary to convince reasonable minded teachers that all students have the same aptitude for learning every subject."

[Ed. Note: That Professor Groff, professor emeritus, San Diego State University, would make the above comment is interesting in light of recent events; namely, his co-founding with Robert Sweet of the Right to Read Foundation (RRF) which has taken a position in support of the Reading Excellence Act of 1998. In supporting this legislation Groff’s organization has indicated support for the "scientific, research-based" reading method used in ECRI, the very technique which he says "has not presented the empirical evidence necessary to convince reasonable- minded teachers that all students have the same aptitude for learning every subject."

ECRI is the mirror image of Siegfried Engelmann’s DISTAR direct instruction, the Skinnerian operant conditioning-based reading program promoted in Right to Read newsletters and on its website.]

WILLIAM (BILL) SPADY, "THE FATHER OF OBE," MADE THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT DURING a conference held at the U.S. Department of Education in 1982 (attended by this writer). This writer wrote down verbatim in shorthand Spady’s following comment:

Two of the four functions of Mastery Learning are: Extra: whole agenda of acculturation, social roles, social integration, get the kids to participate in social unit, affective; and Hidden: a system of supervision and control which restrains behavior of kids; the outcome of the hidden agenda should be the fostering of social responsibility or compliance.

"STATE OF PRECOLLEGE EDUCATION IN MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE" WAS PREPARED BY Paul DeHart Hurd, professor emeritus, Stanford University, for the National Convocation on Pre-College Education in Math and Science, National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering in Washington, D.C. in 1982. In this paper Prof. Hurd asserts that:

In the Communist countries there are comprehensive examinations at the end of the primary, middle, and secondary schools to assess a student’s actual progress. Test results are not interpreted in a competitive sense as to who has done well or poorly compared to other students or a norm, but rather whether a student has mastered the prescribed subject matter.

If test results are below expectancy, the student is tutored by the teacher and students.

The object is to avoid failures.

[Ed. Note: This definition is striking in its similarity to the definition of OBE/mastery learning/183 direct instruction, which uses non-competitive, criterion-referenced tests rather than traditional norm-referenced tests which compare students to one another. Another common feature among these techniques is continuous progress whereby students can have all the time and/or tutoring they need in order to "master" the content. Continuous progress is necessary to carry out UNESCO’s lifelong learning concept. This "exit exam" process is being legislated into an increasing number of states.]

IN A SPEECH ENTITLED "REGULATED COMPETITION IN THE UNITED STATES" DELIVERED BEfore the top 52 executives in Northern Telecom’s Worldwide Corporation meeting, for which the edited proceedings were published in the February 1982 issue of the Innisbrook Papers,7 Harvard Professor Anthony Oettinger of the Council on Foreign Relations made the following extremely elitist statements:

Our idea of literacy, I am afraid, is obsolete because it rests on a frozen and classical definition.

Literacy, as we know it today, is the product of the conditions of the industrial revolution, of organization, of the need for a work force that could, in effect, "write with a fine round hand." It has to do, in other words, with the Bob Cratchits of the world.

But as much as we might think it is, literacy is not an eternal phenomenon. Today’s literacy is a phenomenon (and Dickens satirized it) that has its roots in the nineteenth century, and one does not have to reach much farther back to think of civilizations with different concepts of literacy based, for example, on oral, rather than written, traditions.

The present "traditional" concept of literacy has to do with the ability to read and write. But the real question that confronts us today is: How do we help citizens function well in their society? How can they acquire the skills necessary to solve their problems?

Do we, for example, really want to teach people to do a lot of sums or write in a "fine round hand" when they have a five-dollar, hand-held calculator or a word processor to work with? Or, do we really have to have everybody literate—writing and reading in the traditional sense—when we have the means through our technology to achieve a new flowering of oral communication?8

What is speech recognition and speech synthesis all about if it does not lead to ways of reducing the burden on the individual of the imposed notions of literacy that were a product of nineteenth century economics and technology?

Complexity—everybody is moaning about tasks becoming too complex for people to do. A Congressman who visited one of my classes recently said, "We have such low-grade soldiers in the U.S. that we have to train them with comic books." And an army captain in my class shot back: "What’s wrong with comic books? My people function" [emphasis in original].

It is the traditional idea that says certain forms of communication, such as comic books, are "bad." But in the modern context of functionalism they may not be all that bad.

[Ed. Note: Doesn’t the above sound a lot like the Texas Study of Adult Functional Competency,

the Adult Performance Level Study, and Secretary of Education T.H. Bell’s and William Spady’s initiation of dumbed-down competency-based education?

One can’t help but wonder if Oettinger—and those social engineers with whom he associates

who call the shots in regard to our children’s futures—would be happy to have their .own children and grandchildren offered such a limited education that they won’t even know who Charles Dickens or Bob Cratchit were?]

184 CHESTER FINN WROTE "PUBLIC SERVICE, PUBLIC SUPPORT, PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY" FOR the March 1982 issue of the National Association of Secondary School Principals’ Bulletin. Finn became a high profile figure in education circles with his appointment as assistant secretary, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, by Secretary of Education William Bennett. Finn’s article was quoted in Barbara Morris’s book, Tuition Tax Credits: A Responsible Appraisal (The Barbara Morris Report: Upland, Cal., 1983):

Short of scattering money in the streets or handing it out to everyone who wants some, the funding agency must define eligible recipients.... This means, in a word, "regulation," the inevitable concomitant of public financial support.

Finn also believed the government is obligated to recognize that the private schools it helps support are different from public schools—that it is this "differentness" that makes them supportable. The other side of the coin, he says, is the obligation of private schools to recognize certain limits to their differentness and certain ways they must conform to the norms and expectations of a society that values and supports them....

Some, to be sure, like to think they can have it both ways; i.e., can obtain aid without saddling themselves with unacceptable forms of regulation. But most acknowledge the general applicability of the old adage that he who pays the piper calls the tune, and are more or less resigned to amalgamating or choosing between assistance and autonomy.

ON MARCH 29, 1982, AT THE "CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC" ANNUAL MEETING OF THE COUNCIL of Chief State School Officers, Secretary of Education T.H. Bell’s top assistant, Elam Herzler, told the assembled fifty state superintendents of education:

One of the elements of an effective school is to monitor, assess, and feed back.... As little as 5 percent of a school budget K–12 would be needed over a period of 12 years to enable each student to have his own computer, and this is within our cost range.

"CAN COMPUTERS TEACH VALUES?" BY JOSEPH A. BRAUN, JR. AND KURT A. SLOBODZIAN, assistant professors in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction of the Northern Illinois University School of Education in Dekalb, Illinois, was published in the April 1982 issue of Educational Leadership. The following are excerpts:

In helping children learn how to inquire and examine their own emerging value systems, most educators agree that unintentional negative reactions by teachers are deleterious to youngsters’ self-concept. Couple this with potential ridicule from student peers, and one can readily see why values education has been a delicate and controversial issue. However, a student using CAI [computer-assisted instruction] in the examination, evaluation, and acquisition of values would be able to do so with mature guidance in an environment free from potential rejection or scorn.

Another pitfall for teachers of values education is the invasion of a child’s right to privacy. Well-intentioned teachers often expect self-disclosure beyond a student’s limit of psychological safety (Lockwood, 1977) by demanding deeply personal revelations from participants who are not prepared to discuss their more private thoughts. The computer, in contrast, has no misguided need to get to know "the real you."

The computer, then, is ideally suited to the role of facilitator in values education. It inherently possesses the Rogerian [psychologist Carl Rogers] qualities of genuineness and congruence. It can even be programmed to positively regard anyone who uses it. A student using CAI gains a sense of protection as well as a constant source of appropriate feedback while exploring and integrating feelings, beliefs, and behavior.

Computers have also been programmed to pick out key words from a respondent’s statements. The computer program then formulates open-ended questions from key words, which causes the respondent to focus and further clarify feelings. In other words, using a program called "Doctor," Holden (1977) describes a conversation between a computer and a troubled young woman who began with a common complaint:

Human: "Men are all alike."

Computer: "In what way?"

Human: "They’re always bugging us about something or another."

Computer: "Can you think of a specific example?"

Human: "Well, my boy friend made me come here."

Computer: "Your boyfriend made you come here?"

Human: "He says that I’m depressed much of the time."

Computer: "I am sorry to hear that you are depressed."

Human: "It’s true, I am unhappy."

Computer: "Do you think coming here will help you not be unhappy?"

Human: "I need some help. That much seems certain."

Computer: "What would it mean if you got some help?"

Human: "Perhaps I could learn to get along with my mother."

Computer: "Tell me more about your family."

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF FRANCIS A. SCHAEFFER: A CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW, VOLUME One, a Christian View of Philosophy and Culture (Crossway Books: Westchester, Ill., 1982) was published.

In a treatise entitled "A Christian View of Philosophy and Culture: Back to Freedom and Dignity," noted Christian scholar and theologian Dr. Francis Schaeffer warned of B.F. Skinner and his methods:

Skinner says that up until the present time all of humanity has considered man to be in some sense autonomous—that is, that there is in each individual an "ego" or mind or center of consciousness which can freely choose one or another course of action. But, Skinner says, autonomous man does not exist, and it is the task of behavioral psychology to abolish the conception.... Skinner declares that everything man is, everything man makes, everything man thinks is completely, 100 percent, determined by his environment.

After the publication of Beyond Freedom and Dignity [1972], when he [Skinner] was at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, he spoke at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. There he said, "The individual does not initiate anything." In fact, he said that any time man is freed from one kind of control, he merely comes under another kind of control. Christians consider that man is autonomous in that he is significant, he affects the environment. In behavioristic psychology, the situation is reversed. All behavior is determined not from within but from without. "You" don’t exist. Man is not there. All that is there is a bundle of conditioning, a collection of what you have been in the past: your genetic makeup and your environment. But Skinner goes a step further, subordinates the genetic 186 factor, and suggests that man’s behavior can be almost totally controlled by controlling the environment.... Some behaviorists would differ with him on this last point. How is it that the environment controls behavior?

Here Skinner brings up the concept of "operant conditioning." This notion is based on his work with pigeons and rats. The basic idea is that "when a bit of behavior is followed by a certain consequence, it is more likely to occur again, and a consequence having this effect is called a reinforcer." (p. 27) That is, for example, "anything the organism does that is followed by the receipt of food is more likely to be done again whenever the organism is hungry."

There are two kinds of reinforcers: negative reinforcers which have adverse effects, and positive reinforcers whose effect is positive. Skinner contends that only the positive reinforcers should be used. In other words, in order to reinforce a certain kind of behavior, one should not punish; he should reward. If a person is surrounded by an atmosphere in which he gets a sufficient reward for doing what society would like him to do, he will automatically do this without ever knowing why he is doing it.... Within the Skinnerian system there are no ethical controls. There is no boundary limit to what can be done by the elite in whose hands control resides.

The reduction of man’s value to zero is one of the important factors which triggered the student rebellion at Berkeley and elsewhere in the 1960s. Those students sensed that they were being turned into zeros and they revolted. Christians should have sensed it long before and said and exhibited that we have an alternative.... We are on the verge of the largest revolution the world has ever seen—the control and shaping of men through the abuse of genetic knowledge, and chemical and psychological conditioning.

Will people accept it? I don’t think they would accept it if (1) they had not already been taught to accept the presuppositions that lead to it, and (2) they were not in such hopelessness. Many of our secular schools have consistently taught these presuppositions, and unhappily many of our Christian lower schools and colleges have taught the crucial subjects no differently than the secular schools.

Schaeffer’s "Conclusion" follows:

What do we and our children face? The biological bomb, the abuse of genetic knowledge, chemical engineering, the behavioristic manipulation of man. All these have come to popular attention only a few years ago. But they are not twenty years away. They are not five years away. They are here now in technological breakthroughs. This is where we live, and as true Christians we must be ready. This is no time for weakness in the Church of Christ. What has happened to man? We must see him as one who has torn himself away both from the infinite-personal God who created him as finite but in his image and from God’s revelation to him. Made in God’s image, he was made to be great, he was made to be beautiful, and he was made to be creative in life and art. But his rebellion has led him into making himself into nothing but a machine. (pp. 374–384)

AN ARTICLE ENTITLED "GRADUATES LACK TECHNICAL TRAINING, STUDY WARNS—BY 1990, 2 Million May Not Have Essential Skills Needed for Employment in ‘Information Society’" was published in the May 12, 1982 issue of Education Week. This article clearly placed the responsibility for the transformation from traditional academic education to workforce training at the feet of the Carnegie Corporation-spawned Education Commission of the States (ECS) and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This article fired one of the first shots across the bow of traditional academic education. It clearly defined the new "education" landscape when it described the need for Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy (high level skills of critical thinking; i.e., evaluation, analysis, synthesis, application, etc.) versus "low level basic skills," emphasizing the use of the brain for processing, not storage (explained by Thomas Kelly in the January 1994 issue of The Effective School Report). The terminology in this article would, eleven years later, be reflected in the major Goals 2000 restructuring legislation, the Elementary and Secondary Reauthorization Act of 1994 (H.R. 6) which referred to the learning of basic academic skills and the emphasis on repetitive drill and practice in elementary school as a "disproven theory." Some excerpts from this enlightening article follow:

"Unless the decline of high-order skills among high-school students is reversed," warns a new report from the Education Commission of the states, "as many as two million students may graduate [in 1990] without the essential skills required for employment in tomorrow’s technically-oriented labor force."

"Information Society: Will Our High School Graduates Be Ready?" was prepared by Roy Forbes, director of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and Lynn Grover Gisi, a research assistant and writer with NAEP. Its intention, the authors say, is to "stimulate research and communication among the groups concerned with technology’s impact on education."

The Forbes-Gisi report reviews labor-force projections, summarizes recent National Assessment findings, and outlines "recent corporate, educational, and legislative actions" designed to address the problem.

Arguing that the computer chip will replace oil in the U.S. economy, and will form the basis for a new information society, the authors say that the "basics" mastered by the high school gaduates of the future will have to include more complex skills than minimal reading, writing, and computing. Among the higher-level skills the information age will require, they argue, will be "evaluation and analysis, critical thinking; problem-solving strategies, including mathematical problem-solving, organization and reference skills; synthesis; application; creativity; decision-making given complete information; and communication skills through a variety of modes." …The data from the National Assessment provide convincing evidence that by the time students reach the age of 17, many do not possess [the above listed]… higher-order skills. The "elements of the problem," says the report, are:

• Foreign competition. The age of high technology is rapidly changing the roles of production and other countries are responding—faster than the U.S.—by upgrading their educational programs on a national level. The U.S. educational system, says the report, "poses unique problems by its inherent commitment to diversity and emphasis on local and state control."…

• Students. Technology used for educational purposes has the potential to reshape instructional delivery systems, the report says, and that may result in a decentralization of learning from traditional schools into homes, communities and industries.…

• Responsibilities and relevance. Education must become more relevant to the world of work, the report contends, and this requires "informational feedback systems on the successes of students who have completed the required curriculum. Quality control has focused on the inputs into a system—teachers and textbooks, for example—and not the outcomes. Thus there has been no attempt to incorporate long-term information into the management system’s program planning." The report’s authors agree with a report of the Southern Regional Education Board that American schooling no longer lacks the basics rather the "complexities that make for mature learning, mature citizenship, or adult success."…

Unless the U.S. can keep pace, the report contends, its "position as a leader of technology and competitor for world markets will be severely threatened."

Cooperative Efforts

Only cooperative efforts involving all segments of society will solve the problem, the report states. In particular, it calls on American industry and labor to play a greater role….

…"Industries cannot afford to pass up these opportunities and others because their future existence will depend upon it…. Clearly we are not cultivating the raw materials, our future workers, who are vital not only for economic progress, but ultimately for economic survival."

[Ed. Note: There are many responses this writer could make to the above article, but the first of which is that the statement "Clearly we are not cultivating the raw materials, our future workers"—our children!—is the most offensive of all. The use of those words alone when referring to human beings should tell the reader that something is very, very wrong in the United States of America. One has more respect for their pet animals than to refer to them as "raw materials."

Secondly, the report’s agreement with the Southern Regional Education Board "that American schooling no longer lacks the basics" defies logic! From a region which consistently scores at the bottom of the heap, this is particularly repugnant. The idea that "higher order skills" should be the focus of our educational efforts can only be the product of the thinking of persons who are not concerned with whether or not students can read, write, or compute unless it is to perform a workforce function. Without a basic ability to read, write and compute on a broad base, it is impossible for anyone to have substance about which to "think critically"! Thinking critically—making choices and comparisons—requires a base knowledge that is either acquired through study (as in the case with most children who are students) or through life experience (which adults, but not children, can claim).

Lastly, the use of technology to decentralize "learning" from traditional schools into homes, communities and industries should raise a tall, red flag for successful homeschoolers.

These folks are talking about government control of this process.]

THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE FOR PARENT/CITIZEN INVOLVEMENT IN SCHOOLS WAS held July 22–25, 1982 at the Hilton Hotel, Salt Lake City, Utah. A letter to Secretary Bell dated February 25, 1982 requesting conference funding contained an impressive list of supporters on its letterhead, including: Scott Matheson, governor of Utah; Mrs. Barbara Bush, honorary chairperson,

National School Volunteer Program; T.H. Bell, U.S. secretary of education; Dr. Don Davies, Institute for Responsive Education; Dr. Carl Marer, National Committee for Citizens in Education; Dr. M. Donald Thomas, superintendent of schools, Salt Lake City, Utah, and education representatives from Canada and Australia.

Dr. Donald Thomas, originally on the board of directors of The Effective School Report, and executive director of the Network for Effective Schools, is a well-known change agent. Thomas has traveled to Russia under the auspices of U.S. Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander and Dale Mann of Columbia University, to work with Russia on implementing international education restructuring.

The above-mentioned letter to Bell also stated:

The "think tank" session will be by invitation only to leaders in the movement. Its purpose will be to assess the current status of parent/citizen involvement in the schools; to identify trends and directions of the movement for the 80s; and finally to plan further positive action to support the continuation of the movement.

One of the attachments to this conference correspondence included many pages related to Effective School Research and a listing of the components necessary for education restructuring.

The list included:

• mastery learning/direct instruction

• expectations

• climate

• motivation

• measurement diagnosis

• assessment

• class management

• discipline

• classroom organization

• pupil conditions/rewards

• praise

• parent involvement, etc.

Those connected with such research are listed as follows: Michael Rutter, England, Effective School Study; the late Harvard Professor Ron Edmonds; professors Benjamin Bloom and John Goodlad; Larry Lezotte; Donald Thomas; and others.

A second attachment on National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education (NCPIE—

Alexandria, Virginia) letterhead stated that NCPIE was facilitated by the National School Volunteer Program and funded by Union Carbide Corporation.

A MEMO WAS SENT TO SECRETARY OF EDUCATION T.H. BELL FROM THE ASSISTANT SECREtary, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, regarding "upcoming events for July 31–August 31" which listed:

AUGUST 5—President Reagan is scheduled to hold a press conference in which he will announce an initiative involving the National Diffusion Network and the National Health Screening Council for Volunteer Organizations, Inc. This collaboration, called PARTNERSHIP, links schools with the media, local businesses, government and hospitals in a school improvement effort.

[Ed. Note: This activity was cancelled due to prompt grassroots opposition in the D.C. area consisting of a memorandum to the White House informing the President of concern nationwide related to the process known as "community education" and public-private partnerships.]

From "Principles of Programming" by Robert Glaser:

Appendix III

(This article was prepared under U.S. Office of Education Research Contract SAE–8417 #691.

This is a preliminary version of a forthcoming book chapter.)

Yesterday, October 16, was the official publication date of the book Teaching Machines and Programmed Learning which Dr. Lumsdaine and I have edited, and which you have received for this seminar. It is indeed true that this book would never have been conceived without the well-known and perhaps undying work of Professor Skinner, and I would like to take this opportunity—what I consider to be a rather momentous occasion for both Art Lumsdaine and myself—to present Fred with a copy of the book at this time. It is largely through Professor Skinner’s work that all this theory and excitement about teaching machines and programmed learning has come about. (Presentation to Professor Skinner).

Most recently, and actually in the course of preparing this volume, I have completed or compiled what appears to me to be the major ideas being expressed in the field of teaching machines and programmed learning. The basic notions have been developed from research findings in the experimental study of learning and have been expressed by a number of men in the field, and to a large extent by the speakers at this platform. However, since the use of teaching machines is in its Kitty Hawk stage, and since the application of the science of learning to the development of a technology of training and education is also in its childhood, I should like to set these notions down for your consideration and discuss each point rather briefly....

Evoking Specific Behavior

The essential task involved is to evoke the specific forms of behavior from the student and through appropriate reinforcement bring them under the control of specific subject matter stimuli. As a student goes through a learning program, certain of his responses must be strengthened and shaped from initial unskilled behavior to subject matter competence.

Programming rules are concerned with how one goes about doing this.

Our present knowledge of the learning process points out that through the process of reinforcement, new forms of behavior can be created with a great degree of subtlety. The central feature of this process is making the reinforcement contingent upon performances of the learner. (Often the word "reward" is used to refer to one class of reinforcing events.) By differentially applying reinforcement to relatively minute behavioral changes, it is possible to progress from the initial behavior of the learner in small steps through the development of more complex behaviors. This progression can take place by small enough steps so that the student’s progress and motivation is not jeopardized by frequent failures.

Since a great deal of teaching and learning is needed for acquiring complex behavioral repertoires, such as a new language or calculus operation, the number of reinforcements and the subtleties of reinforcements required to establish such complicated behavior over-taxes the skill of the most efficient instructor, especially within the limits of his time and usual classroom organization.

…The term "programming" refers to the process of constructing sequences of instructional material in a way that maximizes the rate of acquisition and retention, and enhances the motivation of the student....

Defining the Desired Behavior

…The first step in programming is to define the field. This means that the programmer must outline precisely the behavior he wants the student to perform at the end of the program and must specify the kinds of stimulus material that a student will have available in the course of this performance. A primary purpose of instruction is to provide the student with a behavioral repertoire called knowledge of the subject matter....

Reinforcement a Central Process

A central process for the acquisition of behavior is reinforcement. Behavior is acquired as a result of a contingent relationship between the response of an organism and a consequent event. In order for these contingencies of reinforcement to be effective, certain conditions must be met. Reinforcement must follow the occurrence of the behavior being taught. If this is not the case, different and perhaps unwanted behavior will be learned. In addition, a sufficient number of reinforcements must be given so that the desired behavior is strengthened and its probability of occurrence for a particular student is high in appropriate situations. As has been said, in progressing from the initial repertoire to the terminal repertoire, the student is reinforced for minute changes in behavior which bring him closer and closer to skilled performance. And these minute changes are brought about by successive steps in the program. In most instructional programs, the reinforcing agent for the students is "knowledge of results," that is, knowledge about whether or not the response he performs is the result considered correct. Failure to provide adequate reinforcement and hence failure to strengthen the behavior of the student with respect to the subject matter often results in the student showing a lack of interest. This means that his interest is shifted to other activities for which sufficient reinforcement is provided....

The Principle of Gradual Progression

My third point is gradual progression to establish complex repertoires. In getting the student from his initial repertoire to the terminal repertoire, it has been indicated that an important principle is that of gradual progression. We do not wait for the student to emit complex behavior in the course of trial and error and then reinforce correct performance. In fact, he may never emit the skillful behavior we require. When developing complex performance we first reinforce any available behavior which is the slightest approximation to the terminal behavior. Later we use this behavior in the next step to reinforce a small change which is in the direction of the terminal repertoire. The program moves in graded steps working from simple to higher and higher levels of complexity.

The principle of gradual progression serves to make the student correct as often as possible and is also the fastest way to develop a complex repertoire. It is difficult to see how complex behavior can appear except through the specific reinforcement of members of a graded series. It seems that this is an important principle in the rapid creation of new patterns of behavior.

At each step, the programmer must ask what behavior must a student have before he can take this step. He must ask what principles or interverbal relationships will facilitate this sequence of steps that form a progression from initially assumed knowledge to the specified final repertoire. No step should be encountered before the student can take it with a high probability of success....

Eliciting Available Responses and Controlling Error

The next point that I want to make is called "emitted behavior and prompting". This concerns making the desired behavior more probable. A student is assumed, as I have said, to possess some initial related behavior in the subject matter before he starts the course.

The behavior available must be specified, and the programmer can, at the beginning, appeal only to those available responses. How then do we get the students to emit these available responses? Before behavior is reinforced, it must be emitted and instructional material must be designed to elicit the correct and appropriate behavior which can then be appropriately reinforced. A major portion of what we call the rules of programming is concerned with evoking behavior, that is, concerned with techniques for getting the students to emit new or low strength responses with a minimum of errors.

Appendix III

The occurrence of behavior in a program is made more probable if the materials are designed so that each frame makes the correct answers in the next frame more likely. The probability of success is increased by the use of formal hinting and coaching techniques based upon what we know about verbal behavior....

Putting the Student on His Own

The next point is called "fading or vanishing." Thus far it has been indicated that programming techniques utilize the principle of reinforcement, the principle of prompting.

The next one we come to is the principle of fading or vanishing. This principle involves the gradual removal of prompts or cues, so that by the time the student has completed the lesson, he is responding only to the stimulus material which he will actually have available when he performs the "real task." He is on his own, so to speak, and learning crutches have been eliminated. Fading can then be defined as the gradual withdrawal of stimulus support. The systematic progression of programmed learning is well set up to accomplish this. It is always to be kept in mind that these principles are quite in contrast to "rote learning" or drill. In rote learning, many wrong responses are permitted to occur, and the student eventually learns to develop his own prompts often to a relatively unrelated series of stimuli. Programmed learning, on the other hand, is designed to take advantage of the inherent organization of the subject matter or of the behavior of the subject in relation to the subject matter in shaping up the student’s learning. [all emphases in original]

[Ed. Note: The computer in 1999 is a sophisticated version of the teaching machine referred to in 1960.]

Appendix IV

Excerpts from A Plan for Evaluating the Quality of Educational Programs in Pennsylvania A Plan for Evaluating the Quality of Educational Programs in Pennsylvania: Highlights of a Report from Educational Testing Services (Princeton, NJ) to the State Board of Education of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, June 30, 1965.

BACKGROUND

The planning project reported in this document had its inception in a mandate from the General Assembly of Pennsylvania. The mandate is to be found in Section 290.1 of the Act of August 8, 1963, P.L. 564 (Act 299, The School District Reorganization Act of 1963). It reads as follows:

Educational Performance Standards—To implement the purpose of this subdivision, the State Board of Education, as soon as possible and in any event no later than July 1, 1965, shall develop or cause to be developed an evaluation procedure designed to measure objectively the adequacy and efficiency of the educational programs offered by the public schools of the Commonwealth.

The evaluation procedure to be developed shall include tests measuring the achievements and performance of students pursuing all of the various subjects and courses comprising the curricula. The evaluation procedure shall be so constructed and developed as to provide each school district with relevant comparative data to enable directors and administrators to more readily appraise the educational performance and effectuate without delay the strengthening of the district’s educational program. Tests developed under the authority of this section to be administered to pupils shall be used for the purpose of providing a uniform evaluation of each school district and the other purposes set forth in this subdivision. The State Board of Education shall devise performance standards upon completion of the evaluation procedure required by this section.

This committee on Quality Education sought the advice of experts in the behavioral sciences. These experts constituted a Standing Advisory Committee for the project.… It [the Committee] concluded that an educational program is to be regarded as adequate only if it can be shown to contribute to the total development of pupils.... The Committee recognizes that many of the desirable qualities that schools should help pupils acquire are difficult to define and even more difficult to measure. It feels, nevertheless, that any evaluation procedure that leaves these qualities out of account is deficient as a basis for determining whether the program of any school district is educationally adequate. Having in mind this view of education and its evaluation, the Committee requested the Educational Testing Service [Note: federally-funded, ed.] of Princeton, N.J. to assist in the development of a plan for the implementation of Act 299…. What follows gives the highlights of the three-volume report entitled A Plan for Evaluating the Quality of Educational Programs in Pennsylvania.

PROPOSED GOALS OF EDUCATION

The first step in judging the quality of educational programs is to decide on the purposes of education. What should children be and do and know as a consequence of having gone to school? What are the goals of the schools? These questions have been high on the agenda of the Committee on Quality Education. Its members wanted a set of goals that would reflect the problems society faces in the world today…. Available measures of the factors are uneven in their development. Some of the measures are considerably more valid, precise, and interpretable than others. Measures of conventional academic achievement, for instance, are at a more advanced stage of development than measures of attitude and values. This unevenness poses a difficult, but not an insoluble, problem in designing an evaluation program of the kind we are proposing, In a nutshell, the current situation is as follows:

1. All of the ten goals of education stated above are to be regarded of prime importance in education of high quality. Any educational program that neglects any of the goals is to be regarded as less than adequate. [The Ten Quality Goals are listed below under California’s Plan which lists Pennsylvania’s Ten Quality Goals as those to be used by California, ed.]

2. Measures of progress toward the ten goals are unequally developed. Some are more dependable and valid than others. For example, tests of reading comprehension are relatively well developed and reasonably well understood, while tests of such qualities as self-understanding and tolerance are less well developed and poorly understood.

3. Nevertheless, the evaluation of pupil performance in all areas is critically important as a means of keeping educational programs in balance.

4. Work should therefore begin on evaluating progress toward all ten goals to the extent that this is possible.

5. Where the available measures are clearly inadequate, intensive research and development should be undertaken immediately to bring them to the point where they can have full effect in the evaluation program.

6. Where the available measures are adequate, studies should be undertaken immediately to use these measures in the development of appropriate criteria for assessing school programs.

ILLUSTRATIVE STUDIES

During the past year, we conducted two studies involving five school systems for the following purposes: (1) to identify specifically the practical problems that would be encountered in studies to develop performance criteria for school programs, (2) to see what usable measures might be obtained for measuring the kinds of output called for by 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

• They have shown that youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds do not usually try as hard on tests as their more favored classmates, but that they can be motivated to do so.

• They have shown that it is possible to get a rough measure of the degree to which students bring a creative approach to the arts, the sciences, and the problems of human relations.

• They have shown how the attitudes of primary school children toward their teachers, their school, their classmates may be developing and have suggested how important these attitudes can be in conditioning the children’s further education.

Finally, these studies have shown that much more research needs to be done on how to assess the output of the schools and how to develop procedures for strengthening their programs. We are convinced by our work this year that such research will be fruitful and should be energetically pursued.

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. General policies:

1.2. The evaluation program should avoid any suggestion of a policing operation to see where schools are meeting minimum regulations. It should encourage, not inhibit, experimentation with (a) new curricula, (b) new administrative arrangements, (c) new approaches to instruction….

1.3. The State Board of Education should rely upon the Superintendent of Public Instruction for developing and executing the evaluation program, it being understood, however, that where appropriate he may delegate parts of the work to universities or to other competent agencies outside the Department of Public Instruction….

2. Procedures. The following procedures are recommended as constituting the essentials of an educational evaluation program for the Commonwealth….

2.2. A General Panel of Review consisting of educators, behavioral scientists, and representatives of the general public should be appointed to review the system of tests and measures to be used to ascertain how well pupils are progressing toward the educational goals and to advise on research and development leading to new and improved means of assessing progress toward the goals.

2.3. For each of several areas of educational output, there should be a Sub-Panel of Examiners drawn from the General Panel of Review, with additional numbers drawn from among appropriate specialists in education and the behavioral sciences, to consider in detail the tests and measures related to the area of their concern and to advise the General Panel of Review regarding the quality of the tests and measures and the means for their improvement.

2.4. A broad program of research should be initiated forthwith for the purpose of (a) improving the educational output, especially those that have to do with the personal and social qualities of pupils and for which in many cases no satisfactory measures now exist, and (b) discovering those processes of education and conditions of learning that will maximize the quality of educational output under a variety of circumstances. This program of research should take full advantage of the outcomes of similar research being done elsewhere by adapting these outcomes to the needs of Pennsylvania.

2.5. In those cases where a school system, after applying the appropriate criteria, is dissatisfied with the level of performance of its pupils, such school systems should have the advice and assistance of the Department of Public Instruction in determining what changes in educational processes and/or in the conditions of learning would be most likely to bring about improvement.

Proof that Pennsylvania’s goals were the model for the nation is found in the California State Plan, Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, P.L. 89–10, as Amended by P.L. 90–247, 1970, which states on page 2, (6/9/69 revised):

These Ten Goals were generated in the Study of Quality Education initiated by the Pennsylvania State Board of Education in response to a mandate from the Pennsylvania General Assembly. The Ten Goals provided a classification system simple enough (in terms of the number of categories) to work with and yet comprehensive enough in scope to include almost any educational objective, whether cognitive, affective [attitudes, values, ed.] or psychomotor. These Ten Goals are listed below:

1. Quality education should help every child acquire the greatest possible understanding of himself and appreciation of his worthiness as a member of society (Self-Understanding).

2. Quality education should help every child acquire understanding and appreciation of persons belonging to social, cultural, and ethnic groups different from his own (Tolerance of Others).

3. Quality education should help every child acquire to the fullest extent possible for him mastery of the basic skills in the use of words and numbers (Basic Skills).

4. Quality education should help every child acquire a positive attitude toward school and toward the learning process (Attitude Toward School).

5. Quality education should help every child acquire the habits and attitudes associated with responsible citizenship (Citizenship).

6. Quality education should help every child acquire good health habits and an understanding of the conditions necessary for the maintenance of physical and emotional well being (Health).

7. Quality education should give every child opportunities in one or more fields of endeavor (Creativity).

8. Quality education should help every child understand the opportunities open to him for preparing himself for a productive life and should enable him to take full advantage of these opportunities (Vocational Preparation).

9. Quality education should help every child to understand and appreciate as much as he can of human achievement in the natural sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts (Intellectual Achievement).

10. Quality education should help every child prepare for a world of rapid changes and unforeseeable demands in which continuing education throughout his adult life should be a normal expectation (Life-Long Learning).

[Ed. Note: Anita Hoge’s successful complaint against the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Educational Quality Assessment (EQA), filed under the federal Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, exposed the extent of federal involvement in curricula, testing and evaluation primarily designed to change children’s attitudes, values, and beliefs. These are the areas to which parents most vociferously object. In the mid-1970s the Pennsylvania chapter of the liberal American Civil Liberties Union sided with parents regarding their objections; i.e., invasion of privacy, etc.

All state and local school district goals, standards, competencies, outcomes, results, etc., developed from this time on across the nation were based primarily on these Pennsylvania goals. It is interesting to note that the plans for national assessment were in progress several years prior to passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. This Act signified the end of local control due to its call for the installation of an accountability system in each of the state departments of education applying for federal assistance.

It should be noted that included on the Standing Advisory Committee and its pool of "experts" in the behavioral sciences were: David R. Krathwohl (co-author with Benjamin Bloom of The Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Affective Domain) of the College of Education at Michigan State University; Urie Bonfenbrenner of the Department of Sociology at Cornell University; and Ralph W. Tyler of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Palo Alto, California.]

Appendix V

Comments on and Excerpts from Behavioral Science Teacher Education Program (BSTEP) Behavioral Science Teacher Education Program (BSTEP), 1965–1969, funded by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, was initiated at Michigan State University.

Its purpose was to change the teacher from a transmitter of knowledge/content to a social change agent/facilitator/clinician. Traditional public school administrators were appalled at this new role for teachers. Long-time education researcher Bettye Lewis provided a capsule description and critique of BSTEP in 1984. Her comments and verbatim quotes from BSTEP follow:

Objectives of BSTEP are stated as follows:

Three major goals:

1. Development of a new kind of elementary school teacher who is basically well educated, engages in teaching as clinical practice, is an effective student of the capacities and environmental characteristics of human learning, and functions as a responsible agent of social change.

2. Systematic use of research and clinical experience in decision-making processes at all levels.

3. A new laboratory and clinical base, from the behavioral sciences, on which to found undergraduate and in-service teacher education programs, and recycle evaluations of teaching tools and performance.

…The BSTEP teacher is expected to learn from experience through a cyclical style of describing, analyzing, hypothesizing, prescribing, treating, and observing consequences (in particular—the consequences of the treatment administered)….

The program is designed to focus the skills and knowledge of Behavioral Scientists on education problems, translating research into viable programs for preservice and in-service teachers. The traditional concept of research as theory is not discarded, but the emphasis is shifted to a form of practical action-research in classrooms and laboratory.

The humanities are designed to promote an understanding of human behavior in humanistic terms…. Students are to be exposed to non-western thought and values in order to sensitize them to their own backgrounds and inherent cultural biases.... Skills initiating and directing role-playing are developed to increase sensitivity and perception. Simulation games are included for training in communication skills as leaders or agents of social change. (p. 1)

Lewis’s comments regarding "Systematic Analysis of Future Society," taken from p. 237 of BSTEP:

B.F. Skinner’s behavioral philosophy is quite apparent in this BSTEP Design which states Calculations of the future and how to modify it are no longer considered obscure academic pursuits. Instead, they are the business of many who are concerned about and responsible for devising various modes of social change.

One can’t help but wonder—who gave the educators the "responsibility" or the "right" to devise modes of social change, to use teachers as the "change agents," and to use the children as the guinea pigs through which society is to be changed? One realizes the extent to which this "future society planning" has already gone after reading through the following lengthy list of organizations involved in this behavioral designing:

1. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare—Exploring Possibilities of a Social State-of-the-Union

2. American Academy of Arts and Sciences—Commission of the Year 2000

3. American Academy of Political and Social Science

4. United Nations Future-Planning Operation in Geneva, Switzerland

5. World Future Society of Washington, D.C.

6. General Electric Company—Technical Management Planning Organization

7. The Air Force and Rand Corporation [designer of PPBS, ed.]

8. The Hudson Institute [See 1992 entry regarding approval by business/corporation funded New American School Development Corporation of the Hudson Institute’s "Modern Red School House" proposal. The Design Team was headed by former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett and includes Chester Finn, former Assistant Secretary to Education Secretary, and former Governor Lamar Alexander and author of America 2000 (President Clinton’s Goals 2000), ed.]

9. Ford Foundation’s Resources for the Future and Les Futuribles—a combination of future and possible

10. University of Illinois, Southern Illinois University, Stanford University, Syracuse University, etc.

11. IBM (International Business Machines) This section of the report concludes with: "We are getting closer to developing effective methods for shaping the future and are advancing in fundamental social and individual evolution."

From the section entitled "Futurism as a Social Tool and Decision-Making by an Elite" (p. 248) Lewis quotes:

The complexity of the society and rapidity of change will require that comprehensive long-range planning become the rule, in order that carefully developed plans will be ready before changes occur.... Long-range planning and implementation of plans will be made by a technological-scientific elite. Political democracy, in the American ideological sense, will be limited to broad social policy; even there, issues, alternatives, and means will be so complex that the elite will be influential to a degree which will arouse the fear and animosity of others. This will strain the democratic fabric to a ripping point…. [The reader should refer to the 1972 entry entitled "People Control Blueprint" from the May issue of The National Educator, ed.]

"A Controlling Elite"

…The Protestant Ethic will atrophy as more and more enjoy varied leisure and guaranteed sustenance. Work as the means and end of living will diminish.... No major source of a sense of worth and dignity will replace the Protestant Ethic. Most people will tend to be hedonistic, and a dominant elite will provide "bread and circuses" to keep social dissension and disruption at a minimum. A small elite will carry society’s burdens. The resulting impersonal manipulation of most people’s lifestyles will be softened by provisions for pleasure-seeking and guaranteed physical necessities. (p. 255)

"Systems Approach and Cybernetics"

…The use of the systems approach to problem solving and of cybernetics to manage automation will remold the nation. They will increase efficiency and depersonalization....

Most of the population will seek meaning through other means or devote themselves to pleasure seeking. The controlling elite will engage in power plays largely without the involvement of most of the people.... The society will be a leisurely one. People will study, play, and travel; some will be in various stages of the drug-induced experiences.

"Communications Capabilities and Potentialities for Opinion Control"

…Each individual will receive at birth a multipurpose identification which will have, among other things, extensive communications uses. None will be out of touch with those authorized to reach him. Each will be able to receive instant updating of ideas and information on topics previously identified. Routine jobs to be done in any setting can be initiated automatically by those responsible for the task; all will be in constant communication with their employers, or other controllers, and thus exposed to direct and subliminal influence. Mass media transmission will be instantaneous to wherever people are in forms suited to their particular needs and roles. Each individual will be saturated with ideas and information. Some will be self-selected; other kinds will be imposed overtly by those who assume responsibility for others’ actions (for example: employers); still other kinds will be imposed covertly by various agencies, organizations, and enterprises.

Relatively few individuals will be able to maintain control over their opinions. Most will be pawns of competing opinion molders. (p. 261)

Lewis comments further:

In order to implement this training and to make sure that future elementary teachers accept the "right attitudes" and "behavioral objectives," the use of computers and the collection of information are stressed. The "Central Processor" or the computer programmed to accept or reject on the basis of behavioral objectives, will be the "judge and the jury" as to who will and who will not be the future teachers. For anyone who loves individual freedom, who desires it for their own children, and prays for a future America with individual freedom held sacred—BSTEP has to be a most frightening and devastating plan. It is indeed the "world" of Orwell’s 1984, the Identity Society, and the Walden II of B.F. Skinner. In reference to the latter, it is indeed Beyond Freedom and Dignity, the title of a B.F. Skinner book.

It is a "nightmare" created by the Behaviorists and Humanists who are fast becoming the Major Directors of Public Education.

Appendix VI

Excerpts from Education for Results

Education for Results: In Response to A Nation At Risk, Vol.1: Guaranteeing Effective Performance by Our Schools by Robert E. Corrigan, Ph.D., and Betty O. Corrigan (SAFE Learning Systems, Inc.: Anaheim, CA, 1983). This particular paper was published in 1983 for the Reagan Administration’s use, and actually served as a springboard for implementing OBE.

Most of the experimentation history (pilot OBE/ML/DI) programs, including one in Korea discussed in this paper, were implemented in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Education for Results Project, which basically called for using Corrigan’s Model (mastery learning/outcome-based education/management information systems) had the support of the following twenty key education change agents:

DR. LEON LESSINGER, Superintendent, Beverly Hills School District, Beverly Hills, CA; DR. JACK WARD, Associate Superintendent, Mendocino County, CA; DR. ROBERT KANE, Consultant, Teacher Preparation & Licensing Committee, State of California; DR. NOLAN ESTES, Professor of Education, University of Texas; DR. JAMES MCPHAIL, Chairman, Department of Educational Administration & Supervision, University of Southern Mississippi; DR. HOSEA GRISHAM, Superintendent, North Panola County School, Mississippi, President, Mississippi Association of School Administrators; DR. HINES CRONIN, Superintendent, Moss Point School District, Moss Point, MS; DR. MEL BUCKLEY, Superintendent, Newton Public School, Newton, MS; DR. ROBERT MORGAN, Director, Learning Systems Institute, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL; DR. ROGER A. KAUFMAN, Professor of Education, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL; DR. HOMER COKER, Teacher Corps Program, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA; DR. ANNETTE KEARNEY, Assistant Director, National Council for Negro Women, New York City; DR. JOHN PICTON, Beaverton, OR; DR. LOUIS ZEYEN, Deputy Executive Director, American Association of School Administrators; DR. WILLIAM SPADY, Director, Center for the Improvement of Learning, Arlington, VA; DR. GENE GEISERT, Professor of Education, St. John’s University, Jamaica, NY; DR. AL HOYE, Minneapolis Unified School District, MN; DR. WILFRED LANDRUS, Chapman College, Professor of Education, Orange, CA; DR. ROBERT CORRIGAN, Corrigan and Associates, Anaheim, CA; and MRS. BETTY CORRIGAN, Corrigan and Associates, Anaheim, CA. Lessinger, Estes, Kaufman, Coker, Spady and the Corrigans are among the key proponentsof OBE/ML and have been involved for many years. The following are excerpts from Education for Results:

PROLOGUE: Committing to the Feasible Delivery of Effective Educational Results, by Nolan Estes, prior U.S. Commissioner of Education, University of Texas, Austin…. On April 26, 1983, the National Commission for Excellence in Education presented to President Ronald Reagan A Nation at Risk, a report on the status of quality education in the United States.

This commission was formed by Secretary of Education Dr. Terrel Bell, in August 1981, to evaluate the current status of our national educational system in terms of its overall performance effectiveness; and, where appropriate, to propose changes in policy, practices, and programs to increase the effectiveness of our schools….

The beginning of this reported decline in the performance effectiveness began in the 1960’s. As a Commissioner of Education (1965–1969), along with other Commissioners, we made substantial investments in grants and programs to develop more effective professional practices to replace those then in operation. We concentrated our investments in two major programs, namely:

A. To increase learning effectiveness (mastery scores) for all learners; and

B. To increase the management effectiveness of the delivery system to increase the measured success for learners.

Several major multi-million dollar programs were initiated in the 1960’s consistent with the achievement of the goals stated above. The major focus on development of more effective management-for-results practices and application was Operation PEP, State of California. This was a multi-year program involving several hundred senior educational administrators across the state. Dr. Robert E. Corrigan, as director of the training programs, offered to these administrators skills in management-for-results practices encompassed in his "Systematic Approach for Effectiveness" (SAFE). The acceptance of these practices by these senior educational practitioners is evidenced by the fact that they were applied by Title III management centers across the state of California after the federal funds were removed.

A second key thrust by the Department of Education (1965–1968) was to support the development of new teaching practices which would prove more effective in the delivery of success for learners. A major program was funded for the installation of a Teacher Fellowship Program at Chapman College, Orange, California. This program was headed by Dr. Robert E. Corrigan to develop a Masters Degree in Instructional Systems Design (ISD).

This developing program focused on the design of a new learning-centered technology developed by the Corrigans to assure predictable mastery by all learners of all relevant skills and knowledge in the curricula offered in our schools.

…In these two volumes presented herein by the Corrigans, you are offered the PROOF of these most effective results-focused practices by many school districts both large and small, both urban and rural, in a variety of areas across our country over a period of 22+ years (1960–1983).

Since the 1960s, these effective management-for-results practices have expanded to include the required use of micro computer management systems to control for the delivery of cost-effective results for learners, for the educational practitioners, and the taxpayers.

These publications (Volumes I and II) offer to all educational partners (including teachers, learners, administrators, boards of education, parents, and the community at large) proven ways and means to deliver effective performance by our schools—a "business-like" approach to manage the achievement of established priorities for action and the installation of these successful educational practices in the schools of America.

…We are required NOW to make only the necessary minimal investments in time and/or money by each member of the educational partnership in order to turn our currently reported mediocre performance effectiveness as presented by the Commission on Excellence into a shining success story for all concerned, in particular for the future citizens of this nation and the survival and growth of our nation as a whole.

[all emphases in original]

From Chapter 13: "Instructional Systems Development in Korean Educational Reform"

by Robert M. Morgan:

A Systems Center Study of Korean Education—1970 The aim of this study was an attempt by the Republic of Korea to determine if it might be able to organize its educational resources in ways that would make its educational programs more responsive to the nation’s needs and, simultaneously, function more efficiently. The Korean Government invited the Florida State University to assist with the project and an interdisciplinary study team was assembled. In the planning phase of the project it was judged that a "systems approach" to the analysis of Korea’s educational sector would be suitable.

The study team spent three months in Korea in 1970 gathering information about the educational system, the economy, the nation’s needs and wants for its educational programs, and the resources available for potential improvement of the system. Members of the study team visited schools at all levels throughout Korea and talked to hundreds of teachers, administrators and students. The team also worked with several Korean government ministries.

…The data was analyzed in terms of future manpower needs and educational output, estimated cost benefits, strategies for appropriate introduction of innovation and technology into the system.

[Ed. Note: While reading the following, please keep in mind educational restructuring in the United States to meet the demands of the global economy—the shift from academic education to work force training, using Outcome-Based Education/ML/DI and TQM.]

Economic Factors

Following the Korean War the Korean economy experienced remarkable industrial progress and growth which was predicted to continue into the foreseeable future. The labor force was increasing steadily and the rate of unemployment, decreasing. However, a major problem was anticipated from lack of congruence between the nation’s manpower requirements and the projected supply of skilled technical labor. The only long-range solution to these problems was a reordering of the educational priorities in the schools of Korea.

The Contemporary Korean School System

The educational goals that characterized the Korean elementary and middle schools in 1970 were... restricted to the conventional academic domain. The student learning outcomes at these levels fell almost exclusively into the informational and skill categories of education and was characterized by rote memorization of classically academic subjects with the overriding objective of preparing students for the national competitive examinations which were used to select those students for entry to the next level of education.

The existing curriculum was not as relevant to preparing Korean children to live and prosper as adults as it could and should have been. While the study team did not attempt to specify educational objectives, it believed the curriculum could be broadened to include the teaching of inquiry skills and problem-solving approaches and generally attend more to process objectives—and that these should not only be learning outcomes but also serve as effective instructional means. It was also suggested that pre-occupational training would add to the graduates’ employability, retrainability and occupational mobility.

A Proposed New Educational Model—1971

The study team suggested that a nine-year, free and compulsory educational program was necessary to support Korea’s continuing economic expansion. (Systems Analysis for Educational Change: The Republic of Korea by Morgan, Robert M. and Chadwick, C.B. [University of Florida Press: Gainesville, FL, 1971]). The vocational high schools of Korea were not effectively serving the purposes for which they were formed. Based upon assumptions about potential for improved academic accomplishment at the elementarymiddle school level, the study team recommended that this training be directed exclusively to preparing people for specific jobs. The job training programs would be of variable duration, would be operated only as long as there were known manpower needs for the jobs in question, and would be open to qualified citizens of any age level.

[emphasis added]

…The new school proposed by the study team involved a number of changes from the existing system. These included changing the basic instructional unit from its present class size to a larger grouping, introducing individualized instructional concepts and associated materials, modifying the role of the teaching staff, increasing the ratio of students to teachers, and using programmed instructional television and radio.

…A middle school… moved to a system of individualized instruction… would be performance based, permit students to move at their own learning rate, and would place a larger measure of responsibility on the students for self-direction of their learning experiences. It would also reduce reliance on direct teacher-to-student instruction. The basic instructional resource for that portion of the curriculum to be individualized would be a "student-learning unit" prepared in modular form and packaged for ease of storage and retrieval by students. These units would be developed using the Instructional Systems Design (ISD) approach. The student-learning unit would contain the behavioral objectives for the unit, critical instructional materials, directions to other learning resources, and criterion-referenced test items which would permit the student to assess his own progress through the unit. The principles of programmed instruction would be employed in the development of these units even though most of the instructional materials were not programmed instruction per se.... The teaching team would operate under the direction of a master teacher whose main job would be the management of the learning environment....

…It was estimated that a functional national educational television system could be built which would be an integral component of the system of instructional resources….

It would be a form of programmed instruction developed to teach specific behaviors and would call for active responses from the student. Auxiliary printed materials would be developed to go with the ITV programs in which the students would write responses, solve problems and record reactions and questions. Student learning would be closely monitored and the teacher would be furnished supportive and supplementary materials to help her work individually with any students who experience difficulty or who fall behind in the televised instruction.

…The study team proposed an organization, which it labeled the Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI), to design and try out the system and its components. KEDI would reappraise the educational goals and objectives for the elementary-middle [E-M, ed.] schools. It would develop definitions of desired learning outcomes at the various levels and then design and build the instructional programs to achieve these outcomes....

Estimates were that it would take approximately four to five years to build and test the new system. The cost of development and installation on a national scale was estimated to be approximately $17,000,000.

…During the last quarter of 1971 the KEDI staff focused on two major activities. These were: (1) an intensive series of meetings with Korean educators on the E-M project, and (2) the writing of the International Loan Agreement. The first of these activities was essential to broaden the base of support and to respond to questions or criticisms and to secure the cooperation of educators throughout the nation....

…KEDI was the beginning of a competency-based program of student learning.

…In the several tryouts since 1973—four small scale and four large scale—the achievement levels have generally been higher for the demonstration students than for the comparison group.

…In 1978, the President of the Republic appointed an external commission to conduct an independent evaluation of the new E-M program. This group assessed student and teacher attitudes toward the new program as well as community reaction. They also selected 18 schools and directed that the new KEDI system be implemented in these schools for five months in six basic subject areas, and identified a group of traditional schools to serve as the control. They found that mean achievement across all subject areas was 24 percent higher in the experimental group than in the control group, and that 30 percent more of the experimental students achieved subject mastery. The commission recommended an orderly implementation of the new E-M program in all of Korea’s schools. [all emphases in original]

[Ed. Note: There is no way a valid determination can be made on the basis of instruction over a five-month period. Was the experimental group taught to the test as in OBE/ML/DI? Has the education ministry followed these students to see if their superior achievement has held over time? One would have to look at longitudinal data as well as the examinations used to come to any sort of valid conclusion regarding the superiority of OBE over the traditional Korean form of education. Also, what kinds of results were they looking for—academic or occupational?]

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 personalized.... Because time is a variable, not a constant, and because students may enter with widely differing backgrounds and purposes, instruction is likely to be highly person- and situation-specific.... The learning experience of the individuals is guided by feedback....

[T]eaching competencies to be demonstrated are role-derived, specified in behavioral terms, and made public; assessment criteria are competency-based, specify mastery levels, and made public; assessment requires performance as prime evidence, takes student knowledge into account; student’s progress rate depends on demonstrated competency; instructional program facilitates development and evaluation of specific competencies.... The application of such a systematic strategy to any human process is called the systems approach.... We cannot be sure that measurement techniques essential both to objectivity and to valid assessment of affective and complex cognitive objectives will be developed rapidly enough for the new exit requirements to be any better than the conventional letter grades of the past. Unless heroic efforts are made on both the knowledge and measurement fronts, then PBTE may well have a stunted growth.... To recapitulate, the promise of performance-based teacher education lies primarily in: 1) the fact that its focus on objectives and its emphasis upon the sharing process by which those objectives are formulated in advance are made explicit and used as the basis for evaluating performance; 2) the fact that a large share of the responsibility for learning is shifted from teacher to student; 3) the fact that it increases efficiency through systematic use of feedback, motivating and guiding learning efforts of prospective teachers; 4) the fact that greater attention is given to variation among individual abilities, needs, and interests; 5) the fact that learning is tied more directly to the objectives to be achieved than to the learning resources utilized to attain them; 6) the fact that prospective teachers are taught in the way they are expected to teach; 7) the fact that PBTE is consistent with democratic principles; 8) the fact that it is consistent with what we know about the psychology of learning; 9) the fact that it permits effective integration of theory and practice; 10) the fact that it provides better bases for designing research about teaching performance. These advantages would seem sufficient to warrant and ensure a strong and viable movement.

From "The Scope of PBTE":

Among the most difficult questions asked about the viability of performance-based instruction as the basis for substantial change in teacher preparatory programs are these:

Will it tend to produce technicians, paraprofessionals, teacher aides, etc., rather than professionals?… These questions derive from the fact that while performance-based instruction eliminates waste in the learning process through clarity in definition of goods, it can be applied only to learning in which the objectives sought are susceptible of definition in advance in behavioral terms. Thus it is difficult to apply when the outcomes sought are complex and subtle, and particularly when they are affective or attitudinal in character.

From "Philosophic Underpinning":

Some authorities have expressed the fact that PBTE has an inadequate philosophic base,

pointing out that any performance-based system rests on particular values, and the

most important of which are expressed in the competencies chosen and in the design

of the learning activities.

From "Political and Management Difficulties":

...4) There are political aspects to the question of how far the professor’s academic freedom and the student’s right to choose what he wishes to learn extend in PBTE. 5) …The mere adoption of a PBTE program will eliminate some prospective students because they do not find it appealing. The question remains: Will these be the students who should be eliminated?… 6) The PBTE movement could deteriorate into a power struggle over who controls what. 7) PBTE removes students regularly from the campus into field settings and emphasizes individual study and progress rather than class-course organization, thus tends to isolate the people involved. We live in a period when such isolation is not a popular social concept, and since many aspects of the PBTE approach could be conceived as Skinnerian, dehumanizing etc., it is important that programs be managed in such a way as to minimize isolation?… 9) Finally, there is a need to overcome the apathy, threat, anxiety, administrative resistance, and other barriers that stand in the way of moving toward PBTE and toward performance-based teaching in the schools.

[Ed. Note: Over the years one has seen the departure of many talented teachers who have left the profession due to Skinnerian Performance-based Teacher Education.]

Appendix VIII

Excerpts from "The Field of Educational Technology"

"The Field of Educational Technology: A Statement of Definition," by Donald P. Ely, Ed.

Published in Audiovisual Instruction (Association of Educational Computing and Technology:

Washington, D.C.), October 1972 (pp. 36 ff).

There is no single author of this statement since the definition process involved several hundred people over the period of one year. Kenneth Silber spent more time than any other person and provided continuity through several drafts. Other writers included Kenneth Norberg, Geoffrey Squires, and Gerald Torkelson. Significant contributions were made by Robert Heinich, Charles F. Hoban, Jr., Wesley Meierhenry, and Robert Wagner through discussion papers prepared early in the process. Reactions from related fields were helpful—Desmond Cook (Educational Psychology), Keith Mielke (Telecommunications), and Robert Taylor (Library and Information Science). Each reviewed an earlier draft of the manuscript and met to discuss it. Finally, credit should go to the more than 100 members of the Association of Educational Computing and Technology [AECT, spin-off of the NEA, ed.] who participated at the open hearings held during the Minneapolis convention. And now, the process must go on with each reader. May I have your reactions? Signed by Donald P. Ely, Editor, Chairman, Definition and Terminology Committee, AECT, Branch of the National Education Association.…

When scientific and experimental methods are applied in an orderly and comprehensive way to the planning of instructional tasks, or to entire programs, this process is sometimes known as "systems design," or the "systems approach to instructional development."

Implicit in the systems approach is the use of clearly stated objectives, experimentally derived, data to evaluate the results of the system, and feedback loops which allow the system to improve itself based on evaluation.

A systematic approach usually involves: needs assessment (to determine what the problem really is); solution selection (to meet the needs); development of instructional objectives (if an instructional solution is indeed needed); analysis of tasks and content needed to meet the objectives; selection of instructional strategies; sequencing of nstructional events; selection of media; developing or locating the necessary resources; tryout/evaluation of the effectiveness of the resources; revision of resources until they are effective; and recycling continuously through the whole process. The systems approach is basic to educational technology.

Individualized learning requires systematic planning because it may operate with little or no direct intervention by the teacher. If the benefits of individualized and personalized learning are to succeed, it will be necessary to make full use of appropriate technical resources, to shift money saved by this approach into the development of more effective resources, and to make consistent and expanded use of experimental study and evaluation techniques. All of these require the use of the systems approach to succeed.

The rationale for a unique field of educational technology is its synthesis of three concepts: providing a broad range of learning resources, individualizing and personalizing learning as a focus, and using the systems approach as an intellectual and operational approach to the facilitation of learning. The combination of these concepts in the broader context of education and society yields synergistic outcomes—behaviors which are not predictable on the parts alone—but outcomes with extra energy which is created by the unique interrelationship of the parts….

Within the context of society, the purposes and means of the educational technologist create two value questions: are the means used by the educational technologist neutral, or do they have ends and values built in? Does a person concerned with the means of education also have to be concerned with the ends?… These questions and issues and their resolution by each person in the field is as much a part of the definition of the field as the functions the people in the field perform.

Is technology neutral?

Theoretically, technology in the "pure" state is neutral in its operation, simply the powerful and faithful servant of the society it serves but does not affect.

But institutionalized technology in the real world is never that pure. Once embedded in socioeconomic systems, it tends to become self-justifying and self-perpetuating and does indeed affect the society it serves.

Technology neatly separates ends from means, and attempts to become neutral by divorcing itself from value-laden ends. However, if technology is independent of means, then its worth must be measured by the degree of success and the efficiency with which it achieves the goals set before it. Thus, the technological thrust in modern society is to continually refine and strengthen the means whatever the goal.

The net result, which has been pointed out by many scholars of technology, is that the means tend to become the ends. The means which sometimes serve as the end of technology are NOT neutral. As most critics of technology have pointed out, these means have effects—effects which are not neutral at all. Whether the effects are positive or negative is a question for debate, but neutrality is a choice which does not exist.

For example, it is clear that technology has effects on man, but what are they? One position is that technology exerts a subtle force to reduce human beings to standardized components which can readily be assimilated to whatever system is being served. It absorbs them into man-machine systems by robbing them of their humanity and making them human machines.

The opposing position states that technology makes humaneness and difference possible. It creates the options we need for true freedom, and creates a world which allows divergent value systems.

The opposite of the neutral technician is what we might call the concentrated professional. This person realizes that the means make the ends possible, and that cooperation or hindrance makes ends possible or impossible. The concerned professional has a point of view about the ends and then decides whether or not the work being done will make possible positive or negative ends.

If it is decided the work will bring about negative ends, the concerned professional refuses to perform it.

The scientist working on genetic selection and manipulation because "it can help eliminate disease from the human race" and those who have quit working on it because it will "lead to totalitarian domination by a master race" are examples of concerned professionals. Regardless of their position, they have considered the ends of their work and made a decision to work or not based on how they viewed those ends.

It should be clear that the concerned professional does not have to be a "liberal" or a "conservative." The concerned professional must however, show moral sensitivity to the effect of what he or she does. [emphasis in original]

It does not matter what position an individual comes to as long as it is not "I’ll do it because it can be done."

We believe that in the American society of the 1970s and beyond the educational technologist cannot afford to be a neutral technician. The field calls for concerned professionals. Some very hard questions must be raised about everything this person is called on to do. The concerned professional must ask how the resources produced or used affect all of society, as well as the scientist’s own life.

The concerned specialist must ask what to do if he/she disagrees with the messages of the resources.

It is less important how an educational technologist answers these questions than it is that they are asked, and that there is concern with the real end of the means.... The educational technologist is not the only person making decisions about the facilitation of learning through the identification, development, organization, and utilization of learning resources. The teacher, curriculum specialist, administrator, content specialist, librarian and the student are involved in the process, too.... It is, therefore, important for the field of educational technology to recognize the "other people" context in which it operates.

Further, it is essential to ascertain what the relationship of the field of educational technology with these other fields will be. In a practical sense, the work relationship means "who will get to make the ultimate decisions about facilitating learning and how it is done?"

There are at least five types of alternatives for the facilitation of learning. They differ along the dimension of formality, based on the compulsory nature of the institution, on the degree of authority of those in charge, and on the range of resources available.

The effects of technology cannot, therefore, be overlooked. They create serious concerns for society as a whole. They are particularly important to a person involved in a field like educational technology, since its effects help to shape human minds.

What are the effects of packaged learning [OBE/ML/DI, ed.], etc., on a person for 18 years? Are we moving too fast technologically for people to cope with the changes?

How do feeling and spontaneity fit into a technologically-based system? Are we trying to program all connections between people?

The educational technologist, as a concerned professional, must study the philosophical, psychological and sociological implications of how the technologist can facilitate learning.

[Ed. Note: This paper was an attachment to an AECT proposal to develop Handbook X of the Educational Records and Reports Series for the National Center for Educational Statistics.

AECT also received the Project BEST (Better Education Skills through Technology) contract from the U.S. Department of Education in 1982. The excerpts are very important as they relate to the concerns of leading educators in the field of technology regarding ethical and privacy issues surrounding the use of programmed learning (OBE/ML/DI) in conjunction with technology in the schools of the United States. Donald Ely (Editor and Chairman of the Definition and Terminology Committee, AECT) was also involved in Project BEST in 1982. Also listed as members of BEST’s Advisory Board were Dr. Shirley McCune of the Midcontinental Regional Education Laboratory and William Spady of the American Association of School Administrators—both of whom are closely associated with outcomebased education/mastery learning, the purpose of which is to "restructure" not only the schools, but America itself through changing the attitudes, values, and beliefs of students to accept citizenship in a one-world socialist government. These excerpts should be brought to the attention of Ely, Spady, and McCune with the question: "Do you share the concerns of your associates who contributed to the writing of this paper?" If so, why do you have such a hard time understanding why parents and taxpayers are opposed to Skinnerian outcome-based education?]

Appendix IX

Excerpts from A Performance Accountability System

A Performance Accountability System for School Administrators by T.H. Bell (Parker Publishing Co.: New York, 1974). T.H. Bell served as Secretary of Education during President Ronald Reagan’s first term in office, 1981–1985, and also served as Commissioner of Education in the U.S. Office of Education during the Ford Administration. Excerpts from the book follow:

The Need for a Management System

Under the pressure of the free-enterprise system and the unremitting demand that large corporations earn profits and pay dividends to stockholders, management efficiency through orientation to results has led to development of management systems such as the one described in this book. Most of the successful corporations in the United States now use annually adopted objectives as a means of focusing the energies and efforts of managers on the attainment of goals that are widely known and broadly accepted. Although the problems of educational management are obviously quite different from those of the private sector, there is much to be learned from industry’s systems approach in gaining more efficiency in educational management.

The outcomes are quite similar. (p. 21)

Why Needs Assessments?

As a people, Americans have turned from a preoccupation with production and plenty to a concern for the quality of human life in this nation. We have moved beyond the point where production of the necessities for existence is a concern. We want a rich and meaningful life and we want equality of opportunity for all citizens.

Drug abuse, juvenile delinquency, lack of respect for law and order, coping with environmental damage are all problems with which education must be concerned in this new era of social awareness and public concern for the success and happiness of all. These enormous demands call for systematic attention to the performance outcomes of the schools and colleges of the nation. Since we have so many problems and since our resources are limited, it is essential that we look at the performance of our educational institutions and establish a hierarchy of priorities…. We should seek to solve the problems that are causing the greatest amount of difficulty and unrest across the nation. We should seek to solve the problems whose solutions will both stimulate the economy and free the public from the burden of supporting citizens who are unable to support themselves. We must, in short, assess our educational needs before establishing our objectives and setting into action leadership and management plans. (pp. 32–32)

Use of Tests in Needs Assessments

The economic, sociological, psychological and physical aspects of students must be taken into account as we look at their educational needs and accomplishments, and fortunately there are a number of attitude and inventory scales that can be used to assess these admittedly difficult to measure outcomes….

Most of these efforts to manage education try to center in one place an information center that receives reports and makes available to all members of the management team various types of information useful to managers….

School management by objectives demands more use of educational tests and measures (pp. 33–35).

The Student and Staff Personnel Profile

A departmental or school student and staff personnel profile, constructed from needs assessment information, will provide information in greater depth than is typically found in most school or college operations. The characteristics of the student populations being served and the social, economic, racial, and ethnic make-up of the community or neighborhood must be weighed in making assumptions on performance expectations. An objective, expressed in anticipated performance results, must take into account the characteristics of the students, the neighborhood and community. (p. 42)

Humanizing Education

Many of our current problems of alienation and depersonalization are at least partly traceable to our emphasis in our schools upon giving and getting information and our neglect of the discovery of meaning and humanization. The committee writing the 1962 ASCD Yearbook listed common school practices that have depersonalizing and alienating effects:

• The emphasis on fact instead of feelings

• The belief that intelligence is fixed and immutable

• The continual emphasis upon grades, artificial reasons instead of real ones for learning

• Conformity and preoccupation with order and neatness

• Authority, support and evidence

• Solitary learning

• Cookbook approaches

• Adult concepts considered as the only ones of value

• Emphasis on competition

• Lockstep progression

• Force, threat and coercion

• Wooden rules and regulations

• The age-old idea that if it’s hard it’s good for them

Until now we have been schooling to fit a "norm" of society. It’s time to begin thinking of an education for every man. As defined by Carl R. Rogers, "The only man who is educated is the man who has learned how to learn; the man who has learned how to adapt and change; the man who has realized that no knowledge is secure, that only the process of seeking knowledge gives a basis for security."

This clearly invalidates our conception of a successful student as one who simply graduates with a degree and a high grade point average—a molded, shaped figure ready to slip away from life and learning into the split-levels and station wagons of suburbia. (p. 161)

[Ed. Note: There is no question in this writer’s mind that this one man bears much of the responsibility for the deliberate dumbing down of our schools. He set the stage for  outcomebased education through his early support for systems management, management by objectives (MBO), and Planning Programming Budgeting System (PPBS). These systems later evolved into full-blown Total Quality Management/OBE, having gone through the initial stage of Professor Benjamin Bloom’s mastery learning and ending up as William Spady’s transformational OBE.

Outcome-based or results/performance/competency-based education requires mastery learning, individualized instruction, systems management, and computer technology. Bell’s earlier activities in the seventies as U.S. Commissioner of Education—including his role in supporting dumbed-down life role competencies for K–12 (See 1975 Adult Performance Level Study and 1983 Delker article) and Bell’s testimony before Congress in favor of a U.S. Department of Education —should have kept his name off any list of potential nominees presented to President Reagan. Concerns regarding this nomination expressed by Reagan supporters were proven well founded when Bell, in 1984, funded William Spady’s infamous Utah OBE grant which promised to (and did) put OBE "in all schools of the nation"; spearheaded the technology initiative in the 1980s; predicted that schools would be bookless by the year 2000; recommended that all students have computers; and fired Edward Curran, the Director of the National Institute of Education, when Curran recommended to President Reagan that Curran’s office, the NIE, be abolished.

According to a former member of the Utah Education Association, who was a close associate of Bell’s in the early 1970s, if the Senate Committee that confirmed T.H. Bell as Secretary of Education had read Bell’s A Performance Accountability System for School Administrators, it is unlikely Bell would have been confirmed.]

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 structural

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 Business 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.

Under "Restructuring Schooling":

...[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 Minnes