DUMBING DOWN OF EDUCATION FIGHTIN' WORDS?

Byline: Richard Skidmore Local View

IN April 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education presented to President Reagan and the American people its findings on education in ``A Nation at Risk.''

The findings: ``The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people ... If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.''

This report put education reform at the top of every state and even the national agenda. Education remains the dominant budget item.

Educators talk about standards, new standards, enforced standards and improved curriculum development. Yet over the past 20 years, story after story surfaces about education being ``dumbed down.'' Our students perform, on a world standard, at the bottom in mathematics, sciences, national language skills, and are basically ignorant of their national history.

School superintendents and high school principals always report about the few exceptional students who go on to university education. But when asked about the normal high school graduate, they report that they are happy if their graduating 12th-graders are reading, writing and calculating at an eighth-grade level - meaning the normal student is performing below eighth-grade standards.

It is reported that in California, 80 percent of new students entering community colleges require one or two courses in remedial English and mathematics before they are ready.

The Rand Corp. has prepared a report, ``Breaking the Social Contract,'' stating that high school graduates of 2015 will have a purchasing power 40 percent less than their high school graduate grandparent of 1976. To put this in perspective: If the high school graduate of 1976 earned $12,000 per year, the 2015 graduate will earn only $7,200 - a hefty pay cut!

In the marketplace, the United States Labor Department reports, statistically, that the trend for employers is to hire only college-degreed individuals for entry-level positions when they formerly filled them with high school graduates.

Popular recognition of poor educational quality control has led to calls for student testing as a condition for high school graduation, which is met with resistance from the education establishment.

In California, the passing score for the high school exit exam was lowered to 55 percent, and delayed because too many students would fail.

Now the State Board of Education voted to remove some of the more difficult math and English questions to make its exit exam even easier. But according to board member Carol S. Katzman, ``I don't think we're dumbing down the test in any way.''

Students will face more questions about computing averages - a skill taught in sixth grade - and using estimation to check whether results are reasonable, a seventh-grade math standard.

English questions will also be pared - deleting a requirement that students write a bibliography of reference materials, develop research questions and methods to ``elicit and present evidence from primary and secondary sources'' and having students demonstrate proper manuscript formats, such as title page, spacing and margins.

These progressive changes were made at the request of Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell, targeting the class of 2006 for quality control.

Other educators argue that testing is ``abusive,'' ``inaccurate,'' ``meaningless,'' ``(an) attack on intellectual freedom'' and ``a highly effective means of social control.''

But ignorance is the most effective means of social control that I know.

When a 12th-grader receives a diploma that actually represents an eighth- grade education, and is relegated to an earning power that is 40 percent less than his high school-graduated grandfather, maybe this is an act of war requiring subjugated servitude!