Children who attend private schools and use Saxon Math who do paper and pencil drills in a rote manner perform better and understand Math better than those who are in the New, New Math. This also implies that thematic instruction is to be required so that the information is geared to what the child needs to know according to his career cluster. This goes right along with the Whole Language, child centered education that has produced such devastating results in the knowledge imparted to our children and their lack of understanding in History, etc. In other words, traditionalists need not apply. They also plan to gather data on the students.
Applied education is another term for dumbing down education to what can be measured by performance.
The purpose of schools, it has now been decided, is to focus our children on the group. Individualism, the spirit of our country and the heart of the entrepreneurialism which has made our country great, is now to be intentionally replaced with the importance of the group because an elite group has decided to do so. They use Japan as a model, yet, Japan's economy is now on the rocks. This group never assessed the intrinsic cultural influences which determined leadership in those groups which they assumed to be egalitarian. The rock is already rolling down the hill and this group will not admit the source of their assumptions is flawed and therefore the entire monolithic agenda they continue to pursue is just as flawed.