Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt is an American freelance writer who served as the Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first term of U.S. President Ronald Reagan, and staff employee of the U.S. Department of State (South Africa, Belgium, South Korea).She was born in 1930 and attended Dana Hall preparatory school and Katharine Gibbs College in New York City, where she studied business. Iserbyt’s father and grandfather were Yale University graduates and members of the Skull and Bones secret society.[citation needed] Iserbyt had a second degree in something unrelated to education.  She is known for writing the book The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America. The book reveals that changes gradually brought into the American public education system work to eliminate the influences of a child’s parents (religion, morals, national patriotism), and mold the child into a member of the proletariat in preparation for a socialist-collectivist world of the future. She says that these changes originated from plans formulated primarily by the Andrew Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Education and Rockefeller General Education Board, and details the psychological methods used to implement and effect the changes. In an interview concerning secret societies and the elite agenda she disclosed that in the early 1980s she had a chance to meet with Norman Dodd who had been the chief investigator for the United States House Select Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations and Comparable Organizations commonly known as the B. Carroll Reece Committee. In the video interview she claims that Dodd discussed a ‘network’ of individuals including Carnegie who planned to bring about world peace by means of rapid changes in society. These changes would be brought about by involving the populace in various wars and military conflicts. She further claimed that Dodd had discussions with Rowan Gaither, the president of the Ford Foundation in which he revealed that directives from the President of the United States compelled foundations related to the Ford Foundation to direct their funding into bringing about the merger of the USA with the Soviet Union. Filmed interviews of Iserbyt have her detail her story that lead her from school board trustee/administrator to becoming a Ronald Reagan administration staff in the U.S. Department of Education, and discovering further to her complete disbelief how these policies of a socialist-collectivist nature originated all the way from President Reagan, Vice President George H. W. Bush, and their policy advisers. Up until 1960, Reagan, a leading member of United World Federalists (whose purpose was to merge the United States into a world government), was a charter member of Americans for Democratic Action. Reagan was also a member of the National Advisory Council of the American Veterans Committee that was supposedly “under communist influence.” In 1982 Reagan relieved her of her duties after leaking an important technology grant for computerized learning-Project BEST: “Better Education Skills through Technology” brought about by the scholarly writings and a large study by an education specialist named Dr. John I. Goodlad at the Center for Educational Renewal at the University of Washington, originally from British Columbia, Canada. One book of which Iserbyt was critical, “Schooling for a Global Age”, edited by Charlotte C. Anderson, James M. Becker, Institute for Development of Educational Activities, New York 1979, Iserbyt cited as having less to do with fostering learning and mainly to do with psychological manipulation of students, possibly against the teaching of the child’s parents, for example, in arts classes.[ Parents and the general public must be reached also. Otherwise, children and youth enrolled in globally oriented programs may find themselves in conflict with values assumed in the home. And then the educational institution frequently comes under scrutiny and must pull back.