CHOICE AS REFORM MODEL

CHARLOTTE’S ‘OUTCOMES’ MAKE SENSE

Wednesday, July 21, 1993

By Robert Holland

Judging from what transpired in a jam-packed Mills E. Godwin high School auditorium last Friday night, many Virginians are not happy campers as they finally learn about a school restructuring effort three years in the making that is on the verge of being cast in concrete.

Out of many possible models for its World Class Education reform, the State Department of Education chose for mandatory use in all public schools “Transformational Outcome-Based Education,” a package peddled by sociologist William Spady, a Colorado-based consultant.  His version of OBE is heavy on manipulation of attitudes and light on knowledge in the classical sense.

“Skills” mean so-called “higher-order thinking” about self-esteem, globalism, diversity, coping,  collaboration, and the like.  The CCL intervenes heavily in attitudes – what children should be like; what the government’s  agents think they should think.  As a gauge of steadily boiling public discontent over transformational  OBE, consider this:  How many public meetings about school policy ever have brought out 800 people on a Friday night in the middle of a steamy July, with baseball, pools, and the rivah beckoning?

Parents and teachers paraded to the microphone to express, overwhelmingly, their discontent.  It’s just another experiment, a fad,  that will impose on teaching time.  It tramples parental rights.  A young math teacher said that there can be no accurate way to measure OBE outcomes.  OBE “will not produce all winners; it will produce all losers,” he said.

Perhaps the most on-target comment  of  the night came from Henrico parent Catherine Davis (who joked that she was speaking up to add “the spice of diversity” to the mostly white gathering).  Referring to the injection of industry’s Total Quality Management into education policy, she noted that TQM is supposed to take into account how the customer feels.  But as to a reform that undermines parental authority, she said, “I’m not a happy customer.”

“If you’re truly into TQM, you should be asking me what outcome I want,” she said, to thunderous applause.

Her comments provide a good opening to turn the discussion from what is not wanted to what is:  from the negative to the positive.  Lil Tuttle, the leader of Academics First,  a parents’ group, has discovered through national research that (amid all the mumbo-jumbo) there are at least a few outcome-based reform models around that are grounded in rigorous content – “traditional OBE, if you will, as opposed to transformational.  (See a comparison of the two approaches below this article.)

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, school system will begin testing one such venture this fall.  Called “The Modern Red School house,” it is one of 11 “break the mold” plans to revitalize U. S. education being funded by the New American Schools Development Corporation.  The Hudson Institute of Indianapolis, former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett, and Charlotte Superintendent John Murphy (who started a highly acclaimed magnet school program in Prince Georges County, Maryland) are major players.

This team’s statement of philosophy is a refreshing contrast to the thick jargon of transformational OBE.

“We want our students to leave high school with a shared body of knowledge and skills, a common language of ideas, and the discipline of minds and character to be contributing members of a democratic society.  We want them to be able to read and write proficiently, to know math, science, history, geography, and literature.  We want them to be able to think independently, to work with others, to be capable of advancing an argument and foreseeing its implications….We want our students to challenge their own—and other people’s – assumptions and to be prepared for a lifetime of continued learning.”

Now, those are objectives that make sense.

The “backbone of all students’ education” will be in the core disciplines of English, math, science, history, and geography.  In addition the curriculum will require study of a foreign language, the fine arts, physical fitness, health, and the uses of  technology..

The report continues:  “A number of failed experiments of the 1960’s and 1970’s – some still underway today –sought to separate ‘skills’ and ‘processes’ from ‘knowledge.’ They decried content-rich curricula as ‘rote learning’ and encouraged the teaching of ‘higher order thinking skills’ divorced from subject matter knowledge.  Hudson [Institute] believes that content and process are inextricably linked.”

Alas, one of those “failed experiments”—full of Sixties’-era nonsense about all of education needing to be immediately “relevant” – is about to be repeated on a grand scale in Virginia. 

One disquieting note about Charlotte’s plan:  It will integrate the Labor Department’s SCANS “social competencies” for workers into the curriculum, which may have a diluting effect.  But there are many other good points:  an academic support system for “at-risk” children, and choice for parents and teachers as to participation in these schools emphasizing the basics.

We can do better, much better in Virginia.  And we don’t necessarily need to copy Charlotte’s plan, or that of any spacey consultant.  In fact, what would be wrong with having many models of locally devised reform, and parental choice among them?

TRANSFORMATIONAL OUTCOME-BASED EDUCATION

Transformational OBE differs from traditional education in both structure and content as follows:

TRADITIONAL                                                                    TRANSFORMATIONAL

                        GRADE LEVEL/STANDARDS OF LEARNING (SOLS)

Specific grade levels K-12, each grade        No specific grade levels

level having specific content and SOL’s      (i.e., students progress at

(i.e., standards of learning; what a                 their own pace); intermittent

student is expected to have learned at        benchmarks (i.e., “learner

the end of each grade)                                       outcomes”)

                        GRADUATION REQUIREMENTS

Students must pass specifically                      Students must achieve mastery of

defined academic courses, earning              certain “learner outcomes”  (often

“Carnegie units” toward a high school         involving non-academic, subjective

diploma                                                                     attitudes) to earn a certificate of

                                                                                    mastery.

                        FOCUS OF TEACHING

Academic in nature.  Emphasis on                 Affective in nature.  Emphasis on

content of academic material (i.e.,                application of skills and knowledge

what the student knows)                                   (i.e., how the student uses

                                                                                    information he has)

                        METHOD OF TEACHING

Teachers present factual information           Teachers present information in  

In specific courses (math, history,                 broad themes, managing group

English, etc.), which each student                 projects in which disciplines have

individually is to receive and learn                 been blended (interdisciplinary)

over a specific time frame (one                       Behavior, values, and attitudes

year)                                                                          are very important – self-esteem,

Behavior, values, and attitudes not               coping skills, compromise

considered unless disruptive.                          skills, global citizenship, and

                                                                                    development, collectivist global

                                                                                    society (i.e., “higher order thinking

                                                                                    skills”)

                        TRACKING/GROUPING

Students are often grouped according        No tracking/grouping by ability.  All

to  achievement levels and needs (i.e.          students are grouped together;

honors, remedial, et.)                                          faster or older students help to teach

                                                                                    slower or younger students.

                        GRADING SCALE

“A, B, C, D, F” – If a student fails                      “A” and “not yet” only.  Students

to learn and earn a passing grade                 either achieve “mastery” of a

in a specific academic course, he/she         “learner outcome” or keep

must repeat it.                                                       pursuing “mastery”

                        MAJOR TESTINGS USED

Stanford Achievement Test, Iowa Test,       New assessments will be created

SAT (objective assessments of student       to determine how students

achievement and aptitude)                               demonstrate “mastery” of learner

                                                                                    outcomes (including subjective

                                                                                    teacher assessment of attitudes,

                                                                                    values, etc.)

Source: Academics First, Box 203, Midlothian, VA