OP/ED from the Richmond Times-Dispatch
'CORRECT' ATTITUDES
Outcome-Based Education Seeks to Mold the New Virginia Child
Wednesday, January 27, 1993
By Robert Holland
Watch Out. The Education Establishment is beating the tom-toms for a
monolithic version of school reform --something trading under the deceptively
benign name of Outcome-Based Education (OBE).
The National Education Association, through its Center for Innovation, is
gaga over OBE, as are many pedagogues in education schools, think tanks, and
state departments of education. Many big businesses -- lured by the
promise of job-worthy graduates --also are uncritically embracing OBE. The
America 2000 program, launched by former President Bush and the nation's
governors (new President Clinton prominent among them), is hep on the OBE
program too.
Now OBE may be coming to Virginia. The opening shot is a bill in the
current General Assembly to make kindergarten attendance (public or private)
mandatory for all 5-year-olds, beginning in 1994. An effort to require
enrollment of 4-year-olds will follow in a year or two, because the OBE
game-plan being developed in the State Department of Education anticipates
massive state intervention in early childhood.
Concerning all this, I offer three pieces of free advice to parents and
taxpayers: (1) Guard your wallets, (2) Weigh carefully the educrats'
words, because --as with Orwellian Newspeak --they often mean the opposite of
plain language, (3) Beware of behavior modification masquerading as solid
academics.
OBE BEGINS from an unassailable premise -- that schools should be judged by
"learner outcomes" rather than, say the numbers of books in the library or
teachers with master's degree. But OBE would not make schools directly
accountable to parents for concrete academic outcomes. OBE actually is the
polar opposite of parental choice among a wide variety of competing schools.
Parents are out of the loop.
Central bureaucracies predetermine the desired "outcomes," which have far
less to do with whether Johnny can comprehend the
Federalist Papers or place the Civil War in the correct half-century than
with his acquisition of politically correct attitudes toward such matters as
global resource inequality, multiculturalism, homelessness, alternative life
styles, and environmentalism.
Many of the concepts and much of the jargon in a draft of Virginia's proposed
Common Core of Learning are found in OBE programs in other states. In
Pennsylvania, a storm of controversy has enveloped state educrat's dogged
efforts to replace Carnegie units and standardized tests with 51 non-competitive
"learning outcomes," such as these:
*All students relate (to current problems) in writing , speech,
or other media, the history and nature of various forms of prejudice...
*All students develop skills of communicating and negotiating with others to
solve interpersonal problems with conflicts.
Thousands of Pennsylvania parents have turned out for meetings protesting
OBE; the state's House of Representatives voted 170 to 24 against an
environmental education component; and Governor Robert Casey, a liberal
Democrat, urged that all sections on manipulating attitudes be stripped from
OBE. No matter. The state's board of education arrogantly voted this
month to forge full speed ahead.
Virginia's Common Core -- not yet given final State Board of Education
approval -- similarly lays out 38 student outcomes within seven "Dimensions of
Living." Color it all warm and fuzzy.
ONE DIMENSION IS "Local and Global Civic Participation," encompassing "the
diversity of political, economic, and social rights and responsibilities that
individuals have as citizens of their locality, their nation, and the world."
Typical student outcomes under this section are: "Identify community
problems and negotiate solutions contributing to the public good" and support
and defend civil and human rights worldwide." Environmentalism constitutes
another Dimension.
These aren't independent study projects for high school seniors, mind you.
They are the kind of "real-life" immersion that the state's schools would expect
beginning in early childhood. (Ah those carefree years--whatever happened to
them?) Years away from a rudimentary understanding of basic science or
history, children are supposed to have the answers to world problems. To
be sure they would discover them in "negotiating groups, not as independent
thinking individuals, because OBE is predicated on cooperation, not competition.
All pupils succeed; failure and retention are passe'. Students teach other
students.
The potential for indoctrination is enormous -- and even if that is not the
state's intention, NEA activists will take it as an engraved invitation. (To its
great credit, the Virginia Education Association has not hurried to
embrace OBE. Its leaders want more information.)
In fairness, Virginia's board does not appear to be in the headlong rush to
implementation that Pennsylvania's is. The first draft of the Common Core
is undergoing revision, and, if it passes legislative muster, a phase in would
not begin until 1996. So there is time --if anyone out there cares -- to
wrench the focus back to the basics of learning.
WHAT ABOUT COST?
A study done at the University of Pennsylvania estimated a $16 million fiscal
impact of OBE in five Pennsylvania school districts over a five-year period.
Spread over the entire state, the added expense might exceed $1 billion.
In Virginia, the costs of mandatory schooling for 4- and 5-year-olds alone would
be enormous. Yet no fiscal impact statement has been forthcoming.
Surely Virginians deserve to know the price tag in taxes for this statist
vision of molding a New Virginia Child!
Moreover, they deserve to know what research suggests they would get for
their money. Early OBE experiments in places like Chicago and Bill
Clinton's Arkansas have shown that reading, math, and other achievement
scores have declined. No doubt, however, self-esteem is sky high.
Strangely enough, Virginia's Education Department has said parental choice plans are a no-go because of a lack of proven results. Yet the educrats would impose their Common Core vision statewide without a single pilot study or demonstration of success -- just as, indeed, the state's "safe sex" curriculum was pushed into place several years ago.