The 'Conspiracy' theory ... in plain English

Feb. 12, 1997

"Old social engineers never die; they just sit and wait, change a few words around, and hope the public has a short memory."

"(We will) Restructure the organization and management of public elementary and secondary education on the principles of modern quality management, empowering school staff, reducing intermediate layers of bureaucracy and the burden of rules and regulations from the state, the board of education and the unions, and holding school staff accountable for student progress."

"(Outcome-Based Education) ... is necessary for 'willing' or at least 'passive' citizenship in a socialist one-world government scheduled by the internationalists in education, and in some multinational corporations and tax-exempt foundations for the early 21st Century."

"...I have heard people saying, ‘Sounds like a federal power grab to me.’ That’s nonsense. I say, from Maryland to Michigan to Montana, reading is reading and math is math, No school board is in charge of algebra, and no state legislature can enact the law of physics."

So now we have an official conspiracy theory; Governor Bush even called it that. State Board of Education members — according to the Dallas Morning News, the SBOE members backed by the "religious right" — are alleging that Texas has bought in to the nationalization of education. The majority of the SBOE — funny, but the Morning News didn't label their affiliation, for some reason — isn't quite convinced.

The stories we ran in last week's editions were, to be truthful, pretty heavy reading. So let's boil it all down to plain English. Here's the "conspiracy" story, top to bottom:

• 1. The National Council on Education and the Economy — that's Marc Tucker, Lauren Resnick, New York Governor Mario Cuomo, Ira Magaziner and Hillary Clinton — starts drawing up the New Standards. They envision national adoption, a tie-in with School-to-Work, social services and health-care clinics in the schools.

• 2. The National Standards use Outcome-Based Education elements: performance evaluations, assessment of student projects and assessments of student portfolios. The National Standards are very well-written and researched — but never call for anyone to teach kids to read, write and do math, and completely ignore the teaching of history.

• 3. Texas buys in to the New Standards and NCEE under former Education Commissioner Lionel R. "Skip" Meno during the administration of Gov. Ann Richards. The Fort Worth ISD is chosen to pilot Texas' New Standards/STW programs.

• 4. Meno forms the Committee on Student Learning to research which elements Texas needs to adopt. After meeting with William G. Spady of the High Success Network — and paying him $23,500 in 1992 — that committee reports to the Legislature the state needs to adopt an Outcome-Based Education curriculum, portfolio assessments, and a tie-in to workforce reform. The state sends out a letter asking school districts to participate in an Outcome-Based Piloting Program, and schedules "Real World Forums" to determine what students need to know "and be able to do" by the time they graduate from high school.

• 5. George W. Bush rides a statewide Republican wave and is elected Governor on a promise of getting rid of the Texas Education Agency, and appoints Mike Moses as his Education Commissioner and Jack Christie as the Chairman of the State Board of Education. Moses orders cutbacks in the TEA, and some 200 personnel are transferred from the central office in Austin to the state's Regional Educational Service Centers. Key Republican leaders "buy in" to the NCEE agenda being implemented in Texas under the assumption they can "control" what's going on. [Moving those employees was Meno's way of "cutting staff."  MM]

• 6. State Sen. Bill Ratliff (R-Mount Pleasant) writes Senate Bill 1, which passes the Legislature in 1995 and is signed into law by Bush. The bill is touted for "returning local control" of the public schools. It does just that: local school administrators now have more control of the public schools, while elected school boards and the State Board are stripped of their authority. [That bill also took control of the financing away from elected school boards and gave it to the superintendents! MM]

• 7. Texas gets a big federal grant to reorganize its workforce system; wording in the School-to-Work grant gives the new Texas Workforce Commission the authority to mandate some policies to the Texas Education Agency.  [Using the Texas "Workforce" Commission (and that was a new name for the Texas Employment Commission) to hide what they were doing from the public was pretty clever! MM]

• 8. Following the "Real World Forums," work begins on the state's curriculum rewrite, the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. Some members of the curriculum rewrite teams charge the Texas Education Agency is mandating what they will write or changing what they are writing; professional "consensus builders" are brought in. [Changes to curriculum began way before the "Read World Forums" even met.  I have a copy of the Algebra I changes!  The 'Real World Forums" were just a ruse to dupe the public.]

• 9. Mid-Regional Educational Laboratory of Aurora, Colo., is brought in to train school administrators and teachers on performance-based assessments, OBE, schools without failure, checklists for report cards, whole language reading instruction, holistic writing units, and interdisciplinary/thematic curriculum.

• 10. The TEKS are introduced quietly to the state, with 30 days allowed for public review. A storm of outcry forces the state to extend that period. Bush and major newspapers across the state call the document "mush."

• 11. Moses announces that teacher evaluations will be tied to TAAS test results; Gov. Bush announces a new school-finance tax plan which will begin to shift the burden of paying for education from property owners to the business community. Only a few days later, the State Board approves the first portion of the TEKS.

That's where we stand at the moment. Shifting to the near future:

• 12. With the approval of the TEKS, performance and portfolio assessments begin to be put into place. These assessments are closely tied to a national examination system and the National Standards, and will lead to a Certificate of Initial Mastery — again, the OBE component — for Texas schoolchildren at age 16. Since business will be "paying for education," it will demand a bigger voice; the Texas Business and Education Coalition already wields considerable influence.

• 13. With Texas' official adoption of the educational and school-to-work elements of the NCEE concept, the addition of school-based health-care and social services follows quickly. Other states follow Texas' lead. All workforce training, education and child development effectively come under the umbrella of one national organization.

• 14. As the first several classes of "world-class" students emerge from the nation's schools and enter the voting booth, a significant shift in the United States' foreign policy occurs; we begin working more and more closely in concert with the United Nations, leading eventually to a single world government in which everyone has a job, is at least semi-literate, has free health care and social services and has a reasonably decent place to live. It's Utopia.

As noted, it's all a "conspiracy theory;" some of it is certainly a stretch. Documentation is beginning to surface, however, which lends some credence to the fact that Texas is pursuing an OBE curriculum.

What's chilling is to realize how far along that list we are.

[Mr. Mundy was dead on with THIS article.  Almost everything he included has now happened, and the general public is for the most part, still in the dark about what has changed!  One major change, because of Mundy's articles, was for them to drop the use of the term OBE (Outcome Based Education) as it became too widely known and understood, and so they just don't have a name for it anymore!  Marketing this stuff is a major industry now. MM]