Outcome-Based Education Reform

“For 30 years, this country has been slowly seduced and become intoxicated by one reform strategy with an ever-changing name — outcome-based education reform. In all too many classrooms, our focus on the ‘outcome’ has come at the expense of the process of educating children. Outcomes equated to test scores, and education became test preparation.”… That is from my first blog!

Outcome-based, standards-based, proficiency-based, mastery-based, performance-based, test-based — these and many others all describe basically the same process of using standards and the testing of “outcomes” for the foundation of a “system of instruction, assessment, grading, and reporting.”

Today, most people in the country do not understand what brought us to this point of such hot contention over the use of test scores.

Outcome-based education proponents and many parents believe that standardized tests are an “effective” measure of student achievement. But as any doctor can tell you, test results don’t always give you straightforward answers. All tests have strengths and weaknesses and must be interpreted with that in mind.

On the other side of the argument, fewer than 25 percent of Americans believe that the increased testing we have done over the last decade has helped the performance of their local public schools. A majority of the public rejects using standardized tests scores to evaluate teachers.

The philosophy upon which we reform education is crucial to have right.

It is crucial that the philosophy upon which we reform education is right.

What many do not understand is that people like myself that are against the outcome-based education reform theory are not against standards, against the proper use of standardized tests, or against accountability. I am opposed to doing anything in the name of systemic reform that will knowingly do harm to some of our students chances for success in life.

The evidence is clear. Experiments with the outcome-based theory in 1913, the late 1930’s, and officially since 2002, with No Child Left Behind, all came to the same conclusion; it narrowed the curriculum, it narrowed the curriculum, and it narrowed the curriculum.

McMurrer_FullReport_CurricAndInstruction_072407.pdf

McMurrer_FullReport_CurricAndInstruction_072407.pdf

In life, a “narrowed curriculum” translates into limited learning opportunities. Those most harmed by a narrow curriculum are children whose parents do not have much to offer in the way of educational opportunities in their homes and lives. Quality public schools are their fair shot at success – in theory.

A 2007 survey found “that nearly 75 percent of [civics and social studies] teachers, who say they are using news less often in the classroom, cite mandated standardized tests as the reason. They say that preparing for the tests takes time away from the classroom discussion of news.

In life, will that translate into disinterested adults who won’t be inclined to fulfill their civic duty?  Is this the outcome we want?

www.idahostatesman.com/2014/10/27/3452348/the-future-of-voting-in-idaho.html?sp=/99/106/128/

www.idahostatesman.com/2014/10/27/3452348/the-future-of-voting-in-idaho.html?sp=/99/106/128/

Why are we doing this?

We expect professionals to follow a high standard of practice. We have given authority to lawmakers to maintain educational oversight through policy making; should lawmakers not be held to a standard where they are expected to consider the evidence?

The National Research Council advice to lawmakers is that “the available evidence does not give strong support for the use of test-based incentives to improve education” … and recommends that “continued experimentation with test-based incentives should not displace investment in the development of other aspects of the education system that are important…”

Outcome-based education reform theory is the foundation of No Child Left Behind. Investment in testing went up, opportunity was limited, evidence was collected, and this experiment should officially be ended.

∞ ∞ ∞

UPDATE 2/17/16: No Child Left Behind was replaced with The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) on 12/10/15. ESSA continues to have the outcome-based education reform theory as its foundation.

America’s Choice: High Skills or Low Wages

Is America’s choice the Marc Tucker plan? High skills or low wages are the only choices being offered? Care to look at the details of this plan?

For those unfamiliar with Mr. Tucker, Lynn M. Stuter describes him as “an avid supporter of and advocate for systems education, known also by a plethora of names. Most notably, it is outcome-based education. Other names include performance-based education (PBE), competency-based education (CBE), outcomes driven developmental model (ODDM), and outcomes-driven education (ODE).”

The Tucker plan is explained by the Eagle Forum as being “designed on the German system, the Tucker plan is to train children in specific jobs to serve the workforce and the global economy…” And the Forum goes on to outline the policies that have supported the plan thus far.

The Tucker plan centers on national standards, assessments, and certifications for “mastery”; it is the outcome-based theory taken to an extreme and tied securely to the labor force through data systems.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/09/24/05summit.h34.html

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/09/24/05summit.h34.html

The history is sometimes hard to follow because the “organizations” and their “projects” change names on a regular basis. But many agree that a pivotal point in “the plan” moving forward was “a two-day summit at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville on Sept. 27-28, 1989.

What began at Charlottesville was a long march of a bipartisan [movement] to fundamentally change the system,” said Mr. Tucker, who served as an unofficial consultant to the cadre of officials involved in developing the goals [America 2000]. “It had good results and bad, but it survived changes in administration in a way that few things did. It was not A Nation at Risk that did that. It was Charlottesville.”

For us, this is one more demonstration of “the influential” pushing policy forward. From New York where “Rochester schools were the designated laboratories for an experiment in nationalizing education,” the Tucker plan quickly spread to D.C.

HEADLINE NEWS: New American Schools Development Corporation (page 75) The National Alliance for Restructuring Education “has as its 
goal a Total Quality Management (TQM), output-driven, performance-oriented system of education with students meeting high national achievement standards.”

Based on the perception (one later disproved by the Sandia Report) that a “strong general education” was lacking in our country, the Tucker plan gained steam with the publication of America’s Choice: High Skills or Low Wages.

Over and over the same words were used, the same reasoning given, and the same plan explained. As Ira Magaziner and Hillary Rodham Clinton reiterated:

“We grow by having every American worker produce more…

A new educational performance standard should be set for all students, to be met at or around 16. This standard should be established nationally and benchmarked to the highest in the world….”

The vision is based on “a national examination system” like the “New Standards Project.” When students pass the test, they are awarded a “Certificate of Initial Mastery.” Technical and professional training “would be offered across the entire range of services and manufacturing occupations” because training by employers was seen as “lacking” so the government would take over through the new public school system and “public technical assistance” – according to the Tucker plan.

This is a “total system” of school to work. Dropouts? No. “Children should not be permitted to work before the age of 18 unless they have a Certificate of Initial Mastery or are enrolled in a program to obtain it (America’s Choice, page 6).

The Tucker plan was further clarified in his personal Letter to Hillary Clinton where he shares what his ideal system would look like.

Dear Hillary

…We think the great opportunity you have is to remold the entire American system for human resources development…

…We have a national system of education in which curriculum, pedagogy, examinations, and teacher education and licensure systems are all linked to the national standards…

…We have a system that rewards students who meet the national standards with further education and good jobs, providing them a strong incentive to work hard in school…

…All students are guaranteed that they will have a fair shot at reaching the standards: that is, that whether they make it or not depends on the effort they are willing to make, and nothing else…

The letter is very detailed leaving no doubt that the vision is for one system to be “regulated on the basis of outcomes that providers produce for their clients, not inputs into the system.”

Giving children “a fair shot”?

Add to this the plan to have  “All available front-line jobs — whether public or private — must be listed in it [The Labor Market System] by law.”

This is a vision for developing a totalitarian education/labor system. “The State” (my quotation marks here) will hold total authority over standards, testing, certification, and job placement – of America’s children. This is America’s choice?

With access to quality education still left up to luck and location, this is “a fair shot’? Really?

25 years after the Charlottesville, Virginia meeting, is it possible that these people, that are paid to think, put all our chips on the wrong vision for America? Did they ever stop to think about that?

Our "chips"; our plan?

Our “chips”; our plan?

But, we should not hang Marc Tucker out to dry alone; he had plenty of support in his efforts…too numerous to mention today.

The big question is, what does America think of the Tucker plan? And do we see its similarities to The Common Core?

Time to make a choice, America.

Quit gambling, or keep betting on the same outcome-based theory that has a 30 year history of no returns on investment.