Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 28, 1993 TAG: 9309280269
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Recently, Gov. Douglas Wilder called for the death of Virginia's outcome-based education reform movement, a victory for the religious right and others opposed to the sweeping changes outlined for the state's public schools.
But what exactly have its opponents won? Or, more precisely, what has been killed?
Just what was outcome-based education, anyway?
Boiled down to its basic components, outcome-based education means deciding what students should get out of school and finding more realistic ways for them to show that they've gotten it. In other words, stop focusing on what teachers teach (input) and start paying attention to what students learn (outcomes).
So why the fuss? As the movement spreads across the country - at least 42 states are preparing outcome-based plans - it leaves plenty of controversy in its wake. Members of the religious right may be its most forceful and well-organized opponents, but they have been joined by others - parents, educators, taxpayer associations - creating coalitions that sometimes include members from opposite ends of the political spectrum.
The complaints are almost always the same. Opponents fear that outcome-based education would, among other things:
Promote homosexuality.
"Dumb down" classroom instruction, forcing teachers to teach to the lowest common denominator.
Cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Prevent schools from teaching "the basics."
Teach children to be "politically correct," undermining values taught at home.
Joseph Spagnolo, the state's superintendent of public instruction, says it would have done none of those things in Virginia. But he never could convince the public.
Spagnolo blamed a nationally backed opposition that sold its version of the reforms more successfully than he could spread his.
"The opposition, for whatever reason, created their own reality of what we were talking about. And once that reality was created, it scared people," he said.
No matter how many times Spagnolo or his staff told people that the reforms would raise academic standards, stay out of family values, and use mostly money already set aside for staff development, the message never took.
It wasn't just that the movement became controversial, said James P. Jones, chairman of the state Board of Education. It was that nobody was behind it.
The Virginia Education Association - the state teachers' union - gave the initiative only lukewarm support, taking a "wait-and-see" attitude. The state Parent-Teacher Association never rallied behind it, either.
But plenty of people came out against it, and some said it was Spagnolo who was creating the false reality.
"I think it's a colossal brainwashing system, really," said John LeDoux, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech and chairman of the Montgomery County chapter of the Christian Coalition, which lobbied against the reforms.
LeDoux said the movement failed not because of poor public relations, but because it was a bad idea that has failed across the country.
But outcome-based education hasn't failed everywhere.
It may have created a brouhaha, but that hasn't stopped some states or individual school divisions from implementing it. Versions can be found in Connecticut, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
Johnson City, N.Y., has been using outcome-based philosophies for more than 20 years, and has seen a significant rise in standardized test scores, Superintendent Lawrence Rowe says.
Rowe fields phone calls from parents and educators from across the country who want to know what Johnson City is doing. He hosts so many visitors he had to set aside one day a month to give tours.
The key to winning acceptance, Rowe says, is not to force the changes on anyone. He was a teacher when a former superintendent approached him and asked how he could improve instruction so that more students would succeed. Rowe and other teachers began looking at educational research and making changes - slowly and voluntarily.
The movement, which was not called outcome-based education at that time, caught on because nobody was pushed into it, he said.
"Try that," Rowe said, "and you are in trouble."
Problems in Pa.
Pennsylvania did push - and ran into trouble.
"I've never seen a public policy decision so poorly managed as I have in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania," said Charles Greenawalt, former policy director of the Pennsylvania state Senate and an assistant political science professor at Millersville University.
"Pennsylvania did an awful job," he said. "We have it, but pretty much in name only. I hate to say that."
Analysts say Pennsylvania made two mistakes. It mandated the changes without clearly defining them, and it tried to include values education.
The latter caused such an outcry that Gov. Robert Casey delayed the plan until a more acceptable version - with the values section essentially gutted - was produced. Eventually, the state passed a set of standards for all students that schools will begin to phase in over the next several years.
Greenawalt fears many schools will pay only lip service to the standards because they don't have the time or resources to figure out how to make them work locally. The state wrote its "student outcomes" in an intentionally broad manner to give local divisions more control over what they were teaching.
Virginia also tried to remain broad in writing its Common Core of Learning, the document that listed what students should know, be able to do and be like by the age of 16. The idea was to grant autonomy to local divisions, but the idea backfired in both states.
"Outcome-based education means as many different things to people as there are people in Pennsylvania," Greenawalt said.
People were never sure what it meant in Virginia.
Harvey Carmichael, Virginia's lead specialist in social studies and co-leader of the team that developed the Common Core, said state educators faced a difficult task in trying to achieve a balance between granting schools independence and letting them know what was expected.
What resulted was a document so ambiguous it opened the door for speculation - and speculate the opposition did.
To avoid that kind of vulnerability, said George White, professor of educational leadership at Pennsylvania's Lehigh University, supporters must produce specific examples of what they have in mind, pointing to methods used in other school divisions.
Virginia tried to establish examples by funding two-year pilot projects across the state. But the first set of schools was just moving beyond the planning stages of the grant when Wilder killed the program.
States cannot be too specific about what they want or schools will resist the reforms, White said. Stripping schools - and local communities - of control over what their students do in the classroom is a recipe for failure.
That's why New York never forced other districts to follow the Johnson City example, said Dick Jones, one of the state's regional education coordinators.
"We don't think we can mandate anything," he said. "Some people would not like it, just because we mandated it."
However, the state is rewriting its educational standards so they focus more on "student outcomes."
How is that different? Jones said he doesn't see this as forcing something on schools because the outcomes will be broad enough to allow each division flexibility in how to meet them.
Sound familiar? Only New York doesn't call this "outcome-based education," Jones said. It calls it "the new compact for learning," and has included the slogan, "bottom-up reform with top-down support."
The buy-in issue
White advocates the same approach.
"If I were a state getting ready to do this," he said, "ain't no way I'd use `outcome-based education,' because that's a trigger for the religious right."
David Barrett, superintendent of the Jenkintown, Pa., school division, said he avoided controversy by letting his staff decide whether it wanted the changes. Jenkintown began outcome-based education six years ago, long before the state entered into its battle.
Barrett asked teachers to travel in small teams to Johnson City and school divisions in Arizona and tell him what they thought. The response was unanimous. Teachers told him, "We like what's happening. We think it's worth pursuing."
Jenkintown still is writing standards for all of its grade levels, but it's a process that includes all faculty members, Barrett said.
"The buy-in issue is very important," he said.
Virginia hoped to gain more acceptance of its program by working early on with members of the Virginia Business Council, the state PTA and the VEA, state Department of Education spokesman Jim Foudriat said.
Still, many Virginians felt left out and complained the changes were sprung on them at the last minute.
"I don't know why that occurred," said Carmichael, who said he spent two years traveling across the state getting feedback from thousands of parents and educators.
Barrett said what a division leaves out of its outcome-based plan can be as important to its success as what it puts in.
Jenkintown avoided much of the fighting that erupted statewide by separating values education from academic content.
Jenkintown does teach values, Barrett said. But it does not link them to graduation requirements and it does not test students on them.
Spagnolo had difficulty dispelling the notion that Virginia would test students on values such as honesty, although he said it was never his intention to do so. He admits the plan probably would have had a better chance for survival if the "critical attitudes" section had been left out.
That's not to say that Jenkintown or Johnson City found wholesale acceptance of the reforms when they started, or that they have complete agreement on them now.
Rowe said it took 10 years for residents of Johnson City to accept what was happening. In the beginning, some parents circulated a petition calling for the former superintendent's resignation.
The uproar quieted down as parents saw what the schools were accomplishing, said Sue King, PTA president of one of Johnson City's elementary schools.
King said her parents signed the petition and called the former superintendent "a nut." But now they support the school system, as do most parents.
In Jenkintown, at least one teacher refuses to implement "mastery learning," a controversial method of teaching that allows students to retest until they grasp the lesson.
But that's OK, said Barrett, as long as that teacher's students meet the required standards, which they do.
"It's the difference between the what and the how," Barrett said.
The outcomes tell teachers what they have to accomplish. How they do it is up to them.
That's what would have happened in Virginia, state educators say. They just didn't say it very clearly.
WEDNESDAY: How outcome-based education plays out in classrooms in Johnson City, N.Y., and Jenkintown, Pa.
by CNB