Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 29, 1993 TAG: 9309290234
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: JENKINTOWN, PA. LENGTH: Long
A group of sixth-graders hunkers down on the carpet of Virginia Griffith's classroom on a sunny September morning, a large fan blowing cool air onto their hot necks.
The teacher stands in front of them, chalk at the board. She asks a question, then waits for the children to call out answers. They are brainstorming.
Today's problem: What to do if America runs out of oil 10 years from now, pushing the price of gasoline to $30 per gallon.
Griffith looks down at the 11-year-olds squatting in front of her. Will the energy crisis affect you? How? Who else will it hurt? What transportation will be eliminated? What will we use instead?
The children fire back at her. Trains, planes, cars, trucks, buses - all these will become too expensive to operate. All gas-powered vehicles will have to go, one child pipes up.
They are ready for Griffith's questions. They have wrestled with this problem already, in small groups the day before.
Fifteen minutes into the lesson, they are debating the merits of electric cars and discussing the laws of supply and demand.
What these children probably could not tell you, however, is how their morning activity fits into the controversial movement known as outcome-based education. Doubtless they have never heard of integrated curriculums and could not identify where science, economics, problem-solving and group cooperation overlap in their daily lessons.
They don't know that they are learning to communicate effectively. Or that they are developing a keener sense of their environment and learning to apply knowledge to real life. Or that a group of faculty members sat down and determined that these were things they should be able to do before they graduate, and that this is one way Griffith has chosen to make sure they can do them.
At the other end of the building, Connie Stark has written the day's outcomes on the board. Her second-graders understand that before they leave, they are expected to learn three new words: meadow, splatter and polliwog.
Stark reads a story that uses the words. Then they compare and contrast the characteristics of frogs and toads. They fill out activity sheets to show they have mastered the lesson.
Outcome-based education. Decide up front where the children should be - by the end of the day, the lesson, the year - then work on how to get them there.
"Isn't this what we always did? Is this so brand new?"
Math teacher Jackie Mejzak asked those questions six years ago when Superintendent David Barrett began to speak to teachers about outcome-based education.
Then she looked more carefully at the way she was teaching and realized it was new. In the past, she would write in her lesson book "study right triangles." Now, she writes down the skills she wants her students to learn.
A second chance
That doesn't mean Mejzak doesn't teach about right triangles. What it means is that she introduces her students to broader mathematical concepts, and shows them how right triangles fit into those concepts.
"Being outcome-based has changed my style," she said.
Mejzak spends less time at the blackboard. The students spend more time working on problems individually. And she asks her students questions about what they are doing and why. When they can answer her, she knows that they truly understand.
Unlike many of her colleagues, Mejzak does not, however, use mastery learning. And she is quick to point out that mastery learning and outcome-based education are not the same thing.
Mastery learning is a teaching method built upon the premise that all students can learn but that they learn at different rates. It advocates reteaching and retesting students until they master the lesson, often using the quicker, brighter students to help tutor the slower ones.
Opponents of outcome-based education often link the two, complaining that mastery learning "dumbs down" classroom instruction by forcing teachers to teach to the lowest common denominator. What's more, they say, it unfairly prevents good students from moving on to more difficult material.
It also removes competition from the classroom and discourages students from studying hard the first time if they know they will be allowed to take the test again, critics say.
Jenkintown social studies teacher Carol Heath said she ran into that problem initially, then built in hurdles to motivate students to study the first time around. If students want a retest, they must earn it by doing extra work or staying after class for help. Heath sometimes does use the quicker students to teach the slower ones, but she said that helps the bright students, also, by reinforcing what they have learned.
Heath said she teaches the material differently the second time and does not always retest on the whole lesson. Students earn whatever grade they achieve at the end, and they aren't penalized for doing poorly on the first test.
Does that remove competition? Does it mislead students into thinking that life will be full of second chances?
Life does provide second chances, Heath said. She points to the bar exam, driver's license tests, accounting certificates.
"All life is not one or done," she said.
As for competition and dilution of class rank, Barrett said he's not interested in comparing students to each other. He's interested in making sure they all learn.
If the college admissions folks don't like that, so be it.
"There are quick studies," he said. "But a lot of us had to struggle to get through college and we did well."
Mejzak disagrees with her colleagues on this one. She does not offer retests.
"A student must be accountable on that day, period," she said.
But she periodically checks to make sure students are progressing, before she tests. And she offers individual help to those who are behind.
Barrett sees no problem with this. Mejzak's students achieve the outcomes expected of them, and that's all that matters.
Outcome-based education means developing a set of expectations, he said. But it must allow flexibility in the classroom, at the division level, for each state.
`It's their rules'
Indeed, things are not precisely the same in Jenkintown as they are in Johnson City, N.Y., where many of Barrett's teachers went to study the reforms. The New York village more than 200 miles to the north of the Pennsylvania community hosts dozens of visitors each month, all eager to see the district that pioneered outcome-based education more than 20 years ago.
In Johnson City, not only faculty but students get involved in setting some outcomes. For example, third-grade teacher Pat Holbert asks students on the first day of class what they hope to achieve by the end of the year. They also set classroom rules together by talking about what kind of environment they want to learn in.
"Then, if somebody breaks a rule, it's their rule," she said.
This year, her children chose rules that include being responsible, respecting each other, cooperating, doing their best and being kind.
Holbert said teaching without outcomes is like "taking a vacation and piling the kids in the car and not knowing where you're going."
Elementary school Principal Jane Meyers said she resisted the shift into outcome-based education in the 1970s, when she was a teacher in the school system.
"I thought I was good enough and I couldn't learn anymore," she said.
She changed her mind when the former superintendent asked her how many of her students earned A's and how many earned D's and F's. Only eight of 28 students were earning A's and B's, she said.
"I went to bed that night very frustrated," Meyers said.
She compared her job to someone in private industry and wondered, "Could I turn out eight goods and 12 rejects every day?"
By the second year, she was using outcome-based methods in class. Now, she keeps up with all the latest research and passes it around to her staff.
The process in Johnson City has been refined over the past 20 years, and continues to be refined, Superintendent Lawrence Rowe said.
"Change - it never ends in a good school district or a good business," he said. "Change is constant."
One change he learned to make was to include parents in the process. He learned it the hard way.
When Johnson City primary classes moved into more hands-on activities and dropped work sheets and other traditional homework assignments, parents were not made aware of what was happening. When they didn't see their children coming home with a lot of paperwork, they wondered what they were doing at school.
They let Rowe know they weren't happy. So he made some changes.
One class now writes a newsletter to parents to tell them about what they do at school, he said. It became a part of the lesson and satisfied parents at the same time.
Likewise, when the district recently decided to remove the traditional grading system from elementary schools, switching to more anecdotal methods of tracking student progress, faculty members spent two years preparing parents for the change.
`It's not nirvana'
Still, not everybody likes what Johnson City is doing. One family removed its children from the school system because self-esteem lessons and discipline procedures taught students that they were in control of their actions and the consequences, a lesson that contrasted with the family's religious belief that there are things only God can control.
Rowe is quick to point out that Johnson City does not offer a panacea for education's ills.
"It's not nirvana here," he said. "We deal with the same issues everyone else does."
And yes, he said, they teach values. But they do not test on them. And they do not promote homosexuality, a charge often lodged by opponents of outcome-based education.
"We teach kids in school to have a genuine concern for themselves and for others," he said.
That includes respecting other lifestyles and cultures, a must in a school system located at a refugee drop-off point, where students speak more than a dozen languages. Johnson City also practices inclusion, mixing all of its special education students into regular classes.
That does not mean Johnson City promotes one lifestyle over another, said Rowe, or that it indoctrinates children into anything. But it does teach them about the consequences of their actions and it does teach open-mindedness.
"As a school system, how can we say that we're going to teach closed-mindedness? If we don't respect diversity, then what should we do? Disrespect diversity? What's the right thing to do?"
Consequently, one of the outcomes in Johnson City is "concern for others."
Lydia Sokoloski, a second-grade teacher, handles it with exercises like this one:
The children sit in a circle and play a game called "paper crunch." One student says something mean to a piece of paper and crumples it, then passes it to the next student. That child repeats the act, as do those after her, until they hold a wadded ball. Then the children say something nice and flatten it out.
The wrinkles remain, Sokoloski points out. The lesson?
"You can't erase all the bad feelings. It really illustrates what a bad comment can do to a child, or an adult, too."
But does outcome-based education actually work?
Rowe thinks so. He credits the changes for standardized test scores that rank consistently well above the national norms and a rise in scores at the higher grade levels, where student performance usually drops off.
Barrett said it's too early to say whether the reforms have made a significant difference in Jenkintown. Students score well compared to statewide averages, but then again, they have always done well in this tiny, middle-class suburban community outside Philadelphia.
Barrett also pointed out that while per-pupil expenditures in Jenkintown were among the highest in the state, that is not something that happened as a result of outcome-based education. Jenkintown, a half-square mile community with one campus for its two schools, spent roughly $21,000 to make the shift.
That money, said Barrett, went to travel expenses and staff development. But most of the cost is now absorbed by using money that has always been set aside for teacher training.
Rowe said Johnson City, a significantly larger school district outside of Binghamton, spends roughly $150,000 per year on staff development.
Is it worth it?
Just ask Board of Education member Tom Jablonoski, a graduate of Johnson City schools. When he finished high school in 1957, nobody expected him to go to college. Students like Jablonoski, who were either not at the top of the class or simply from ethnic backgrounds, were told to join the military or take a job at the then-booming Endicott-Johnson shoe factory.
Outcome-based education changed all that, Jablonoski said.
"Twenty years ago," he said, "we were known for what we put on our feet. Today we're known for what we put in our heads."
by CNB