
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, August 5, 1995                   TAG: 9508080014
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

EDUCATIONAL DEFEATISM

EFFORTS to improve public education in America were plagued for years by the faddish inconstancy of diverse reform initiatives, by an absence of measurable accountability and by the implicit assumption that money alone could do the job.

Unfortunately, today's counterreaction - that money doesn't matter; that innovations are unhelpful and the schools should just limp along; that mediocrity is the best that can be expected of any government enterprise - adds up to a defeatism that is no less damaging.

Such defeatism is evident when Republicans in the U.S. House move to kill the modestly funded Goals 2000, the most comprehensive attempt to improve America's schools in many a decade. It is similarly evident in Richmond when Gov. George Allen - does the man actually believe his rhetoric about federal jackboots? - rejects Goals 2000 money rather than have the state continue its participation.

This should not be a partisan issue. Bill Clinton, when he was Arkansas governor in the mid-'80s, was instrumental in getting the goals-movement off the ground - in concert, that is, with Lamar Alexander, then the governor of Tennessee and now an aspirant for the GOP presidential nomination to oppose Clinton next year. The heretofore bipartisan effort to introduce higher academic standards throughout U.S. education moved forward at the 1989 education "summit" in Charlottesville where a Republican president, George Bush, approved the goals in concert with governors of both parties.

Goals 2000 incorporates ideas that have spurred dramatic quality improvements in U.S. business and industry: adoption of agreed-upon goals; development of measurable benchmarks and standards contributing toward meeting the goals; bottom-up flexibility in figuring out how best to make the improvements to reach the standards.

In keeping with American federalism, which makes public education the duty of state and local governments, the federal role is as a coach - adviser and monitor - rather than a player. But while the federal role is limited, it is not trivial - partly because lack of curriculum coordination is a weakness in a nation where one of every five students moves during the course of a year.

Goals 2000 is still more potential than reality. In many places, and in Virginia for a while, it got sidetracked by "outcomes-based education." Like Goals 2000, OBE defines goals (or desirable outcomes), then measures schools' performance in reaching them - rather than schools' compliance to a complex set of regulations imposed from on high. But unlike the standards the governors have in mind, many of OBE's lack clarity and academic rigor. According to a recent survey by the American Federation of Teachers, lack of clarity and academic rigor continues to characterize standards being developed in many states - though Virginia was one of 13 whose new standards did meet with approval.

Even so, much work remains. Virginia, for example, has relatively rigorous standards but no plans to make meeting them a requirement for graduation. And no state, reports the survey, has completed the job of tying its standards to world-class benchmarks; most states, including Virginia, have taken no significant steps toward doing so.

Goals and standards are not a substitute for changing the way teaching is done in most schools. In most schools, which are still based on an industrial-era factory model, attention to actual learning is scandalously inadequate.

Goals and standards are, however, an important way to raise expectations and promote accountability. If myopic politics means the end of Goals 2000 now, then an opportunity for genuine improvement of America's schools will have been tragically forgone.

by CNB