EDUCATION REFORM PLAN HITS OBSTACLE

JEFFERSON CITY -- The Missouri Board of Education Tuesday rejected 18 months of work on new educational standards by the Senate Bill 380-mandated Commission on Performance, sending it back to be drafted with basic study areas and clear language.

Rep. Harold Caskey, D-Butler, a sponsor of the state's educational reform act, told the group he wanted reform "that the community, the parents and the students can read clearly and understand."

Critics charged that reform would be full of outcome-based standards and vague requirements.

Caskey's motion, requiring that any education reform have standards for six basic areas -- communication arts, fine arts, health-physical education, mathematics, science and social studies -- passed without dissent.

State Sen. Peter Kinder, R-Cape Girardeau, a vocal critic of outcome-based education, said he was surprised to see state Education Commissioner Bob Bartman vote to send the plan back to the drawing board.

"It is so bad and so vague that the sponsor of SB-380 didn't like it," Kinder said. "Bartman clearly did some last-second vote counting. It's amazing Bartman, who orchestrated this, bought into the amendment when he was faced with the author of SB-380 repudiating his bill. It shows how really indefensible these non-educational, non-standards are."

Gov. Mel Carnahan presided over the two-hour hearing, listening to opponents of the new standards and several Missouri teachers who have worked to implement the program.

The education board began measuring the success of active learning almost two years ago when working groups of teachers and ad hoc committees were formed to explore non-traditional methods of teaching.

Critics, including Daniel Trifan, a professor at Missouri Western State College in Joplin, called the state's attempt to change education standards "totally devoid of any sense."

"OBE standards are vague and fluffy," Trifan said. "The bottom line for Missouri is that this is not education reform -- this is education fraud."

"We did not want to reinvent the past," said Doug Allen, an Independence social-studies teacher who is part of a group proposing new standards. "We designed education to ask not only what the students know but what they can do with that knowledge."

Sherri Straiter, a teacher at Northwest Missouri State University, said she developed "a holistic view of the classroom" by adopting the new standards in a pilot program. Straiter said she is still enthusiastic about the reform effort.

"We don't feel like we lost," Straiter said. "It's just up to us now to make sure the lay people understand that we have a chance to attain excellence."

Lynette Holt, a Lee's Summit teacher and leader of Missourians For Academic Excellence, an anti-OBE group, said although the new standards were rebuked for lack of clarity, "as long as parts of SB-380 are in place, outcome-based education will resurface. I still don't see any academic standards from the 18 months they had to work on it."

The next meeting of the education commission is in July. Supporters of the new standards will attempt to have revised goals completed by the first of the next school year.