`HIGHER ORDER SKILLS': BOARD MEMBER REVIEWS REFORM BILL

Reforms contained in Senate Bill 380 should provide better accountability for schools and insure that students are prepared for jobs of the 21st century, State Board of Education member Rebecca Cook said Tuesday.

At last week's meeting, many of the reforms included in the bill were reviewed by the board. Cook believes the changes are generally positive. Those changes also mean that the state board will be busy the next few months trying to implement the reforms.

"Next month the department staff will bring us a suggested calendar of steps we need to take to implement the reforms portion of the bill," said Cook, a Cape Girardeau resident. "This will be taking a lot of our time the next few months."

The Senate bill, which Gov. Mel Carnahan plans to sign Thursday, also includes a new school foundation formula and additional funding. There have been various projections done on what the new plan means to each school district. However, Cook said the state education department is carefully trying to determine the impact on all 538 districts.

She said a final summary should be available soon so all districts know how they stand and can use the data in preparing budgets.

One of the major reforms the board will develop is a new method for assessing performance of students, different from the MMAT now being given. Cook said in some instances, school districts are teaching the test and they appear to have good student performance, but in reality students are not getting a well-rounded education.

"We are trying to leave the paper and pencil test a bit and look more at performance-based tests where, for example, kids can show us they can measure and what it means to take information down and make it into something useful," said Cook.

This process will get students more involved and may result in the tests being a portfolio of work, not just a test given one day.

"We will encourage more writing, experimentation and drawing conclusions the kind of higher order skills most of us will need in future years. We need people who can think and work with other people on things and come to a final resolution of the problem by information they have assimilated and accumulated," explained Cook.

In the future, Cook stressed that there will be more information than students can ever learn. "What you know will not be as important as your ability to go out and gather information, because there will be so much information."

Cook believes this new direction for schools will be an exciting process. She points out that in 1960, 60 percent of the jobs required unskilled labor in the country. In 1990, that figure was just 16 percent and is getting lower all the time.

As part of the process, Cook said state education leaders will have to determine what children need to learn in school to prepare them for careers.

Said Cook: "We have to decide what we want a kid who graduates from high school has to be able to do. They have to be able to communicate, work with other people in a team-like social situation; we hope they will have some values, and we are going to try and make kids understand why it is important to be a good citizen. The first step is to decide what we want the high school student to know and be able to do, and then go back and stair step that from pre-school up. We need to try to have an understanding of what can be accomplished in each grade to move toward the goal."

The question of accountability in the bill caused some concern among teachers. But as the bill was reviewed, it was revised to include not only teachers in accountability issues, but also administrators and school board members.

Once the assessment process is in place, an effort will be made to see how each school building in the state is performing. If there are buildings where performance is not satisfactory, then an audit committee of teachers, community leaders, parents and administrators will come in and look at how the school is functioning and evaluate where the problems are.

Depending on their findings, Cook said another team of educators could be called in to assist staff in the building to deal with problems that have been identified.

If the problems are not resolved eventually, Cook said the ramifications could be very serious. Eventually, a school could lose its accreditation.

"With poor performance over a period of time there can be some real change," said Cook. "Deadwood had better start living again."

Cook said the ultimate goal of the new legislation is to insure that students get a minimum standard of education in every school building of the state. Some districts, however, will exceed the minimum standards.

The term "outcomes based education" has stirred controversy among educators, and Cook said the definition has been distorted by varying definitions. In the case of this legislation, Cook said what it means is "getting kids involved, working as a team, and finding ways for the whole group to solve a problem ... making kids react, start interacting with classmates and instructors."

In the classroom of the future, Cook said there will be fewer lectures by teachers and more emphasis on projects in the classroom where students apply what they learn.

"Some of these things are pretty revolutionary I think, but this is part of a nationwide movement in this general direction," said Cook.

The bill also establishes an advisory group made up of state officials, educators, legislators and citizens to insure that the goals of reforms in SB-380 are carried out.