LOCAL EDUCATORS GET INVOLVED IN STATE REFORMS

(Second in a two-part series)

Richard Bryant, who helped draft Missouri's new academic performance standards, says schools need to change.

"About the only thing that has not changed over the past 80 years is public education," Bryant said. "How can anyone argue that we can keep up without making changes in education as have in every other aspect of our economy?"

Bryant was among 120 teachers from across Missouri who helped write 41 academic performance standards for school children.

Bryant, who holds a doctorate in science education, teaches in both the biology and secondary education departments at Southeast Missouri State University.

He was a high school teacher for 12 years and won the presidential award for science teaching in 1988 while teaching in Oklahoma.

"As you can imagine, with 120 people working on a document," Bryant said, "one of the biggest challenges was just getting the task done. There was certainly not a single voice of 120 people, but there was a remarkable amount of agreement. I think we did see this as a chance to make some changes."

Bryant said most teachers have been unhappy with the previous academic standards, the Missouri Mastery and Achievement Test. Students take a standardized test each spring to mark progress on key skills and core competencies outlined by the test.

"The actual objectives weren't too bad, but the assessment was terrible," Bryant said. "When you turn assessment into a multiple choice test, you completely undermine the entire test."

Bryant said one of the first objects was not to produce standards that could be tested by a multiple-choice standardized test.

The teachers decided they would focus on what Missouri students should be able to do when they graduate from high school.

"We dealt entirely with academic skills and knowledge base," he said. "The goals and standards are very academic, but they are not a list of factoids, like the MMAT objectives were."

As the groups met by discipline to discuss what students of science or math or literature should be able to do, Bryant said, the answers were very similar.

"I was working in the science group, and we were saying students should be able to communicate verbally, both in speaking and writing, and graphically. Those same standards showed up in mathematics and language arts."

The groups began working together across disciplines to write the standards, which eventually fell into four broad categories, called goals.

Under each goal are standards, then skills and examples of activities to address the goal and standards.

Vicky McDowell, community health nurse and member of the Jackson school board, served on the ad hoc committee helping to develop the academic performance standards.

"The idea is that every student in Missouri will graduate having received the same sorts of skills. There should be certain standards met by every student who graduated," she said.

McDowell said her job was to look over the standards set down by educators to see if they made sense. Her participation was in the form of critiquing and fine tuning the document.

"The business community tells us children are not ready for problem solving and communicating," McDowell said. "Students must go beyond just memorizing math tables. When the performance standards are met, math is applied and hands-on learning takes place.

"I could see that when students actually participate in a project to learn the same thing, they might be more motivated."

McDowell said the curriculum frameworks now under way are just that -- frameworks. "My understanding is that they are not going to write to Jackson and say this is what teachers in the sixth grade will teach," she said. "These are frameworks, guidelines to develop within each school district."

"It was a wonderful experience," Bryant said. Missouri, he believes, is about 20 years behind other states in public education. "The focus needs to be on skills and not memorizing facts," he said. "When I got to this group, I found everybody there felt this way."

Bryant said assessment will likely be very different than tests students now receive.

"Perhaps a teacher will keep a journal on her desk and note that on a certain day students were divided into groups and completed a particular task. The students themselves may keep documentation.

"I can't think of anywhere else in society that human beings are assessed by standardized tests," Bryant said. "This is not necessarily subjective, but it is more realistic."

Bryant expects teachers to be concerned when they read about the changes in store for them.

"Some may have trouble determining how their teaching will fit these standards. We have a lot of good teachers out there who may have to do a little rethinking of what they do in the classroom," Bryant said. "But I think they will find more success and their students will be more successful."

Other local teachers serving on the teacher work groups were Charlene Peyton of Cape Girardeau public schools and Robert Gifford of Southeast Missouri State University.

Kim McDowell of Concord Communications in Cape Girardeau was also a member of the ad hoc committee.