STATE EDUCATION REFORMS TAKE SHAPE

(First of a two-part series)

Good-bye to dependence on memorization and multiple choice tests. Missouri school children will be asked to demonstrate, apply and integrate the skills they learn.

Statewide education reforms outlined in Senate Bill 380 are taking shape this summer.

The first step, a draft of four goals and 41 academic performance standards, has been circulated to educators and the public for review and comment.

The standards were written by educators, including some from Cape Girardeau, and reviewed by community members from throughout the state.

Otis Baker, assistant commissioner of education in the division of instruction, explains that Senate Bill 380 lays out a three-prong approach to reform. The first prong was development of the standards.

State-level committees of educators last week began drafting the second prong, "curriculum frameworks," and this month other committees begin developing plans for the third part, a new assessment system.

Performance standards, curriculum frameworks and assessment can also be called goals, ways to meet those goals and a system to test students' progress, Baker explained.

State board member Bekki Cook of Cape Girardeau says she sees the reform as a business model for schools.

"Most businesses set goals and move forward to them," Cook said. "That's what we were hearing when we went around the state about three years ago in meeting with businesses."

She said employers also said students with high school diplomas didn't have the skills needed to hold jobs.

"The demands of the workplace have become much more complex," she said. "There are fewer unskilled jobs in the workplace. We felt we needed to look toward raising the standards and then setting specific goals for what kids ought to know."

Cook said not all school systems in the state had high standards. "A lot of districts were not providing what we consider a basic education for kids," she said. "We wanted to assure that every child had adequate opportunity to learn and gain the necessary skills to be competitive and to continue to learn."

While Senate Bill 380 gave a push to the reform movement in Missouri, Baker said education reform has been discussed statewide since at least 1985, when the Excellence in Education bill was passed.

"There has been a growing dissatisfaction with public education," Baker said. "Expectations for kids on the job and in college both are going up very rapidly. There is a widespread perception that schools have not kept up with the changes. Kids are better educated than ever. The problem is the gap between what they know and are able to demonstrate and what is expected."

At the same time, Missouri didn't have a specific set of goals for student achievement.

"In high school, what kids learned was an accident of what they chose to take. Some take rigorous courses. Others take Mickey Mouse courses," Baker said. "Curriculum has been sort of an accident -- whatever teachers wanted to teach or what textbooks included."

Testing has not kept pace either, he said.

"We've been assessing for years using standardized tests," Baker said. "They are quick, cheap and easy, yet they measure only one aspect, raw knowledge. They do not measure if children are able to integrate and apply knowledge."

The reforms set goals, outline curriculum and develop new ways to measure student achievement.

Work on the performance standards began last November. The standards are at a standstill while the curriculum frameworks are drafted. Work began on the frameworks last week.

"This is not a curriculum and cannot be used as curriculum," Baker said. "These are frameworks used at the district or building level by committees who are developing curriculum."

Baker said the frameworks should be in draft form by September when they will be distributed for review and comment. Specifically, the curriculum frameworks must match with the academic performance standards.

The assessment system will take longer to develop, Baker believes.

"The law requires it to be performance based," he said. "Instead of every kid taking a multiple choice test, we will have kids doing significant problems or producing significant and meaningful projects."

Critics say this type of assessment will be too subjective.

"Judgments of how the work has been done is how the world really works," Baker said. "Is your work evaluated by a test or by the judgment of your boss?"

He uses an analogy of Olympic figure skating judging to describe the type of assessment planned.

"To some degree that is subjective," he said. "However, much of the scoring is very objective. Every skater must perform certain moves. Certain skills must be performed in a certain way."

Richard Bollwerk, Cape Girardeau director of elementary education, said state officials are looking for feedback about the new performance standards.

Already, Cape Girardeau staff members have made suggestions on the first draft of the standards.

Bollwerk withheld wholesale support of the reform until he sees the other components.

"There is a trend to move to more cooperative and collaborative problem solving," Bollwerk said. "Instead of just an individual posed with a question, it would be modeled after the workplace where teams of individuals are working on problems and pool ideas of how they might arrive at answers."

But Bollwerk said he is particularly interested in the assessment portion of this process. "How are we going to test kids?" he asked.

"It's a lot different than what kids are accustomed to. These are not just word problems," Bollwerk said. "There's more practical application to them."

Cook said some critics have questioned whether the standards will actually improve performance and worry that more state guidelines will mean less local control.

"In my mind, this actually strengthens local control and expands the right of the district," Cook said. Local schools have choices on how to achieve the standards.

She added that Senate Bill 380 sets aside money for teacher training.

The changes mean different ways of teaching and testing children.

"It is less structured with pencil and paper and allows children to exhibit what they know in other fashions that encourages the development of other communication skills," Cook said. "Instead of rote memorization, students learn logical thought and drawing conclusions and critiquing work.

"These reformed-minded techniques give teachers more strategies for dealing with students."

In Tuesday's edition: Local educators get involved in the reform process.