KINDER'S COMMENTARY: EDUCATION PROFESSOR SEES OBE AS CLOSED SYSTEM

In all the reading I have done on Outcome Based Education, one article stands out. It is a paper written two years ago by Dr. Daniel Harden, a professor of education at Washburn University in Topeka. Harden describes heavier burdens for teachers:

"As one teacher experienced in the Mastery Learning days of Chicago, `... the enormous test-giving and record-keeping requirements (a single teacher with a class of 30 to 35 students could end up administering between 2,000 and 3,000 criteria referenced tests each year) left little or no time to actually teach students to read.'"

Harden continues, referring to an "ongoing conversation concerning the advantages of the Mastery Learning core of OBE. As long as there is no legitimate or authentic consensus among educational specialists or the public, is it the role of prudent educational policy makers to dictate that a particular approach, or system, be imposed?"

Good question. There's more, though. Much more. "Throughout the OBE literature there is an unwavering ideological commitment to an uncompromising egalitarianism." One might ask, what place does an ideological commitment of any stripe have in a theory of educational reform? To ask the question is to reveal a touching naivete. Rigid political agendas are at work here.

Harden continues: "The assumption is that we are moving toward a society which deemphasizes competition and in which production is almost completely the result of collaboration, cooperation and teamwork between equals. Any other view of the future, or of educational method, is frequently dismissed out of hand because it doesn't fit into the desiderata of the OBE ... contingent. The egalitarian assumptions are not argued. ... The ultimate sin is that of perceived elitism.

"If one is committed to the proposition, literally interpreted, that `all children can learn,' and by learning one means that they will eventually learn to about the same level of mastery, there are only two conclusions that a realist can reach. First, the level at which one proclaims mastery is going to be disturbingly, if not frighteningly low, or second, that we have just given a new meaning to the term `life-long learning.' ..."

Harden continues, describing the "hermetically sealed environment" now confronting Missouri parents: "Frequently any attempt at independent, outside measurement is immediately suspect among ... backers of OBE. If nationally normed tests indicate further decline in academic achievement, the claim is almost universally that the tests were not applicable to the new, OBE-developed curriculum."

This sealing off, Harden asserts, "can easily be interpreted as an effort to insulate the new educational model against the very accountability that its proponents were accusing the old model of lacking. By having the achievement measures designed exclusively by those who are also responsible for curriculum development and instructional design, any external measurement of accountability has been removed. No external standards, no accountability. ...

Harden continues, devastatingly: "In fact, that hermetically sealed model gives some credence to the argument ... that OBE is a phony reform movement ... meant to keep the public school establishment in control at the same time that it appears to be leading a reform effort."

Such reading I have done, added to experience with Missouri's OBE meisters these last six months, confirms that conclusion.

Next: More on the threat OBE and Mastery Learning pose to parental rights in the upbringing of their own children.

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.