KINDER'S COMMENTARY: HOW DESE GATHERS THE `FACTS'

For weeks, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has been touting a series of seven meetings held around the state yesterday afternoon at the rather arbitrary time of 4:30-to-6:30 p.m. (The only one held in Southeast Missouri was in Poplar Bluff.) Stated purpose of the meetings: To gather comments from citizens concerning the department's so-called Academic Performance Standards.

We are informed in a DESE press conference, commissioner Bob Bartman, spokesman, that court reporters will be present to transcribe public comments, and that each and every comment will be forwarded immediately to all members of the state board of education.

This becomes interesting when you consider that the state board of education meets Jan. 18 in Jefferson City. Purpose of the that meeting: To make final the board's tentative adoption of the "standards", which they did at a meeting last fall.

My hat is off to the court reporters and to the DESE personnel who will have to work overtime to prepare the materials and to place them in the hands of the state board members so that they can spend the necessary time reading and reflecting on them. What Herculean effort!

Can you say "pro forma"? Can you say "going through the motions"? Can you say "a meaningless exercise in public relations"? Can you say "a pre-determined agenda, cut and dried far in advance"?

Insert your favorite public-relations cliche in this space.

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In the familiar pattern of the state department's holding meetings during the daytime, so as to minimize attendance from ordinary working Missourians, the time of the meetings whose purpose is to gather public input came under fire from Cape Girardeau's school board president, Dr. Bob Fox. In a letter to the state board written a couple of months ago, Fox protested the time and place of these meetings in which he, and so many other locally elected board members, have such a vital interest. In reply, he received a polite brush-off letter from a state board member. Kudos to Bob Fox for trying, anyway.

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My Senate office has learned this week that calls were being made from the governor's staff in advance of the meetings to local school board members around the state. The message being passed by the governor's underlings: Please make an effort to attend these meetings and offer lots of uncritical chirping about the so-called "standards."

This is another example of what I have often described as "the carefully sealed echo chambers of the public education establishment." Thus do we gather "spontaneous public input" from "interested citizens."

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Speaking of interested citizens, Big Education seems less than totally convinced that a truly spontaneous outpouring of public comment would give them the positive reaction to the "standards" they crave so desperately. It is necessary, therefore, to orchestrate not only attendance from supportive folks, but also to orchestrate their "spontaneous" outpourings of support.

Not only is the governor's office making the calls noted above, and not only are the teachers unions working the phones overtime to get their members there, but the privately funded Partnership for Outstanding Schools, a sort of private-sector DESE cheering section, has come forth with a remarkable, three-page letter to local school board members and teachers around the state. In a series of "Talking Points for Parents/Teachers" and "Talking Points for Business People," the letter, signed by partnership director Paul Tandy and president Betsy Tutt, offers instructions for spontaneous "testimony." A brief excerpt will provide the flavor of "some talking points you can use Thursday night":

"1. Formal academic standards for our public schools are an OLD/TRADITIONAL idea which is long overdue. As many people have pointed out, they go back to the founding years of the nation and Thomas Jefferson. And teachers and parents have been asking for them for many years. ... PLEASE DO NOT SAY: Standards are a NEW/MODERN/PROGRESSIVE/TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY idea." (Emphasis original.)

Whew! Glad we got that settled.

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