KINDER'S COMMENTARY: MASTERY LEARNING MAY BE ANOTHER LABEL FOR OBE

Patrons of the Cape Girardeau school district are being told that the "complete redesign of curriculum" being implemented here, pursuant to Senate Bill 380, isn't Outcome Based Education but rather something called Mastery Learning. What, then, is Mastery Learning?

Such evidence as I have been able to uncover is not at all reassuring. Dr. Jeffrey Burke Satinover is a psychiatrist and former fellow of the Yale Child Study Center and the holder of a master's degree in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Dr. Satinover writes: "The heart of the new process behind OBE involves a simple, superficially plausible concept that among its proponents goes by the name of Mastery Learning. The idea is to turn time from a constant into a variable."

Wow. Mastery Learning is the very heart of OBE? Let's read on, continuing with Dr. Satinover:

"What this idea means is that rather than teaching a given subject or educational module (e.g., addition of two-digit numbers) within a more-or-less fixed amount of time (pegged to a class average), and finding that mastery of the subject among students will be distributed on a bell-shaped curve (e.g. 1A, 3Bs, 12 Cs, 2Ds, 2Fs), the subject or module will be taught for however long it takes all students to master it." [UNITL.] Instead of a bell-shaped curve of proficiency demonstrated by traditional grades, there will be a bell-shaped curve of time that it takes for the students to reach mastery, defined as some percentage of mastery, usually 80 percent. But this time differential will not be reported. After all, goes the reasoning, if you've mastered the subject, what difference does it make how long it took?" (Emphasis original.)

"The concept of Mastery Learning was developed and promoted over 20 years ago. It was simply a former name for OBE, quietly discarded because when implemented it failed so dismally that Mastery Learning, and its major proponents, became totally discredited. Who was behind Mastery Learning? The major figure was Dr. William Spady, also the inventor of OBE, `an educator' as the New York Times describes him, `who has been helping states and school districts design the new systems for 20 years.' Dr. Spady is a sociologist who has never in his life taught in a classroom."

Peg Luksik is a Pennsylvania housewife, mother of six and a nationally known opponent of OBE who has debated Bill Spady. She forced him to admit in public that there is no successful research supporting his "active learning" model that is at the heart of both OBE and Mastery Learning. Yet this model is the heart of Gov. Mel Carnahan's SB 380, the source of a six-figure grant to Cape Girardeau's public schools and the engine that is radically transforming Missouri schools.

Dr. Satinover continues, quoting from a publication called "Educational Leadership" (December 1992-January 1993 issue) in an article entitled "On Outcome Based Education: A Conversation with Bill Spady." Quoting Dr. Spady: "`In January of 1980 we convened a meeting of 42 people to form the Network for Outcome-Based Schools. Most of the people who were there had a strong background in Mastery Learning, since it was what OBE was called at the time. ... But I pleaded with the group not to use the name Mastery Learning in the network's new name because the word "mastery" had been destroyed through poor implementation.'"

Perhaps something else is meant when officials of the Cape Girardeau School District use the term Mastery Learning? I wonder.

Next: (What happened when Mastery Learning was introduced in Chicago schools.)

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