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OpinionApril 6, 1995

The following are non-negotiable: eliminate tracking and ability grouping. All kids should be taught the same thing ... We must vary the time and hold achievement as the constant. -- David Hornbeck, consultant to the New Standards Project, 2/9/93, a consortium of states of which Missouri is a member...

The following are non-negotiable: eliminate tracking and ability grouping. All kids should be taught the same thing ... We must vary the time and hold achievement as the constant.

-- David Hornbeck, consultant to the New Standards Project, 2/9/93, a consortium of states of which Missouri is a member.

Tracking must be abolished. The boundary between testing and curriculum will be gone. Testing will drive the curriculum.

-- Marc Tucker, founder, New Standards Project, 3/8/93.

Focus on the outcomes. The goal is to centralize control about direction and outcomes.

-- Susan Trainman, OBE consultant, 3/1/93.

On countless occasions, I have been told by Cape Girardeau Public Schools Superintendent Neyland Clark, who came to Cape Girardeau from Kentucky, that "Missouri is following the Kentucky model" in education reform set in motion by Senate Bill 380.

Kentucky is a state partner in something called the New Standards Project, a consortium of states that have signed onto this project, which is operated out of the University of Pittsburgh. Senate Bill 380 mandated that Missouri join the New Standards Project, for which we are paying $250,000 annually. Kentucky has been cited by education reform proponents since 1990 as a "World Class" model for the kind of reform we are undergoing in Missouri. Incidentally, in Kentucky, education officials openly admit that, pursuant to the New Standards Project, they are doing Outcome Based Education.

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Item: Spelling bees were recently eliminated in Kentucky. Such competitions, the reformers instruct us, are "stressful" and are "harmful to students' self-esteem." National standardized tests are being eliminated in Kentucky, so that parents and citizens can't account for performance over time.

The state of Connecticut is, like Missouri and Kentucky, a member of the New Standards Project. Some Connecticut towns have already piloted OBE curricula. In that state, 1993's OBE sixth grade spelling is no more challenging than 1988's third grade spelling. 1993's second grade math involves adding two one-digit numbers. In 1988, second graders were adding and subtracting three-digit numbers. In 1993, OBE seventh grade math is at the previous fifth to sixth grade level, is done in teams and is done with emphasis on "sharing the process" as a group, not on computing answers. The seventh grade OBE group process took 10 minutes on one problem, while fifth graders elsewhere solved the same problem in less than one minute.

In Missouri, Boone County schools are in the vanguard of OBE-type, "performance-based" or "active learning" reforms. A local superintendent there informed me last fall that it is their policy to eliminate the teaching of standardized spelling in the lower grades.

Incredulous, I requested an explanation of the rationale for this abandonment of time-tested technique. Drilling students in spelling in the first or second grades, the superintendent told me, "turns them off" from writing, "which is the ultimate goal." If we abandon the teaching of objective standards for correct spelling, students become much more enthusiastic writers, which, he confidently informed me, "is the goal." Merely trust this new, "anything goes" spelling technique, I was told, and an enthusiastic writer emerges some time around the fifth grade, who is as good or better a speller than under the dreaded old drill method we followed before.

Believe that? Nah, I didn't either. But it serves to illustrate the mindset within the Brave New World of education reform, according to Educrats such as Missouri Education Commissioner Bob Bartman, who enthusiastically signed us up, committing your tax dollars to this New Standards Project.

On the heels of my interview with the Boone County, Missouri school superintendent about the new abandonment of spelling drills, I put many of the same questions to Neyland Clark. He confirmed this new approach to creating enthusiastic writers by ignoring proper spelling. "There is research that shows that," Neyland told me by way of confirmation.

Over the last year, when challenged about the reforms being imported to Cape Girardeau Public Schools through a six-figure state grant for "a complete redesign of the curriculum" pursuant to SB 380, Neyland Clark has had one consistent response. "What we are doing here in Cape isn't OBE," Dr. Clark declared, "We are doing Mastery Learning."

In Sunday's edition: More about "Mastery Learning" and other innovations in "World Class Education."

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