KINDER'S COMMENTARY: NOT ALL SCHOOLS BUY NEW STANDARDS

My last three columns have attempted to inform readers of major developments under way that threaten a sweeping and unprecedented transformation in teaching methods and curricula for Missouri's public schools. All these changes are proceeding within the confines of an appointed commission whose deliberations have -- with the exception of a handful of newspaper articles -- gone unnoticed by the news media and the public.

I urge every reader, and every person with a stake in Missouri's public schools, to take the trouble to inform themselves about the academic performance standards that Senate Bill 380, the so-called education reform act, required the Commission on Performance to write for all Missouri schools. My last column analyzed and found wanting several of the proposed standards that the commission is considering recommending to the state school board.

In western Missouri, one local school board has considered and debated a resolution declaring that district elects not to participate in the agenda being promoted under SB 380 and through these proposed standards. Although the board in question hasn't adopted this resolution, upon reading it I found it sufficiently persuasive to commend it to local school boards in the 27th District. I am also considering introducing a version of it in the Senate. The resolution reads:

"BE IT RESOLVED that the School Distract elects not to participate in the agenda commonly known as outcome-based education, which the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is currently developing under the Outstanding Schools Act of 1993, for the following reasons:

"First, because the proposed Academic Performance Standards are not differentiated by subject area, rendering them non-academic;

"Second, because the proposed academic performance standards are not differentiated by modal grade level, rendering them irrelevant to the organization of curriculum in real time;

"Third, because the effective nature of many of the outcomes intrudes on the privacy rights of students and their families, questions focus on information that is designed to produce attitudes and socially correct feelings;

"Fourth, because the emphasis on active learning, naively defined, will tend to reduce academic time on task;

"Fifth, because the constructivist approach to pedagogy, which trains teachers as facilitators rather than as figures of authority, will interfere with our teachers' proper independence of means of instruction;

"Sixth, because the proposed performance standard improperly denigrate rote memorization and the mastery of a core curriculum that requires the teacher to teach at the pace of the slowest student;

"Seventh, because the absence of defined academic goals will inhibit students' development of a disciplined work ethic;

"Eighth, because the absence of defined academic goals will hinder, rather than promote, the development of higher order thinking skills;

"Ninth, because the non-comparability of inter-school assessments mandated by the Outstanding Schools Act will improperly prevent parents and taxpayers from assessing the relative success of different schools and school districts in imparting a core curriculum in language arts, math, science and social studies;

"Tenth, because the non-comparability of inter-school assessments mandated by the Outstanding Schools Act will make it difficult to duplicate successes, or to avoid failure;

"Eleventh, because the non-comparability of inter-school assessments mandated by the Outstanding Schools Act will render it impossible to reward good teaching and administration;

"Twelfth, because a non-fact based assessment system is an open invitation for child abuse by educators miscast as therapists;

"Thirteenth, because the experimental, intrusive, anti-academic agenda promoted under the Outstanding Schools Act utterly negates the ideals that first influenced our school district to involve itself in litigation for educational equity and improvement."

Is this agenda coming to our community? Has it already arrived? Last year, the Cape Girardeau School District received a grant from SB 380 funds for a complete redesign of the curriculum. This fact, combined with the existence of a campaign currently under way to elect school board members at the April election, might just make timely a public debate in our community about just exactly where our schools are heading.

This is a debate that should be feared by no citizen or official at any level. If the allegations I have laid before the public are wrong, then let the appropriate officials come forward and state how, and when and where. If I am correct, then someone must be held accountable. Let the debate begin.

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