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OpinionOctober 26, 1995

Why did Gov. Mel Carnahan, whose Senate Bill 380 did more to accelerate the move toward outcome-based education in Missouri than any single measure, suddenly join the ranks of OBE opponents? Could be any one of several reasons. My guess, though, is that he and his advisers are watching this year's most interesting election: the race for governor in the Commonwealth of Kentucky...

Why did Gov. Mel Carnahan, whose Senate Bill 380 did more to accelerate the move toward outcome-based education in Missouri than any single measure, suddenly join the ranks of OBE opponents? Could be any one of several reasons. My guess, though, is that he and his advisers are watching this year's most interesting election: the race for governor in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

I was sworn into the Missouri Senate in January 1993. Throughout the winter and spring of that year, Mel Carnahan remorselessly pushed SB 380 through a General Assembly reluctant, as always, to increase taxes. But his $350 million in higher taxes was only part of the package. SB 380 was a Trojan horse for a set of OBE reforms said to guarantee higher standards for Missouri schools and "world class education for the 21st century."

During 1993, to the question "What is our model for these education reforms?" the answer, from SB 380 proponents, came back: "Look to Kentucky." At the behest of many of the same thousand-dollar-a-day consultants who were busy drafting our SB 380, lawmakers in Frankfort had passed the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990. Pushed through, as in Missouri, by a Democratic governor and legislative majority, KERA, as it has come to be called, was Missouri's model. They were thus three years ahead of us Missourians on this school-reform track. KERA mandated something called the KIRIS test for all schools, about which more shortly.

Gradually, over the last year, operating mostly below the radar screen, disdained by elites and ignored by most but not all of Kentucky's Big Media, the issue has come into focus: Although supported by every elite institution you can name, KERA is about to be unceremoniously dumped by the only folks who still count, after all, in America: the voters. The Big Bureaucrats of Big Education are about to get the thrashing of their lives.

Writing in the Oct. 22 edition of the Paducah Sun, editor Jim Paxton tells an interesting tale about the Nov. 7 election pitting Democrat Lt. Gov. Paul Patton against long-time Republican activist Larry Forgy in a state that hasn't elected a Republican governor since 1967. Paxton describes an evening he recently spent, not among "members of the Michigan militia or One World Order types who think KERA and Goals 2000 are some U.N. plot to brainwash America," but rather "sophisticated, college-educated professionals."

Paxton writes of listening to these citizens that "of greater concern to me were the opinions that KERA has so focused the education format on KIRIS-based rewards that the KIRIS test has become the curriculum, while essential fundamentals go untaught."

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Paxton says he is left with "the impression that KERA is in serious political trouble in Kentucky, and that the Democrats' determination to stand their ground on the reforms because `people resist change, even good ones' is nitroglycerin in the party's hands."

Into this volatile situation has boldly stepped GOP nominee Larry Forgy, who is shoving all his chips toward the middle of the table on one, preeminent issue: KERA must be dumped. Paxton, again, describing a recent Forgy speech to newspaper editors:

"He said point blank that the November election will be ... a statewide referendum on the education reforms. He said that the state's education establishment, legislative leadership and major newspapers have `circled the wagons and said the emperor has clothes'" regarding KERA. "`On Nov. 7,' Forgy said, `the voters are going to tell us whether the emperor really has clothes.'"

For those who have followed the debate in Missouri, the next part is familiar: "Forgy blasted KERA as an `arrogant concept' rammed down the peoples' throats by contemptuous legislators. He said KERA ignores fundamentals in favor of untested concepts. He said the consultant who devised Kentucky to devise ungraded primaries now is advising Alabama not to try them because they are a failure here. And he said the KIRIS test, upon which rewards and penalties are meted out to schools, does not work; yet it has made a fortune for the ... little-known ... New Hampshire firm that dreamed the test up. It was a thunderous attack. ..."

Paxton describes the new Forgy TV ads trumpeting this attack as "a master stroke" through which the Republican has, with exquisite timing, "sprung a trap on (Democratic nominee) Patton, who has no way out." One pictures Lt. Gov. Patton tied to the railroad tracks, together with all the denizens of Big Education in Kentucky, as the Forgy train bears down on them, gathering speed.

Watch Kentucky on Nov. 7. If Forgy wins, it's a 12-alarm fire bell in the night for OBE. Dr. Bob Bartman, call your office.

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

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