KINDER'S COMMENTARY: SCHOOL REFORM TURNS TO HIGH-PRICED MARKET RESEARCH

Readers who have been following my last 10 columns on what is happening to our Missouri schools in the name of reform might be interested in the latest creative spending idea from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Seems they have gone into the market survey research business. Well, not exactly in the survey business themselves. Rather, DESE has contracted for this service with a couple of expensive firms. In response to a letter of inquiry I sent last week in which two of my colleagues joined me as co-signers, DESE director Dr. Bob Bartman confirmed the survey and claimed legal authority for the expenditure from Senate Bill 380 itself.

Word of the expensive survey came first from parents of schoolchildren in the Kansas City area, then from others across the state. It seems DESE is interested especially in the opinions on school reform held by conservative Christians. Thus at least four participants chosen as part of a focus group in Jackson County were asked whether they qualified by being members of one of the following four groups: Assembly of God, Baptist, Church of Christ or born-again Christian. The screeners also wanted rural people, for which the Jackson County communities of Lee's Summit, Blue Springs, Grandview, Independence or Raytown somehow seemed to qualify, even though they are mostly prosperous, white-collar suburbs of Kansas City. The expensive firms (Attitude Research Company and Quality Control Services) that DESE hired to do the surveys convened 12 focus groups last month in St. Louis, Kansas City and Springfield. They are following up these sessions with statewide telephone surveys of approximately 800 people.

I have alleged earlier in this series of columns that DESE director Bartman and his department, like their counterparts in other states, are engaged in "terminological evasion" -- essentially a shell game with words whose purposeful design is to fool the public as to what their real agenda is. It seems to me clear that this survey is part of the DESE agenda to confuse, mislead and disorient their critics and the public at large. The DESE plan, if I am correct: Survey opinions among conservative Christians opposed to Outcome Based Education, so as to better craft a message intended to soothe those concerns while misleading everyone throughout.

Dr. Bartman is said to have told a reporter that DESE has paid approximately $64,000 of your tax money for this survey or surveys. We should have asked for the precise cost figure in our letter to Bartman but did not. I will attempt to verify the correct figure. I can tell you that when shopping around for some competent polling and advertising help during my 1992 election campaign, the folks at St. Louis-based Attitude Research Company were among the firms I interviewed. ARC principals drove to Cape Girardeau to give me their pitch. Over lunch they proposed for me a detailed program so far into six figures that I was simply amazed. I declined to hire them and ultimately got a competent job done for far less. For instance, I hired a nationally known, Washington, D.C.-based firm to perform a statistically valid poll of 300 eight-minute telephone interviews (admittedly, without focus groups) for less than $5,000.

In this episode it is clear to me that Missouri government has crossed a new frontier in its Orwellian plans to manipulate, mislead and confuse taxpayers about what they are doing to our schools. Dr. Bartman promises to share with me "the results of the study in early April." I'll keep you posted.

FOOTNOTE: To no one's surprise, Partnership for Outstanding Schools director Paul Tandy has arrogantly rejected the debate challenge issued to him by Lynette Holt, president of Missourians for Academic Excellence. I will update you in a later column.

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