Many education people are worried because ultra right-wing groups have become very active in opposing a reform effort known as outcomes-based education (OBE). In a couple of cases, these groups have succeeded in getting provisions of QBE legislation altered or even blocking the legislation altogether. Some educators are afraid that the fight about QBE could lead to a takeover of American education by the radical right. Is there any basis for these fears?
Outcomes-based education embodies a number of sound ideas. One is that the traditional way of looking at education in terms of inputs--how many courses a student has taken and how many years he or she has spent in school--doesn't tell you much about what the kid has learned. Seat-time is no gauge of educational attainment.
But suppose, instead of messing around with inputs, you set standards or outcomes and allow individual schools figure out the best way to help their students attain them. And suppose you base assessments on these standards so you can find out how well students--and schools--are doing.
All this sounds fine--and it is. The problem is not with measuring outcomes instead of inputs; it is with the particular outcomes that QBE reforms propose to measure. QBE reformers have the rhetoric of higher standards down pat: They talk about world-class standards and the skills needed to compete in a global economy. But whereas the education standards in other industrialized countries call for things like solving algebraically and by graph simultaneous linear equations or analyzing the causes of the Cold War, QBE standards are vague and fluffy. For example, among the 55 "learner outcomes" proposed in Pennsylvania were:
-- "All students know and use, when appropriate, community health resources."
-- "All students demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of families, their historical development, and the cultural, economic, social and political factors affecting them."
Ohio's 24 outcomes called for high school graduates to be able to:
--"Function as a responsible family member."
-- "Maintain physical, emotional and social well-being."
-- "Establish priorities to balance multiple life roles."
QBE standards include academic outcomes, but they are very few and so vague that they would be satisfied by almost any level of achievement, from top-notch to minimal--in other words, they are no improvement over what we have now.
Pennsylvania's writing outcome calls for "All students [to] write for a variety of purposes, including to narrate, inform, and persuade, in all subject areas." In an excellent school, this could mean a portfolio of short stories, several I 000-word essays and numerous shorter ones. In a poor school, it could mean three short paragraphs loaded with misspellings.
Vaguely worded outcomes like this will not send a message to students, teachers and parents about what is required of youngsters. Nor will they help bridge the enormous gap between schools where students are expected to achieve--and do--and schools where anything goes. They put no pressure on schools or teachers to ask more of students or on students themselves to work harder. Instead of the change we need, they encourage business as usual.
The radical right has a point when it worries that a school will try to find out whether a student is "a responsible family member" by asking a lot of questions that are none of the school's business or that youngsters will be indoctrinated about family styles that run counter to their religious beliefs. Even paranoids have enemies. But the academic issues these outcomes raise are far more troubling.
In addition to their fuzziness, there is the problem of the large number of outcomes proposed. This sounds demanding, but it's the opposite. The more outcomes are required, the less likely that any of them will be achieved. It's clearly a case where more is less--and less would be more. Teachers have been asked to assume so many roles that they are already spread thin, and they won't be able to pay attention to all of these new outcomes. They'll pick and choose. And it's a lot easier to schmooze with kids about "life roles" than to make sure they can do geometry theorems or read Macbeth. In an educational version of Gresham's law, the fluffy will drive out the solid and worthwhile.
The radical right is a small group, and if it's gaining momentum, it is not because Americans are turning to the right but because many of them are correctly suspicious of the outcomes proposed by outcomes-based education--that is why the Pennsylvania Federation of Teachers opposed QBE legislation in its state. Those who are pushing for this reform should wake up and realize that, as presently conceived, outcomes-based education will do a lot to advance the cause of the radical right and nothing to raise student achievement.