Columbine High School and OBE
Outcome-Based
Education (OBE) proponents believe that "all
children can learn" but that some students just take a little longer to
learn a concept.
OBE is a belief that students need to master each concept before they
go on to the next concept. The way
that teachers implement OBE is to break all curriculum into little pieces and then pre- and post-test
each part. Students may take
post-tests over and over until the students finally show mastery. Mastery is usually set at 80. As soon as a student reaches that level
of mastery, his "A" or "B" is recorded. OBE teachers
keep elaborate computerized records on the mastery level of each student so
that the correct retest can be administered.
Students progress at their own speed as
they master each unit. Students are
never given a deadline and have the freedom during their school career to go
back and make up any "incompletes." In a real OBE
school, a senior theoretically could go back and complete an
"incomplete" which he received in sixth grade for a unit which he did
not finish. All students are
basically working on individualized plans.
This all sounds just great, doesn't
it? Many educators bought into the
idea in the early 1990's led by such states as Pennsylvania, Oregon, Kentucky,
and Colorado. The problem is that
students are natural procrastinators when allowed to be. If students know they can always take a
retest, they simply do not study the first time.
The teacher and students all start out
on the same page the first day of school.
A test is scheduled for the next day. Part of the class studies, passes, and
goes on to the next concept. The
rest of the class is busy the night before and decides not to study. After all, they can always take a
retest. On the next day, part of
the class is ready to proceed forward while the rest of the class is busy
taking a retest. The student who
spent his time studying for the first test begins to be resentful as he
realizes that his "A" counts the same as the "A" made by
the procrastinator who took numerous retests.
Soon the group that studied realizes
that there is really no reason to waste their valuable time studying; and,
therefore, fewer and fewer students do their nightly studying. As time progresses, every student is on
a different mastery level, takes tests whenever he feels like it, and finishes
a unit whenever he decides to. The
classroom unity breaks down. What
can everyone talk about together since everyone is on a different page?
OBE students are allowed to become lazy procrastinators who do not
learn the importance of meeting real-world deadlines. OBE students
typically receive very high grades because busy teachers do not have the time
to make out completely new retests; therefore, many of the students just
memorize the answers or receive answers from other students who have taken the
retests. After all, OBE students have plenty of time to "prepare"
themselves for the retests because there are no deadlines.
The two Littleton shooters had
undoubtedly spent most of their school lives in OBE
classrooms where they became the center of their own universes. The two boys spent almost seven-hours a
day X the number of years in school in such an environment. That is a large number of hours in which
to decide when, where, and what they wanted to learn. They probably spent most of their school
day participating in cooperative learning and performance-based activities
which taught them that consensus and "groupthink" are more important
than fact-based learning. In performance-based
assessments, there is not a right or wrong answer; nothing is black or
white. Of paramount importance is
what the student's opinion is or what the group thinks. After all, when the shooters produced
their hate-filled video projects, how could a teacher chastise them? The students were just expressing their
own uniqueness.
OBE also goes hand-in-glove with consensus building
("group-think" vs.the importance of
individual convictions), cooperative learning, performance-based assessments (subjective
grading), multiculturalism, teacher as facilitator instead of authority figure,
the affective domain (feelings, emotions, opinions), self-esteem building, and
school-to-work.
It has been reported that Columbine
High School is actually located in the Jefferson County Schools and not in the
Littleton School District; but undoubtedly the entire area is
"infected" with the performance-based assessments philosophy. One reason for this is that William Spady, the "father of OBE,"
with his Colorado-based High Success Network has been located nearby. Also, the Department of Education's Mid-Continental Regional
Educational Laboratory (McREL) is located
in Aurora, Colorado — just a few miles from Littleton. One of McREL's
main missions is to implement performance-based assessments throughout Colorado
and the surrounding states.
No, the public schools are not
responsible for what goes on in children's lives outside the school day (e.g.,
violent movies, pornographic web sites, dysfunctional families); but we, as
educators, are responsible for the curriculum and methods which we use to shape
our students' thinking. If we, as a
nation, are going to try to figure out what is behind the violence in schools,
we also need to look at the curriculum and methods which schools are using
since students spend so much of their lives in school classrooms.
I am sorry to report that Texas,
through its Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS),
has now institutionalized OBE in Pre-K through Grade
12. Our students have no set
deadlines or clearcut-goals to meet at each grade
level; and the TEKS are based upon subjectively
assessed, performance-based projects.
A move is presently on by the Texas
Education Agency and the Texas Legislature to move the Exit-Level, Texas
Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) test from the
tenth-grade to the eleventh-grade, thereby requiring new tests to be
developed. Since Harcourt Brace has
been the TAAS subcontractor and has also been responsible
for the development of the present performance-based, end-of-course tests, it
will be very easy for Harcourt Brace and the Texas Education Agency to turn the
end-of-course testbank right into the new "Sons
of TAAS."
The Texas Legislature is also busy trying to require "voucherized students" who go to private schools to
have to pass the TAAS which means private school
students would have to be taught the TEKS, too.
As a mother and grandmother of boys,
and as a teacher with over twenty-seven years of classroom experience, I know
that boys are particularly comforted and feel more secure when they have
certain goals to reach at each grade level; they need to have a set beginning
and a set end. They need to have
their natural aggression channeled, and boys are particularly motivated by
fixed timeframes. Not only boys but
also girls like to know when they have arrived at the goal; but for that to
happen, the goal must be clear.
Children also feel more secure in environments which have definite limits
and parameters that are set by the authority figures in their lives.
I trust that the Congressional hearings
will focus on the all-important role of school discipline and curriculum and
will not just focus on more gun controls as an easy, stopgap solution.
Texas Classroom Teacher
╪