| Outcome-based Education |
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OBE is good Its proponents view OBE as a liberating and rightful replacement for the ills of traditional education based on mastering and memorizing content, ranking by ability, getting credit for mere seat time, and serving as an umbrella for a wide variety of education reforms, from constructivist math to whole language. Liberal politicians often support OBE because of its vision of high standards for all groups and the promise that all students will be in the 80th percentile. Conservatives like the idea of measuring outputs rather than input money spent, and insisting that student demonstrate learning rather than just showing up. Large corporations such as Boeing, IBM and Nintendo often participate in the process, and pay for expensive public relations campaigns because they want a capable workforce. OBE is bad Its detractors view it as a disaster of biblical proportions. The first to complain are often conservative Christians who dislike the liberal worldview promoted with OBE, but also gaining the opposition of liberal educators who dislike measuring the value of children with a single test score, and denying basic rights of a high school diploma with the same, especially since gaps between races actually tend to be wider than the previous system where there were no official consequences attached to low test scores. OBE Process in USA In the United States, OBE is currently best known as the movement for "high standards" " No Child Left Behind ", and a series of state assessments such as WASL and MCAS where high school graduation will require achieving a passing score on a test which initially fails 60-70 percent of the population. Although there have been a few notable spectacular failures, such as in Littleton, Colorado , and California's abrupt cancellation of CLAS , there is little or no formal funded opposition. Millions are spent by non-profits to promote and enlist the support of coporations and foundations to promote the practice. Washington's Partnership For Learning is a typical institution which was created to support the education reform law, and give the impression of, and create public support against possible opposition from citizens. In most US states, the OBE process was designed by the blueprint "America's Choice: High Skills or Low Wages" of the NCEE which is headed by Marc Tucker . OBE is said to be patterned after many of the idea of TQM . If a school is like a factory, then producing high quality students should be like quality control. If outcomes are specified and measured, then processes of continual improvement should make it as easy to produce defect-free students as chocolate chip cookies. All we have do do is start with a test with a high failure rate, and then gradually increase pass rate. A state would produce outcomes, or "standards" to be covered at grades 4, 7, and 10, and an Performance Based Assessment aligned to the curriculum standards would be produced. Certificate Of Initial Mastery (CIM) A student who passed the 10th grade test would get a Certificate Of Initial Mastery . Some critics argue that the assessment does not measure knowledge as their parents would understand it, but instead measure the degree that controversial new teaching methods and values have been implemented. She would then be allowed to continue 2 more years of career based training. A national standards board would be created which would create similar tests for all 8 career fields which would bar the employment of those who were not offically trained or certificated. The CIM has been abandoned by almost every state, but in its place, states effectively replaced the diploma with CIM by requiring passing the same 10th grade test. The CIM concept was patterned after nations like Germany where most students end their formal education after grade 10, and this is why states require a 10 grade test to exit grade 12. These tests were deliberately calibrated to fail as many as 70 percent of students in the first year of testing. California's CLAS was later revealed to not have allowed ANY high scores the first year in math, and it was common for states to tell their graders to give very low grades the first year. But they always rise at a rate of 5 or more points per year as teachers include test problems in their lessons, the difficulty level of the test, and passing scores are adjusted, even though standardized tests and the NAEP typically show little or no improvement. Massachusetts is given as an example of the success of OBE because of a high test passing rate. However, critics say that this because many students have been forced out by "standards", and the failure rate of minority groups continues to be several times the majority rate. Levels This education replaces grades such as "A" "B" "C", or percentages. Instead of grades the student is "levelled". From kindergarten to year 12, the student will receive either a Foundational level (which is pre-institutional) or be evidenced at levels 1 through to 8. A student cannot 'fail', he or she will just simply not achieve in the level many of her or his students are achieving. This acknowledges differential growth at different stages, and focuses the teacher on the needs of the students Many people are against OBE, perhaps suggesting that it doesn't let students excel because they are levelled. However, the system allows for a student to achieve at higher levels beyond the average of the grade or year. Some of the resistance no doubt comes from the considerable extra work for teachers to evidence outcomes for each student, and parents simply do not have past experience to help them appreciate the method. Many students do not understand the marks they receive either, and due to the set out of OBE, a well written essay that wasn't planned meticulously may rate low for its lack of processes and strategies. A student who achieves a level 4 in one outcome and two level 5s in two other outcomes will achieve a level 4.8, the same as a student who achieved two level 8s and a level 4, with the 3 level gap between 5 and 8 not being recognised. Familiarity could ease concerns, but the enormous claim on teachers' time to both initially learn, administer and develop curriculum for the method naturally has its critics. Anti OBE PLATO, People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes, is a self-named group of people against OBE, created by Greg Williams. This group of people disagree with the Western Australian Minister for Education, and her commitment to OBE. The group includes many outraged teachers from Western Australia. William Spady promoted the OBE method as a way of getting beyond meaningless percentages and marks, aiming for education for life beyond school, giving children and young adults a broader and more transformative education. Unfortunately inelegant implementation makes the future of OBE unclear, and at odds with the Australian Government in Canberra. Signs of OBE OBE was heavily promoted in the US in the 1980s. If your school has adopted report cards that say whether you child "met the standard" instead of A-F, it is using OBE. If your state is reporting how many children "met the standards", and requires passing to graduate, it is using OBE. If your new test costs $50 to score, and 6 months to get the results back, and they promise that everyone in all subgroups will pass in 5 years when 50% are failing this year, it is OBE. If your state has allocated millions of dollars to develop new standards and a new test, and big businesses are donating millions in publicity to promoted "education reform", and teachers and parents must spend overtime in massive retraining and re-education, it is OBE. If you hear that "all can suceed", they will meet "world class standards" with "new skills for the 21st centuty" and that they are "raising the bar", and that your child will get a "diploma that is meaningful", it is OBE. If your students are spending all of their time on complex projects with low academic content only to get low grades, it is probably OBE. If your principal says "we are not doing OBE", they are doing OBE. OBE As Demanded By Business and Citizens It often ran into heavy opposition from parents. Often, when legislators and officials have been persuaded or forced to abandon it, it resurfaces with a new name such as Performance Based Education , and most recently Standards Based Education . OBE is universally said to be the result of demands from parents and business that diplomas don't guarantee learning, and that education reform is driven by parents who seemingly are demanding lower grades and stripping the diploma from any of their children who don't have the skills neccesary to get into the best universities. OBE as Snake Oil The other view is that OBE was really driven by the education reform industry, such as the NCEE , which would visit districts and legislators, and use processes such as Delphi on isolated business, parent and education leaders to get their help in implementing OBE instead of considering whether OBE was a good idea in the first place. The NCEE was known to have worked with states and districts which covered as many as half of the public school students in the nation, including Washington, Vermont, and Texas, and to have essentially written the initial legislation which created and authorized spending for OBE testing and standards, and the Certificate Of Mastery which would be awarded upon passing a test which demonstrated achieving the learning "outcomes". Very few citizens outside the small education reform opposition movement know of the central role played by the NCEE in the mass adoption of tying graduation to passing standards-based assessments such as WASL . All Will Succeed = All Will Work Really Hard Instead of a paradise where every one succeeded regardless of ability, the bar of "what every child must know and be able to do" is often been raised so that even high performing students get low grades. At Skyline High School in Issaquah , Washington, there were TV news stories of how their campuses felt like academic labor camps, and parents questioned why their high school students were asked to do college level work. The problem with the mantra "all will succeed" tends to be implemented as "all students must perform as well as the successful top 10 or 20 percent". Passing standard changes from a D grade to tasks far more complex than simply getting a 90% pass rate on a multiple choice test of facts that were taught, which was once the requirement for an A grade. Massive Failure in Littleton Colorado "Government Nannies: The cradle-to-grave agenda of Goals 2000 & Outcome Based Education" by Cathy Duffy (1995) notes losses of students and staff due to outcome-based education. There were 36 demonstrations required for graduation, but "high-school classes and grades carried no weight. Only 145 of 533 students enrolled completed algebra. Demonstrating knowledge of algebra was not a graduation requirement. So far, no OBE demonstration in a diverse high school has ever produced a 100 percent graduation rate will every student of every ethnic, economic, and special education status being qualified for every job and every college, but this is usually due to ineffective implementation rather than any inherent problems with the vision of OBE. In "Assessment of Student Performance: Studies of Education Reform" by the U.S. Department of Education, it is noted that "Littleton, Colorado, had to rescind its reforms due to community opposition. The community was not kept well informed, and the reforms were enacted too swiftly. In the end, community members felt that vague, nonacademic outcomes were replacing content, and that technically unsound assessments would be used to determine something as important as high school graduation" Projects Instead of simplistic reading, drill, and testing of facts, very large projects involving music, arts, crafts, or even electronics which take the entirety of spring break to construct, say 3 models of 20s-30s cars, 6 pictures, 6 write-ups on each car, plus an oral presentation for 20th century history, or producing and performing a play or video. The NCEE New Standards program for example in its literature proposes that 2 4th graders with the assistance of a professional carpenter produce and build a bike trailer, complete with 3-view and oblique projection, and parts list including cotter pins and counter-sink drill head. The corresponding high school example project was to use an electric motor donated by the power company to engineer and build an electric car. This sort of project might take Toyota a team of 12 engineers 2 years with a budget of 10 million dollars. It would certainly desirable if all students could demonstrate such performance, but it is unreasonable to expect all students to pass such a level. Outcomes OBE typically replaces the expectation of teaching and retention of basic skills and facts with what some would call "fuzzy" non-academic "outcomes" such as "will think critically", "become a life-long learner", "preserve the environment", "value diversity" which don't change much from grade to grade. The inegalitarian notion that people must be graded and ranked on a curve with artificially creates winners and losers, and that only some students will be expected to go to college is replaced by standards sufficient that all can attain the ability to meet the one standard which is adequate for any job and any college. Right and wrong answers are replaced with "rubrics", where correct answers and passing levels on tests are often determined after answers are turned in. Standardized Tests which are machine scored and ranked are replaced with Standards Based Assessment , which are scored by low paid temporary staff against a handful of anchor papers, and all students are scored against an arbitrary passing score, which in most states is required for graduation for students, regardless of ability, and typically corresponds to a performance level neccesary for entrance to a competitive 4 year university. OBE As Umbrella for Education Reform OBE also typically promotes Constructivism , Inquiry Based Science and [[reform mathematics]], which believes that carry and average are too complex and demeaning for K-6, but college geometry and statistics is neccesary for the 21st century. School To Work is also usually a component, which replaces the Comprehensive High School concept of career and academic tracks into requiring all students to spend school time in a work experience, much like the German concept, except that students on a univerisity track are exempt from working for a company. Pro OBE Links
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