Working on the Goals 2000 Systemic-Change Gang

By ROBERT HOLLAND

Reprinted by permission: The Washington Times

MANY PARENTS and other citizens across the nation are objecting to school restructuring schemes that have more to do with manipulating children's attitudes than with teaching them to read.

But the systemic-change gang doesn't intend to neglect the adults. Oh, no. It means to adjust their attitudes too.

In fact, entire communities are in the sights of the Goals 2000 propaganda artillery. The National Education Goals Panel, an all- politicians' group assembled under the Goals 2000 law, is preparing to distribute a Community Action Tool Kit developed by the U.S. Dept. of Education and its tax-funded regional laboratories. The five pound kit is chock full of brightly colored manuals for community organizing that are printed on spare-no-expense glossy paper. Even sign-up and reminder sheets for local Goals 2000 activists(whom the feds evidently assume to be too inept to draw up their own) are printed on the high-quality slick paper.

Ruth Chacon, the panel's spokesman, claims that by selling 2,500 of these kits to community activists at $37 apiece, the government will recover its costs. Sure. And if you believe that, you probably believe the coming national education standards are going to be "voluntary."

The little ol' kit-makers leave little to chance. Among the contents:
* Letters to the editor, op-ed pieces, feature stories, radio spots, and even entire speeches endorsing the national education putsch. This is Connect-the-Dots grassroots support: Just sign your name and send in a government- prepared letter. (See the sample letter at the end of this article.)

* A Troubleshooting Guide for dealing with opponents, aka The Resistance. Identify your opponents, the kit advises; list their resources. This sounds like something out of one of Chairman Mao's tool kits.

* Case histories of how opponents can be co-opted in order to implement curriculum changes. Educrats in Edmonds, Washington, for example, deliberately put out multiple drafts of the district's OBE plan because "it gives the impression that you are open to change."

* Step-by-step plans for manufacturing community support through the use of s-called facilitators and change agents. Those are people who steer public meetings toward a phony consensus. The regional education labs, formed under the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (recently reauthorized for five years), long ago contracted with behavioral scientists to develop this tool for imposing government-desired innovation. One such manual, for example, was prepared at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research.

"Only by changing the attitudes and behaviors of community members," the Tool Kit states, "will it be possible to reach the National Education Goals."

That strongly suggests local people are to have little or no choice about the shape education reform will take. Those who believe learning the basics of literacy more important for first graders than higher order thinking about globalism and multiculturalism are to be prime candidates for a government re- tooling.

THE CHANGE being peddled is fraudulent. Real change would break up the education monopoly, enable parents to choose the best schools for their children, and restore intellectual rigor. The systemic-change gang, by contrast, wants to nationalize the monopoly, brainwash parents, and decimate pockets of excellence by assessing for feelings instead of testing for knowledge.

Under Choosing a Facilitator, the kit's Community Organizing Guide makes this remarkable statement: "An organized discussion about education reform will not happen spontaneously."In other words, local rubes cannot be trusted to reach the right conclusions. Their meetings must be facilitated.

That kind of didactic talk - irksome from a nagging aunt but ominous coming from Big Brother's helpers - is common to strategic plans of the systemic-change gang. The National Center on Education and the Economy, a Carnegie offshoot that has become a virtual adjunct of the Clinton Education Department, said this in a 1992 funding proposal: "If we are to succeed in radically transforming schools, we must alter attitudes outside the schoolhouse door."

The center added that it would be necessary to employ "all the techniques of the modern media strategist as well as the proven methods of community organizing." It said one of its partners, the Public Agenda Foundation, already had "been successful in designing and orchestrating citizen education campaigns" in five communities.

That's where the Tool Kit now comes into play, and sure enough the Public Agenda Foundation's seven-stage journey to correct thinking is contained therein. At Stage One, citizens "may not yet recognize that there is no 'going back to basics' in education; we must go forward to a set of 'new basics' required for success in today's increasingly complex and competitive global economy."

That's Outcome-Based Education jargon right out of the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) reports. The so-called new basics are "competencies" like self-esteem and working in a group.

Indeed, the Colorado-based High Success Network - the lucrative consulting business of OBE guru William Spady - is cited in a section of the Tool Kit on how to sell social change. Interestingly enough, the kit elsewhere advises change agents to avoid using such terms as "outcomes," "outcome- based education," and "self-esteem" - the better to avoid "serious conflict."

Mark this well: The systemic-change gang's preferred new euphemism for OBE is "standards-based education" (SBE). Of course, that's subject to change in Tool Kit II, after the resistance catches on.

[SAMPLE LETTER FROM THE TOOLKIT]

To the Editor:

As the nation struggles to figure out why the education system is falling short, one simple concept can serve as a guide: we can only make true progress if we know where we want to go!

Until recently, such goals have been missing in education. We have lacked a national agreement on what students should know and be able to do when they emerge from the public education system and what constitutes the "academic success" to which every student should aspire.

The National Education Goals established under the "Goals 2000: Educate America Act," and the creation of standards for what students should know and be able to do, are now filling that gap - focusing our attention and resources on what we want and need to accomplish. All across the nation, parents and concerned citizens are using the Goals as a framework to dramatically change the system that support teaching and learning - from prenatal care to assure (sic) that babies get the best possible start to workforce training programs that provide employees with opportunities to acquire needed skills. Achieving the National Education Goals will strengthen the fiber and backbone of our communities.

(Insert any local experience or community activities surrounding Goals, if available. Or, use the following paragraph.) In one city, the local newspaper distributed to 250,000 households a report listing more than 125 strategies the community could use to help achieve the Goals. These strategies were then condensed into a community action plan after more than 50,000 people identified by ballot the activities they felt would be most appropriate for their schools. The immediate results: A pilot project to teach students the most critical skills required in over 50 of the most prevalent jobs in the community, and a model program that aims to double the number of children served by early childhood care and education. This is just the beginning.

Goals and standards must be the anchor for our education reform efforts. Curriculum, instruction, assessment, and teacher training can all be more effective and focused if they are aimed toward the same end.

(Other communities/our community) (are/is) starting to see the wisdom of using education goals and standards as a framework for reform. We need to build on that beginning.

Sincerely,

(Your name)


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