EDUCATION REFORM'S SECOND FIVE-YEAR PLAN, 1995-2000
(PART ONE)
By Aldo S. Bernardo

In a piece on current educational reforms appearing in this past summer's issue of MEASURE, I promised to write a follow-up on what I called "the second five-year plan." Since the Reagan administration's call to action in 1983 with its report entitled A NATION AT RISK, education reform has become as controversial as health reform. This time, unlike earlier reforms, the movement is truly all-encompassing. In fact, the federal act that has been driving the reform is subtitled "Reinventing American Education."

BASIC DOCUMENTS

As I pointed out in the earlier article, the propelling force behind the general movement is an educational theory known as Outcome-Based Education or OBE which has unobtrusively crept into the reforms as a result of the 1992 elections. At that time, the federal bill known as America 2000 (sponsored by the Bush administration) was converted to Goals 2000 (sponsored and signed by President Clinto in 1994). While America 2000(Am2000) stressed the need for improving the teaching of academic basics, Goals 2000 (G2000) stressed the personal, social and psychological growth of students. Both established national standards for core subjects, but G2000 made it clear that "success in the world of employment and civic participation" were additional results to be achieved. Both Acts were supplemented by other federal bills that provided substantial funding for the general movement. By the fall of this year every state but 4 had been tempted by G2000 funds to succumb to the principles of OBE which it espoused and which I alluded to in the previous piece as a "gentle bulldozer." New York, for example, is receiving $27 million for 1995-96 to implement the goals.

Since, in keeping with the philosophy of OBE, current reforms call for students to be exposed to outcomes that are "real-life based," and to "real-life performances" (i.e. the applicability of every subject studied to real-life situations), it was natural for the reform to encompass the preparation of students for the workplace. Just as parents and communities were to contribute to the implementation of OBE principles, so now would businesses and corporations become involved in preparing students for a workforce "second to none" in the world. This would mean that the movement's basic tenet, which states that "It takes a whole village to raise a child," would become a reality, and we thus enter our second five-year plan, intended to convert our traditional schools dedicated to the sharpening of human intellect into a sort of advanced trade schools training an employable work force.

As with the first plan, this one is likewise proclaimed through certain official and semi-official documents. The first, entitled LEARNING A LIVING: A BLUEPRINT FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE," was prepared by the U.S. Department of Labor as its contribution to Am2000. Also known as the SCANS Report (The Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills), it was originally prepared in 1992 under the Bush administration. Its purpose was "to define the know-how needed in the workplace and to consider how this know-how is best assessed," as well as to develop "an action plan for schools and workplaces." The reason for the radical changes proposed is that "economic change has made the high-school diploma and what it represents less of a guarantee of a decent wage."

The Report goes on to give detailed directives on how schools ought to instill "workplace competencies" at every school level, from K-12. The centerpiece of the proposal is how to integrate SCANS competencies into the core curriculum areas. To give two short examples, under the "competency" entitled "Resources," an assignment for Social Studies/Geography states, "Design a chart of resource needs for a community of African Zulus," while under the competency called "Interpersonal," the assignment for English calls for a discussion of "the pros and cons of the argument that Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice is a 'racist' play and should be banned from the school curriculum." It calls for a radical "reinvention" of American schools by espousing the argument that learning in order "to know" should not be separated from learning in order "to do." The two could be combined by having teachers teach "in context, that is, learning content while solving realistic problems...[in] real-life situations." This can be done by participating in work-based projects, internships, and mentor programs, and by "shadowing" workers on the job. In short, students should become workers learning from a curriculum that is "integrated across subject areas that require students to read, write, compute, apply scientific or statistical principles, integrate, and reason about specific problems." This calls for classrooms that differ markedly from the conventional ones. No longer would we have what this new "educational philosophy" derides as omniscient teachers, passive and isolated students, rigid disciplinary borders, and "abstracted" knowledge and facts. Instead these would be replaced by "sophisticated and more realistic concepts of instruction and learning (the teacher may not know best, students often learn best in groups, and knowledge should be related to real problems)."
Toward the end of the Report we find recommendations regarding the designing of assessment systems that simply repeat OBE concepts. Added, however, is the concept of a Certificate of Initial Mastery (CIM) which will eventually replace the high school diploma as the level of achievement to which all students are entitled. Usually attained by age 16, the CIM will attract the attention of high-performance employers because the levels of performance required would presumably be benchmarked to the highest standard in the world for 16 year olds. In fact, the Report cautions that "under today's civil rights law, many employers will be barred from using the CIM as a ticket for job selection, because their jobs do not need all the skills that the CIM will certify." On the other hand, a SCANS Commissioner writes, "Many companies have moved operations to places with cheap, relatively poor educated labor. What may be crucial, they say, is the dependability of a labor force and how well it can be managed and trained - not its general education level...." Translated from the bureaucratese, this decrees that surrender of the quest for a well-educated citizen to the massive production of programmed quasi-robotic workers.

The fact remains that the SCANS Report essentially summarized the OBE components of G2000 and other pertinent federal Acts, and added to them the concept of schools shifting their attention from teaching cognitive knowledge to the preparation of a world- class work force. The Report in turn spawned a number of other federal documents addressing the same goals. Chief among these was HR2884, the "School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1993." It too pushed performance-based education and training, the integration of academic and occupational learning, "career majors," local partnerships with business, apprenticeship programs, new teaching methods, the systemic management of schools along TQM (Total Quality Management) lines, and supplemental funding for new curriculum design as well as for teacher training.

Meanwhile, public pressure and the new Republican administration have caused several changes in the program. A Michigan senator has introduced a bill that would eliminate Goals 2000 and transfer the $310 million appropriated for 1996 to "school choice" and charter schools programs. Another bill (HR1883) is being considered offering an alternative to the elimination of the Department of Education. It would consolidate the Departments of Education and Labor under the Labor Secretary. This bill would convert public schools into "Workforce Prep" centers in which school children would be trained rather than educated. Schools would thus become "efficient delivery systems" to meet the challenges of a competitive global economy in the next century.

Still another bill, HR1617, known by its acronym CAREERS Act (Consolidated and Reformed Education, Employment, and Rehabilitation Systems Act), has now rescinded and replaced HR2884 mentioned above. It parallels S180 sponsored by Senator Kennedy and called the "Workforce Development Act." Both bills give the government the responsibility for job placement and development. The Senate bill would implement this through a complex federal, state and local bureaucracy, while the House version would concentrate on the states. Both bills call for a labor market information system "to assure that workforce development programs are related to the demand for particular skills in a local labor market." The system will record how well the schoolchild did on the "performance assessments" of the states' "goals and objectives" as required by G2000. As one critic has noted, "the premise of the system is the assumption that government committees know what is best for the individual and the economy." Both bills also call for "one-stop career centers" (located mostly at public schools) where people could be given options such as further education or on-the-job training. From the vast information available from the labor market information system, these centers will train individuals for designated job slots, and will be capable of delivering the workforce wherever it is needed. The Secretaries of Education and Labor are so anxious to realize these plans that they have enlisted the help of the current Miss America to promote the program! Other Clinton officials are urging big business to throw its economic might behind job-training programs, warning that congressional budget-slashing proposals were a threat to economic recovery.

THE NEW GURUS

Just as in the first five-year plan the OBE movement infiltrated congressional circles in order to promote legislation intended to "reinvent our schools," so have educational activists (mostly sociologists) succeeded in influencing government officials in developing the second five-year plan. The chief "guru" of the first was William Spady; of the second, Marc Tucker. Spady's contact official was Secretary of Education, T. H. Bell; the two persons who eventually became official contacts for Tucker were Hillary Clinton and Ira Magaziner. Both had worked closely with Tucker during his climb from being Executive Director of the Washington-based Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy (funded in 1986 by the Carnegie Corporation of N.Y.) to heading his own Center in Rochester, N.Y. where in 1988 he moved the Forum, changing its name to the National Center on Education and the Economy. The new Center continues attracting considerable funding from private foundations as well as corporate and government grants. The reason for moving to Rochester was that in the late 80s Rochester schools had moved to the forefront of the reform movement, and were enjoying the backing of such huge corporations as Xerox and Kodak. By the early 90s the Center was interacting with a wide network of public and private agencies involved in education reform. [See table]

In 1990 the Center released a key Report entitled AMERICA'S CHOICE: HIGH SKILLS OR LOW WAGES in which both Mrs. Clinton and Ira Magaziner had a hand, and whose funding was assured by New York's Governor Cuomo. The Report was prepared by The Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce of which Magaziner was chair and Mrs. Clinton co-chair. In spelling out "the foundation skills," the Report makes five recommendations. The first is the creation of "A new educational performance standard...to be met by age 16....and benchmarked to the highest in the world." By meeting such a standard, a student would be awarded a CIM. In addition to a demonstrated ability in traditional core subjects, a student would have exhibited a capacity to "work effectively alone and in groups." The CIM would "certify labor market readiness and a mastery of basic skills necessary for high productivity employment." The Certificate would also be required for "entry into all subsequent forms of education." The accompanying assessment system would "give employers an objective means to assess the capabilities of job applicants."

The second recommendation requires that states take the responsibility "for assuring that virtually all students achieve a CIM." Students who fail to do so by l6 could remain in school until 18 to do so. Those who drop out would have to attend Youth Centers whose purpose is "to ensure that every young person attains the Certificate." The Report asserts that "The lack of any clear, direct connection between education and employment opportunities...is one of the most devastaging aspects of the existing system." It therefore proposes that "child labor laws be amended to make the granting of work permits to young people up to age 18 contingent on either their possession of CIM, or their enrollment in a program leading to the Certificate." The third recommendation proposes "A comprehensive system of Technical and Professional Certificates and associates degrees...for...student and adult workers who do not pursue a baccalaureate degree." This would not only provide students with "a smooth transition from school to work," but it would offer them "clear routes to a variety of career qualifications, opportunity for work-based learning and an alternative path to college." As for funding, "the states and the Federal government should furnish four years of financing to all Americans to allow them to pursue education beyond the CIM at some point in their adult lives."

The fourth recommendation deals with "Lifelong Learning and High Performance Work Organizations," and proposes, among other things, that "Initially, employers would be required to spend approximately 1% of payroll on education and training (with the amount increasing progressively over the decade)." Furthermore, "All companies, organizations, and institutions, regardless of size or type of business, including local and state governments and schools, [emphasis added] would be required to participate." [A similar "Market Model" in Canada aims to reduce learning to "an instrument serving social power....and the needs of corporate capital in an information age of global production," with the role of education being reduced to "competing economically in the international marketplace."]

Recommendation 5 suggests "A System to Pull it Together," defined as follows: "A system of Employment and Training Boards should be established by Federal and state governments, together with local leadership, to organize and oversee the new school-to- work transition programs and training systems we propose."

The 90-page Report is indeed a "bold, new agenda" as it calls itself at the very end. Details of each Recommendation are not only fully developed, but are proposed as means of ultimately becoming public policy.

(PART TWO)

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