RADICAL CHANGES

Radical changes are currently being made or planned in every school district in New York State, in response to a reform plan being carried out by our State Education Department. This plan is called A New Compact for Learning. ESTEEM has received word that the Compact has drawn criticism and will not presently become law. However, the reforms it contained have been translated into five year plans by each school district in our state to qualify for state funds for 1994. There is a "new" program, called Vision 21, which is yet another channel for promotion of an almost identical set of reforms in our state. (Former NY Commissioner of Education Thomas Sobol wrote in Sept. 1993 that while the name of the New Compact might be changed at some point "the essence of this ... venture will continue.") These same reforms were codified into law in August 1994, as The 21st Century Schools Act. This Act applies to 60 New York State school districts to be chosen as models for the rest. At the core of these reforms is a fundamental redefinition of the role and methods of education. The 21st Century Schools Act/Vision 21/A New Compact contain the same blueprint for restructuring as is found in Goals 2000. These plans are based on the disproven educational theory known as outcome based education. The focus of our schools is being shifted from academics to politically correct attitudes. Most parents send their children to school expecting them to be taught the knowledge and skills necessary for eventual success in their chosen careers. If the social planners have their way, those children will enter schools that will be used as centers for social engineering.

The ideas behind these reform blueprints were originated by a small group of sociologists and educational theorists. The stated purposes of these "educrats" have more to do with changing the values and beliefs and social structures of our nation than with education. They plan to use the schools of America to move us toward full participation in a conflict-free global society. To be productive members of this imaginary future society, our children must learn to see traditional American values as suspect, and all values as negotiable. If this leads to conflicts in the home, well, that's all part of the plan. Parents are welcomed into the schools to receive their very own re-education through state approved parent training and consensus-based exercises in groupthink.

There are some assumptions behind the New Compact/21st Century Schools Act/Vision 21 that are patently absurd, yet are used as the rationale for the radical changes proposed for our schools. Though all of the programs flowing from the State Education Department are filled with the promise of excellence and high achievement and world-class standards, the flawed ideas that actually drive the reforms can only lead to mediocrity or worse. One of these assumptions is that all children can reach the same level of achievement. Another assumption is that the amount of time required to accomplish a task is not important. Another assumption is that individualism and personal achievement are inherently suspect, and thus group participation must be stressed from the earliest grades through graduation. Yet another strange assumption is that responsibility for learning rests no longer with the child and the family, but now with society. Teachers must do whatever is necessary, and society must pay whatever is necessary, to make these ridiculous assumptions produce desirable results in our schools. How much will we spend and what will we inflict on our children while we learn that this is an impossible task? The reforms being proposed for our state, now codified in your school's five year plan, can only move us away from the lofty goals set forth.

What does all this mean for the education of our children? Wherever these ideas have been put to the test, educational results have either failed to improve or have declined. This despite significant increases in expenditures and extensive staff retraining. We can expect this to happen soon across our state. This should mean that the reforms, once enacted, will be quickly rejected. But will they? A key, nonnegotiable component of the Compact is the use of new methods of testing. Not just new tests, but new and radically different methods of testing. The new tests will focus on student mastery of "standards" that are so vague that accountability for their achievement is next to impossible. These new methods are so complex and subjective that teachers will require extensive retraining to be able to understand and apply them. Report cards will see basic changes. Grade levels in the earlier years will be eliminated. Textbooks will be avoided. Standardized tests will be downplayed. How will parents be expected to assess what is being learned? Remember, the SAT tests have been given their first major revision this year, allowing calculators to be used during the math portions of the test.

Abraham Lincoln once said: "The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next." He knew, as do the social planners behind education reform, that the future of our society is determined in the classroom. What happens in the classroom is being increasingly influenced by people whose values and beliefs are very different from those of the average citizen of this nation. Therefore, we believe that the future of our society rests upon strong and independent involvement by parents and the business community in establishing and monitoring the philosophy and goals of our schools. Why independent involvement, as opposed to involvement that is "enabled" and channeled by the State Education Department? Because the New Compact claimed to provide for exactly this sort of involvement, while what it delivered was a manipulative and deceptive strategic planning process by which each local community "thought up" for themselves essentially the same blueprint for radical change. Vision 21 promises to be simply a repetition of the same old public hearings producing the same old "bottom-up" reforms.

Another reason independent involvement and oversight of our schools are critically important is that elementary and secondary education in our state was a twenty two billion-dollar enterprise in 1993. Under the Compact's reforms we can expect that cost to increase dramatically. Where this kind of money is involved, accountability must be maintained. We can see that many in the education "industry" might view cost-effective education very differently than taxpayers do. Remember, none of these education dollars "for the children" actually go to the children. In many ways they come from the children in the form of economic hardship placed upon families by spiraling taxes. The only measure of what actual benefit the children receive is educational outcomes. While research and experience have repeatedly shown that more money is not the answer to our educational woes, this truth has never penetrated the thinking of the education theorists.

School boards, which in the past provided the means for local supervision of the schools, are increasingly under the control of the education establishment. (The N. E. A. currently instructs their members to hold 'candidates forums' during school board elections. Here questions are framed to identify those candidates who believe that the school board should have a strong role in administering the school. These candidates find themselves facing an uphill battle. Teachers also are encouraged to run for school board positions in adjacent districts, and spouses of school personnel are encouraged to run as well. The conflict of interest implications are enormous, and are not being addressed by the system. [See 'Comeuppance,' Forbes, 2/13/95]) These are times that call for voters and taxpayers to seek out school board candidates who are bold and courageous, who are willing to risk the ire of the powerful interest groups controlling our schools. It seems likely that the goal of the originators of the current batch of reform plans was to preclude just such a possibility.

Under the reforms contained in the New Compact/21st Century Schools Act/Vision 21, school boards will be given a narrower role, which will actually involve more responsibility and less authority. State Regent Carl T. Hayden, in noting that the Compact gives school boards "less power" than they previously had, wrote: "The Compact mandates a process called shared decision making." [The same process is mandated for 21st Century Schools] "That process contemplates a new, greatly expanded role for teachers and parents in the formulation of school policy ...The power equation has been altered."[Binghamton Press and Sun Bulletin, 5/15/94] What Regent Hayden doesn't mention is that the site based committees he refers to contain a majority of school personnel, and in some districts even the two representative parents are spouses of school personnel. So although, as Regent Hayden goes on to say, "the Compact will exact significantly higher accountability from school boards," the power that should accompany accountability will go to the education establishment, with a few parents included for the sake of appearance.

New York State taxpayers currently spend $9,665.00 per student per year for elementary and secondary education. This amount, which has doubled since 1983, would cover the tuition at many fine colleges. Yet our SAT scores, once at the top nationally, have fallen to the point where we rank 40th among the states. At a time when our state economy is fundamentally threatened, we need to move toward proven cost-effective methods to provide excellent education for our children. ESTEEM concurs with many of the positions recently espoused by the American Federation of Teachers. We agree with their president, Al Shanker, when he points out that at a time when America's place in an emerging global job market is increasingly tenuous, we must learn from those nations whose schools are most successful. We cannot afford to plunge blindly into more of the same "progressive" and "child centered" education that has made our school system one of the most expensive and least effective among developed nations.

Perhaps the most tragic element of the 21st Century Schools Act/Vision 21 reform is that it capitalizes on the growing realization that we truly must make fundamental changes in the way we educate our children by promoting reform that takes us in exactly the wrong direction. While the New Compact is filled with misleading jargon and utopian promises, it is definitely not just another relatively harmless set of mandated educational fads. The New York State Education Department's 21st Century Schools Act/Vision 21 initiatives pose an unprecedented threat to the academic achievements of our children, the financial future of our state, and the civil rights we take for granted as Americans. The true implications of enacting this reform must be given broad public exposure.

You have taken a key step in reading this information. As you inform yourself and then others in your community you can make a real difference in a crucial arena in our society. ESTEEM seeks to promote networking among those interested in truly beneficial education reform. When possible, we will help you locate others in your area with similar concerns, or provide a speaker to address groups of concerned citizens in your school district.

Please let us know how we can be of further assistance.