Testimony before the Senate Education Committee
January 29th, 1998It is imperative that the background of the Schools for the 21st Century be understood, as it is the foundation for America 2000 which became Goals 2000 and education reform as we have come to know it under HB1209 here in the state of Washington. Time does not permit us to cover the subject in-depth.
SSB 5479, authorizing the Schools for the 21st Century, passed in May 1987. This legislation, proposed by then Governor Booth Gardner was heavily influenced by the much publicized report of Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy (CFEE), A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century. Mark Tucker (head of CFEE) later reorganized as the National Center on Education and the Economy, was a consultant to Governor Gardner at the time of the writing of the 21st Century legislation. Tucker is known to have consulted on the writing of legislation, both state and federal. As reported in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, Tucker testified before the House Education Committee in February 1987.
Requirements of the law and its purpose:
The stated purpose of the Schools for the 21st Century was to foster change in the state common school system and to develop model school programs to improve student performance through additional money, 10 extra days per year for staff, and the very controversial temporary waiver of certain state statutes, administrative rules and waivers of federal regulations in order to develop new methods and procedures.
The legislation established a ten member Governor's Task Force on the Schools for the 21st Century. Brian Benzel of the Edmonds School District was appointed the chair of the task force. Benzel would, during the course of the pilot program, become a member in other state and national education reform programs including the National Education Goals Panel, the National Alliance for Restructuring Education (a design team of the National Center on Education and the Economy under which Washington became a site partner), National Council on Educational Standards and Testing, the Governor's Council on Education Reform and Funding known as GCERF and the Commission on Student Learning. While Benzel was head of the Governor's Task Force on Schools for the 21st Century, a school in his district was chosen, on the recommendation of the Task Force, to be a 21st Century site.
Who was affected:
In the first round of funding, in the 1988-89 school year, 21 projects were chosen to be 21st Century sites through a competitive grant process. Although not specifically outlined in the legislation, all 21 projects submitted applications that held common strands. In the second round of funding, the 1990-91 school year, 12 more projects were added, bringing the total number of projects to 33, covering 27 school districts, 111 schools, and 52,106 children. The pilot project ended June 30, 1994, having expended $20.7 million.
How projects were selected, funded and monitored:
The state board of education was to review and select the projects for grant awards, monitor and evaluate the schools for the twenty-first century pilot projects. In addition, the Governor's Task Force on Schools for the 21st Century was to recommend projects for approval to the state board. The application for funding required schools or districts to include, among other things, (RCW 28A.100.038) (1) an enumeration of specific activities to be carried out as part of the pilot school project, (6) the evaluation and accountability processes to be used to measure school-wide student and project performance…
Under RCW 28A.100.042 (3), the school pilot projects, initially funded for two years, could be extended for a total period not to exceed six years. Continued funding was contingent on a positive evaluation and on sites submitting an annual report to the State Board of Education. In addition, reports were to be delivered to the state legislature by the state board of education on the progress of the pilot by January 15 of each odd-numbered year. Approval of pilot projects could be modified or terminated for funding purposes, due to unsatisfactory evaluation results or a school districts failure to comply with the terms of the district's application.
In 1992, SSB 6220 added additional requirements to the legislation, mandating that a final report be provided to the legislature on January 15, 1995, which would answer two essential questions: Has student performance increased? If so, what factors caused the increase?
In addition, this RCW allowed the state board and the Superintendent of Public Instruction to contract for an independent evaluation of the schools. Beginning in January 1993, the state of Washington began paying Peter Holly, of Cambridge, England, for work on the final report, due January 15, 1995. Considering that Holly had worked with the Schools for the 21st Century since 1989, one has to question how independent any evaluation completed by Holly could have been. The 1993 Report to the Legislature (pg. 88) indicates that Holly was involved with schools in Washington state prior to the implementation of the 21st Century program.
Common Restructuring Strands Funded:
Although not specifically mandated in the legislation, common themes emerged in the 21st Century grant applications. According to the 1989 Report to the Legislature, "Common themes among the projects include staff development, enhanced use of technology, international education, outcome based education, and reorganization of the delivery system for such programs as special education, Chapter 1, and the Learning Assistance Program."
Key among these themes is international education, exemplified by the I*EARN program established and supported by the Copen Family Foundation. I*EARN is an acronym for International Education And Resource Network. The purpose of I*EARN is to link American students directly with their peers in other parts of the world, creating international joint projects. Key program coordinator was John Anderson, also coordinator for the Schools for the 21st Century. In addition to the I*EARN telecommunication project, Schools for the 21st Century, as a program, is involved in two international partnerships, the School of the 21st Century project in Moscow and the China National Institute for Education Studies/Haidian Education Bureau in Beijing.
Three years prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union, Mr. Copen signed an agreement with the Soviet Academy of Sciences; a similar agreement was entered into with the People's Republic of China. The purpose of both contracts is, "to exchange best ideas, practices, and instructional materials";"to exchange information and research between students, teachers, administrators, and scholars…particular emphasis on the school change process, innovative teaching trategies…"; and "To actively seek to establish exchanges of teachers and students in partner schools." John Anderson traveled to Moscow to help in the planning of the 21st Century project there, which was to be a laboratory for continuing educational research. Was this what the legislature intended to fund?
Another key theme, common to the projects, is outcome based education. Known as mastery learning in the 1970's when it was implemented—and ultimately failed—in the Chicago schools, it has achieved new status under the name of outcome-based education. Currently, OBE is known as performance-based, competency-based and standards-based education. Chief promoter of this concept of education based on outcomes, is Dr. William Spady, who, in 1984, successfully submitted a proposal to then Secretary of Education Terrence Bell for a grant which would eventually bring OBE to "all schools of the nation." (overheads) On this first overhead, we see the letter of intent as evidence that Bill Spady worked with SPI Burningham of Utah to, "put outcome-based education in place, not only in Utah but in all schools in the nation."
This next overhead shows how OBE results can be altered, "(w)e want to 1) screen out those schools which do not possess defining OBE characteristics or which cannot provide evidence of substantial improvement in student achievement." (pg. 15 of application). The last overhead, is from the proposal (pg. 4) and speaks to the results of three OBE projects. Number 3 states, "The Center School in New Canaan, Connecticut, where for the last eight years in a row, about 60% of the sixth graders score at the 99th percentile on the MAT, some complete Algebra 1, and virtually no students in the entire school of 300 score below grade level." You might ask, "How is the school doing now?" In an interview with investigative reporter Jayna Davis, on Oklahoma TV4, Spady was asked to name a successful class where students learned mathematics without textbooks, through real life experiences. He stated that there was an elementary program called Outcome Based Mathematics that was, " developed by a friend of mine when he was Principal in his school in Connecticut, and he and his staff put this curriculum in." When asked if the school was New Canaan, he stated that it was. Jayna Davis then went on to ask if the school was still open. His reply, "not the…the school's been closed for ages. The school is a parking lot." When asked why, Spady's response was, "declining enrollment." The reporter finally asked, "Was it an OBE school?" Spady's answer, "Yes it was…the closure didn't have anything to do with the effectiveness of OBE."
I have this video here tonight and would be happy to make it available for anyone interested in viewing this short segment. William Spady's success or failure is important because he became a consultant to at least one of the 21st Century sites, which, in its application, outlines its outcome-based orientation. That school district was Yakima. Yakima also consulted with Johnson City Central School District, Johnson City, New York. The failure of Johnson City has since been more than adequately documented.
From page 7 of the 1995 Executive Summary on the Report to the Legislature, we find the list of the seven major restructuring strands used in 21st Century Schools. All of the projects contain at least some of the features listed under each of these seven strands. (Overhead). They are:
These were the reform components/strands used in the pilot schools of 21st Century sites. To conclude this segment, we have looked at the law and its stated purpose, and looked at, to a minor degree, what that law brought to the State of Washington under the 21st Century pilot. The question remains, did the program meet the requirements of the law? As a pilot, was it successful?
THE FINAL REPORT
Lynn StuterCris has outlined for you, the law, and given you a peek at what the schools were doing under the law. First I propose to answer the question that Cris asked — "Did the Schools for the 21st Century meet the requirement of the law?" I wish to take you to page 31 of the manuscript of Peter Holly. An abbreviated version of this also exists in the summarized digest, page 15. I quote,
"Has student performance increased? If so, what factors caused the increase?"
These are the two questions that were to be answered in the final report to the legislature as required by SB6220, codified into law as RCW 28A.630.295. The manuscript then continues,
"The answers to these two vital questions are contained within the remainder of this report. There is plenty of evidence … that student performance has indeed increased. … What we were not able to do was to thoroughly investigate the validity, reliability and veracity of the findings. What we can say is that we included only evidence that would seem to spring from education research that conformed to all the usual and expected standards of inquiry."
In short, while the claim is made that the evidence does exist, to show increased student performance, an immediate disclaimer thereafter follows, stating that the "validity, reliability and veracity of the evidence" cannot be provided. I shall expound on this further in a moment.
In answer to the second question, "If so, what factors caused the increase?" the manuscript continues,
"What is somewhat less certain are the answers to the second question, i.e., what were the causal factors that led to the increase in student performance? The quest to be definitive in such an area is problematical to say the least. Equally so, any attempt to ’isolate the variables’ is foolhardy, because one ends up doing just that—isolating a variable from all the other factors working for success while knowing full well that the real answer lies in the combination of factors, their interplay, their chemistry. Isolating the variables takes the efficacy, the magic, out of the scenario."
Meeting the requirement of the law was ’foolhardy?’ Need more be said!
It becomes apparent in reading this manuscript — and I do hope that you will all make the effort to read the document in its entirety — is that the "evidence" provided is anecdotal, and does not conform to the usual standards associated with scientifically validated research. To quote page 482 of the manuscript,
"But in education, so much that is achieved is not measurable — unless students are tracked over a 10/15 year period to college and beyond, follow their routes taken, connections made to the 21st Century experiences. We have to use anecdotal evidence — otherwise, we are not going to be able to measure Century 21! … You can talk it, you can feel it, you can communicate it – anecdotally."
A similar quote is to be found on page 26 of the manuscript,
"You cannot evaluate Schools for the 21st Century…so much that has been achieved is not measurable, and the true results will only appear over time. There's a need to shadow students from 10-15 years—through college and beyond—following their routes taken, decisions made, key incidents encountered and all the time, making connections with the 21st Century experiences… You can talk it, you can communicate it, but you can't quantify it."
You can talk it, you can feel it, you can communicate it, but you can't measure it. In earlier reports to the legislature on the Schools for the 21st Century, we glimpsed impending problems with evaluation of the projects. Consider these quotes from page 88 of the 1993 Report to the Legislature,
"The original Schools for the 21st Century legislation stated that the purpose of the program was to see if locally developed projects in school restructuring and innovation could improve student performance. However, no definition of student performance was given, no assessment tools were indicated, and no evaluation plan was proposed. As a result, no baseline data was collected prior to implementation, other than scores from the Metropolitan Achievement Test required of all schools."
Now contrast that statement with this one found in the 1991 Annual Report to the State Board of Education, pg. 10,
"Because many of the variables in schools are uncontrollable or unknown, standardized test scores viewed alone can be misleading when viewed as effects of complex educational programs. However, when integrated with other types of data, they can become meaningful indicators. Metropolitan Achievement Test scores, available for all 21st Century projects as baseline data prior to being selected by the State Board, will be the standard objective data reported in an overall Schools for the 21st Century evaluation."
The question now becomes—did the MAT tests become the baseline data and the standard objective data reported in a overall evaluation? From page 109 of the 1993 Report to the Legislature, five years into the project, we read,
"For now, however, when asked if they were doing any formal evaluation of student outcomes resulting from the implementation of the various innovations, the majority of respondents said, ’No’, contrary to the strong proposal for ’extensive Action Research’ and the data collected for annual reports and staff surveys."
I will add, at this point that the attempts of citizens to obtain the MAT test scores for the Schools for the 21st Century have been futile. I will also add that the test score information contained in this manuscript, supposedly evidence of increased student learning, was supplied by the school districts themselves in the form of charts and graphs. Said information has not been audited for accuracy or efficacy; it does not represent information supplied directly from an achievement test company that shows how many children were tested, how many tests were validated, and what the score was for the tests validated.
Returning to the evaluation of the 21st Century project - what was used to evaluate this pilot? Again, we shall turn to the manuscript, page 32,
"School transformation, by its very nature, is complex and swirling. It is a deep, rich tapestry of interacting factors. It is characterized by connectedness, not isolation. The challenge is to get inside this richness in order to experience it, not to measure it: ’to talk it and feel it, not to quantify it.’ The best that can be done is to do two things. The first is to watch closely and listen intently: to capture the complexity from the inside and to gain understanding by interacting with all the many different kinds of participants—parents (as above), teachers, administrators, students … support agents, etc. —and asking the same basic questions (’I’m seeing this, I’m picking up this – is this how you see it?’) and then entering into dialogue around the responses. This is called communicative validation — the story is validated within the communication with key participants. And within the story-telling, the connections, the causal links, begin to emerge."
Further clarification of the evaluative and accountability process comes from page 300 of the manuscript,
"The essence of accountability (as with this report) are the questions, ’has student success occurred?’ and ’what caused this success?’ By asking these questions in this documenting, we are reporting the fruits of the assessment and evaluation activities and, in so doing, we are rendering accountable Schools for the Twenty-first Century."
The 21st Century program is rendered accountable merely by asking the questions? It becomes very apparent that accountability is based on evaluation consisting of anecdotal excerpts from interviews, etc., with people involved with the project; interviews, I might add, that were guided, as noted above, by the evaluation team members. Beyond that, quote after quote after quote, reveals not what the participants (usually nameless, in the report) knew about what was being implemented, but how the various participants felt about the project. The words feel and feeling appear probably more times in this document than any other word. They are joined by the terms emotionality and affectivity. This was how the 21st Century Schools were evaluated—on how the participants felt about the program.
.Projects throughout the report have indicated an aversion to standardized testing as evidenced by these quotes from page 26 of the 1995 Report to the Legislature,
"Indeed, many teachers in many schools feel that they are being pulled in two directions at once - by the undoubted popular vote for standardized tests in the community at large and by their own personal and professional misgivings. Many educators disparage these tests; they have no time for them– mainly because they do not see their educational worth."
It goes on to state,
"Many respondents - educators especially - echoed the thoughts of Peter Block in his book, Stewardship, 'A heavy hand, however, leads people to give more attention to the measurement than to the service, product or outcome. We see it in schools when we care more about grades than we do about learning… For an extended discussion of the flaws of standardized tests, please consult the resource document."
Remember, we just read from the 1991 Annual Report to the State Board of Education that, "MAT scores…will be the standard objective data reported in an overall Schools for the 21st Century evaluation." There are other aspects of this report that also need to be addressed. Citizens have repeatedly expressed concern over the parental role under education reform; concern that centers around who is and who is not allowed to participate and have a voice in restructuring. Consider these quotes, At Clark Elementary, the parent involvement school,
"every teacher trains their own parents at the beginning of the year. It requires a lot of work, but its worth it…" (p 69)
"I have mixed feelings over the site-based council. Parent involvement at the governance level can be a mistake. They have good hearts but they don’t have all the information; they don’t know what they should or shouldn't know. They bring their personal agendas to the table." (p 529) "Is parent involvement in governance a good thing? Of course; but only if it works for all those concerned." (p 531) "…I am cautious about parents and site councils. Schools are evolving, complex; they are leading and influencing…On site councils, parents should not try to micro-manage. … Parents have to be immersed operationally; when they are adjuncts, volunteers should they be guiding on operational questions? It’s asking a lot of them." (p 530) "In terms of the development of the site council, it's taken all year for parents to understand how things work. It’s an informational issue. There needs to be a controlled setting in order to ask for parent's feedback, receive a perspective on the family and their kids." (p 550-51)
These are but five of the many, many quotes referring to the role of ’parents’ in the school. This quote, from page 673, just about sums up the role of parents,
"Such schools develop extended families that include parents and members of the community in responsible roles. Teachers increase their conversations with parents about learning and development. Parents take on increased responsibilities for their children's growth and development, participate in developing new programs and services, and contribute their time to assisting teachers in facilitating learning"
This certainly defines the role of parent as partner. This quote translates into the school becoming the new family of the child and the parent being the adjunct. The following quote on pages 363 & 364, is but one of the several that defines the new family,
"the strengths of the program are the continuous progress, the family group, the extended periods of time with the same teacher…They have social knowledge through ongoing peer interaction. They've formed a 'society', a family group."
On page 434 of the manuscript, the necessity of emotional bonding as a family concept with the school is discussed,
"we have a holistic approach here…we deal with the whole child - in terms of social, emotional and academic learning. Maslow’s basic needs - safety, warmth, caring, the emotional needs of ’family’; you have all this first. From this you build the social and academic. It’s a school built on friendship (parents helped design it), or feeling of 'I can do it', on bonding and positive attitudes"
No wonder parents are upset!
With the advent of education reform, parents need a new dictionary. Old words seem to have attained new meanings. Repeatedly in the context of the Schools for the 21st Century, more recently statewide restructuring, we hear how education reform is "content and process." The overhead you are about to see gives us the new definition of "content." (p 630). I ask you, do you define "content" as "excellence in terms of the quality of the change agenda?" No wonder parents are screaming about the loss of academics in their local school while the education establishment is busy telling us that the essential learnings are content-rich.
Speaking of process, consider these quotes from the manuscript,
"The students of today and the future will need to know how to process, search and organize information in order to make sound decisions. The need to know facts will become less important and the need to know how to acquire, decode, judge, and create and solve problems will become more important." (p 167) "We keep looking to find the product - it's the process and if we don't have the process we will go backwards. The destination is the process; we're teaching the kids to be life-long learners." (p 373) "…the students are getting the chance to explore, to make mistakes, to realize that there's no one answer, to understand that learning is about processing." (p 374)
This manuscript also refers to the facilitative process that parents have found themselves subjected to in the name of achieving "consensus". One parent, unwittingly, laid bare the truth about the process of consensus building when she said,
"She knows just how to facilitate so that everyone thinks it is their idea…" (p 597)
That facilitative process is being used in every facet of our society and government today, including education reform. It promotes collectivist values over individual values; it promotes the collective, the community, over the individual; it has no tolerance for differing views. The whole of education reform is based on a process. That process is defined throughout this manuscript by such terms as outcome-based education, total quality management, the learning organization, quality schools, continuous quality improvement, and systems thinking - all being synonymous, all springing from the same developmental theory, all synonymous in structure. Each views the school, the organization, the world as a wholistic or holistic system, interdependent and interconnected; that what affects one part affects all parts, that within any subsystem is an infrastructure that is analogous across systems, irrespective of physical appearance. The systems approach finds basis in the writings of one Alfred North Whitehead, a man quoted several times in this document. Other supporters of the systems approach are also heavily quoted in this book, to include Peter Senge and Stephen Covey. Consider these quotes from pages 428 and 429,
"In this chapter on the real curriculum we have included connected learning as one of its essential components. We are now, however, making a bigger claim for connectedness… Connectedness, to borrow an apt phrase, the river running through it…"
"...the biggest danger of the Twenty-first Century is people feeling out of touch and alienated from their lives which are too fast-paced, too depersonalized, too disconnected… During the discussion at Skyline, a Native American parent reminded the group that the greatest accomplishment of Schools for the 21st Century is the deeper sense of presence achieved - the healing, the spirit, the shamen - the connectedness; the deeper sense of community.""...it's about ’in thereness’; it's the same feeling you get on mountains, by the side of rivers, on starry nights - it’s the feeling of living in them, being of them, understanding balance." "...interpersonal connectedness (collaboration, co-operative learning, teaming, sharing and learning together, co-creating the collective spirit) is balanced by intra-personal connectedness (self- understanding, reflexivity; being in touch with one's own feelings). Personal strength comes from personal connectedness."
Ladies and gentlemen, they've just been Borged!! It is easy to see that, under this concept, education would be seen as wholistic, addressing the whole child - mentally, physically, and emotionally; constructivist, hands-on, real-life, or life-role education. This is the frame of reference for whole language and whole math. The focus of education would move away from academics to real-life issues taught in the context of unit themes or thematic units with knowledge only incorporated as it is used and applied in addressing the social or life-related issue; integrated curriculum instead of individual disciplines, etc. Consider these quotes,
"First, we found learning that was relevant (to children and their lives in the real world); applicable, alive, active, experiential, hands-on, practical and above all, non-artificial. The learning was connected with reality, not separated from it. Second, we found learning that is really learned, i.e., understood, assimilated, internalized. It grabbed the students." (p 412) "Self-actualizing individuals come to respect the need for a self-actualizing organization which unites around life themes in which all the individual members feel they have an investment." (p 645)
A case in point of life themes in which all individual members feel they have an investment, in real-life, is elucidated in this quote,
"We’ve made big gains, firstly on the environmental side. What was done last is paramount to me - the Wetlands; a real story book."
Throughout the manuscript we find similar references to environmentalism. The systems approach dictates that mankind can create the future by deciding what the child should know and be able to do as a result of his or her educational experience. This is defined by the state essential academic learning requirements. Once the end result of learning is established, then everything done to achieve the end result (also known as the goal or exit outcomes) is aligned to the end result to ensure that it is achieved. The measure of mastery is the assessment. It is easy to recognize this systems approach as our own education reform. For instance, in the Schools for the Twenty-first Century, it was utilized as the GRASP concept in a backward-mapping mode. GRASP means Governance, Real Curriculum, Assessment, Support for Restructuring and Professional Development. According to Holly's model, this was implemented in a 1,4,5,2,3 sequence or G,S,P,R,A fashion with Assessment as the final component to determine whether the system is achieving the end result. Systems thinking is the basis of planned economies in which all component parts are carefully managed according to a state driven and state managed economy. Need I say that this is the economic system of socialist/ communist nations where people are considered to be human capital, and the education system the means of producing that human capital. Speaking to the learning organization, the manuscript, page 713, states,
"(These same schools) attend to their organizational health creating humanistic environments in which all members can learn and grow." The following quote comes from Strategic Planning for Educators (1986) by Dr. Shirley McCune, currently administrative assistant to Dr. Terry Bergeson, "The synthesis of technology with educational tasks opens new possibilities for more humanistic schools and educational systems."
Humanistic? Repeatedly, throughout books written on education reform, this term comes into play. Humanism runs parallel to systems thinking. Humanism sees man as devoid of spirituality and self-determinism, that man must, therefore, be conditioned to his environment whatever it is decided that environment will be. This futuristic tone is relayed in these two quotes from the manuscript,
"Some Century 21 teachers feel particularly aggrieved because they were exhorted to be innovative in the classroom and then, in their perception, get saddled with an inappropriate way of assessing progress and capturing achievement. They feel constrained, less than futuristic in their change efforts." (page 233) "Originally, we got ourselves a lot of information from Futurists (concerning what kids will need in the 21st Century - a backward mapping exercise - plus alternative instruction strategies, active learning, etc.)" (page 477)
The exit outcomes established in school districts were based on the work of Futurists - people who attempt to decide what the future should look like. How many times have we heard, what the world will be like in the 21st Century, Creating the Future; etc. Education, under Schools for the 21st Century, under current reform measures, is not about producing innovative, creative, intelligent individuals; rather, it is about conditioning children to the perceived environment as it has been decided that it will be in the near future. Again, we are aligning everything we do to achieve the outcome. Repeatedly, in the context of restructuring, in this manuscript, appears the phrase "paradigm shift." Paradigm means model; according to Stephen Covey, much quoted in this manuscript, paradigm is how one "perceives the world" — it is your world view. A paradigm shift, then, would be a shift in world view. From what world view to what world view? This newspaper article that has been included in your packet reveals that 90% of Americans still hold to the world view of our Founding Fathers. I will remind you, ladies and gentlemen, that the foundations of our nation were to ensure freedom, liberty, and justice. Humanism has a track record; it has a history. It has been the world view of every totalitarian, dictatorial government ever established on the face of this earth.
I have heard the term non-sectarian bandied about in addressing education. The world non-sectarian is an oxymoron. Non-sectarian means non-religious. Every educational philosophy has a sectarian basis — has a religious basis. Education is religious; the two are inseparable. The prejudice of our Founding Fathers was Judeo-Christian. That is the religion upon which our nation was founded. If we intend to retain our freedom, liberty, and justice, wouldn't it behoove us to guard our educational institutions and their religious foundations closely?
Because these issues are ones which may deeply divide us, we have a tendency to sweep them under the rug - we don't look at them, we don't want to discuss them and therefore, we don't deal with them. It becomes much easier to call names than to address philosophical differences.
In closing, I draw your attention to this quote from the manuscript, page 49 and again on page 289,
"Kids in Schools for the Twenty-first Century are performing above the academic level of traditional schools."
This manuscript disparages standardized testing based, again, on anecdotal testimony—how teachers feel about standardized tests. In the Spring of 1997, schools state-wide participated in the first run of the fourth grade assessment. The schools involved in the 21st Century program would be, for the first time, measured according to their own criteria. As 21st Century Schools, with between seven and nine years of education reform behind them, with fourth graders who have been in "the system" since day one, these students should have outperformed the 'traditional' schools. Did they? The results of this assessment, more than this 782 page manuscript, provides the evidence of the success or failure of the Schools for the Twenty-first Century. (overhead) These scores were figured and aggregated using the same formulas and figures used by the state to figure and aggregate the scores. Of the 38 elementary schools in the 21st Century program, 36 participated in the assessment. Of those 36, only 8 managed to meet or exceed the state-wide scores in all categories. That is 22%, ladies and gentlemen. Is this how we define success? With this kind of 'success rate', what will our schools, statewide, be producing in three to five years?
Roxanne Sitler
In summary, what we have presented to you, for your consideration, is just a small part of a much bigger story - a story which is fully revealed within the pages of this manuscript. As citizens, what we discovered in researching Schools for the 21st Century, is that the success of this program has, in our estimation, been grossly exaggerated, even to the point of misrepresentation. As revealed in an earlier quote, those inside the project stated that the improvements in student learning, their success, could not be measured or quantified. Therefore, the statement in the final report which states that C21 kids are performing above the academic level of traditional schools must be questioned as to its validity and reliability.
You might be tempted to brush all this off as insignificant, but, given the fact that this program was used as a pilot, not only for the State of Washington, but for the entire nation, it would be wise to look into these concerns further. Again, this project was important, not only to the foundation of education reform here in our state, but was also influential at the national level. In order to support that statement, I will read just a few of the many quotes from 21st Century Reports and national documents which indicate that this project did indeed pilot a state and national philosophy of education reform. 1993 Full Report to the Legislature State Board of Education Letter.
"We believe that the Schools for the 21st Century program has played a key role in educational restructuring throughout the state and has been a catalyst for significant changes, such as the movement towards outcome-based education, site-based management, and the passage of the Education Reform bill of 1992."
Page 5, "Since 1987, Washington has made a sizable investment in the Schools for the 21st Century Program. With the passage of the School Reform bill of 1992 and its plan for transitioning to locally-based decision making and outcome-based education by 1998, the state is now well positioned to make good use of its Schools for the 21st Century resources. The next years are the time for final reporting and for dissemination of the most effective accomplishments of the Schools for the 21st Century projects. Therefore, a process must be developed to establish a statewide network to link these projects with other schools at varying stages of educational reform. The State Board of Education recommends mentor relationships under current levels of funding as the most effective and cost efficient way of accomplishing this."Page 130, "Compared with restructuring schools and districts across the country, Washington provides many of the cutting edge examples of changes in school culture, organization, and practice" (Jane David-NCEE as part of a report to the Governor's Council on Reform and Funding).
1993 Report to the Legislature - Executive summary
Page 5, "It is interesting to note that with passage of the 1992 Education Reform Bill (SSB5953), other districts will have the opportunity to request similar waivers, and the entire state will transition toward outcome-based education." 1995 Final Report to the Legislature Page 5, "What we have learned from the Schools for the 21st Century projects will continue to provide firsthand educational restructuring information to the state as it moves ahead with systemwide reform under ESHB 1209 in 1993 and ESHB 2950 in 1994."
1995 Final Report - Executive summary
Page 10, "Policymakers and educators across the country have been following the nation's first and most far-reaching of the school restructuring initiatives. Included in the complete Report to the Legislature on the Schools for the 21st Century Program are reports written about the program by the following: Jane David of National Center on Education and the Economy, Peter Holly of Gheens Academy for Educational Research in Louisville, Kentucky, Geoff Southworth of Cambridge Institute of Education in England, additional reports from Policy Research Associates in Washington DC and SRI and Associates in Palo Alto, CA…"
The Seattle Times - July 9, 1991
"President Bush has announced a new education initiative based on a program borrowed from a source some Washington teachers might question - Gov. Booth Gardner. Bush yesterday said he would ask corporate leaders to raise between $150 million and $200 million to finance a school program based on Gardner's Schools for the 21st Century…good ideas are at work out there in the state of Washington", Bush said in the White House Rose Garden after a meeting with Lt. Governor Joel Pritchard and school officials from Edmonds and Bellevue. Bush’s national schools campaign called America 2000 was announced in April."
America 2000, An Education Strategy, George Bush, Track II, For Tomorrow's Students: A New Generation of American Schools, Strategy:
"We will unleash America’s creative genius to invent and establish a New Generation of American Schools…A number of excellent projects and inspired initiatives already point the way. These include Washington State’s Schools for the 21st Century…the mission is to help create schools that will reach to National Education Goals and the World Class Standards…Governors will work within their own states to develop strategies for restructuring their education system in order to achieve the goals." (Note: This refers to the Design Teams which were chosen by Bush's New American Schools Development Corporation. Washington state signed into an agreement with Marc Tucker’s NCEE design team, National Alliance for Restructuring Education - as noted earlier, Tucker was a consultant to Governor Gardner’s staff at the time of the writing of the Schools For the 21st Century Legislation)
Resource Document
Page 76 & 77, "This venture will provide an extensive support infrastructure for state-wide reform in the form of nested site-based development. The nesting will take place in seven state-wide regional clusters within which individual school sites and school districts will form what we like to refer to as the implementation zone....Networking will be a key feature of this initiative - both within and across the regional clusters.....These sites, ably supported by the internal facilitators, will provide the 'front-line' for implementation of reforms initiated at the State and Federal levels, e.g. Goals 2000."
I believe these statements present the irrefutable evidence that this pilot has had widespread impact on the present reality of education reform. Clearly, here in our state, the intention was to use the information learned and the practices of those themes common to the pilot projects, as a basis for restructuring our statewide system. Shouldn't we be asking ourselves the question of why the pilot schools, which were deep into the philosophies of the paradigm shift of education restructuring, didn’t do any better on an assessment which was supposedly designed to assess so-called authentic learning? Washington's new 4th grade assessment is a performance-based assessment. As noted previously, the consultants and those stakeholders of C21 projects stated their belief that standardized testing does a poor job of measuring what children should know and be able to do; what children should be like - the essence of their definition of student learning. And yet, by an assessment tool specifically designed to measure this definition of learning, Schools for the 21st Century scored lower, as a whole, than did more traditional schools whose exposure to reform practices has been less comprehensive.
I would say we need to ask some hard questions here. The theories and philosophies of education, upon which we are securing our future, are failing by measurable standards. After studying the reports on the Schools for the 21st Century, we have concerns about what we see is meant by student learning and we have concerns about how success is defined and measured. Semantics are critical, definitions are critical - knowing exactly what is meant by increased student learning and knowing how that learning is measured is fundamental to the issue. Citizens, for the most part, have the basic understanding that student learning is about academic achievement in the traditional sense. They do not understand this paradigm shift - this shift which is presented wholly in Peter Holly’s report - this report that never saw the light of day. It’s in here; this is the place where you find the truth of what is meant by student learning. Few have ever seen it, including those who were supposed to have considered its contents.
Our fear is that, like so many reports that have gone before it, it will sit in the archives, gathering dust while education restructuring goes on, undisturbed in its implementation. Considering the little bit of this that we have been able to pare down for you, we respectfully encourage you to undertake a full investigation into this matter of education restructuring in the state of Washington. As you know, education takes over 50% of the entire state budget but, more importantly, education lays a foundation for all of our futures. To allow restructuring to continue without answering some of the obvious questions and concerns raised here tonight, would seem like rather careless stewardship. Do we not owe it to the citizens of this state, and our children to make sure that we know NOW if we are making a costly mistake, a mistake that costs not only in terms of dollars - but even more importantly, a mistake from which children may never recover. Thank you for allowing us to come before you tonight - we have appreciated this opportunity afforded us by the Senate Education Committee. We thank you for your time and your attentiveness.