MEMORANDUM TO U.S. CONGRESSMEN AND SENATORS
FROM: Maple River Education Coalition PAC (or
"MrEdCo") - http://edaction.org
RE: ESEA Re-authorization/Constituent Objections
DATE: 2/14/00
Many Minnesotans are unhappy with education policy. A number of grassroots parent organizations focus on reform at the state level, and there are similar parent groups working in other states. We, and similar groups, believe our efforts at reform will be blocked by the current ESEA re-authorization embodied in H.R.2. This memo explains why.
Following passage of School-to-Work, Goals 2000 and the ESEA re-authorizing (H.R.6) legislation in 1994, the State of Minnesota obtained the federal funding grants to aggressively implement the principles and mandates contained in the bill. This involved re-defining the purpose of an elementary and secondary education away from cultivating a well-rounded educated citizen able to think critically and logically, and toward training students in job skills. This is accomplished in part by applying regional data on employment trends and channeling students toward these anticipated jobs. Critics of School-to-Work believe it turns most all of education into career training. The educational system in Minnesota and in other states begins as early as kindergarten to intrusively direct students toward specific career paths, long before students are ready to make such decisions, rather than providing them a liberal arts education and respecting their right to make such decisions for themselves at a later date. In the meantime, students are being crippled academically, as only career-based (or job-based) curriculum is included.
While the goal is supposedly to prepare students for the workforce, the School-to-work effort is failing its stated goal. Students get school credit for working in entry level, service jobs instead of spending time obtaining a rigorous, substantive education. (MrEdCo believes a challenging, liberal arts education is the best preparation for the workplace, and that being pigeonholed for future jobs as early as middle school is counterproductive.) The workforce development emphasis also leans toward low paying, service jobs that local employers may need to fill. The curriculum is being driven by local business interests through local business-education partnerships, bypassing locally elected school board authority. An academic curriculum, what there is of it, is only contextual to the identified career path.
In exchange for a federal Goals 2000 grant, Minnesota was required to create, and did create, a state-wide performance assessment system, which it called the "Profile of Learning" (or "Profile") The Profile sets forth a series of vague, ambiguous goals that students must demonstrate in order to graduate. These goals include "purposeful thinking, effective communicating, self-directed learning, productive group participation, and responsible citizenship". The Education Department describes these goals as the answer to the question: "What do you want students to be like when they leave our schools?" (The question is not, "What do you want students to know?") The goals are more about attitudes, values and behavior than about knowledge. The department even commonly describes these goals as "behaviors." Students display their mastery of these goals by creating charts and graphs, learning technical reading and writing, working on projects in groups and other supposedly job-related activities that are decidedly non-academic. The Minnesota students often describe it as empty "busy work." The mandatory rubric scoring system is 1 through 4, with 1 requiring little more than mere participation. Only a 1 is required to pass. The Profile is a dramatic dumbing down of the curriculum.
Parents are alarmed. The Profile is widely unpopular in Minnesota, with teacher support for the program at only 9%. While Minnesota has had outcome-based education (OBE) sporadically for 15 years, Goals 2000 allowed OBE to be solidified and forced upon the entire state.
Eighth grade Minnesota students are also tested with a "basic skills" test, which is nothing more than a functional literacy: a 6th grade level test of basic math and English questions, and a 10th grade writing test. It is described as a "safety net" to identify low performing students. The Basic Skills tests set a very low standard for students to achieve. It is the only high stakes test a Minnesota student has to pass to graduate. Moreover, students who fail the Basic Skills tests seem to have no problem passing the allegedly "high standards" embodied in the Profile itself. The Profile standards, as discussed above, are anything but "high." Thus, there is no substantive test to ensure that Minnesota students are learning a core body of knowledge.
The work products resulting from the Profile are accumulated into individual student portfolios. A portfolio is an data file, most of it computerized. This information is used to help corral students toward specific careers and employers. The technology is in place to electronically collect and share the information between schools, future employers and government agencies. This so-called "educational data" (as now defined in Minnesota Statutes) is completely unlimited in nature, with no limitations whatever on how invasive it may be, and specifically includes unlimited data on the student's health and "mental problems", all jobs and all manner of volunteer service (all of which are invasive information about the student's personal values and beliefs). The collected data also has extensive parental information, including marital status, income level, educational background, previous addresses, quality of family relationships, and more.
The Profile and School-to-Work/Goals 2000 model recently implemented in Minnesota will be cemented into place by H.R.2. It has already removed authority from locally elected school boards. Curriculum must now conform to the workforce standards and aligned with the SCANS skills standards defined and established at the federal level. (SCANS is the Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, a federal Department of Labor definition of workplace competencies.) Officials at all levels within this labor market system are appointed, not elected, so-called "partnership" boards. They are replacing the locally elected school boards in making curriculum decisions.
The STW planners are explicitly creating a unified plan that aligns various federal funding sources so that federal funding continues after STW is over. These include funds through Carl D. Perkins, Vocation Technical Education Act (Perkins III), Tech-Prep Education, Title II of Perkins III, Title I of Workforce Investment Act, Title II of Workforce Investment Act, Food Stamp Employment Training Program, 2 of Title II of Trade Act of 1974, the Wagner-Peyser Act and others.
MrEdCo and other Minnesota parents want to eliminate the Profile of Learning/School-to-Work system, re-establish real academic achievement and return authority to the local school boards. However, H.R.2 substantially hinders those goals. For instance, in Section 105 of H.R.2, such terms as "specify what children are expected to know and be able to do" and "performance based standards" are terms of art of the previous School-to-Work/Goals 2000 bills that are sunsetting soon. These terms were used to implement the Profile of Learning in Minnesota.
Here are some specific concerns:
H.R.2 and H.R.2300 continue the ongoing revolution in education reform away from knowledge-based academic curriculum and toward ideologically-centered curriculum by mandating that a state plan must certify development and implementation of state content and performance standards aligned with state assessments.
Goals 2000 required participating states to define state content standards as aligned with federal guidelines. Likewise, states applying for School-to-Work (STW) grants also agreed to develop and implement performance standards aligned with state content standards and state assessment standards as per Goals 2000. This highly integrated system, together with the dictates of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) of 1998, and the Carl Perkins Act of 1998 define the states’ present performance standards now adopted and currently undergoing implementation across the nation. In other words, for a state to access Title I, et seq. monies, a state must prove it has both state content (Goals 2000) and state performance (School-to-Work/WIA) standards developed and in the process of implementation.
As all 50 states have recently spent hundreds of millions of dollars designing and implementing content and performance standards, and as H.R.2 and H.R.2300 require state certification of these standards, it is unreasonable to believe states would chuck the recently required educational reforms in favor of content and performance standards outside the requirements of federal grant funds.
State performance standards, per federal STW requirements, are based on a US Dept. of Labor document (known as the SCANS Report - or Secretaries Commission On Achieving Necessary Skills). Due to the nationalization of curricula, assessments and professional staff development and licensure, we have witnessed a radical shift in the focus and mission of public schooling away from a child’s acquisition of knowledge, facts and information - and toward narrow job training skills as needed in the local job marketplace.
Simply stated, in this new system of K-12 workforce training, a child will not be educated beyond the level of his or her designated job training. General track, K-12 liberal arts training will no longer be the norm, nor a mandated option for all publicly educated children.
Authority over education shifts from locally elected school boards and parents to the US Secretary of Education and a state’s education secretary and, to some extent, appointed educational agencies (not to be confused with a locally elected school board). Under both H.R.2 and H.R.2300 the schools become ultimately accountable to the US Secretary of Education for failure to adhere to the national/state educational performance agreement.
H.R.2 and H.R.2300 (Straight A’s) requires affirmative action for public education, as both ask for quotas of educational achievement by group affiliation. This affirmative action in education is required to occur according to predetermined federal timetables. H.R.2 and H.R.2300 negate the principle of equal opportunity for academic success for all, in favor of government insistence of equal results for all. H.R.2 and H.R.2300 flatline educational achievement and diversity by requiring group rather than individual achievement. Incentives are given to states which encourage flat-lining of educational achievement. This idea, taken from redistribution of economic wealth, seeks to redistribute knowledge and educational results.
Local schools collect data on a child’s group affiliations, including: race, ethnicity, gender, English proficiency, migrant status and income level. Student assessment data, based upon SCANS generated performance goals, are compared by group classification. The data are shared with local, state and federal agencies. No provisions are made for families to remove a child from the federal data collection mandates.
H.R.2 and H.R.2300 fail to eliminate the Goals 2000/School-to-Work performance standards, and, in fact, mandate their continuation. If left in current form, these bills prevent individual states from opting out of these standards, as provisions in both bills mandate continuation of state performance standards and assessments throughout the term of the national/state performance agreements, which in the case of H.R.2300, Sec.3(6)(C) Consistency of Performance Measures, is five years.
Some of MrEdCo’s suggested reforms include: allowing norm-referenced tests to replace state performance assessments, eliminating the requirements of state performance assessments, limitations on the collection of personal student data, and other concerns.
MrEdCo members look for the opportunity to discuss these issues with you.