Journal of the Effective Schools Project, Volume 1, 1994 Page: 7
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Also, there's the board of education. We've had
wonderful board members (forgive me for saying "we"; I
still think of myself as part of Johnson City), who allow the
administrators and teachers to do their job.
Another factor is how intentional we are about
everything we do-intentional about what we want students
to learn, about alignment of instruction, about creating
standards and holding kids accountable.
Now we're getting to the techniques of outcome-based
education.
Yes, but none of them makes a difference unless you have the
right environment. You've got to have the dedication of the
staff. You've got to reach consensus on the mission of the
school. Our mission, by the way, has been clear for a long
time. It is that all students will learn we...
At one time, you described what you were doing as mastery
learning, right?
Yes, I remember reading Bloom's first article on Learning
for Mastery back in 1968 and being fascinated by what he
said. So we started our journey with what I would now call
"mastery learning 1". We broke with the traditional. Instead
of kids having to guess what would be on the exam, we began
saying very clearly in 1972, "This is what children have to
learn; let us intentionally align our instruction with this
outcome." We broke away from the norm-referenced test to
the criterion-referenced test.
And boy, did we make mistakes. But we were doing
our best. And we learned from our experience. Forexample,
we tried individualized instruction; that didn't work. In
retrospect, I can see that we went through three different
phases of mastery learning until we got to outcome-based
learning.
What do you see as the major difference between mastery
learning and outcome-based education?
For us, mastery learning involved instructional alignment.
We emphasized correctives for some students while others
got enrichment. But then it changed; we grew up a bit. We
used better criterion-referenced tests, and we began to get
many more students leamring-but the emphasis was still on
what the teacher did: teaching to the outcomes, teaching to
criteria that we had established.We were doing very well-but then we began to see that if
we really wanted outcome-based learning, if we wanted
students to be self-directed, we had to get them involved in
self-assessment.
That's what I think makes OBE different. For
example, in virtually all our classes, students are given
opportunities to demonstrate to the teacher that they under-
stand, The criteria are still being used-but it's the students
who are using them.
We believe in co-assessment. Before students turn
in a paper-in elementary or in secondary schools, not in
every classroom but in most classrooms-they have to
judge whether that paper is their personal best. If it is, they
sign it. Parents tell me that, with that simple technique,
students are not willing to hand in anything but quality.
Of course, teachers get involved, too-because it is
co-assessment-using the standards of quality that the teach-
ers and students have established together.
There's a lot of controversy across the country these days
about outcome-based education. What does the term mean
to you?
Well, in the past, we'd take action hoping that something
good would happen. We would do open education, or
flexible scheduling, or quality circles, hoping something
good would happen. Outcome-based education turned that
whole process around. What it says is, what do you want to
happen? What outcomes do you really want to achieve?
Start with your outcomes and let your outcomes drive your
actions.
It's a simple idea, really. Know what you're trying
to produce, use the best research in the field, and then take
action according to the outcomes. But also your outcomes
should serve as a screen. When we consider doing some-
thing, we always ask, "If we take that action, will it get us
what we want?"
Getting clear about the purposes of education can be
difficult. Has Johnson City found a way to state outcomes
in a way that is brief enough for people to grasp and still
comprehensive enough to cover the whole educational
program?
Yes. Johnson City has three basic outcomes. The first is
academics. These are the parts you ought to be grading,
nothing else. Under academics, we want students to be able
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Tarleton State University. Effective Schools Project. Journal of the Effective Schools Project, Volume 1, 1994, periodical, 1994; Stephenville, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth201678/m1/7/?rotate=270: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Tarleton State University.