Issue

I don't think that teachers can avoid transmitting values. When and how did we decide, as a profession, that attitudes and values could be removed from the (merely) cognitive in instruction? "Good job" scrawled on a homework assignment, mandatory attendance policies, the discouragement of cheating on tests, the Pledge of Allegiance—these teach a constellation of values. One cannot not teach values. OBE simply offers a means to teach values consciously rather than inadvertently.Concerns about OBE have emerged largely from certain religiously oriented constituencies. Isn't their real concern which particular values and attitudes should be taught in public schools? Would OBE be criticized if the values reflected in, say, the McGuffey Reader were the ones students were required to demonstrate? We have debated the purpose of American education, especially relative to values, since the beginning of our republic (those old "secular humanists," Ben Franklin and Tom Jefferson, partly inaugurating the discourse). This debate—over why we educate students and what they should learn—defines the purpose of education in America.Outcome-based education, however, is mostly about the how—how we specify and measure the transmission of cultural attitudes that have always been part of schools. Eliminating OBE will not make values disappear from the curriculum. Why confuse a technology for how to do school with the political question of why to have schools?—Bernie Neiweem is the Outreach Counselor at Wheeling High School, Wheeling, Ill., and serves on the faculty of the Illinois State Board of Education Administrators' Academy.

The questions as posed confound several distinct issues. First, schools have an obligation to prepare young people for life beyond the classroom in a challenging and complex Information Age world. Traditional "academic" content, procedures, assignments, learning, tests, and credentials simply don't match up to—or prepare students adequately for—the dynamic, complex, interpersonal performances required in life-role situations.Second, if schools are to meet this obligation, they must foster learning that embodies the skills and behaviors that successful people manifest in their occupational, civic, and personal lives. Thus schools must give students extensive, learner-friendly experience and support in dealing with the issues, conditions, and challenges they will face in the future.Third, outcomes are culminating demonstrations of learning that occur in authentic performance contexts. While they range from simple, discrete content skills to complex life-role performances, they are not values, attitudes, or affective states by themselves. Successful demonstrations require three essential components: knowledge, competence, and performance "orientations" such as motivation, confidence, and willingness. Those who implement OBE should do everything necessary to strengthen these three components in their students but ultimately hold them accountable only for successful performances.—William Spady is director of the High Success Network on Outcome-Based Restructuring in Eagle, Colo. He works with educational systems throughout North America.

OBE is a philosophical approach to the education of children, and its main purpose is to help students acquire the knowledge, skills, and competencies that will help them be successful in an ever-changing society.OBE demands a thorough assessment of the kinds of outcomes that will enhance young people's chances of success. Sometimes we must establish outcomes that are nonacademic but are necessary to equip students with skills to survive in the real world.The philosophical premise of OBE holds that nonacademic outcomes are appropriate and should be included when developing program, course, and unit outcomes. Traditionally, classroom teachers endeavor to teach the "whole" person; therefore, they include academic and nonacademic behavioral outcomes in their course or unit outlines.To require students to demonstrate such outcomes to graduate is still very heavily debated in school districts with established OBE programs. No aspect of OBE evokes more reaction than the component dealing with the assessment, grading, reporting, and credentialing of student learning, for (as Spady has noted) it is here that some of the most fundamental aspects of educational philosophy, practices, and decision making are played out.—Moody Jackson is associate principal at Carl Hayden Community High School in Phoenix, Ariz.

Making nonacademic outcomes required for graduation could actually decrease the chances that students will develop the attitudes and values that these outcomes contain. First, defining and assessing these outcomes, which must be done if they are graduation requirements, leads to controversy and can polarize factions within the schools and in the community. Productive dialogue breaks down, and the goals are lost. Second, making these outcomes graduation requirements puts the emphasis on determining whether students have attained the outcomes, rather than on finding ways to help students attain them. An emphasis on assessing and reporting out, rather than on learning, does not serve the students or the outcomes.Instead of assessing students, perhaps we should use the criteria in nonacademic outcomes to assess our schools and classrooms, to determine if they are places where students have experiences and opportunities that help them develop productive attitudes and values. If we generally agree that students need to be self-directed, for instance, let's assess the extent to which classrooms expect, encourage, and reinforce self-direction.Before we assess and hold students accountable for these nonacademic outcomes—in fact, for academic outcomes—we must be confident that our classrooms are places where all students have access to the knowledge contained in those outcomes. Hopefully, the legacy of outcome-based education will be that we have more clearly defined high standards and have held ourselves accountable.—Debra Pickering is senior associate at the Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory (McREL) in Aurora, Colo.