The Making of an Obsession – Part 1 of 17

Well, my pity party is over – I would like to thank all of you who came. Back to the issues that mean the most to mothers across the country – crafts (insert sarcasm here). In honor of our nation’s birthday, I thought I’d pass along a crafting idea that the whole family can do together. Here is the link to a patriotic wind chime you can make with your children. For those of you who do not want to channel Martha, I thought I would provide a brief (?) history of how Brenda became ‘obsessed’ with the underbelly of RUSD.

As mentioned earlier, I was happily ignorant until about 5 years ago when I started hearing grumblings about the new teaching strategy, Continuous Progress, and the highly paid consultants that were bringing it to our district. When I pressed RUSD staff for more information, I was given the name of the head consultant – Dr. John “Jack” Champlin. Once I verified he was indeed highly paid (by looking at 6 months worth of RUSD payment vouchers; thanks again Armin and Mike for telling me this information was available for free at the library), I did a quick Google search to find more about Dr. Champlin and his staff.

What I discovered was disturbing to say the least. The very same Dr. Champlin that was directing our reform process was once the superintendent of the Johnson City (NY) district where his reform measures were considered controversial and critics of the plan correctly forecasted that the plan would “be remembered as a failed experiment.”

In the May 1999 edition of the Education Reporter, there is a story detailing the demise of Champlin’s OBE reform plan and why it failed to raise test scores as promised.
The similarities between Johnson City and Racine are astounding:

“Veteran teachers and administrators told horror stories of how he ruthlessly brushed aside anyone and anything standing in his way”

Many teachers and principals feel the same way; Continuous Progress (same plan, new name) has been shoved down the throats of our educational professionals.

He blamed its failure on the loss of will to "sustain significant change."

Dr. Hicks, our own superintendent, is now blaming the teachers for the lack of improvement in our test scores.

I challenge each and every one of you to spend a little time on the internet and find out a little more of Outcome-Based Education, and then ask yourself this question – “Is this really the best approach for all of our children?” Remember, the acronyms keep changing as each approach is deemed a failure. What was Mastery Learning (ML) is now Continuous Progress, and we still have 3rd graders that can’t spell ‘was’ and 4th graders reading at 1st grade level. No wonder we haven’t seen the promised test results, we have 4th graders who have never seen 4th grade material in the classroom.