KINDER'S COMMENTARY: SCHOOL STANDARDS SESSION MAY BE MOMENTOUS ONE

This Tuesday, April 25, may be a momentous date in the history of Missouri's educational reform effort. That is the date for what was to have been the final meeting of the Commission on Performance, a 28-member body set up under Senate Bill 380 to recommend academic performance standards to the state school board.

Pause right here to note a disturbing fact: Two years ago, Missouri lawmakers, at the behest of Gov. Mel Carnahan, passed a law (Senate Bill 380) giving to one unelected body -- the aforementioned commission -- authority to draft and recommend to another unelected body -- the state school board -- a new straitjacket for all Missouri schools.

Through the entire reform process there have been plenty of pious cliches and empty chatter about involving business, parents and other consumers of education. In fact, though, opportunities for outsiders or principled critics to affect the reform process have been almost non-existent. A brilliantly written dissenting report to the work of the commission, complete with compelling articles from sources nationwide, has been completely ignored by those who have the whip hand within the commission, as at other points in this process.

Inside the hermetically sealed echo chambers of the education establishment, a narrow agenda has been relentlessly pursued -- and flat-out lied about -- by Dr. Bob Bartman and some of his underlings at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. That agenda isn't really denied by Dr. Bartman today and, despite his repeated evasions, is confirmed by his own documents as late as December 1992 and by certain high-ranking Bartman deputies as late as spring 1993. It is this: to move all Missouri school districts to a variety of Outcome Based Education no later than the year 2000.

Slowly, Missourians across our state have been waking up to the real meaning of SB 380 and to the agenda being pursued by the insulated folks at DESE. For some, it was the sharply higher taxes SB 380 brought, which most didn't know about because they didn't kick in until the filing of this spring's tax returns. For others, it is the A-Plus Schools Program or a science pilot program featuring politically correct indoctrination called "Trash Troubles" currently being tried out in some Southeast Missouri districts. For others, it is the reading they are doing about the onset of OBE in other states.

Anyone who doubts my claim that this has been an insulated, even hermetically sealed, process should read a letter dated April 3 from Dr. Bartman to Sen. Steve Ehlmann, my colleague from St. Charles and a member of the Commission on Performance. Sen. Elhmann had written earlier to Bartman concerning the April 25 meeting. Among his questions about the meeting agenda: Would there be any opportunity for citizens to address the commission before that group met, at their last meeting, to adopt the academic performance standards?

Bartman's characteristically arrogant reply: "There will not be an opportunity for individuals other than those involved in the process ... to address the commission. ..."

Well, folks, Dr. Bartman got rolled on that one. After strenuous effort by many of us, even intervening with the governor, who sits on the commission, Tuesday's meeting will feature a 30-minute presentation by the two authors of the dissenting report, plus a history professor from Missouri Western College in St. Joseph. I'll be reporting on the "outcome" of Tuesday's meeting this coming week.

Dr. Bartman may yet get his way, but it won't be without a fight. Along the way, thousands of Missourians are getting educated about what are, after all, our own schools.

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.