Outcome-based education
Encyclopedia
Outcome-based education (OBE) is a recurring education reform
Education reform
Education reform is the process of improving public education. Small improvements in education theoretically have large social returns, in health, wealth and well-being. Historically, reforms have taken different forms because the motivations of reformers have differed.A continuing motivation has...

 model. It is a student-centered learning philosophy that focuses on empirical
Empirical
The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation or experimentation. Empirical data are data produced by an experiment or observation....

ly measuring student performance, which are called outcomes. OBE contrasts with traditional education
Traditional education
Traditional education or back-to-basics refers to long-established customs found in schools that society has traditionally deemed appropriate. Some forms of education reform promote the adoption of progressive education practices, a more holistic approach which focuses on individual students'...

, which primarily focuses on the resources that are available to the student, which are called inputs. While OBE implementations often incorporate a host of many progressive pedagogical models and ideas, such as reform mathematics
Reform mathematics
Reform mathematics is an approach to mathematics education, particularly in North America. It is based on principles explained in 1989 by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics . The NCTM document, Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics, attempted to set forth a vision...

, block scheduling
Block scheduling
Block scheduling is a type of academic scheduling in which each student has fewer classes per day but each class is scheduled for a longer period of time . A student might be taking 7 different classes, but only 4 per day, and the specific daily classes would rotate through a changing daily cycle...

, project-based learning
Project-based learning
Project-based learning, or PBL, is the use of in-depth and rigorous classroom projects to facilitate learning and assess student competence . Students use technology and inquiry to respond to a complex issue, problem or challenge...

 and whole language
Whole language
Whole language describes a literacy philosophy which emphasizes that children should focus on meaning and strategy instruction. It is often contrasted with phonics-based methods of teaching reading and writing which emphasize instruction for decoding and spelling. However, from whole language...

 reading, OBE in itself does not specify or require any particular style of teaching or learning. Instead, it requires that students demonstrate that they have learned the required skills and content. However in practice, OBE generally promotes curricula and assessment based on constructivist
Constructivism (learning theory)
Constructivism is a theory of knowledge that argues that humans generate knowledge and meaning from an interaction between their experiences and their ideas. During infancy, it was an interaction between human experiences and their reflexes or behavior-patterns. Piaget called these systems of...

 methods and discourages traditional education
Traditional education
Traditional education or back-to-basics refers to long-established customs found in schools that society has traditionally deemed appropriate. Some forms of education reform promote the adoption of progressive education practices, a more holistic approach which focuses on individual students'...

 approaches based on direct instruction
Direct instruction
Direct Instruction is an instructional method that is focused on systematic curriculum design and skillful implementation of a prescribed behavioral script....

 of facts and standard methods. Though it is claimed the focus is not on "inputs", OBE generally is used to justify increased funding requirements, increased graduation and testing requirements, and additional preparation, homework, and continuing education time spent by students, parents and teachers in supporting learning.

Each independent education agency specifies its own outcomes and its own methods of measuring student achievement according to those outcomes. The results of these measurements can be used for different purposes. For example, one agency may use the information to determine how well the overall education system is performing, and another may use its assessments to determine whether an individual student has learned required material.

Outcome-based methods have been adopted for large numbers of students in several countries. In the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills
Texas Assessment of Academic Skills
The TAAS, or Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, was a standardized test used in Texas between 1991 and 2002, when it was replaced by the TAKS test from 2003 to 2009. Prior to 1990, the test was known as the Texas Educational Assessment of Minimum Skills or TEAMS . It was used from grades 3...

 started in 1991. In Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, implementation of OBE in Western Australia
Western Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

 was widely criticised by parents and teachers and was mostly dropped in January 2007. In South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

, OBE was dropped in mid 2010. On a smaller scale, some OBE practices, such as not passing a student who does not know the required material, have been used by individual teachers around the world for centuries.

OBE was a popular term in the United States during the 1980s and early 1990s. It is also called mastery education, performance-based education, and other names.

What is OE?

Outcome-based education is a model of education that rejects the traditional focus on what the school provides to students, in favor of making students demonstrate that they "know and are able to do" whatever the required outcomes are.

OBE reforms emphasize setting clear standards for observable, measurable outcomes. Nothing about OBE demands the adoption of any specific outcome. For example, many countries write their OBE standards so that they focus strictly on mathematics, language, science, and history, without ever referring to attitudes, social skills, or moral values.

The key features which may be used to judge if a system has implemented an outcomes-based education systems are:
  • Creation of a curriculum framework
    Curriculum framework
    A curriculum framework is an organized plan or set of standards or learning outcomes that defines the content to be learned in terms of clear, definable standards of what the student should know and be able to do....

     that outlines specific, measurable outcomes. The standards included in the frameworks are usually chosen through the area's normal political process.
  • A commitment not only to provide an opportunity of education, but to require learning outcomes for advancement. Promotion to the next grade, a diploma
    Diploma
    A diploma is a certificate or deed issued by an educational institution, such as a university, that testifies that the recipient has successfully completed a particular course of study or confers an academic degree. In countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia, the word diploma refers to...

    , or other reward is granted upon achievement of the standards, while extra classes, repeating the year, or other consequences entail upon those who do not meet the standards.
  • Standards-based assessment
    Standards-based assessment
    A standards based test is one based on the outcome-based education or performance-based education philosophy. Assessment is a key part of the standards reform movement. The first part is to set new, higher standards to be expected of every student. Then the curriculum must be aligned to the new...

    s that determines whether students have achieved the stated standard. Assessments may take any form, so long as the assessments actually measure whether the student knows the required information or can perform the required task.
  • A commitment that all students of all groups will ultimately reach the same minimum standards. Schools may not "give up" on unsuccessful students.

Outcomes

The emphasis in an OBE education system is on measured outcomes rather than "inputs," such as how many hours students spend in class, or what textbooks are provided. Outcomes may include a range of skills and knowledge. Generally, outcomes are expected to be concretely measurable, that is, "Student can run 50 meters in less than one minute" instead of "Student enjoys physical education class." A complete system of outcomes for a subject area normally includes everything from mere recitation of fact ("Students will name three tragedies written by Shakespeare") to complex analysis and interpretation ("Student will analyze the social context of a Shakespearean tragedy
Shakespearean tragedy
Shakespeare wrote tragedies from the beginning of his career. One of his earliest plays was the Roman tragedy Titus Andronicus, which he followed a few years later with Romeo and Juliet. However, his most admired tragedies were written in a seven-year period between 1601 and 1608...

 in an essay"). Writing appropriate and measurable outcomes can be very difficult, and the choice of specific outcomes is often a source of local controversies.

Each educational agency is responsible for setting its own outcomes. Under the OBE model, education agencies may specify any outcome (skills and knowledge), but not inputs (field trips, arrangement of the school day, teaching styles). Some popular models of outcomes include the National Science Education Standards
National Science Education Standards
The National Science Education Standards are a set of guidelines for the science education in primary and secondary schools in the United States, as established by the National Research Council in 1996. These provide a set of goals for teachers to set for their students and for administrators to...

 and the NCTM's Principles and Standards for School Mathematics
Principles and Standards for School Mathematics
Principles and Standards for School Mathematics are guidelines produced by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in 2000, setting forth recommendations for mathematics educators. They form a national vision for preschool through twelfth grade mathematics education in the US and Canada...

.

Approaches to grading, reporting, and promoting

An important by-product of this approach is that students are assessed against external, absolute objectives, instead of reporting the students' relative achievements. The traditional model of grading on a curve (top student gets the best grade, worst student always fails (even if they know all the material), everyone else is evenly distributed in the middle) is never accepted in OBE or standards-based education. Instead, a student's performance is related in absolute terms: "Jane knows how to write the letters of the alphabet" or "Jane answered 80% of questions correctly" instead of "Jane answered more questions correctly than Mary."

Under OBE, teachers can use any objective grading system they choose, including letter grades. In fact, many schools adopt OBE methods and use the same grading systems that they have always used. However, for the purposes of graduation, advancement, and retention, a fully developed OBE system generally tracks and reports not just a single overall grade for a subject, but also give information about several specific outcomes within that subject. For example, rather than just getting a passing grade for mathematics, a student might be assessed as level 4 for number sense, level 5 for algebraic concepts, level 3 for measurement skills, etc. This approach is valuable to schools and parents by specifically identifying a student's strengths and weaknesses.

In one alternate grading approach, a student is awarded "levels" instead of letter grades. From Kindergarten to year 12, the student will receive either a Foundational level (which is pre-institutional) or be evidenced at levels 1 through to 8. In the simplest implementation, earning a "level" indicates that the teacher believes that a student has learned enough of the current material to be able to succeed in the next level of work. A student technically cannot flunk in this system: a student who needs to review the current material will simply not achieve the next level at the same time as most of his same-age peers. This acknowledges differential growth at different stages, and focuses the teacher on the individual needs of the students.

In this approach, students and their parents are better able to track progress from year to year, since the levels are based on criteria that remain constant for a student's whole time at school. However, this experience is perceived by some as a flaw in the system: While it is entirely normal for some students to work on the same level of outcomes for more than one year parents and students have been socialized into the expectation of a constant, steady progress through schoolwork. Parents and students therefore interpret the normal experience as failure.

This emphasis on recognizing positive achievements, and comparing the student to his own prior performance, has been accused by some of "dumbing down" education (and by others as making school much too hard), since it recognises achievement at different levels. Even those who would not achieve a passing grade in a traditional age-based approach can be recognized for their concrete, positive, individual improvements.

OBE-oriented teachers think about the individual needs of each student and give opportunities for each student to achieve at a variety of levels. Thus, in theory, weaker students are given work within their grasp and exceptionally strong students are extended. In practice, managing independent study programs for thirty or more individuals is difficult. Adjusting to students' abilities is something that good teachers have always done: OBE simply makes the approach explicit and reflects the approach in marking and reporting.

Differences with traditional education methods

In a traditional education
Traditional education
Traditional education or back-to-basics refers to long-established customs found in schools that society has traditionally deemed appropriate. Some forms of education reform promote the adoption of progressive education practices, a more holistic approach which focuses on individual students'...

 system and economy, students are given grades and rankings compared to each other. Content and performance expectations are based primarily on what was taught in the past to students of a given age. The basic goal of traditional education was to present the knowledge and skills of the old generation to the new generation of students, and to provide students with an environment in which to learn, with little attention (beyond the classroom teacher) to whether or not any student ever learns any of the material. It was enough that the school presented an opportunity to learn. Actual achievement was neither measured nor required by the school system.

In fact, under the traditional model, student performance is expected to show a wide range of abilities. The failure of some students is accepted as a natural and unavoidable circumstance. The highest-performing students are given the highest grades and test scores, and the lowest performing students are given low grades. (Local laws and traditions determine whether the lowest performing students were socially promoted
Social promotion
Social promotion is the practice of promoting a student to the next grade despite their low achievement in order to keep them with social peers...

 or made to repeat the year
Grade retention
Grade retention or grade repetition is the process of having a student repeat an educational course, usually one previously failed. Students who repeat a course are referred as "repeaters"...

.) Schools used norm-referenced test
Norm-referenced test
A norm-referenced test is a type of test, assessment, or evaluation which yields an estimate of the position of the tested individual in a predefined population, with respect to the trait being measured. This estimate is derived from the analysis of test scores and possibly other relevant data...

s, such as inexpensive, multiple-choice computer-scored questions with single correct answers, to quickly rank students on ability. These tests do not give criterion-based judgments as to whether students have met a single standard of what every student is expected to know and do: they merely rank the students in comparison with each other. In this system, grade-level expectations are defined as the performance of the median student, a level at which half the students score better and half the students score worse. By this definition, in a normal population, half of students are expected to perform above grade level and half the students below grade level, no matter how much or how little the students have learned.

Claims in favor of OBE

Proponents view OBE as a valuable replacement of the traditional model of relative ranking by ability and getting credit for merely sitting through class. Liberal politicians often support OBE because of its vision of high standards for all groups. Conservatives like the idea of measuring outputs rather than inputs (such as money spent or number of hours of lecture given) and insisting that student demonstrate learning rather than just showing up.

OBE proponents believe that all students can learn, regardless of ability, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and gender.http://eric.uoregon.edu/publications/digests/digest085.html Furthermore, OBE recognizes that a complex organization is more likely to produce what it measures, and to downplay anything it considers unimportant. The adoption of measurable standards is seen as a means of ensuring that the content and skills covered by the standards will be a high priority in the education of students.

The standards-based education movement rejects social promotion
Social promotion
Social promotion is the practice of promoting a student to the next grade despite their low achievement in order to keep them with social peers...

 and the inevitability of inferior performance by disadvantaged groups. While recognizing that some students will learn certain material faster than others, the standards movement rejects the idea that only a few can succeed. All students are capable of continuous improvement.

The opportunities that were previously afforded to those at the top of a bell curve
Bell curve
Bell curve can refer to:* A Gaussian function, a specific kind of function whose graph is a bell-shaped curve* Normal distribution, whose density function is a Gaussian function...

 are opened up to the diversity of all students, in a democratic vision, sometimes connected to social justice.

The movement presents the following positions and viewpoints on OBE:
  • All students will complete rigorous academic coursework so that they leave high school prepared for college or technical training, without remedial courses.
  • All students, including those who live in poverty, will meet district, state, and national standards.
  • Staff will maintain high expectations and standards, believing all students will succeed if kept to high expectations
  • Students should be measured against a fixed yardstick, or "against the mountain" rather than against other students.
  • We need higher world class standards for the 21st century (though no state has yet found a precise definition of the term "world-class standards").
  • Students should demonstrate that they have met standards, not just put in seat time to advance to the next level.

In essence, OBE seeks to reject a rank-ordered definition of success by essentially promising that all students will perform at least as well as the stated standards. In practice OBE often results in large increases in spending as more resources are poured into students who were previously allowed to graduate while being functionally illiterate and innumerate. OBE's objective standards also put a brake on grade inflation
Grade inflation
Grade inflation is the tendency of academic grades for work of comparable quality to increase over time.It is frequently discussed in relation to U.S. education, and to GCSEs and A levels in England and Wales...

, to the distress of students who prefer high, but meaningless, grades.

Criticism

Criticism of OBE falls into a few major groups:
  • Opposition to standardized testing
  • Criticism of inappropriate outcomes
  • Lack of evidence that OBE works
  • Extra burden on instructors and educational institutions
  • Dislike of something that is not OBE

Opposition to testing

Critics claim that existing tests do not adequately measure student mastery of the stated objectives.

Some parents also object to the use of standardized test
Standardized test
A standardized test is a test that is administered and scored in a consistent, or "standard", manner. Standardized tests are designed in such a way that the questions, conditions for administering, scoring procedures, and interpretations are consistent and are administered and scored in a...

s (all students take the same test under the same conditions) because they think it unfair for schools to require the same level of work or to use the achievement tests for impoverished or disadvantaged students as they do for more advantaged students.

The OBE philosophy insists that assessment models be carefully matched to the stated objectives. High-stakes tests are not required in an OBE system; norm-referenced test
Norm-referenced test
A norm-referenced test is a type of test, assessment, or evaluation which yields an estimate of the position of the tested individual in a predefined population, with respect to the trait being measured. This estimate is derived from the analysis of test scores and possibly other relevant data...

s are prohibited. Portfolios, daily assessments, teacher opinions, and other methods of assessment are perfectly compatible with OBE models. Furthermore, the OBE approach does not permit special, lower standards for students who have been badly served by public education in the past.

Inappropriate outcomes

Many people oppose OBE reforms because they dislike the proposed outcomes. They may think that the standards are too easy, too hard, or wrongly conceived. Finally, some so-called OBE critics oppose non-OBE reforms that were presented as a part of a wide-ranging reform "package", rather than opposing OBE itself.

Standards can be set too low:
Most fear that the focus on achievement by all students will result in "dumbing down" the definition of academic competence to a level that is achievable by even the weakest students. Critics are unhappy with having all students meet a minimum standard, instead of most students meeting a somewhat higher standard.

Some critics also question whether even such low goals are realistic or attainable, and whether success can only be framed in terms of high test scores and high incomes. The emphasis on higher reading standards and algebra for all appears to devalue vocational training and the achievement of those who do not get high test scores, but who are likely to become competent blue-collar workers.

Standards can be set too high:
Others object that the standards are too high. OBE models do not approve of social promotion
Social promotion
Social promotion is the practice of promoting a student to the next grade despite their low achievement in order to keep them with social peers...

, so non-disabled students who perform significantly below the stated standard may be held back or required to take additional instruction. Especially when the standards are relatively new, and the schools are just beginning to adjust to the new standards, a majority of students struggle with at least some of the requirements. Parents are understandably unhappy to learn that their children have not acquired the necessary skills, and occasionally respond by demanding that the standards be lowered until their children are declared to be passing.

Sometimes this demand that the standards be lowered is justified, because standards can be found developmentally inappropriate for all but the brightest students. The State of Washington found that some fourth grade WASL
Washington Assessment of Student Learning
The Washington Assessment of Student Learning was a standardized educational assessment system given as the primary assessment in the state of Washington from spring 1997 to summer 2009. The WASL was also used as a high school graduation examination beginning in the spring of 2006 and ending in 2009...

 math problems were much more difficult than what is typically expected of nine-year-old students. A 2008 draft mathematics standard proposed that Kindergartners multiply to 30 by skip counting
Skip counting
Skip counting is a mathematics technique taught as a kind of multiplication in reform mathematics textbooks such as TERC. In older textbooks, this technique is called counting by twos ....

 (also known as counting by twos: 2, 4, 6, 8...), and that second graders solve simple algebra story problems.

Committees often set standards without considering how many students are currently achieving at that level. For example, in the 1998 North Carolina Writing Assessment, less than 1 percent of fourth graders received the highest possible score for writing content. While a majority of students passed easily, parents were upset that so few were rated as being best.

Dislike of specific outcomes:
Finally, many complaints are directed against the nature of certain standards. For example, a politician might propose that standards be included for education about sex or creationism
Creationism
Creationism is the religious beliefthat humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being, most often referring to the Abrahamic god. As science developed from the 18th century onwards, various views developed which aimed to reconcile science with the Genesis...

. Opponents say that many educational agencies have adopted outcomes which focus too much on attitudes (e.g., "Students will enjoy physical education class") rather than academic content. Similarly, the "Who Controls Our Children" campaign in Pennsylvania claimed that an OBE reform effort was part of a federal program that was "stressing values over academic content, and holding students accountable for goals that are so vague and fuzzy they can't be assessed at all." The Western Australian outcomes were criticised for being too vague.

Controversial standards are opposed because of their content, not simply because they are standards. OBE models always leave the choice of the exact standards to the educational authority, so that families can influence the choice of standards according to their community's preferences.

Lack of evidence that OBE actually works

OBE is a loosely-bound collection of ideas, with little uniformity in the way it is implemented from case to case. This makes it difficult to test OBE's effectiveness in a way that applies universally. The vagueness of OBE's conception of a "measurable outcome" is a particular challenge, both in implementing an OBE regime and in testing its effectiveness. In fact, there is little published evidence that OBE actually works.

Extra burden on instructors and educational institutions

Critics sometimes oppose OBE because of the burden it imposes on instructors and educational institutions more broadly, a burden that they regard as unjustified by any evidence showing that OBE actually improves learning outcomes. Rather than issuing a single letter or number to summarize an entire term's achievements, an OBE system may require that the teacher track and report dozens of separate outcomes. It takes longer to report that a student can add, subtract, multiply, divide, solve story problems, and draw graphs than to report "passed mathematics class," but the burden imposed by OBE does not owe primarily to the reporting of more data. The burden is spread across the entire educational institution, in the form of (1) a new layer of assessment placed atop the old familiar one, (2) a new bureaucracy responsible for the institution-wide collection and presentation of data, and (3) the altering and curtailing of classroom instruction to make room for more intrusive testing. In view of the paucity of evidence showing that OBE actually works, many regard this extra burden as an unjustified drain on pedagogical resources.

Dislike of something that is not OBE

Many criticisms of OBE are actually criticisms of other things that are introduced with an OBE system. Many people oppose OBE reforms because the OBE reforms are packaged with other reforms.

OBE reform is often packaged as part of a comprehensive school reform model which promotes constructivism
Constructivism (psychological school)
In psychology, constructivism concerns the world of constructivist psychologies. Many schools of psychotherapy self-define themselves as “constructivist”. Although extraordinarily different in their therapeutic techniques, they are all connected by a common critique to previous standard approaches...

, inquiry-based science, tax reform
Tax reform
Tax reform is the process of changing the way taxes are collected or managed by the government.Tax reformers have different goals. Some seek to reduce the level of taxation of all people by the government. Some seek to make the tax system more progressive or less progressive. Some seek to simplify...

, teacher training, and more. Other educational reforms, including changes to the school calendar, the age of students that attend school in a certain building, or the way tax revenues are divided, may all be inappropriately labeled "OBE" reforms simply because they were proposed on the same day as an OBE program.

School to work may also be a component of these multi-faceted reform programs. School-to-work programs require students to spend time in an internship or other form of career training or experience.

Australia

One of the problems of OBE for students wishing to attend university is that it does not lend itself well to forming a competitive Tertiary Entrance Rank
Tertiary Entrance Rank
The Tertiary Entrance Rank was a tertiary entrance score used in several Australian states and the Northern Territory as a tool for selection to universities in Australia...

 (TER). The suggested model for mapping levels to a TER has been attacked because it results in a score with more significant digits than the measures from which it is derived and so is charged with being mathematically unsound. William Spady
William Spady
William Spady is the head of ChangeLeaders. William Spady is a sociologist and the self-proclaimed father of Outcome-Based Education . OBE is referred to by over 20 different names including Systemic education restructuring, Performance Based Education, Standards based education reform, High...

 promoted the OBE method as a way of getting beyond 'meaningless' percentages and marks, aiming for education for life beyond school, giving children and young adults a broader and more transformative education. Arguably inelegant implementation makes the future of OBE unclear, and at odds with the Australian Government in Canberra.

Criticism of OBE in Western Australia

The current OBE controversy in Western Australia relates specifically to the introduction of OBE in upper school (year 11 and 12) classes. Many Western Australian schools have been using some form of OBE for K-10 students for several years. (OBE is only one part of the current changes to upper school education currently being implemented. Other aspects of the new courses of study
New courses of study
New courses of study is the term commonly used to describe the review of upper school education in Western Australia. The new courses extend the application of Outcomes Based Education to years 11 and 12...

 that form the upper school review have received little public attention.)

As part of the debate over further introduction of OBE into the teaching practice of Western Australia, various groups of concerned citizens and those in the teaching profession formed various single-issue lobby and action groups to progress their viewpoints. One such group was People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes formed by Greg Williams. The core view of this group was their disagreement with the former Western Australian Minister for Education (Ljiljanna Ravlich
Ljiljanna Ravlich
Ljiljanna Ravlich is a Western Australian politician. She is currently an Australian Labor Party member of the Western Australian Legislative Council, and was most notable for being the Minister for Education during the debate over the introduction of outcomes-based education...

) in respect to her commitment to implement OBE. Another such group was Parents Against Outcomes Based Education, who took the position that the implementation of OBE would pose significant problems and potentially lead to the decreased knowledge and performance of school students. Their objection was not to OBE itself, but to the bundle of reforms, of which OBE was the most mentioned. The "Fuzzy Outcomes" criticism above applies.

In January 2007, the Western Australian Government responded to the massive opposition by teachers and parents to its implementation of an OBE system by stating that it would allow year 11 and 12 students to be graded traditionally.

South Africa

OBE was introduced to South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

 in the late 1990s by the post-apartheid government as part of its Curriculum 2005 programme http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/article536849.ece/A-brief-history-of-a-system, but it was widely viewed as a failure, and was eventually scrapped in 2010 .

United States

In the early 1990s, several standards-based reform measures were passed in various states, creating the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills
Texas Assessment of Academic Skills
The TAAS, or Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, was a standardized test used in Texas between 1991 and 2002, when it was replaced by the TAKS test from 2003 to 2009. Prior to 1990, the test was known as the Texas Educational Assessment of Minimum Skills or TEAMS . It was used from grades 3...

 (1991), Washington Assessment of Student Learning
Washington Assessment of Student Learning
The Washington Assessment of Student Learning was a standardized educational assessment system given as the primary assessment in the state of Washington from spring 1997 to summer 2009. The WASL was also used as a high school graduation examination beginning in the spring of 2006 and ending in 2009...

 (1993), the CLAS in California (1993), and the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System
Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System
The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, commonly shortened to MCAS , is the Commonwealth's statewide standards-based assessment program developed in 1993, in response to the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of the same year...

 (1993).

At the national level, Congress passed the Goals 2000
Goals 2000
The National educational Goals were set by the U.S. Congress in the 1990s to set goals for standards-based education reform. Many of these goals were based on the principles of outcomes-based education, and not all of the goals were attained by the year 2000 as was intended...

 act in 1994. The best-known and most far-reaching standards-based education law in the U.S. is the No Child Left Behind Act
No Child Left Behind Act
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is a United States Act of Congress concerning the education of children in public schools.NCLB was originally proposed by the administration of George W. Bush immediately after he took office...

, which mandated certain measurements as a condition of receiving federal education funds. States are free to set their own standards, but the federal law mandates public reporting of math and reading test scores for disadvantaged demographic subgroups, including racial minorities, low-income students, and special education students. Various consequences for schools that do not make "adequate yearly progress" are included in the law.

At the state level, exit examinations have proliferated, and now more than half of US high school students will be required to pass a high-stakes test to get a normal high school diploma
High school diploma
A high school diploma is a diploma awarded for the completion of high school. In the United States and Canada, it is considered the minimum education required for government jobs and higher education. An equivalent is the GED.-Past diploma styles:...

. In some states, fewer than half of students and one-quarter of ethnic minorities have met these standards.

In some communities, such as Littleton, Colorado, organized opposition groups have forced educational agencies to rescind reforms. In Littleton, community members felt that vague, nonacademic outcomes were replacing content, and that technically unsound assessments would be used to determine something as important as high school graduation. They also objected to students being refused a high school diploma if they could not perform 36 separate mathematics skills, despite being given good grades in class.

OBE diplomas

A certificate of initial mastery was a program to provide students with an interim certification around the age of 16. The certificate was earned by taking and passing a written test, which had been designed to determine whether a student was performing at about the tenth grade level. A student who passed the 10th grade test would receive a Certificate of Initial Mastery.

The CIM concept was patterned after nations like Germany's hauptschule
Hauptschule
A Hauptschule is a secondary school in Germany and Austria, starting after 4 years of elementary schooling, which offers Lower Secondary Education according to the International Standard Classification of Education...

 system, in which the students who are not going to elite universities end their school-based education around age 16 and start career-oriented training in fields like construction
Construction
In the fields of architecture and civil engineering, construction is a process that consists of the building or assembling of infrastructure. Far from being a single activity, large scale construction is a feat of human multitasking...

 technology, allied health professions
Allied health professions
Allied health professions are clinical health care professions distinct from dentistry, nursing and medicine. One estimate reported allied health professionals make up 60 percent of the total health workforce...

, and business
Business
A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...

. In a typical US proposal, a student who received a CIM would then take two more years of career-based training. A national standards board was proposed to create similar tests for eight career fields, with the hope that employers would prefer certificated employees.

The CIM has been essentially abandoned; however, in its place, states frequently require passing the same exam as a condition of receiving a high school diploma. Oregon had proposed a CAM for "advanced mastery" at the 12th grade.

OBE's relationship to college

One ironic effect of high school exit examinations is that it may become more difficult to graduate from high school than enter college. There is no set passing level for college entry tests like the SAT, and such tests are often not required by the lowest-rated colleges.

In the future, some states may require criterion-based standards either for admission to or graduation from public universities. States are attempting to align high school curricula with the minimum standards for beginning college in an effort to reduce college dropouts and the number of remedial classes being taught at universities.

Performance-based economy

Outcome-based methods are used in some businesses. For whole companies, outcome-based evaluations are the basis of stock exchange prices: Companies which produce higher profit growth are more valuable than companies which perform poorly. Employees who are paid for piecework or by commission
Commission (remuneration)
The payment of commission as remuneration for services rendered or products sold is a common way to reward sales people. Payments often will be calculated on the basis of a percentage of the goods sold...

 are examples of traditional employment use of outcome-based pay. Alternatives include seniority
Seniority
Seniority is the concept of a person or group of people being in charge or in command of another person or group. This control is often granted to the senior person due to experience or length of service in a given position, but it is not uncommon for a senior person to have less experience or...

 systems (oldest worker gets highest pay).

Many private employers give standards-based tests to determine whether job applicants have necessary job skills (such as typing speed), and nearly all government employees have to take and pass a civil service examination. Furthermore, nearly all licensed professionals, from nurses to truck drivers to beauticians, already take such tests as a condition of entering their professions. Often these tests have disproportionate failure rates for disadvantaged subgroups, such as school dropout
Dropping out
Dropping out means leaving a group for either practical reasons, necessities or disillusionment with the system from which the individual in question leaves....

s and impoverished people.

Further reading

Castleberry, Thomas. 2006. "Student Learning Outcomes Assessment within the Texas State University MPA Program." Applied Research Project. Texas State University. http://ecommons.txstate.edu/arp/182/

External links

Background

Pro OBE Links

Anti OBE Links
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