Grayslake Elementary District
46’s strategic design process seems to have gotten off to a bumpy start,
as more than 300 parents and community members crowded the Frederick School
gymnasium Tuesday evening to question controversial futurist and educator
Dr. William Spady.
Spady was hired by the district earlier
this year to help facilitate the strategic process.
Many parents at the meeting called
for Spady to remove himself from the district’s strategic design efforts,
citing controversy surrounding Spady’s “outcome-based education” philosophy.
Outcome-based education is a type of
education reform that was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which
promotes, among other things, having students stay on one subject until
it is mastered by all students.
Parents argued that this type of philosophy
does not fit in District 46, and that Spady would not be able to separate
the philosophy from the strategic design process.
“He can never, in our minds, be unbiased
or objective,” said parent Joe Stopka. After hearing that the district
had hired Spady, a group of parents began researching Spady’s programs
and philosophies, he said.
A search on America Online revealed
more than 33,000 articles about Spady, he said, many of which were negative.
“We realized there’s no separating
the man from the process,” Stopka said. “He can never be an objective,
unbiased consultant to this district.”
A group of parents distributed several
pages of articles against outcome-based education at the meeting. The group,
which has organized an Internet site at www.watchd46schools.org, is encouraging
parents to “stay involved...your children, your tax dollars and your property
values are at stake.”
Parents from this group asked Spady
about the failure of outcome-based education in various school districts,
citing examples in Arlington Heights, Buffalo Grove, Kansas and Michigan.
“So we’re quite concerned,” said one
of the parents. “Why should we proceed and pursue your services, Mr. Spady?”
Stopka agreed.
“There is no clinical data to support
him,” he said.
Spady countered that there has been
“enormously distorted” information spread about this philosophy.
“We built the outcome-based education
movement on what were enormous successes in school districts,” said Spady.
“But many people rushed in to use the label (of outcome-based education).
I don’t regard the rushing in as an adequate implementation of something
and then it failed. It never happened.”
Spady added that he is in District
46 to help develop with the strategic design process, not outcome-based
education.
“What we’re proposing to do here is
not outcome-based education,” he told the audience. “What we’re hoping
to do is set a direction. I'm doing work all over the country and in other
countries that has nothing to do with outcome-based education. I'm not
here to do (outcome-based education).”
John Karol, former District 46 school
board president who resigned Monday night due to health reasons, reiterated
that Spady was hired to help with the design process.
“The board has said we’re not buying
a program that he’s selling. We’re buying his expertise in being a facilitator,”
said Karol. He acknowledges that the community has expressed concerns about
Spady’s outcome-based education philosophy. “One of the reasons we wanted
Dr. Spady to come in (Tuesday night) was to answer those questions.”
One audience member wanted justification
for the $23,000 the district is spending to hire Spady, while others wanted
to know the goals of the process and what the results will be.
“(The strategic design process) is
designed to give a local district and its community a process for designing
its educational program or process,” Spady said. “The purpose is fundamentally
to...take into account the priorities of people and helping kids get to
the future successfully.”
Spady said his role in the process
will be to help the district’s central committee ask the community the
right types of questions.
“My role is to help them frame the
types of questions that define this process,” he said.
For example, the committee will need
to identify areas the community feels will be important for students in
the future, what students will face in the future, and what kinds of values
and principles they should have when leaving school.
“Once the data comes in, my goal is
to help them sort through all of this,” Spady said.
But one parent said he feels the district
should, instead of going through the strategic design process, identify
colleges that are producing the kinds of teachers it wants to hire.
“We need to empower the teachers where
they’re at,” said the parent, a Trinity College professor. “We need to
do this from the ground up rather than from the top down. I'm thinking
maybe the strategic design process has to come from the teachers.”
Spady said from his perspective, this
process is not coming from the top-down.
“That’s why the community is involved,”
he said. “It’s the top-down stuff from the state that’s drowning people.”
Another parent stood up and asked Spady
to “voluntarily remove himself from our efforts.” Spady said he didn’t
want to “make that commitment tonight.”
District 46 Board Member Ursula Ahern
was also questioned at the meeting because she contributed to one of Spady’s
books, audience members said. Ahern could not be reached for comment.
Stopka said he would like to see Spady
removed from the strategic design process.
“I'd like them to stop the design process
in its current state. I'd like them to release Spady from any future involvement
with our school district and go back to the community and ask for input,”
Stopka said.
One parent, however, is in favor of
keeping Spady in the district.
“What he wants to do is guide the district,
the community and the faculty in finding a focus for what they do so well,”
said Kirsten Howe. Many teachers in the district are doing a great job,
she said, but they’re all going in different directions.
“They’re not linked up to each other,”
she said. “This strategic design will give them the confidence that they’re
all going in the same direction. He’s not talking about outcome-based education
in District 46.
“He has different services he gives
to districts, including outcome-based education and strategic design,”
Howe continued. “(Strategic design) is the catalog item we ordered.”
Karol said if the board continues with
the process, it can still opt to adopt or reject the strategic design when
presented at a later date by the central committee.
“There certainly is a check-and-balance
there,” he said.