What's going on? Last December, the School Board approved the hiring of William Spady of ChangeLeaders, at a cost not to exceed $23,000, to advise District 46 in the Strategic Design Process (read 12/04/00 meeting minutes). In early February, Dr. Spady visited Grayslake for three days (at a cost of $2,000 per day) to help kickoff the program. William Spady is a sociologist and the self-proclaimed father of Outcome-Based Education (OBE). He is arguably one of the most controversial proponents of school reform. OBE is referred to by over 20 different names including Performance Based Education, Standards Based Education, High Performance Learning, Total Quality Management, Transformational Education, Competency-Based Education, and Break-the-Mold Schools, among others. Its proponents have continually changed the name due to the negative implications associated with the program. However, all of these titles refer to a similar philosophy and a plan which implements radical and "systemic" change into schools.In the early 1990s, Dr. Spady and a colleague, Charles Schwahn, evolved OBE into what they refer to today as the Strategic Design Process. This process is described in detail in the book Paradigm Lost, written by Dr. Spady. His synopsis of Strategic Design can be found in the article, "Transcending Educentric Achievement Through Strategic Design". In this article, he states that "traditional school learning and achievement were not translating into adequate career preparation for young people". He labels the major features of our current educational system, such as academic subject areas, grade levels, self-contained classrooms, nine-month school years, and A through F grading, as "educentric", and believes we must start the Strategic Design Process by focusing on values, attitudes and behavior.
Strategic Design must not be mistaken for strategic planning. In Dr. Spady’s new book, Beyond Counterfeit Reforms, he states, “Strategic Design is profoundly different from what people call strategic planning”. He advocates nothing less than complete reform of our schools as we know them. As he stated in Paradigm Lost, "...everything else we do amounts to technical tinkering". The publisher's synopsis of Beyond Counterfeit Reforms on the Barnes & Noble web site provides further insight into his belief that our schools must be radically changed:
Have you ever asked yourself, "Why do we do this?" when faced with the day-to-day realities of school, such as report cards, standardized tests, or textbooks? Chances are, if you are like most Americans, you haven't. William Spady has, however, and in "Beyond Counterfeit Reforms" he questions the dead-end assumptions of American education. He asserts a set of five "research realities" that should be the foundation of any truly learner-centered system: Human Potential, Human Learning, Domains of Living, Future Conditions, and Life Performance. Not only does Spady thoroughly articulate the bad news about the deep organizational flaws in our schools, but he develops the model of a Total Learning Community - a profoundly compelling description of a possible education and society which makes current reform methods look superficial and misguided in comparison.The role of Dr. Spady is to get us to think in non-educentric terms. Our School Board and Dr. Anderson have stated that Dr. Spady has been hired to ask us the "tough questions". To see examples of the non-educentric questions, and their responses, recently asked by Dr. Spady when he visited Grayslake in early February, read the recent letter from Dr. Anderson. The ultimate goal of the Strategic Design Process is to define a series of outcomes for our learners based on his eight "spheres of living". During this process, the community will be involved in defining what our graduates must know, be able to do, and be like, in order to successfully meet future conditions and challenges. The Board has targeted completion of the plan for late spring of 2002, with implementation beginning shortly thereafter.Why is Strategic Design so controversial? Dr. Spady's "Strategic Design Process" centers around asking key strategic design questions that relate to his defined spheres of living. Part of this proprietary process is to train community members to ask specific questions that will shape the outcome of the Strategic Design Plan. There was initial concern that anything considered educentric (tests, grade levels, grades, etc.) would be changed or eliminated as has occurred in other districts that have implemented outcome-based programs. However, a recent flyer from the administration states that "nothing could be further from the truth". While we are certainly pleased that the administration has gone on record in this matter, the real issue with the Strategic Design Process centers on the process itself. The types of questions asked lead to defined outcomes (goals) that are vague, fuzzy, and difficult to implement and measure. We all know instinctively that a process which does not set specific, well defined and clearly understood goals will produce poor results or fail entirely. Furthermore, non-educentric thinking leads to non-educentric goal setting.
Teaching academic content must be our schools' primary focus. Our state was thinking along these lines when it introduced the tougher Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) in 1999. As the Chicago Tribune reported at the time, ISAT "was developed by the state board of education to better inform parents on how their schools are faring and is part of a nationwide movement toward well-defined educational standards". We believe that the District 46 strategic plan should be based on specific academic objectives that will improve our ISAT scores. We note that the District is already doing a good job in this area and ask, why change what seems to be working? We believe that introducing subjective outcomes only confuses the focus on academics. There are a finite number of classroom hours. More time spent teaching values means less time for academic subject material. Of even greater concern is how values would be determined and taught.
Proven results should be our guide in planning for the future of our schools. Unfortunately, we have found little evidence of positive results from affective outcome-based programs like Dr. Spady's. States that have implemented them, such as Pennsylvania, New York, Minnesota, Oregon and Ohio, have largely abandoned them and are returning to strong academic standards-based curriculums. We have asked the School Board to show us the results from other districts that have implemented Strategic Design plans.
Another critical issue that must be addressed is the high cost of implementing a Strategic Design Plan. Dr. Spady does not deny this. In his book, "Outcome-Based Education Critical Issues and Answers", he states: "...to implement a fully developed OBE model at the local level will require significant retraining of personnel; redesign of the system; and retooling of its curriculum, instruction, assessment and credentialing components". Grayslake's already highly taxed residents simply cannot afford this plan.
It is important to note that other than hiring Dr. Spady, the School Board and Administration maintain that they haven't done anything yet. This begs the obvious question, why did they hire Dr. Spady? We believe that his Strategic Design Process cannot help but influence our plan and schools with his controversial beliefs.
The School Board has indicated that it is their desire to get input from the community at-large during the Strategic Design Process. This is admirable. We would ask them to add a step to the planning process by involving the community in setting the desired goals for our strategic plan before going forward with any consultant. This step will allow the Board and the community to build a consensus on what the goals should be for the District. We believe this is a win-win scenario that will help achieve a broad base of support for the ultimate plan.
Each of us must become informed on the issues and make our own decision. If this site helps to raise awareness and gets more people involved in our education process, the entire community wins. Hopefully, the information provided here is a starting point. If you have questions about this site or have a comment to share, please contact us at the e-mail address listed below. We intend to present all viewpoints that are stated in a factual and non-inflammatory manner. We will post additional information as it becomes available and welcome any corrections to information on this site that is found to be in error.
It must be stated that while this site presents our concerns about Dr. Spady and the Strategic Design Process (OBE), we continue to discuss the issues with the School Board members. We support and have the utmost respect for the board members. They give a significant amount of their personal time to serving our community, and cannot receive enough thanks for this commitment. We applaud their decision to formulate a strategic plan for the future and believe that we all seek the same goal, excellence in education for our children. We firmly believe that the community must work through and support the Board, and that healthy debate can serve to improve the end result if the issues are discussed and worked out in an open and positive manner.
More information and other resources are provided below. Please help get the word out by printing and distributing the flyer below. Many of the documents are in Adobe PDF format. Click on the Acrobat icon to get the free reader. Please hit the BACK button on your browser to return to this page after viewing the document.
Documents on this Site
