Education: The Dallas Monster

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"When a student comes home with a B, it doesn't really communicate anything to the parent," says Dallas School Superintendent Nolan Estes. That could be true, but the "report cards" that the younger pupils in the Dallas Independent School District are coming home with this winter may well have completely eliminated any communication between home and school. The latest educational innovation, imposed upon Dallas parents and children for the first time this fall, is an 8½-in. by 14-in. number-filled sheet that looks more like a page from a company audit than a report card. To assist them in deciphering the report, which is used for kindergarten through third grade, pupils' parents are supplied with a 32-page booklet called Your Child Starts School and a 28-page manual with the remarkable title Terminal Behavioral Objectives for Continuous Progression Modules in Early Childhood Education. Says School Board Member James Jennings, who labeled the whole package a "monster": "Seventy percent of the parents will never raise the lid on a cover with a title like that."

Those brave or curious enough to look inside will find lists of anywhere from seven to 23 specific skills in 39 "modules" under seven basic "curriculum areas" (e.g., mathematics, social sciences, art). The wording may well represent a new low in educators' jargon. Skill No. 5 in the basic concepts module in the communications curriculum area, for example, is "oral response on a concrete level using objects." That means, the manual explains helpfully, that a child can "identify a toy car by saying a word, phrase or sentence about it."

In the wake of the criticism that descended on school officials, minor revisions have been made in the report card; for example, the phrase "goals and accomplishments" has been substituted for "terminal objectives." Superintendent Estes also hired a freelance writer last November to write yet another supplementary pamphlet, which in effect will explain the explanation. At last report the writer was only halfway through the job. Reason for the delay: he is having difficulty understanding the manual.