This article originally appeared in The Wanderer, May 4, 1995 issue, and permission was given to upload to America Online.
Parents' Group Opposes Archdiocese's Plans to Impose OBE On Schools
by Paul Likoudis
DETROIT - Catholic parents in Detroit are opposing a new plan of the Archdiocese of Detroit to impose transformational outcome-based education (OBE) on all Catholic schools in the archdiocese.
The organization, the Catholic Association of Parents for Excellence in Education (CAPEE), began a campaign last fall to inform Catholic parents that the archdiocese's Mission and Strategy 2000 plan, formulated by David Ramey and Strategic Leadership Associates, Inc., of Beavercreek, O., is nothing short of a scheme to render Catholic schools "government schools with a crucifix in the classroom," said CAPEE's president, Marilyn O'Brien.
During four meetings held from Jan. 31st to Feb. 15th in different parts of the archdiocese, facilitator Ramey introduced the plan to restructure archdiocesan schools to priests, principals, teachers, and a few hand-selected lay persons. The plan, he asserted, would make Catholic schools "viable into the 21st century."
But CAPEE members are warning Catholic school parents that Mission and Strategy 2000 simply "lifted" the "educational reform" language of Michigan Public Act 25 of 1990 and Public Acts 335, 336, 337, et al., of 1993, which imposed outcome-based education on Michigan public schools in anticipation of the passage of the national Goals 2000 plan.
In an interview with The Wanderer, O'Brien explained that outcome-based education is not only coming to the Archdiocese of Detroit schools, but to all Catholic schools in the country.
"It's all part of an agenda," she said, "that was set nearly five years ago in Washington by the National Catholic Education Association (NCEA). In November, 1991, in the 'executive summary' approved by the NCEA at its National Congress for Catholic Schools of the 21st century, the Catholic education bureaucracy formally adopted Goals 2000 as part of the educational mission of the Catholic schools."
Though this "executive summary" was actually produced three years before Goals 2000 became law, it reads like a blueprint (or a carbon copy) of Goals 2000, speaking, for example, of "educat[ing] students to meet the intellectual and ethical challenges of living in a technological and global society," "conducting a school climate study to determine the degree of tolerance or lack of thereof in a school," " developing a statement at the national and diocesan levels which rejects racism, sexism, and other kinds of discrimination," "opening" new schools which "reflect the changing needs of family, church, and society," and so forth.
In 1994, at its national convention in Anaheim, Calif., the NCEA included a major conference entitled,"The Outcome-Based Catholic School: Embracing the Challenge of Transformation."
Throughout the Archdiocese of Detroit, O'Brien said, Catholic schools are now being ordered to become accredited by the Michigan Nonpublic Schools Accrediting Association (MNSAA), an arm of the Michigan Association of Nonpublic Schools (MANS).
MANS/MNSAA'S goal is to accredit Catholic schools based on the state and national standards, which in Michigan is the Michgan Model Core Curriculum, a 300-page "curriculum" based on the Pennsylvania and Kentucky state education department regulations which mandate values clarification, global education, environmental awareness, and OBE, as well as Goals 2000.
Furthermore, the Council for American Private Education (CAPE), a national organization of private school administrators under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Education's National Diffusion Network, promotes programs and curriculums which ensure implementation of Goals 2000, and it "assists" MANS.
Thus, in Michigan, Gary Cass, an employee of the Michigan Department of Education, is the "state facilitator" for the National Diffusion Network (NDN). He is working directly with Frank X. Delaney, the NDN facilitator for private schools in the U.S. Department of Education, to bring Michigan's private and parochial schools on-line with OBE.
The Archdiocese of Detroit is already utilizing such programs as the U.S. Department of Education's "Growing Healthy," "Career Wise," and the " Junior Grade Book Curriculum," all of which promote OBE.
Michigan's other Christian schools and nondenominational private schools are also being brought on-line with OBE and Goals 2000.
Another Angle
Along with this top-down push from the U.S. government and private education associations to bring Catholic schools into conformance with Goals 2000, the Archdiocese of Detroit increased the pressure when it hired Ramey and Strategic Leadership Associates to enable pastors, principals, teachers, and parents to formally implement the NCEA's 1991 plan and the Michigan Core Model as "Mission & Strategy 2000: Future Scenario for Catholic Elementary Education in the Archdiocese of Detroit, Executive Summary."
This document states: "Our curriculum stresses academic skills in critical-thinking, decision making, and problem-solving to prepare students for the challenges of an interdependent world and society... integrate[s] technology with the core academic curriculum to prepare students with the necessary tools for working and living in the 21st century... individual schools may not compete with each other... curriculum development such as interdisciplinary learning, cooperative learning, and curriculum resources for multicultural education..."
This language is identical to Goals 2000, and also to Michigan's OBE legislative mandates.
Red Flags
When Adam Cardinal Maida of Detroit hired Ramey, Catholics familiar with the introduction of New Age notions into the Catholic establishment were immediately alarmed.
Ramey is a member of the World Future Society, which was founded as a New Age Society to help other New Agers network with each other.
The World Future Society publishes The Futurist magazine as a forum for its members. In the September, 1994 issue, it carried an article, "Temples of Tomorrow," on the need to form a new United Religious Organization.
The article says that "a new covenant between God and humankind needs urgently to be extended to science, politics, government, and technology."
(The proposals in this article, O'Brien said, are eerily similar to Cardinal Maida's April 10th speech to the Economic Club of Detroit, in which he called for a new three-way partnership between government, business, and the Church.)
An accompanying article in the same edition of The Futurist, "Forecasts for World Religions," stated that world religions "are increasingly working on the theoretical basis of a world theology."
Ramey's other credentials include creating "vision and strategy" programs for numerous Catholic schools, hospitals, and religious orders, and also for the archdioceses and dioceses of: Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Alexandria (La.), Brooklyn, Cleveland, Covington, Grand Rapids, Green Bay, Greensburg, Las Cruces, Madison, Saginaw, and St. Petersburg.
Ramey's four appearances in the Archdiocese of Detroit were not publicized for area Catholics. No mention was made in either the Catholic or secular newspapers that he would be leading discussions - facilitating meetings - which would lead to the reorganization and reorientation of all archdiocesan schools, but some priests and nuns friendly to CAPEE members informed CAPEE, and CAPEE urged its members to attend.
At the first meeting on Jan. 24th, at St. Thomas More Church, Ramey opened the meeting, then let representatives of the archdiocese state their program.
Ramey then divided the 200 people at the meeting into various groups: clergy, religious, administrators, teachers, parents, representatives of parish councils, and ordered parents to one side of the room, and priests, et al., to the other, so that it would be physically impossible, say, for parents to talk to priests or teachers.
Each group was to "brainstorm" on the "most pressing problem facing schools today," and then Ramey took questions.
O'Brien recalled the meeting: "Ramey is a very skillful facilitator. When someone would stand up and ask a question, Ramey would begin his answer by reciting the question, but he would give the question back in a slightly different form than it was asked, so that the question he answered would not be the one he was asked.
"At one point, one fellow - who was not a part of our group - stood up and asked how the Archdiocese's Mission 2000 lines up with the Michigan Model Core Curriculum. Ramey said, 'I have no idea what you are talking about.'
"The fellow explained what the Michigan Model called for, and he wanted to know if it would be implemented in the plan. Again, Ramey didn't answer. He just said, 'I can't address that, it has nothing to do with us'."
After that first meeting, said O'Brien, Ramey would not take questions from the participants at the other three meetings.
Hiding
As the pipeline to send OBE into Detroit Catholic schools is constructed, more parents are beginning to join CAPEE, O'Brien said, because they are worried about OBE ruining their Catholic schools.
"We're getting a lot of support from priests and nuns and, directors of religious education, and finally, a lot of people are starting to see that something is wrong in education, though they may not be able to name it.
"But then there are a lot of people who think they can insulate themselves from OBE. Some Catholic schools that are proud of the traditional education they offer don't believe OBE is coming. They think it can't happen to them. They don't want to deal with that thought.
"And, unfortunately, some teachers are not joining our fight because they think they'll be out of teaching before OBE gets in.
"But this is unrealistic. Detroit's Catholic schools are on a very fast track for OBE. At that January meeting at St. Thomas More, Ramey said it would be ten years before all the schools in the archdiocese would be regionalized and consolidated - that is, run by the archdiocesan bureaucracy. Then he told us the plan would be in effect by April, 1995.
"What this means is that no Catholic school can set its own curriculum anymore. Parents no longer can have any input."
Since its founding last fall, members of CAPEE have made numerous request to Cardinal Maida and members of his education department to discuss OBE in Catholic schools.
All requests have thus far been denied. One meeting was scheduled by Msgr. John Quinn, director of the education department, but it was later cancelled.
"Certain individuals in the archdiocese labeled us as a radical right-wing political group," O'Brien says, "and so they won't meet with us."
Finally, a meeting was arranged for April 28th.
O'Brien was waiting to see if that meeting would happen as this article was written.
(Michigan Catholics who want to know more about how outcome-based education is coming to their Catholic schools can write or call CAPEE at: P.O.Box 1071, Bloomfield Hills, Mich., 48303-1071; phone 810-680-1911.
