Word: obe
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...involvement in public education extends well beyond school-board elections. In Virginia the race for lieutenant governor pits incumbent Democrat Donald Beyer Jr. against Michael Farris, a former Washington State director of Falwell's Moral Majority. Earlier this year Farris barnstormed Virginia, waging war against outcomes-based education (OBE), a controversial educational strategy that focuses on mastering skills (negotiation, cooperation) as well as measuring achievement (tests, grades). His efforts forced OBE off the state's school agenda and won Farris the Republican nomination. Now he is running neck and neck with Beyer. Farris vows to "bring my religion into politics...
Increasingly, an electoral race isn't even required to win converts and influence agendas. Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum conducts seminars in Georgia to challenge that state's new OBE programs, and not incidentally to publicize the Forum's wider agenda. Opponents of OBE have managed to galvanize concern to the point that parents in suburban Atlanta stick leaflets on car windshields denouncing the "dumbing down" of classes and the substitution of "psychotherapy" for the three Rs. Debi Schwier, an anti-OBE organizer in Gwinnett County, denounces such reforms as "one of the most blatant shifts in the history...