Outcome-Based Education

Outcome-based education (OBE) is a student-centered, results-oriented instructional system that focuses on those processes by which each student in the school is able to demonstrate what he or she knows and is able to do to a predetermined level of attainment. In its focus on clearly specified student outcomes as the curriculum, OBE differs from traditional education that emphasized school inputs, such as Carnegie units, known as “seat time,” as indicators of student achievement. The original conceptual framework for OBE was based in the Benjamin S. Bloom's Learning for Mastery model and in the theoretical work of [Page 624]John B. Carroll, which asserted that as many as 95% of students could achieve mastery of a topic or a task if differential instruction that maximized the quality of instruction, the understanding of the instruction, and the time allowed for needed instruction was provided to the student.

In the 1980s, mastery learning expanded from individual classrooms to districtwide implementation of the model, and the term outcome-based education was adopted to identify this instructional system. In an OBE system based on mastery learning, learning was not a finite resource but was unlimited, allowing the potential of every student to be maximized and not regulated by a belief in the random distribution of intelligence. By the 1990s, many school districts in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia were implementing OBE and were reporting gains in student achievement, in particular for lower-income students and for students who were not in the upper 20% of the district student population. In 1992, Pennsylvania became the first state board of education to reformulate its state curriculum to include measurable student learning outcomes, later to be termed academic standards.

In an outcome-based system, what the student is expected to learn is clearly identified as an objective/standard and the student demonstration of the learning to be acquired must be measurable. The level of student achievement is measured via multiple assessment means, ranging from selected response tests to performance-based exhibitions. Multiple instructional strategies are used over time until the student reaches a satisfactory level of achievement. The design of the strategies involves an ongoing teacher reflection and analysis based on the learner's needs. The student outcome, the instructional strategy, and the assessment means are clearly aligned in the instructional model.

During the early development of OBE systems, student progress was based on criterion-referenced rather than norm-referenced assessments. Local districts determined the outcomes, the strategies, and the assessments; if required by their state, local student outcomes were aligned with state standards. However, as a result of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) and its requirements for state defined academic standards and for state standardized tests to assess student achievement, local districts have had less and less control over the development of student academic outcomes, the form of assessments, and the design of the instructional strategies.

In the mid-1990s, William Spady and other proponents of OBE developed what they called “transformational” OBE, in which curriculum planners expanded the scope of learning outcomes beyond essential academic knowledge and skills to include higher-order thinking skills, affective values, and social behaviors. Many parents and community members considered the expanded learning outcomes too vague and overly directed at academically average or weak students, and questioned how certain outcomes, for example, the development of student tolerance to diverse groups would be assessed. Their opposition in several states led to a narrowing of learning outcomes and their being renamed “academic standards” and the elimination of psychological or values outcomes. NCLB mandated that each state develop a set of academic standards in reading, mathematics, and science for Grades 3 through 8 and Grade 11; in effect, these standards defined each state's curriculum for these subject areas.

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