President George H.W. Bush convenes the nation’s governors for the first National Summit on Education. The result is that Outcomes-Based Education (OBE) is given an official endorsement by the governors and the president. In contrast to the traditional content-based curriculum, OBE creates specific outcomes or achievements that students should be able to demonstrate after completing a certain period of education.
The theory is that educators are not responsible solely for presenting information; in the end, they are responsible for the absorption of the information. Therefore, educational guidelines should define what the learner is accountable for, rather than telling teachers how to teach or students how to learn. Critics argue that repeated testing of students, to measure whether they have completed the required learning, forces teachers to teach to the test and undervalues critical thinking skills.