And I thought the operations side of the house had problems.

Robert Carkhuff was a self-published Washington OSPI contractor whose thinking system was the basis for the Washington education reform movement and WASL. He has had a decades-long professional relationship with key OSPI staff members Terry Bergeson and Shirley McCune. Documents show he was paid more than $1 million to restructure Washington state education around his thinking systems.

Carkhuff created the new Three R's, relating, representing and reasoning to replace reading, writing and arithmetic as the primary basic education goals for Washington state.

A 2006 Snohomish Tribune investigation concluded that the work of Carkhuff was largely responsible for creating an invalid framework for the controversial WASL test that failed half of all students and 3 quarters of under performing minorities in 2006 that Terry Bergeson had pledged would give all state seniors a world class diploma by 2008.

Professor Don Orlich has concluded that the WASL math test contains many items which are developmentally inappropriate (much too difficult for any given grade level), and other critics say that the math test is really a test of reading and reasoning, and require the most explanation of comparable state tests.

A spokesperson at the OSPI stated "that Carkhuff is listed as one of the 100 most important social scientists by the Institute for Scientific Information".

Co-processing with God

A Passage from The New Science of Possibilities, authored by Robert Carkhuff and Bernard Berenson, and purchased by the State of Washington by Terry Bergeson's office:

God is The Great Montessori Teacher: He co-processes only with those of us who use His most precious gift—the intellect with which He has endowed us.

We came to know God only when we came to generate human and phenomenal possibilities, for God is in the phenomena He presents to us.

It is only when we begin to employ the plural pronoun "we" that we know that we are approaching collaboration with God: first relating interpersonally with our fellow collaborators; then processing interdependently with our phenomenal universes; perhaps only then co-processing with God.

The State of Washington purchased nearly $75,000 worth of Robert Carkhuff publications for distribution throughout five States.

Dr. Shirley McCune authorized payment for the purchases from Robert Carkhuff's publishing company, Human Resource Development (HRD Press). Dr. Shirley McCune and Robert Carkhuff coauthored the Possibilities Schools. When asked to stop promoting New Age religion in public schools, she responded by telling a member of the public she considered her religion as being Metaphysical.