Education Law

"National" Standards Part II

Recently, I noted that a new move is afoot to develop "national" (i.e., NOT federal) standards for high school reading and math. Here in this second post on the topic, I consider more deeply the question of accountability. Our readers no doubt are aware that we have had "national" standards in language arts, math, and at least five other subjects for years. Unfortunatley (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), these existing national standards have never been viewed as very important. This could be because they are very generally stated (and thus not very useful on the ground), or it could be because they are just flat-out poor standards. However, I believe that the main reason that state education agencies have basically ignored the existing "national" standards is because they can. That is, none of the existing national standards is backed up by any common accountability measure, and therefore, the state education agencies understandably do not see them as binding in any way.

This point brings me to the new push for more "national" standards in two subjects.  The development of these standards apparently stems from the conception that, among the states, students are not being asked to achieve rigorous enough outcomes, and as a result, we are falling behind our international peers. But I fail to see how this conclusion derives from a lack of "standards" at the state level. For at least a decade, most, if not all, states have published and refined specific curricular "standards" for each grade level, and many of these, AS STATED, are quite rigorous.  It seems much more likely that the conclusion derives from a lack of rigorous assessment targets, and the resulting lack of any meaningful common accountabilty for achieving rigorous standards. Many commentators have pointed out that the main flaw of NCLB (our only existing "national" accountability system) is that the law allows the states to determine for themselves the meaning of "proficient" (the all-important holy grail of educational attainment) and how to measure it.  The new "national" standards aparently will do nothing to fix this glitch, as there is no accompanying movement for a "national" test or other assessment, and there is no indication that these "national" standards will be anything other than optional. 

So, what does this mean?  If history is any guide, it means that we will spend a lot of money promulgating and publishing these new standards, forcing teachers into staff development sessions to learn them, translating them into layperson's language for parents, and ordering new textbooks reflecting them, but we may not see any benefit from them, and more importantly, we may not even see them actually taught in anything other than a token way.  Without aligned assessments, any new "standards" are mere suggestions to change what we are already teaching.  But change is expensive.  It will not occur without a catalyst, and like it or not, assessments accompanied by consequences have thus far been the only meaningful catalysts for system-wide curricular reform in education.  We can argue about the value of assessment-based accountability, but I fail to see how "national" standards could ever succeed without it.   

Full post as published by Edjurist on July 08, 2009 (boomark / email).