The idea of national standards for U.S. education is alive and well—but, ironically, not at the national level. The standards movement has lost momentum at the national level, observers say, as political forces have curtailed the federal government's role in promoting national standards in each subject area. Nevertheless, the movement is forging ahead at the state and district levels, where efforts to develop standards have continued unabated (see box).
A Capsule History
A Capsule History
The national standards movement in the United States was born in 1987 when the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics began drafting standards for what students should learn in math. During the following years, more than a dozen other subject-area organizations followed suit, several with funding from the U.S. Department of Education. The math standards received a rapturous reception, but efforts in some other subject areas were criticized—most notably the first set of history standards, which were denounced by the U.S. Senate by a vote of 99 to 1.
The federal role in promoting national standards has expanded, then shrunk. In November 1993, a report of the National Education Goals Panel called for a council that would give voluntary national standards a seal of approval. In March 1994, when Goals 2000 was signed into law, the National Education Standards and Improvement Council (NESIC) was created to certify national and state standards. Legislation passed after the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, however, eliminated NESIC.
This conservative backlash shocked many players in the education community, says Ramsay Selden, director of the Education Statistics Services Institute. Many stakeholders thought that the political issues had been dealt with "in a careful, responsible way," he says, because the standards were voluntary, and the process for setting them was decentralized and didn't create a national curriculum.
Meanwhile, all but 2 of the 50 states are developing state standards, and countless districts and schools are developing standards of their own. Many of these efforts are strongly influenced by the national standards developed by the subject-area organizations.
A new organization called for by governors and business leaders at the 1996 National Education Summit, "Achieve," plans to support standards-based reform by serving as a national clearinghouse on standards and assessments, helping states benchmark their standards, and providing technical assistance and public reporting. For more information about Achieve, contact Patricia Sullivan of the National Governors' Association at (202) 624-7723 or psullivan@nga.org.
Another irony of the standards movement is that U.S. educators are attempting to develop common standards in a decentralized way. States and districts throughout the country are working intently to develop their own standards, experts say, rather than simply adopting the national standards published by the subject-area organizations.
Educators at the state and local levels are using the national standards "as a starting point," says Christopher Cross, president of the Council for Basic Education (CBE). Although the original concept was that experts in the various disciplines would create definitive documents that could be used anywhere, "that concept overlooked the fact that people needed to gain ownership, to go through the process [of developing standards] themselves," Cross says. The final results of these multiple efforts show "a lot of similarity, which is good," he adds. (To support these local efforts, the CBE is developing a reference volume that consolidates the national standards and "boils them down," Cross notes. This volume should be finished by the end of the year.)
States and districts must adapt the national standards because the professional associations "did not come up with a coherent set of documents," says Bob Marzano of the Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory (McREL), co-author of A Comprehensive Guide to Designing Standards-Based Districts, Schools, and Classrooms. Although any one document might be strong, "you can't make sense out of these documents" as a group, Marzano says, because they take "incredibly different perspectives" and reflect varying levels of generality. (McREL supports local standard-setting efforts through its publication Content Knowledge: A Compendium of Standards and Benchmarks for K-12 Education and an online database at http://www.mcrel.org)
Standards setting is typically a "self-driven, local interest," says John Kendall of McREL, Marzano's co-author. Most districts are enthusiastic participants and not merely complying with mandates, he says. Districts recognize standards setting as a way to bring coherence to their curriculums.
Are these local educators reinventing the wheel? Kendall thinks not. "Districts have to make [standards] their own," he says. "They want the direction of blue-ribbon panels, but they also want to be part of the process." Involving teachers in developing standards makes the rationale for standards clear to them and promotes their buy-in, he says. "You can't just deliver standards from on high."
Adopting the national standards wholesale isn't feasible because the work of the subject-area groups was plagued by problems that are "clear in hindsight," says Marc Tucker, codirector of the New Standards project. First, the experts drafting the standards included far too much material to teach in the time allotted. They created "a very rich menu but didn't make the hard choices regarding what's most important to teach."
Second, those writing the standards tended to overreact to the mindless ways in which their subjects are sometimes taught, Tucker says. As a result, the math standards downplay computation, while the English standards slight grammar and spelling. The gulf between the public and the standards documents regarding what's important to teach creates "a serious credibility problem."
Matt Gandal of the American Federation of Teachers cites another force driving state and local standard setting: our political aversion to having a set of national standards. When it comes to setting standards, "people are more comfortable with the state doing it," he says.
To date, most standards efforts have focused on content standards that spell out what knowledge and skills students should learn. There has been far less emphasis on performance standards and the consequences for failing to reach them, experts say.
Educators are just beginning to focus on performance standards, Cross says—but districts do recognize the need for them. Designing performance tasks that are aligned with content standards is "the next stage of work," Kendall says.
But what happens if students fail to meet performance standards? "This is a big issue," Marzano says. "Do we hold kids to standards? Nobody's addressed the implications of that."
Attention will increasingly focus on performance standards and consequences, says Diane Ravitch of New York University, who was an assistant secretary of education during the Bush administration. One cause of this trend is dismay over the high cost of remediation at the college level, she says. "There will be growing support for some sort of stakes."
Tucker agrees. "As time goes on, we'll see more policy-making that ties high stakes to standards," in response to calls for greater accountability, he believes. (The New Standards project, which Tucker codirects, has recently issued performance standards for English, math, science, and applied learning.)
Gandal suggests two sorts of "high stakes" that might gain currency: intensive extra help for students who don't meet performance standards, and an end to social promotion and "the meaningless diploma."
None of the experts interviewed for this article believe the standards movement will fade. Ravitch thinks the movement will gain momentum because it is driven by social and economic forces. The movement is "a response to the world's demands rather than political demands," she says. "There are, in fact, real international standards in math and science; they exist." And, she notes, even in states that are "zealous" about local control, parents want to know how their children are doing in school. Given today's conditions—a world economy, high mobility—"you can't just use local standards."
A number of states will come up with very good standards, "so good that others will gravitate toward them," Gandal predicts. "We see that happening already."
The standards movement will certainly "carry the day," Kendall believes. "It just makes too much sense not to continue."
