Although professional organizations in all the major subject areas, from art to physical education, are working to create national curriculum standards, educators remain deeply divided over whether such standards will help or harm American education.
This divide was thrown into sharp relief at a panel discussion co-sponsored by ASCD and the Smithsonian Institution, which took place in Washington, D.C., in October. Francie Alexander, deputy director of curriculum with the Edison Project, and Elliot Eisner, a professor of education and art at Stanford University, exchanged clashing views on the probable effects of national standards (for content and performance) in the various disciplines. Alexander—who directed a study group created by Congress that called for the development of national standards—spoke optimistically of the power of standards to improve curriculum and instruction. Eisner, a vocal critic of the standards movement, argued that standards will homogenize education without improving schools.
"I want there to be national standards, passionately and vigorously, if they're good standards," Alexander said. "What excites me about [the standards movement] is the opportunity for us to shape the standards, as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics did," she said. "It's an invitation to have a professional conversation" that will allow educators to reclaim their profession.
The standards being developed by professional organizations will supersede the flawed, de facto standards we have now, Alexander argued. "We have standards that come from standardized tests, textbooks, and instructional materials," she said—but these standards have been imposed on educators. The NCTM standards, by contrast, were developed by educators in the field saying, "This is what we think mathematics should be."
In stark contrast to Alexander's enthusiasm, Eisner condemned the whole standards movement as a misguided effort.
Focusing on standards is "a superficial distraction" from the real work of making schools better places for teachers and students, Eisner said. "What do you do if the children do not achieve the standards?" he asked. "What's the solution to that problem?"
Improving schools requires much more than setting specific standards for students, Eisner contended. "The idea that the formulation of standards is going to have a major impact in counteracting conditions in schools that need to be altered is basically naive," he said. "That [change] is going to require time for teachers to reflect, to assist each other, to collaborate—and to build curricula that make it possible for youngsters to see relationships."
Alexander, however, argued that standards have the potential to transform curriculum and instruction, citing as evidence the effects of the NCTM standards. "Studies show 40 percent of [math] teachers in this country now say that they're using the NCTM standards," she said; and instruction has become much more diverse and creative as a result of the standards' influence.
Math instruction used to be "open the book and do the problems," Alexander said. Now it deals with big ideas, and it has become more open-ended. Teachers are asking students to conjecture and to determine whether their answers are reasonable, for example. "Kids are doing rich investigations, working collaboratively, using the book sometimes—but not exclusively—as the primary method of study," she said.
Eisner, however, disputed Alexander's contention that math teachers are changing instruction significantly in response to the NCTM standards. Teachers may "believe that they have digested and comprehend these standards," he said, but many "are not in fact implementing the spirit of the enterprise that they claim to be implementing. Teachers, like all of us, don't have much [perspective] on their own behavior."
Uniformity or Diversity?
Eisner also criticized the assumption underlying the standards movement that "uniform content and goals" are appropriate for a country as diverse as the United States. Although our nation has historically celebrated diversity, he said, the standards movement "seems to emulate what was going on in France a century ago, when the minister of education said that at eleven o'clock on any Thursday morning he knew exactly what was going on in French schools."
Eisner firmly rejected such an approach. "A homogenized national agenda for education that's built on the assumption that children move through schools in a developmentally uniform way, through a [single] body of content that is appropriate for all—despite the vast array of cultural, regional, ethnic, and ideological differences that exist in this country—is a mistake," he said emphatically.
Rather than trying to ensure that every student "gets to the same place at the same time," schools should strive to "raise the mean in performance and increase the variance" of students' interests and strengths, Eisner said. Educators "ought to be cultivating productive idiosyncrasy, playing to the youngsters' talents, allowing them (at appropriate times) to follow their bliss, because in the long haul it's the cultivation of those positive aptitudes that will feed back into the culture," he maintained. "It's through the interaction of complexities, not the production of uniformity, that a democracy grows."
Alexander countered that standards can help provide all students with an equal opportunity to learn. A set of common standards will help equalize expectations for all students, she argued. "Only a small percentage of high school kids in this country really know what their standards are, because they're set by institutions of higher education. These students know precisely what they have to do" to succeed, she said. "However, for far too many kids in this country, the standards are too low." These students are at a disadvantage when they enter our changing workplace or participate as citizens. National standards would help these students—and their teachers—understand what they need to accomplish, she said.
Standards could also help bring about more equal conditions in schools, Alexander asserted. "The way we're going to get at equal opportunity is by knowing where we want to go first," she said. "I think we're going to have a lot more success [generating] the political will to get the job done if we can describe what the job is," she said. "If you can clearly describe an educated person so that everyone says, `That's what I want my son or daughter to be like,' then I think you're going to get the will" to demand equitable conditions in schools, so that every child can become well educated.
"If you want support for the resources that are needed, you have to be able to say, `These are the resources it's going to take, this is the program it's going to take—if we want all of our kids to have those abilities,'" Alexander said. And once adequate resources have been secured, "then do precisely what Elliot Eisner has described in terms of [pursuing] the work at the school level that's going to make it happen," she advised.
A Broader Context
Eisner also warned that standards will inhibit spontaneity in the classroom, because they map out a prescribed course.
"In working with kids as a teacher, if you've got your eyes and ears open, opportunities emerge that you could never have dreamed of or anticipated," he said. "A good teacher functions opportunistically—at least a significant part of the time—to exploit educational possibilities and teachable moments that have to be capitalized on." That doesn't mean teachers don't need to plan, Eisner said. "But the surest path to hell in classrooms is to keep your eye only on the target."
Eisner also questioned whether performance standards would be an adequate measure of student achievement. "The judgments that wise teachers make about their students' performance [involve] a lot more than whether specific standards have been achieved," he said. "They [involve] what kids have done, what kind of effort they've made, what kind of people they are, where they come from—all of the personal, cultural, and social circumstances that ought to be taken into account in dealing with human beings."
"I am not saying that we shouldn't have expectations; I am not saying that everything is of equal worth," Eisner insisted. But he emphasized that "schools are not changed by [defining] standards that teachers have to attain, unless you create conditions in schools that make it possible for teachers to become reflective about how they can get better at that very complex and subtle art called teaching.
"Unless we think critically and analytically about the nature of school, about the ways in which time is organized, the ways in which roles are defined, the kinds of opportunities and expectations and resources that are provided, we are going to be missing the boat," Eisner said. "And we're going to wind up with another reform movement in eight years."
In conclusion, Alexander cautioned that the standards issue shouldn't be taken out of the broader context of education reform. But standards can be part of a new vision of education in this country, she asserted. "I don't see standards as a cure-all or a silver bullet," she said. "I see standards as a catalyst for doing the hard work that needs to be done."
