Mar 03 2009
Moving Towards National Standards
Educational standards provide a guideline for teachers and administrators to follow in order to produce expectations for K-12 students. The standards give the teachers structure and focus on how to craft lessons and what learning needs to occur in order for the students to pass standardized tests.
Under the current system, these standards are determined by each state and each state has differences on what is expected of each student. There are also national standards in place, but currently these national standards are voluntary and utilized as a suggestion in creating state standards. Mandating national standards is a policy that has been up for debate and controversial discussions since the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was enacted in 2001.
The debates have resurfaced again and there are strong advocates for moving away from the long-standing history of state controlled standards in the classroom towards all schools meeting uniform national standards. There are varying degrees of suggested policies on how involved Congress should be in the educations system. The pendulum swings from full-out control including standards and testing to voluntary participation and incentive programs for national standards participation.
The general consensus is the NCLB Act has flaws and needs to be reformed. Strong reformers claim that the states are not providing a meaningful yardstick for measuring standards. Many states are lowering their standards to compete on a national level. By lowering the benchmark each year, the test results portray improvement in percentage of students that score above the state’s standard.
The president for the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, fully supports national standards. In her article, she gives an analogy to professional football standards. She asks readers if it would be fair if certain teams had to run more yards to get a first down than other teams. While I think educational standards and testing is more complex then the NFL rules on down yardage requirements, it is a simple analogy that gets her point across that children should not be held to lower or higher standards based on which zip code they live in.
The begging question becomes, who creates these standards? There is no doubt that education reform and policy changes are a valid concern and many questions need to be addressed, the answers are not simple nor will policy change overnight. This country has a long history of ‘local control’ in the education system and this drastic system reform will be a political change that will not be met easily or quickly.
