Why Don’t We Have National Standards?
by Lin Yang on March 10, 2008 in The Blackboard
When Bob Moses spoke at the JFK, Jr. Forum on February 21, he called on our country to implement a constitutional amendment mandating that every child should have an equal opportunity to obtain an excellent education. Bob argued that this right is essential to ensuring further progress for minority communities in the U.S., and it follows the line of struggles that have won African Americans the right to be free, the right to vote, and the right to receive equal protection under the law. When he posed the proposal “How many of you believe that every child should have a chance to obtain a high quality education” to the audience, everyone’s hand shot up. So why don’t we have constitutional amendment for equal education?
To answer this question, we would have to look at what a constitutional amendment for equal education would mean. If this amendment were to pass, we would essentially need a standardized way to judge states, districts, and schools to see if they are providing equal levels of education. The most practical way to do this would be to give the U.S. Department of Education authority to develop a set of national standards that teachers across America must follow; standards in subjects that our government deem pertinent to the concept of an “excellent” education. These standards would help guarantee equal implementation by mandating that all states, districts, and schools, teach at or above those standards. Our federal government would have to devise ways to rate schools based on how well they delivered on the mandate, and the courts would have to decide what the legal test for “providing equal opportunity” would mean in this context. We would have no more of this NCLB nonsense, where states devise their own standards that have become widely variant and inherently useless for comparison and benchmarking purposes.
The move towards national standards has primarily been blocked by several factors. Traditionally, the public education system has fallen under the purview of State’s Rights, with authority to design curriculums given to states, and even individual districts. This is why you have certain states and districts passing resolutions to teach “intelligent design” in schools. The original intent of giving discretion to states was to recognize that each state had different economic needs, history, and culture. Many whom support this position argue that communities and parents should have the final say of the content in their child’s education. In addition, having a legal requirement of “equal opportunity in education” across the United States would open a whole new can of worms, with lawsuits flying around the ambiguity of what “equal” truly means.
However, we need national standards because certain levels of proficiency in reading and writing, math, science, and social studies should be non-negotiable. Key standards must be set to ensure that our students are prepared for the increasingly dynamic job market out there. When a state like Mississippi claims to have 89% of their fourth graders scoring proficient on the state’s reading test in 2005, and then have those same students bomb the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) with 18% proficiency, the system is broken. Our global economy makes the cultural differences between states shrink every day, while the disparities in education continue to increase. Even if our children do not plan to become professors or high-salaried consultants, they must have the skills to adapt and change professions if they lose their jobs. We also need more of them to become teachers and pass down their knowledge.
Written by Lin Yang · Filed Under The Blackboard
Lin Yang taught high school mathematics for two years in West Helena, Arkansas, as part of Teach for America's Mississippi Delta Corps. He is currently a Master in Public Policy candidate at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, concentrating in U.S. education policy.
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Lin, this is fascinating stuff. In the UK, we’ve actually had a national curriculum for twenty years. On the whole, it’s been a success, standards have improved and parents are better able to monitor and compare the quality of their children’s education. However, it’s not an end in itself - everything depends on what the standards are and if they stretch rather than stifle pupils. IPPR, a UK think tank that does great work in this and other areas, has an interesting report about the merits and dangers of assessment in our national curriculum.
http://www.ippr.org/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=516