Nowadays, most people who talk about improving U.S. education are all for raising standards. But "standards" is just another buzz word if we don't agree on certain things: what children need to know, what we mean by satisfactory levels of achievement and how we'll know whether kids are attaining these levels. So you'd think there would be a lot of enthusiasm for a proposal that is now before Congress. It would establish a council to coordinate the development of national standards and assessments and make sure it's done properly. Instead, this proposal, which is based on the recommendations of the National Council on Education Standards and Testing (NCEST), is under considerable fire. Some people object because they are terrified by the idea of a federal exam; others are certain that the system would be grossly unfair.
Those who worry about a federal exam can rest easy. What NCEST proposed was not a federal exam but a national assessment system composed of different tests, none of which would be created or imposed by the federal government. Some would be created by partnerships among states, some by a single state and some by private organizations. But they would all have to be based on nationally agreed upon standards for what students should know and be able to do -- like the curriculum framework already created by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. The government's only role would be to provide some financial support for groups trying to develop standards and assessments, coordinate their efforts and attest to the quality of the results.
People who are worried about fairness raise a more complicated set of issues. They, too, agree that we need to improve standards and assessments because kids are not learning what they should even though they are being tested to death. But many of these people are unwilling to change the present system until they are convinced that the new tests will be absolutely fair. By "fair," they mean that all youngsters must have an equal chance of doing well on the new assessments.
Some of them say a new assessment system won't be fair until we make sure all mothers have proper health care while they are pregnant. Or it won't be fair until all kids are able to participate in high-quality early childhood programs. Or until every school has the same amount of money to spend per child and all our schools shape up. Other people say that we shouldn't go with new assessments until we're sure they are valid on all sorts of scientific and statistical grounds and have no disparate impact on minorities.
These are not trivial considerations. We should pursue these goals. But if we have to wait until we attain them before trying to establish national standards and assessments, we'll wait forever. It's like saying we have to wait until our society is perfect before trying to improve it.
Students in other industrialized nations are doing better than our youngsters, and one of the main reasons is that these countries have standards for their students, tests and testing systems. Their assessments are not perfect, and neither are their societies. But standards and assessments tell them things they need to know. Students find out if they are working hard enough. Their parents can find out, too, so they can exert a little extra pressure. Teachers can see where they are not getting through to students and where they need new or better materials.
In these countries, standards and assessments are also used to make decisions about students. Who ought to go on to university and who should follow a technical or vocational program. Many Americans don't like this idea because they assume that "sorting" students means that a favored few get a first-class education and the rest have to put up with the dregs. After all, that's what happens here when we sort kids. So we ignore the fact that many of these countries have programs that work for all their students. These countries help kids who are at the bottom as well as those in the middle and at the top, and we can, too.
Because we have no national standards, our students don't have to meet any but the most minimal standards to graduate from high school. If they have a diploma and enough money, they can find a college to admit them; and the employers who are willing to hire kids right out of high school aren't interested in anything but the diploma, either.
Our current system is devastatingly bad for all our youngsters. We are not producing a top group that is equivalent to that of other industrialized nations, and our bottom group is in terrible shape. We are crippling our youngsters because we're giving them the wrong message.
Those who point to the fact that all of our kids are not equally prepared are absolutely right. This means that meeting standards will be tougher for some students than for others. But people who say the kids won't be able to do it are wrong. They're the same people who argued that requiring students to pass minimum competency exams for high school graduation would lead to a dramatic increase in high school dropout rates. It didn't. Many of the students people expected to quit school worked hard enough to meet the standard expected of them, and they graduated from high school.
Holding out on establishing standards and assessments until we are sure that everything is absolutely fair has a nice humane sound. But it is an excuse for doing nothing - for maintaining the status quo -- and that would be terribly unfair to all our students.