Goals 2000 does not just permit -- it requires -- citizen participation.
Goals 2000, the education bill that Congress passed this spring, is designed to encourage states to create clear and high academic standards, and some states have already gotten started. But now we are hearing some alarming things about Goals 2000. If states accept Goals 2000 money, does that mean bureaucrats from Washington will soon be dictating what kids learn? Does Goals 2000 represent a federal takeover of education? That's certainly what you'd think if you listened to some of Goals 2000 critics -- for example, Lamar Alexander, who was a secretary of education under George Bush.
Alexander is going around talking about how the new law will establish "a sort of national school board that overrides local control." According to him, governors won't have authority over education any longer -- "Washington experts and union leaders" will. And instead of establishing high academic standards, Alexander says, Goals 2000 will lead to that anathema of the right, outcomes-based education.
This is scary stuff However, none of it is true - and Lamar Alexander knows it. But if people take this kind of misinformation seriously, states will lose more than federal dollars.
Nothing in Goals 2000 threatens state responsibility for, and local control of, education; the legislation was carefully written to preserve these things. What Goals 2000 does is to offer states money if they want to develop rigorous academic standards and make other changes that will help students meet the new standards -- like improving teacher training and creating tests geared to the standards.
Goals 2000 does not just permit -- it requires -- citizen participation. States that apply for Goals 2000 funds must have parent representatives, as well as a broad range of community members, on the panels that develop standards. And once the standards are set, it will be up to communities to decide how to meet them.
But what about that "national school board" Lamar Alexander talks about? He probably means the National Education Standards and Improvement Council (NESIC), but it's nothing of the sort. NESIC's job is to establish guidelines for the new standards, and it will be able to give a kind of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval to standards that meet these guidelines. But NESIC is not a federal school board; it doesn't remove authority for local schools from local control. And no state even has to submit its standards to NESIC for approval; that's strictly voluntary.
The idea that Goals 2000 "encourages" outcomes-based education (QBE) is another distortion. QBE is based on the idea that we should measure student achievement by what youngsters know and can do ("outcomes") rather than on how many courses kids have taken and how much time they've spent in school ("inputs"). This sounds fine -- and it is, as the majority of Americans agree. The trouble is that many of the QBE outcomes have been nonacademic and even silly -- things like "All students should know and use, when appropriate, community health resources" or high school graduates should be able to "establish priorities to balance multiple life roles." And when outcomes have been more academic, they have often been so vague as to be worthless: "Students should be able to write for a variety of audiences" is an example. Communities that have rejected outcomes like these have been quite right.
But Goals 2000 does not encourage fuzzy, feel-good stuff; it sends the opposite message. It calls for states to improve academic achievement by setting clear and high standards for performance in core subjects. And it offers states some of the resources they will need to put the standards into practice. If states end up with the worthless kind of QBE outcomes, it will be because they have created them. There is nothing in Goals 2000 that requires or would lead them to do that.
Right now, nobody is happy with our educational "product." We've subjected our students and teachers to all kinds of untried educational experiments in the name of innovation, usually without much success. But standards are a tried and true practice in good school systems. They've gotten excellent results in the school systems of other industrial democracies -- Japan, Germany, France and Australia -- and in good school systems in the U.S. For once, we can confidently undertake an education reform that we know works.
Goals 2000 offers a structure, not a prescription. It is the beginning of an effort, not the end, and the results will be as good as states and localities make them. People should be contacting education departments now to find out what's going on and how they can contribute to making Goals 2000 work for their schools and students. Above all, they should keep in mind that Goals 2000 is not a meddling federal mandate. It's more like a do-it-yourself kit, and the results depend on citizens' interest and involvement.