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I agree that local control is a problem. I moved around a lot as a child and attended many schools in different states. I lost two years when I moved from Minnesota to Alabama, and it was hard to make up when I moved back north. (Plus, the southern schools believed in corporal punishment. With a northern accent, I was not the teacher’s pet.) The social studies movie I watched was sympathetic to the south and the teacher had tears in his eyes. Then there’s the issue of Regents vs. Iowa tests, etc. I’ll have to catch up on your series, but if not national standards, what do you suggest?

I’m in favor of rigorous curriculum, which is, perhaps, a step beyond standards. I just thought I’d point out that even E.D. Hirsch, whose work is much maligned by many in the education world and can, in some ways, be seen as the father of the most recent core curriculum movement, wrote in his most recent book that he felt that a rigorous core would only be 50% of the curriculum taught in schools and would be focused on early grades (K-8).

So is it standards (or curriculum) that this argues against or just these standards and how they’re being framed? This came up in an earlier disagreement we had, the source of which turned out to be that your concern is with standards as end-goals, the 12th grade bar, essentially. I agree this is the wrong approach, but why not then call for the right approach with rigorous national standards, which would include significant, year by year articulation of goals that are common to all students and schools, and simultaneously not all encompassing on what is done in the classroom?

No one wants bad standards, and the current work being done by the NGA may be ineffective (if not viewed as a small step toward more effective work we’re not ready to accept). Brookings just published a short article (http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2009/1014_curriculum_whitehurst.aspx) comparing the effectiveness of various efforts on student achievement– notice that standards seem not to help at all but implementing an effective curriculum had, by far, the largest effect size. This doesn’t surprise me at all– simply having standards is meaningless, but constructing effective curriculum (which assumes meaningful standards) makes all the difference.

Support for standards shouldn’t be because they alone solve problems, it should exist because without standards we don’t have the conditions necessary to form the most effective curriculum, which actually addresses the mobility issue that myself and others have mentioned.

To those afraid that national standards are the “camel’s nose”, I say congrats! You have seen passed the politics and recognized this is a move toward the actual, effective reform that you fear.