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Despite everything I have written about the intrinsic weaknesses of big state or national standards, I understand the appeal of standards. I really do.

Imagine this:

A country in which all students are well educated. High quality curricula, outlined in rigorous standards, taught by smart, thoughtful expert teachers using differentiated instructional techniques that address multiple modalities, learning styles and intelligences. Students easily surpassing the low bar of standardized tests and building a lifelong love of learning. Even students who move or are in the lowest SES communities are well educated because standards ensure that all schools are appropriately ambitious for their students and focused on the core content that really matters.

What’s not to like?

Well, that’s the vision. And the vision is the appeal. I get it. What’s not to like? (more…)

For the last two weeks, I’ve been raising objections to the idea that new standards — particularly new national standards — are worth the attention they get. It is ridiculous to think that they can be a meaningful lever of broad educational improvement. In fact, I do not think that they can have any significant impact at all.

Why Does Anyone Bother?

Hamlet spoke of customs “More honor’d in the breach than the observance.” I would not go quite that far when speaking of standards in education, but that is primarily because standards are in large part based on what is already actually done. To the extent that they are descriptive, standards are honored. But to the extent that they are prescriptive, they are rather impotent.

So, why all this attention to standards? Why is anyone bothering, and why does anyone pay attention? (more…)

This and next week I am raising objections to the idea that new standards — particularly new national standards — are worth the attention they get. It is ridiculous to think that they can be a meaningful lever of broad educational improvement. In fact, I do not think that they can have any significant impact at all.

Problem #6: Local Control

Directly contrary to the urge for state or even national standards is the long standing support for local control of schools is this country. Parents and communities want to decide what is taught in their schools, and how it is taught.

• Northern Aggression? States’ rights? Slavery?
• Comprehensive or abstinence only?
• Whole language or phonics?

I don’t need to write “Civil War,” “Sex Education” or “Reading” and you already know what I am talking about. Of course, those are just some of the most visible controversies. There are legitimate differences in what to focus on in social studies, with obvious regional or local concerns with stressing local history. There is also the issue of tradition and what feels like arbitrary change when you have to live by someone else’s compromise.

To the extent that standards are voluntary — and certainly in the absence of inspections, everything not on a test is voluntary —there are powerful forces against adopting standards. (more…)

This and next week I am raising objections to the idea that new standards — particularly new national standards — are worth the attention they get. It is ridiculous to think that they can be a meaningful lever of broad educational improvement. In fact, I do not think that they can have any significant impact at all.

Problem #5: Tests Matter; Standards Do Not

As much as they may hate them, teachers do respond to tests. Not always well or in good faith, but teachers and schools feel the pressure of high stakes and public reported tests.

Tests, of course, are usually supposed to be based on standards. State tests are specifically supposed to be based on state standards. State tests might, in the future, be based on the Common Core standards.

But that’s not really true, not exactly. You see, tests only include the standards that we know how to test and are capable of testing relatively cheaply.

The recent draft of the Common Core ELA standards actually begins, “A crucial factor in readiness for college and careers is students’ ability to comprehend complex texts independently.” However, psychometric requirements for reliability, combined with reasonable limits on the time and money it costs to take an exam, prevent the inclusion of complex texts if only because text length is an issue. Later, the draft says, “Students must be able to revisit and make improvements to a piece of their writing over multiple drafts when circumstances encourage or require it.” There is also a whole section for “Speaking and Listening.” Does anyone expect that that standardized tests based upon the Common Core standards will include a speaking section or will include students’ ability to revise their own work?

And so, even if tests do a good job of evaluating students on the standards that they attempt to include, they do not actually represent the larger set of standards fairly. Moreover, in the absence of real advances in testing, I do not see how changes in the standards will lead to changes in the tests. Test developers will continue to test what they know how to test, regardless of what the standards say or how they have been changed.

Previous: Problem #4 — Classrooms
Next: Problem #6 — Local Control

This and next week I am raising objections to the idea that new standards — particularly new national standards — are worth the attention they get. It is ridiculous to think that they can be a meaningful lever of broad educational improvement. In fact, I do not think that they can have any significant impact at all.

Problem #4: Classrooms

I have never heard a teacher declare that s/he was going to change what they were teaching because of something s/he saw in a standards document. Never.

Have you?

I have known teachers and other educators to look through standards and declare what they like or do not like. I have heard them say that they approve of certain changes and not approve of others. But no one has ever said that they have to stop doing something because it fell out of the standards or that they need to start something new because it is in the standards.

The fact is that teachers already know what they want to do in their classes. Whether or not you or I agree or approve of their ideas, they already have them. The ideas could have developed during their own days in school, during their preparation, from things they have read, from discussions or experiences with colleagues or any number of other ways. I suppose that, in theory, reading standards documents could shape these ideas, but I have never seen any evidence of it, and I doubt that you have, either.

Previous: Problem #3 — Fear of Failure Rates!
Next: Problem #5 — Tests Matter; Standards Do Not!

This and next week I am raising objections to the idea that new standards — particularly new national standards — are worth the attention they get. It is ridiculous to think that they can be a meaningful lever of broad educational improvement. In fact, I do not think that they can have any significant impact at all.

Problem #3: Fear of Failure Rates

I am not a fan of most of what appears on The Quick and the Ed, but last month Chad Adelman made a great point about setting high standards. He explained that when they are taken seriously and the inevitable high failure rates occur, people find or create loopholes or backdoors.

Frankly, people do not have the stomach for high failure rates. It is easy to say that we want to raise standards; that is the good news. But it is hard to endorse high failure rates; that is public bad news.

In a 2001 episode of The West Wing, two characters discussed the impact of making the standard for poverty more rigorous and realistic. The good news was that they had a better sense of the problem and would be better able to address it.

Toby: Let’s get back to the bad news. Four million people
became poor on the President’s watch?

Sam: They didn’t become poor. They were poor already. And now we’re calling them poor.

Toby: What was wrong with the old formula?

Sam: I don’t know.

Toby: Find out.

Sam: It is possible that this is a statistical reality and not a political finding.

But public failure is always a political finding, too. And people subject to politics, be they elected, appointed or just in high visible positions, have great incentive to undermine bad news or prevent the news from coming out. So, the more rigorous the standards, the less seriously others will take them, knowing that they will likely be blamed for the bad news. The idealized senior staff of The West Wing could accept “the bad news” because it was really just a more accurate description of reality. But would our real flesh & blood leaders, with all of the pressures they face today, be as well able to accept “the bad news” — and potentially the blame for it? When new more rigorous standards lead to reports of fewer expert or even proficient students, those in positions of responsibility will be blamed. Will they allow that to happen?

Previous: Problem #2 — An Unrealistic Bar!
Next: Problem #4 — Classrooms!

Since last week, I have been raising objections to the idea that new standards — particularly new national standards — are worth the attention they get. It is ridiculous to think that they can be a meaningful lever of broad educational improvement. In fact, I do not think that they can have any significant impact at all.

Problem #2: An Unrealistic Bar

Even if we did not have the kinds of gaps that we see between schools, districts and even states, there is a common problem with where to set the bar. Standards are often set by content experts who have rarely worked with below average students in their field, and perhaps not even average students. They declare what they think students ought to know or be able to do by the time that they graduate from high school, for example. Imagine what college professors/instructors of mathematics would say that high school graduates should know. And historians. And scientists.

When these standards setting committees say, “To be proficient, a student should know…,” what do they actually mean by proficient? Are these bars set for the average student? For the honors student? For the student who truly excels in that subject and will major in it in college?

I don’t see a lot of pressure for these brilliant experts — and I am perfectly willing to concede that they are brilliant experts — to consider a bar any lower than what they think ought to be possible, what they would like to see happen. But they don’t do research or investigation to see how likely or practical their goals are, for whom they might be reasonable, or what it would require for schools to raise all of their students to that level of proficiency — presumably the goal, right?

This leads to aspirational goals and standards, rather than realistically achievable standards.

Previous: Problem #1 — Which Bar to Raise?
Next: Problem #3 – Fear of Failure Rates.

This and next week I am raising objections to the idea that new standards — particularly new national standards — are worth the attention they get. It is ridiculous to think that they can be a meaningful lever of broad educational improvement. In fact, I do not think that they can have any significant impact at all.

Problem #1: Which Bar to Raise?

New standards and new standards initiatives are always about raising the bar. They are always about improving education, educational outcomes and sometimes even — shockingly — improving test scores. Standards efforts are never aimed at merely documenting what is actually done.

But this goal is actually impossible to accomplish with a single bar or single standard because we know that there are all kinds of achievement gaps in this country. Yes, there are racial/ethnic gaps and income gaps. But there are also geographic gaps. The NAEP has show us that some states simply do much much better than others. Caroline Hoxby’s latest report talks about the Harlem-Scarsdale gap. Regardless of the cause of these geographic gaps, they exist.

Given such gaps between states and within states, for whom should we raise the bar? Those who call for excellence are looking to improve the top half or quarter. Those who call for equity aim to improve the bottom half or quarter. Perhaps we can do both at the same time, but wouldn’t that call for multiple bars? States like Mississippi and California could show incredible improvement and still be behind states like Massachusetts and New Jersey. Set the bar high enough to push higher achieving states or districts, and the lower achieving area will see a demoralizing and impossible goal and be that much less likely to take it seriously. Set it at a level to be realistically inspiring for lower achieving states and higher achieving states could sit on their laurels for having already passed it. The exact same issues hold true for districts and even schools.

So, a single set of standards to raise the bar? Impossible.

Next: Problem #2 — An Unrealistic Bar.

We are decades into the Education Standards Movement. Standards have been all the rage for quite some time, and they are getting all kinds of attention today. Right now, there is all kinds of work on national standards going on.

But I say, “Feh!” Standards do not matter — particularly national standards — even if we dearly want them to.

What Are Standards, Anyway?

Standards prescribe and specify what should be done in school. In that, they are similar to curricula and lesson plans. In fact, the line between standards and curricula can be hard to distinguish — as can the line between curricula and lesson plans. As a rule, however, standards are the least specific of the three, and focus on what should be taught, rather than how it should be taught.

So, standards documents describe the goals of a course or a subject. They are the bar or the target, depending on your preferred metaphor. They declare what should be taught, what students should learn and/or what they should be able to do by their course’s end.

When I was teaching in New York not that long ago, each of the English teachers in my school was required to have a poster of the ELA standards up in their classrooms. The contents were probably just a couple of pages long, and they specified what students should learn in their high school English classes.

The widely publicized Common Core draft ELA standards, released last month, can be found in a 47 page document, of which six pages comprise the standards and the rest are explanations and examples to help the reader make sense of them.

Who Creates Standards

Anyone may write standards, and can try to publicize them and get others to pay attention. Rarely, however, will such efforts be successful. Standards simply cannot have more power and authority than the organization that publishes them. NCTM (the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) has been publishing standards for decades, and their expertise and credibility have given them a lot of weight.

However, the most important standards have been created by the states. In our system, the federal government has no constitutional role in education, in theory leaving the entire enterprise to the states. In the last fifty years, though the federal role has grown, standards have still remained the province of the states. In 1994, President Clinton tried to foster the creation of voluntary national standards, but was politically unable to do so — due to the efforts of Lynne Cheney and others. This time around, the Council of Chief State School Officers is leading the effort, along with Achieve — a creation of the National Governors Association. Thus, this time we have a national effort that is not tied to the federal government in Washington, DC.

Of course, it is not as though President Clinton, Governor Schwarzenegger or any of the State Superintendents write standards themselves. Rather, they are supporting the creation of standards by teams and committees of experts. These can include text book writers and publishers, teachers, researchers, professors of education, experts in the appropriate content areas and various others. Real people, with real expertise, real agendas — for better and for worse — and real histories.

Six Problems

Over the next week, I will explain the major problems I see with standards efforts, particularly high profile national standards.

• Problem #1: Which Bar to Raise?
• Problem #2: An Unrealistic Bar
• Problem #3: Fear of Failure Rates
• Problem #4: Classrooms
• Problem #5: Tests Matter; Standards Do Not
• Problem #6: Local Control
• Standards: Why Does Anyone Bother?

Come back through the week and share what you think of each reason. In the meanwhile, do you think that there’s a strong case to be made for strong state or national standards?

Did you hear about the big report that came out this week? You know, the one that “shows” that NYC charter schools are better than traditional non-charter public schools? It has gotten a ton of attention, probably because it uses “‘the gold standard’ method[ology].” The report is not subtle about this. It is right there in the very first sentence of the executive summary, “The distinctive feature of this study is that charter schools’ effects on achievement are estimated by the best available, “gold standard” method: lotteries.” It even uses the term “gold standard” four more times throughout the report.

Everyone wants to follow The Gold Standard — or at least be able to say that they do. Of course! I mean, who wouldn’t? But I do not think that we actually have a gold standard in education research. In fact, I am quite sure that we do not, and appropriating biomedical research’s gold standard does not make it appropriate for us.

However, if we are going to borrow their standard, can we not at least get it right? (more…)