Education is at a crossroads in our nation. Even third world countries are exceeding our literacy rate. It has gotten so bad that, as a computer lab tutor for a local community college, I spent more time teaching high school graduates grade school grammar than teaching them computer skills. Therefore I support a proposed national achievement standard.
A panel of educators convened by the nation’s governors and state school superintendents proposed a uniform set of academic standards on Wednesday, laying out their vision for what all the nation’s public school children should learn in math and English, year by year, from kindergarten to high school graduation.
The new proposals could transform American education, replacing the patchwork of standards ranging from mediocre to world-class that have been written by local educators in every state.
Under the proposed standards for English, for example, fifth graders would be expected to explain the differences between drama and prose, and to identify elements of drama like characters, dialogue and stage directions. Seventh graders would study, among other math concepts, proportional relationships, operations with rational numbers and solutions for linear equations.
The new standards are likely to touch off a vast effort to rewrite textbooks, train teachers and produce appropriate tests, if a critical mass of states adopts them in coming months, as seems likely. But there could be opposition in some states, like Massachusetts, which already has high standards that advocates may want to keep.
“I’d say this is one of the most important events of the last several years in American education,” said Chester E. Finn Jr., a former assistant secretary of education who has been an advocate for national standards for nearly two decades. “Now we have the possibility that for the first time, states could come together around new standards and high school graduation requirements that are ambitious and coherent. This is a big deal.”
In recent years, many states moved in the opposite direction, lowering standards to make it easier for students to pass tests and for schools to avoid penalties under the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind law.
After educators, business executives and others criticized the corrosive impact of a race to the bottom, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers set the common-standards initiative in motion last year. They convened panels of English and math experts from the College Board and A.C.T., and from Achieve Inc., a group with years of experience working to upgrade graduation standards.
Alaska and Texas are the only states that declined to participate in the standards-writing effort. In keeping his state out, Gov. Rick Perry argued that only Texans should decide what children there learn.
The Obama administration quickly endorsed the effort. Under the Department of Education’s Race to the Top initiative, in which states are competing for a share of $4 billion in school improvement money, states can earn 40 points of the possible 500 for participating in the common effort and adopting the new standards. Under current law, there is no penalty for states that choose not to participate.
The standards are open for public comment through April 2, before final versions are published later in the spring… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <NY Times>
The problem is worst in Red States where Republicans have embraced the Bush/GOP plan to dumb down America to enable public vulnerability to their disinformation. There would be no problem accommodating superior Blue States like Massachusetts. Just make the national standard a national minimum standard that would not effect stated that already exceed it.
However, states like Texas will rebel. These states are more concerned with teaching students what to think than teaching them how to think, as this article clearly demonstrates.
Even as a panel of educators laid out a vision Wednesday for national standards for public schools, the Texas school board was going in a different direction, holding hearings on changes to its social studies curriculum that would portray conservatives in a more positive light, emphasize the role of Christianity in American history and include Republican political philosophies in textbooks.
The hearings are the latest round in a long-running cultural battle on the 15-member State Board of Education, a battle that could have profound consequences for the rest of the country, since Texas is one of the largest buyers of textbooks.
The board is expected to take a preliminary vote this week on a raft of changes to the state’s social studies curriculum proposed by the seven conservative Republicans on the board. A final vote will come in May.
Conservatives argue that the proposed curriculum, written by a panel of teachers, emphasizes the accomplishments of liberal politicians — like the New Deal and the Great Society — and gives less importance to efforts by conservatives like President Ronald Reagan to limit the size of government… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <NY Times>
In other words, Republicans want to rewrite history. Reagan did little to reduce the size of government. He merely shifted the direction of welfare from assistance for the needy to assistance for the greedy. His “trickle down” economics worked exactly the way the GOP planned it. Nothing trickled down except misery. Wealth gushed up. History must remember this, not the propaganda the GOP would substitute for the truth.
Therefore the national standard should be expanded beyond just reading and math. It also should be a mandatory minimum to protect Red State children from the Republican goal to produce brainwashed sheep.
Anyone who wishes to review the standard and comment may do do by clicking the link in the first article.
16 Responses to “A Tale of Two Standards”
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Motto in Plato’s academy:
Let no man ignorant of mathematics enter here.
And those Greek cats weren’t into dysinformatin. 🙂
Amen to that, Ivan.
Let’s face it: Conservatives (Republicans) live in a fairy tale world anyway, so it is no wonder they constantly want to promote myth, rewrite history, and deny truth. Someone should tell that ignorant buffoon Rick Perry that only ants and savages kill strangers, and that the mark of a civilized and intelligent society lies in what they accept, learn from, and adapt—not in what they reject and run away from. Texas should become its own country—Bush, DeLay, and Perry are way out of step with mainstream America.
Jack, I opposed the border wall and called it the Dubya Ditch. Were Texas to secede, I would be all for building a wall.
For the states that choose not to parcipate, their graduation rates will be below the 50% mark as they are now. Nothing bad can come of standardizing American curricula. These states will eventually be banned from colleges, as their education standards do not meet the rest of the country. Let Texas and Alaska secede – it’s what they want anyway. So sad for the children of those states, but there should be a penalty for not participating. An “incentive” for participation if you will.
Lisa, while I agree in principal, is it right to punish the children for their parents’ teabuggery? That’s why I want it mandatory.
The Bush “No Child Left Behind” forced the schools to teach to the test, so as to keep their funding. Teaching to the test destroys creativity and puts fear into teachers and administrators. America will always have a well educated class who attend top Universities and that seems to be enough for GOP, but what about the rest of the population. A public education system after the civil war, took the country through the back end of the industrial revolution and made the American workforce a power to be reckoned with. I fully support this new initiative.
I agree Holte. Some of the GOP are even calling public education ‘socialism’.
I am a little distrustful of standardized testing as a method to gauge student performance – not because of principle but because of implementation.
In Florida, there is a test called the Florida’s Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT. My graduating class did not require this test to graduate, but we were a “test” class. My major complaint was that teachers would opt to teach FCAT material instead of the curriculum so they could have a high percentage of passing, but by doing so, they would skip essential chapters required to have a firm understanding of the subject.
My math teachers in high school would skip chapter after chapter so we can memorize test questions, but if they taught the curriculum, one would have gained the necessary information to pass the FCAT, and then, if the student doesn’t pass the test, it would be due to the student’s own merits, but like you had written, schools dumb down their standards to make sure they are not at the bottom of the list when meeting federal requirements…
I found that entering college, I was unprepared for some of the classes I was taking, and my grades initially suffered…
Kevin, I see your point. But the folks behind this include the same folks that write the SAT. I can’t speak to FCAT, except to express outrage that they named it after a feline buddy, cousin F.U. Cat. 😉
The tests under No Child May Excel were narrow and simplistic. The trick here is to make the standardized test comprehensive, vary it, and not to publish each year’s version in advance. In that way, devious school districts cannot ignore the curriculum to teach the test by rote.
Holte Ender wrote “America will always have a well educated class who attend top Universities and that seems to be enough for GOP”
I am somewhat curious as to whether that was the initial plan. Introduce a bill that sounds good, but in reality, it’s practice would essentially dumb down Americans, making a class of people who will become future party adherents… I am certain a vast majority of the dumbed down society are the types you find listening to Glenn Beck, and while they may be susceptible to influence, conservatives seem to have “indoctrination” and propaganda down to a science…
Kevin, the well educated class about which Holte wrote usually get a private high school education. I think that dumbing down was the GOP intent. In Texas when Bush was Governor, he pointed to improvements in that state’s test scores after the same program had been implemented there. What he did not say was that the way Texas school districts improved their scores was to encourage underachieving students to drop out.
I have been reading Paul Ryan’s proposal to balance the budget…
Cut medicare, privatize social security, add VAT tax, lower taxes for the wealthy, do not tax interest, dividends, or capital gains, while increasing taxes on everyone else….AND lots of stuff about job training…
Obviously, he is planning on bringing back the aristocracy and turning everyone else into serfs…
That explains the job training focus…..obviously he believes that No Child Left Behind just dumbed down the kids enough to turn them all into serfs…
The perfect plan…
Excellent Analysis, Tao. Along that same line, the US Senate seems to think they are the House of Lords.
Leave it to Texas
They do have a knack for teabuggery, Jeri.