A national solution?
I've heard rumblings about the need for national standards/assessments more often lately, and in today's NYT Diane Ravitch goes to town:
I think Ravitch and the national-solution crowd have a tremendous number of good points. I've written numerous times about how states manipulate, fudge, spin and otherwise mask the truth of education in their districts. I don't believe their intentions are sinister so much as understandable -- as Ravitch notes, it's politics, stupid. Especially in states with elected school boards and elected state superintendants, the downside to public accountability is that there's a great big carrot enticing officials to engage in sleight of hand. To be honest, for a long time I fervently believed that federal imposition was going to be the only way to get all of our ducks in a row.
I just don't see any concievable way that it actually happens.
States are notoriously cagey when it comes to their domains, and perhaps moreso on education than any other issue. We've seen the states moan and groan about every requirement of NCLB, and we've even seen them recoil at the suggestion that the federal government enforce a standardized graduation rate across the land. The second the government passes a law requiring states to participate in national assessments and to face consequences as a result of those assessments, there's going to be a lawsuit. And unless the Supreme Court comes up with a very creative reading of the commerce clause, my rudimentary knowledge of constitutional law tells me there is little chance the feds will win.
The other option is the voluntary agreement approach, embodied by the National Governor Association's pact between 45 states to come up with standardized graduation rate metrics. But graduation rates and standards/assessments are orders of magnitude apart. It would take an enormous amount of public pressure to force states (especially those authentically on the bottom half of the spectrum) to give up that which they feel is nothing short of a birthright -- how to educate their kids.
I don't see that happening anytime soon, but it's certainly the most viable way to reach the necessary threshold of truth. Every new demonstration of the states' chicanery -- every person who realizes that 40% less kids are passing the NAEP than are passing their state assessments -- brings us closer to that critical mass. It might take a funding nudge from the feds, and it's certainly going to take a degree of the state's shooting themselves in the foot to remove a tumor. We've seen it happen before, though -- Washington State superintendant Terry Burgeson (an elected offical) recently came out and said that her state's graduation rate was actually far, far lower than they had been reporting. Despite admitting a failure, she won accolades for honesty and guts. So perhaps it's not hopeless.
The bottom line is that 50 ad hoc systems with different quality assessments, cut scores, n-sizes, content standards and achievement standards is begging for trouble, and trouble is exactly what we've got. "Nationalization" simply isn't a practical option; voluntary agreements may be the only way to go.
WHILE in office, Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton both called for national academic standards and national tests in the public schools. In both cases, the proposals were rejected by a Congress dominated by the opposing party. The current President Bush, with a friendly Congress in hand, did not pursue that goal because it is contrary to the Republican Party philosophy of localism. Instead he adopted a strategy of "50 states, 50 standards, 50 tests" - and the evidence is growing that this approach has not improved student achievement. Americans must recognize that we need national standards, national tests and a national curriculum.
The release last month of test results by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is part of the Department of Education, vividly demonstrated why varying state standards and tests are inadequate. Almost all states report that, based on their own tests, incredibly large proportions of their students meet high standards. Yet the scores on the federal test (which was given to a representative sample of fourth and eighth graders) were far lower. Basically, the states have embraced low standards and grade inflation.
[...]
Why the discrepancies? The states function in a political environment. Educational leaders and elected officials want to assure the public that the schools are doing their jobs and making progress. The federal testing program, administered for the past 15 years by an independent, bipartisan governing board, has never been cowed by the demands of parents, school officials and taxpayers for good news.
In the No Child Left Behind law of 2001, Congress left it to each state to develop its own standards and tests, but added that the tests given by National Assessment of Educational Progress should serve as an external gauge of national and state-level achievement. The federal tests are considered the gold standard for good reason: they are the product of a long-term federal investment in research and development. Unlike the state tests, the federal program tries to align its performance standards with international education standards. Many states model their testing on the national program, but still cling to lower standards for fear of alienating the public and embarrassing public officials responsible for education.
I think Ravitch and the national-solution crowd have a tremendous number of good points. I've written numerous times about how states manipulate, fudge, spin and otherwise mask the truth of education in their districts. I don't believe their intentions are sinister so much as understandable -- as Ravitch notes, it's politics, stupid. Especially in states with elected school boards and elected state superintendants, the downside to public accountability is that there's a great big carrot enticing officials to engage in sleight of hand. To be honest, for a long time I fervently believed that federal imposition was going to be the only way to get all of our ducks in a row.
I just don't see any concievable way that it actually happens.
States are notoriously cagey when it comes to their domains, and perhaps moreso on education than any other issue. We've seen the states moan and groan about every requirement of NCLB, and we've even seen them recoil at the suggestion that the federal government enforce a standardized graduation rate across the land. The second the government passes a law requiring states to participate in national assessments and to face consequences as a result of those assessments, there's going to be a lawsuit. And unless the Supreme Court comes up with a very creative reading of the commerce clause, my rudimentary knowledge of constitutional law tells me there is little chance the feds will win.
The other option is the voluntary agreement approach, embodied by the National Governor Association's pact between 45 states to come up with standardized graduation rate metrics. But graduation rates and standards/assessments are orders of magnitude apart. It would take an enormous amount of public pressure to force states (especially those authentically on the bottom half of the spectrum) to give up that which they feel is nothing short of a birthright -- how to educate their kids.
I don't see that happening anytime soon, but it's certainly the most viable way to reach the necessary threshold of truth. Every new demonstration of the states' chicanery -- every person who realizes that 40% less kids are passing the NAEP than are passing their state assessments -- brings us closer to that critical mass. It might take a funding nudge from the feds, and it's certainly going to take a degree of the state's shooting themselves in the foot to remove a tumor. We've seen it happen before, though -- Washington State superintendant Terry Burgeson (an elected offical) recently came out and said that her state's graduation rate was actually far, far lower than they had been reporting. Despite admitting a failure, she won accolades for honesty and guts. So perhaps it's not hopeless.
The bottom line is that 50 ad hoc systems with different quality assessments, cut scores, n-sizes, content standards and achievement standards is begging for trouble, and trouble is exactly what we've got. "Nationalization" simply isn't a practical option; voluntary agreements may be the only way to go.
This entry was posted
on Monday, November 07, 2005 at 12:35 PM.
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