Nationwide standards: the future?

Were the US to achieve a set of national standards for K-12 education, it would be a “game changing event,” according to Michael Cohen, president of Achieve, one of the first organizations to push for nationwide education standards. It's something administrations have been trying to achieve since the first President Bush was in office, and the current effort – in which states are collaborating to come up with standards that they can voluntarily adopt – is the closest we've ever been.

But will support for such an effort dry up after the next election cycle? What does the Obama administration's clear embrace of such an effort – tying it to federal funding in its Race to the Top goals – mean for the political fate of national standards? And how will these standards, if put into place, play out at the classroom level?

Cohen, together with Center on Education Policy President Jack Jennings and Massachusetts education Commissioner Mitchell Chester came together for a discussion on the national standards movement at one of EWA's Saturday morning sessions. The session was moderated by the Washington Post's Nick Anderson.

The panelists agreed: there are a host of reasons why nationwide education standards would be a good thing. At the moment, educational expectations vary wildly from state to state; a student who might be considered proficient in Kentucky or Mississippi might not be considered so in Massachusetts, for example. Chester said the current administration sees national standards as both a global competitiveness issue – they want to make sure students across the country graduate with the knowledge they need to function in a modern economy – and an equity issue: in the current system, there are big disparities in education quality between states.

But America has always embraced local control of schools, and national standards are a politically touchy subject. The current effort has been savvy, Jennings said, because instead of having the standards come down from the federal government, they're being developed by states together, and can be adopted on a voluntary basis. The revised set of standards, dubbed “The Common Core” is scheduled to be released in June.

How widespread will their adoption be? It's not clear. The Obama administration's efforts to promote the Common Core by tying Race to the Top money to a commitment to the standards has not necessarily been helpful, as it gives off the same top-down vibe those developing the standards have been trying to avoid this time around. Also, some states, including Massachusetts, which are considered to have relatively high standards, are taking a wait-and-see approach before deciding whether the Common Core will be a good fit for them.

Another crucial point: standards are one thing. Implementation is another, and it will require a lot of additional support in the form of curriculum development, textbooks, professional development, etc to translate these new standards into the classroom. New standards can't succeed without this backup, and these will all have price tags attached to them – something worth remembering in coverage.

What are some future of the implications of common standards? Could it lead to something along the lines of a common curriculum, perhaps? “That's radioactive in some circles,” Anderson said.

Chester said in his experience, teachers and principals want help with curriculum development, wherever it comes from.

“People are hungry for assistance,” he said. “Whether you want to call it common curriculum or whether you want to call it sharing what's working.”