National Standards Are Being Discussed Again

Education Week has raised the issue of having our public schools embrace national standards. When I first started teaching over 11 years ago, I asked then when Virginia was just getting everyone to use the Standards of Learning, why we were not moving to a national curriculum. Virginia's SOLs for science, mathematics, and language arts/reading are based on national standards advocated by the various associations that advance these individual topics. The case against national standards is the history; many fear that local/state history would be jeopardized by endorsing a national curriculum framework.

In a Nov. 7 opinion piece in The New York Times, the education historian Diane Ravitch argued that the current strategy of “50 states, 50 standards, 50 tests” has not improved student achievement, based on the most recent results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Ravitch is correct that by not adopting national standards we are left with a patchwork quilt education. Viewing the current framework, it looks good but when we examine the fine stitching that is holding the squares together, we have our four subgroups of NCLB struggling, an achievement gap that is still not closed, and frustrated teachers who are struggling to see all children succeed.

Over the summer, I had a chance to hear our nation's governors speak about the future of education in the US. Gov. Warner hosted this summit where the author, Thomas Friedman, spoke about his book, The World is Flat, and a gave a plea that our American education system had to change. Rightly or wrongly, the US wired the world and we have invited our competition, China and India, into the game. Friedman stated at this summit that America's A/B students were going to have a much tougher time in securing employment than their parents because of this global network.

“I’ve been watching very, very closely the educational progress in Asia—China, India, Vietnam, Singapore, and several others,” said Robert L. Wehling, a retired global-marketing officer for the Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co., “and I’m telling you, they’re making rapid progress, whereas we’re making minuscule progress. And I don’t think the average American understands the impact of this for our future, because they’re going to have the bulk of the intellectual and creative talent in the world, and that has devastating consequences for us.” Given that global situation, the United States needs to define a common set of standards, “especially in subjects like math and science and related courses,” said former Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. of North Carolina, a Democrat, who also has been speaking out this year on the need for national standards.

I know as a teacher and a future administrator that having national standards and a common curriculum framework makes sense; for example, this week I have had two new students added to my roster. These students were not doing what I was doing in science. One student was doing biology while another was doing electricity; neither of these topics are in my sixth grade SOLs. While these students will not be taking a sixth grade science SOL, I recognize that these students will have gaps in their instruction and they are not the only ones. This lack of a national curriculum frustrates teachers and if the policymakers ask the teachers who are in the trenches, they would quickly move to have adoptions made. However, why take a teacher's word - just read The World is Flat.