Standards

Education Week ran a Live Chat with Diane Ravitch this week on the subject of national standards. Ravitch is a conservative analyst and she favors solid traditional schooling that meets needs of every child. She's got high standards for education and all involved. Although politically I might often disagree with her, in educational terms I think she often makes excellent points. Her book Left Back is one of my favorite education texts. Anyway, this week's Live Chat with Ravitch focused on subject standards. The following comment struck me because it is a particular petpeeve of mine. I've got a phone book-sized copy of all the subject standards. To expect that all students--or even any student--would learn all that is contained therein is preposterous. Ravitch's answer points (I think) to a lack of leadership and common sense. Not to mention any appreciation for balance or boundaries.

Question from Lisa Ross, Federal Policy Director, Former Chief Counsel on Education to the US Senate: It's my recollection that when model national standards were developed for various subjects that so much content was included in each subject area that teaching just one of them would take up the whole school day and year. They were developed by groups of subject matter teachers but they were not realistic. How would you propose developing national standards for all subjects that fit into a school day?

Diane Ravitch: I was involved in that earlier effort and I am well aware of everything that went wrong. The effort to create national standards started in the last year of the first Bush administration. The grants were awarded then, but when the standards were written, there was no entity in a position to review them, send them back for revision, insist on paring them down, look at them all together and acknowledge that the amount in them was simply overwhelming. Having participated in standard-writing in various states, I know that one of the biggest problems is what to leave out. There is a lot of old-fashioned log-rolling, where everyone agrees to cut nothing. But if we had a serious and sustained national conversation about what our kids need to know in math, science, history, literature, the arts, etc., then we would also need some oversight, some coordination from the top to make sure that the standards were reasonable as well as geared to high performance. When they are overwhelming in bulk, they can't be taken seriously. Then they are just a wish list.

In response to a later question about barriers, Ravitch acknowledges, again, some common sense problems with no easy solution.

Diane Ravitch: There of course is strong political opposition, based on fear that the standards will be taken over by "them" (whoever you happen to disagree with). The left mistrusts the right, the right mistrusts the left. All of which is reasonable, unless it is possible to create a national entity with real integrity. Having been on the NAGB board, having seen so many people who were dedicated to the well-being of America's children, I think it can be done. But I do not question how hard it will be.

I agree with her, but no one asked me. Nonetheless, I can and do make a difference in this debate. I believe that the little things I do, the people I choose to publicly support, the questions I ask, and the standards of behavior that I uphold and practice, these do make a difference, regardless of who is "in power". It seems to me that people are absurdly afraid of cooperation, hard work, and prioritizing. All I can really do about that bothersome fact is to counteract it.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. -- St. Francis of Assisi

Amen to that.