National School Standards Are Goal for ‘90s

Four years ago, California education officials approved an ambitious and widely hailed plan to overhaul the teaching of history, to give even the youngest students heavy doses of American and world history and place a new emphasis on geography, the contributions of various ethnic groups and the role of politics and religion in shaping world events.

Now, with work under way on a set of national curriculum standards in history and four other major disciplines, the country is set to embark on a similar course, with implications that will stretch into the next generation of schoolchildren and beyond.

In the final report of the National Council for Education Standards and Teaching, to be released today in Washington, the country is asked to depart from its tradition of local control over what schools teach and adopt a set of standards spelling out what all students should know in history, English, science, mathematics and geography.

“What we’re aiming for is to clearly articulate our goals as a nation--to define what it means to be an educated American--and to allow the creativity in meeting those goals to take place in individual schoolhouses all across the country,” said Francie Alexander, who was California’s associate superintendent of curriculum before moving to Washington last year to head the council.

Standardizing what every American child should learn--one of several goals set by President Bush last year to raise the quality of public schools--would represent a dramatic shift in national educational policy. But debate over the setting of national goals thus far has been surprisingly tame.

Proponents tout standards as a way to raise the nation’s collective expectations for its students and spur improvements in public schools. Critics worry that the effort will make it appear that students are receiving the help they need, without tackling the problems faced by underfunded, overburdened urban districts.

And both sides recognize that, while California has shown that it can be done, the process will require the nation to confront difficult issues of ethnic diversity, educational philosophy and the high cost of preparing American students to compete in the world market.

A national curriculum is already a fixture in almost every industrial nation in the world. But in the United States, the concept of a national identity has been anathema to educators; individual states and school districts have been free to chart their own courses.

“We have a lot of diversity and states do things quite differently, but the end result of what children are expected to know is really quite similar from state to state,” said Chris Pipho, a spokesman for the Education Commission of the States, which monitors school systems around the country.

Most states rely on their own curriculum guidelines or high school graduation requirements to delineate what students should learn. But graduation requirements generally conform to national college admission standards, and curriculum guidelines are often dictated by the content of a handful of textbooks used across the nation.

As a result, a sort of de facto national curriculum exists already, and many question whether formalizing standards will radically alter what children learn.

“Will national standards matter? They probably won’t change much because they’ll have to reflect what states are already doing,” said Pipho. “It could be more of a political gesture that won’t make much difference down at the schoolhouse level.”

No Panacea

Critics--and even some supporters--of the concept of standards worry that the nation may embrace the idea of a national curriculum as a panacea for the ills of public schools, burdened with overcrowded classrooms, overworked teachers, and children from families too poor to provide the basics students need to succeed.

“Generally speaking, I think there’s a reason to be optimistic and to say that this could very well be an exciting and challenging thing,” said Bruce Goldberg, a spokesman for the American Federation of Teachers.

“But the problem is you can’t simply have standards as if they are inert objects. It will take money, it will take staff development and training, it will take changes in our schools that allow these things to live and breathe.”

Unless the plan provides new money to states that adopt the standards, Goldberg and others fear that shrinking public school budgets may leave districts unable to meet the higher expectations.

The science standards may require students to do more laboratory experiments, but cash-strapped school systems may not be able to afford the necessary equipment. New math standards that introduce complicated mathematical concepts to elementary students may require training sessions for teachers, something many school districts have been forced to cut back.

“What’s the point of raising standards if you have nothing to offer to those responsible for educating the children that allows them to do a better job,” said George McKenna, a nationally known educator who is superintendent of the Inglewood Unified School District.

McKenna worries that the heightened expectation that standards may generate will penalize many who are less able or less privileged and unable to meet the goals.

He likens it to recent moves by the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. to raise the academic requirements for student athletes--changes that critics say close the doors of higher education to many black youths.

“Raising standards doesn’t improve education--improving instruction does,” McKenna said. “If the children don’t reach these new levels of expectations, do we perceive the children to be deficient or do we accept that the delivery system is flawed and hold people accountable for that? Anything less is an injustice to children.”

Even Alexander acknowledges that standards alone will not improve American education. “This is not a silver bullet,” she said. “It’s not a quick fix, where you just drop a framework on everybody’s doorstep and assume that the kids are getting it.

“It’ll require better instructional material, more training, good tests to measure if it’s working. We’re preparing for all of that.”

The creation of standards is a necessary first step on the road to revamping American education--a way to improve upon the minimum competency requirements that serve as standards in many states, Alexander contends.

“What has been demanded is minimal and covers far too little of the knowledge and skills students will need to function in the 21st Century,” her group said in its draft report last month. “Such low expectations seriously shortchange students and ill serve the country.”

Although it is too soon to tell whether California’s new standards are producing better-educated students--the curriculum and textbooks have just this year been incorporated into lessons in most districts--it is clear from the state’s travails that the nation will face formidable obstacles in the process of forging agreement on what education in America ought to include.

Almost from the start, the California vision of a unified history was criticized by representatives of a variety of religious and minority groups, who worried that the framework would reflect a European and Christian outlook.

The curriculum guidelines were drawn up over two years by classroom teachers, geographers, academicians and some of the country’s foremost historians. When they were submitted to public review, more than 1,700 people from up and down the state responded, many demanding revisions.

For four months, the curriculum panel analyzed and revised the guidelines to satisfy the critics, but the uproar began anew when textbooks written according to the new guidelines were adopted a year ago.

Representatives of several minority groups--including blacks, Latinos, American Indians and Chinese-Americans--complained that their contributions to American history were given short shrift. Both Jews and Muslims said the books were tilted to favor Christianity in the material on religion. Gay and lesbian groups complained that they were excluded from the texts.

“There is no question that this is a fractious area to get into,” said Charlotte Crabtree, a UCLA education professor who helped develop the California framework and will oversee creation of the national history standards.

“But one of the reasons California succeeded was we involved a broad representation of voices,” she said. “And one of the reasons we are hopeful now about national standards is that it has already been successfully accomplished in the most ethnically diverse state in the nation.”

The standards are part of an education reform package proposed by the Bush Administration, and are linked to a proposed system of national tests to measure whether students are meeting the performance goals.

The plan also calls for parents to be given more choice in selecting the schools their children attend, urges schools to expand their use of technology, and endorses more flexibility locally for campus innovations, better teacher preparation by universities and the use of incentives to spur improvements among teachers and students.

The idea of national tests has proven more controversial than the call for standards. But it is the heart of the Bush proposal because it would measure performance of individual students and schools, giving parents a means to compare and select among schools and education officials a way to judge progress toward meeting the standards.

But many skeptics consider the testing plan impractical and point to the inequities inherent in standardized tests that tend to handicap women and minorities. They worry that the tests would be used to unfairly categorize students and divert money and attention from other needed education reforms.

Popular Concept

So far, the concept of standards has received surprisingly strong public support. It has been endorsed by state school superintendents and governors from both political parties and by several national education groups, including teachers’ unions.

More than four in five Americans said they favor national standards in a Gallup poll last summer, and three in four said they support the idea of national testing.

“The people it makes the most sense to are parents,” said Alexander. “They’re so hungry to know how their kids are doing, what they’re getting in school and whether they’re being prepared to get a job or go to college.”

The process for developing the standards is under way, and the panel hopes to have the curriculum guides and accompanying tests in use beginning in 1994.

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has drawn up curriculum guidelines for the nation’s math teachers, and the U.S. Department of Education and the National Endowment for the Humanities last month awarded a $1.6-million grant to the UCLA-based National Center for History in the Schools to develop teaching standards in history.

But, as experience has shown in Great Britain, which recently adopted a national curriculum, the process is likely to be arduous and complicated, with broad ramifications.

The British national curriculum has been widely praised as a way to raise standards and ensure that all children have access to the same high-level courses. But many teachers and scholars have complained that it was developed and rushed into classrooms too quickly, before teachers could be trained to deliver it and textbooks fashioned that incorporate it.

In this country, the math teachers’ council spent four years and $1 million--from membership dues--drawing up a set of standards that focus on developing students’ problem-solving skills and spell out what children in each grade should know.

The 2-year-old standards have been spread to mathematics teachers through word of mouth, professional conferences and training sessions in districts, and universities are using the guidelines to build new courses for prospective teachers.

The process of creating and gaining acceptance of the new approach to teaching the subject “is not something that happened overnight,” said Iris Carl, a Houston math teacher who heads the national teachers group. “We’ve had to learn to be patient, to keep our vision, but listen to teachers and parents and society at large for their ideas on how things should be done.

“It’s too soon yet to tell if students are doing better in mathematics, but we’re saying that within this decade, we’ll see the standards being implemented and we’ll see a difference.”

Basic Math

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has already developed curriculum standards that delineate what children should know at specific grade levels in several areas of mathematics, including statistics, algebra, geometry and basic arithmetic.

Here is a sample, drawn from the Statistics Standards, not including the standards for kindergarten through fourth grade: In grades 5-8, the mathematics curriculum should include exploration of statistics in real-world situations so that students can: Systematically collect, organize and describe data Construct, read and interpret tables, charts and graphs Make inferences and convincing arguments that are based on data analysis Evaluate arguments that are based on data analysis Develop an appreciation for statistical methods as powerful means for decision-making In grades 9-12, the mathematics curriculum should include the continued study of data analysis and statistics so that all students can: Construct and draw inferences from charts, tables and graphs that summarize data from real-world situations Use curve fitting to predict from data Understand and apply measures of central tendency, variability and correlation Understand sampling and recognize its role in statistical claims Design a statistical experiment to study a problem, conduct the experiment and interpret and communicate the outcome Analyze the effects of data transformations on measures of central tendency and variability In addition, college-bound students should be able to: Transform data to aid in data interpretation and prediction Test hypotheses using appropriate statistics SOURCE: The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics