President Backs U.S. Standards for Education

In its first major initiative on education, the Clinton Administration intends to establish national academic standards for American schoolchildren so that the performance of students from all social levels and regions of the country can be gauged against the same uniform goals.

The standards would attempt to merge what is now a patchwork of vastly different, subjective--and in some cases, nonexistent--standards in school districts and states across the country.

Education planners said the initiative would enable educators and governments to identify countless trouble spots that are now escaping attention and determine what improvement is needed.

Education Secretary Richard W. Riley intends to outline the plan to Congress today in his first extensive testimony on the Clinton Administration’s education agenda.

While most other Administration programs for youth are still in the rhetorical or pilot-program stage, this one is being shaped into legislation for introduction to Congress in the next few weeks, Administration officials said.

Although the national standards and assessments would be voluntary and there would be state participation in developing them, some state and local officials have reservations about the plan because it has the potential for giving the federal government a bigger role in an area traditionally controlled by states and local governments.

Despite the enthusiasm among some education planners, other experts argue that national standards actually would have a negative impact on achievement, because the only standards that could be universally agreed upon would be too low to inspire any real improvement. Many middle-class constituents, whose support for the standards would be crucial, might conclude that there was little value in the standards for them or their children, these experts said.

“They will set standards that are not worth shooting for,” saiD. Hoover, the senior author of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, standardized exams taken by millions of children from kindergarten through eighth grade. “Then, teachers will start teaching to those low standards.”

Gordon Ambach, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers and a key player on the Administration’s education transition team, said, however, that there is a growing urgency among educators across the country to establish such national standards.

The standards “will prod states and localities and parents and kids to work harder,” Ambach said. “We increasingly recognize that American kids are not going to compete only with kids in their communities, but with kids across the country and around the world.”

The Clinton Administration plans to use the standards and assessments to spearhead education reform and to “restructure education so that its main mission is performance,” one official said. The legislation now being drafted would provide grant money to states, communities and schools committed to designing strategies that would enable all students to meet the standards.

While no figures are yet firm, the Administration has proposed expenditures of $870 million for reforms and initiatives in 1994, of which the standards and assessments are a part.

The plan represents a significant departure from the traditional role of the federal government in education, which largely has been limited to paying for programs that help economically and academically disadvantaged children.

Testing is a favorite ploy by politicians, Hoover said, because it is relatively inexpensive. The Clinton Administration, for example, hopes to reap wide-reaching benefits from the standards and assessments, while dedicating only minimal funds to the project.

“The real reason standards are so appealing to politicians is that it’s a way to appear to be doing something about education without spending any money,” Hoover said.

But the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, which in 1989 established national standards for math and has begun designing national assessments to complement them, has a different view. James Gates, the council’s executive director, said such tests help “give youngsters throughout the country equal footing” and make “educational opportunities more equal from state to state and community to community.

“The education of every child is a necessity for us to compete in a world economy and remain strong,” Gates said. Forty states and the District of Columbia have adopted or are developing a state math curriculum that uses the council’s principles.

Many educators said that through the decades American public schools have failed to teach too many students the academic skills needed to perform demanding jobs. Such failures were not so important for the country in the days when it needed many unskilled workers, they said, but now there is an economic imperative for all students to have sharper academic skills.

“We can no longer afford to waste human resources, so education has to get better for all children,” said Joan Snowden, vice president of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

The legislation being drafted by the Education Department also provides for the creation of a watchdog committee that would be charged with ensuring that students across the country are receiving the quality instruction and curriculum they need to meet the new standards.