Report Finds School Standards Movement Weak

The decade-old national movement toward adopting academic standards for public school students is more form than substance, with most states still expecting far too little, a new report from a conservative think tank concludes.

Although there are exceptions--California being one of them--most states’ standards are weak, vague, difficult to measure or are not linked to policies that reward success and punish failure, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation says in a report to be released today.

As part of a broad effort to improve academic achievement, 49 states have compiled detailed summaries of what students should know in a range of subjects, such as math, history, reading and science.

The foundation’s survey of academic standards comes amid signs of a backlash from parents and educators who complain that expectations of many states are unrealistically high and unfair. Parents in Ohio, Arizona, Wisconsin and elsewhere are organizing groups to thwart standards-based tests, claiming they are squelching good teaching by pressuring schools to raise test scores.

In part, the Fordham report is an attempt to counter such arguments. But it also demonstrates that disagreement remains over what students need to know.

“Americans really don’t agree on what they all want their kids to learn . . . so we have left this momentous set of decisions to the 50 sovereign states,” said Chester E. Finn, president of the Dayton, Ohio, foundation. “But we went looking for what I believe are some pretty reasonable things in state standards . . . like clarity and specificity and testability.”

The report said that state standards are improving but that only eight states--Alabama, Arizona, California, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas--generally meet those criteria for the subjects of math, history, geography, science and English. The report says 21 states have standards and testing programs that are so weak they’re “irresponsible.”

That list, however, prompted the observation from some critics that states that earned that label--such as Connecticut, Maine, Minnesota and Iowa--are among the top performers on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is known informally as the “nation’s report card.”

Finn acknowledged the apparent contradiction and noted that many factors besides standards influence achievements, such as the relative affluence of students and a state’s spending on education.

Robert Schwartz, president of Achieve Inc., a group set up by corporate leaders and governors to promote academic standards, agreed with some of the Fordham criticisms.

“Almost anybody who has taken a close look at a reasonable cross-section of states agrees that there’s plenty of room for improvement here,” Schwartz said.

Many states, he said, have not been willing to pare down their standards to the most important topics. Instead, he said, they’ve tried to satisfy many interest groups and “ended up putting everything but the kitchen sink” into the standards.

Still, Schwartz said, it’s too early to write off the standards movement. Although more teacher training is needed and kids who are struggling need extra help, the movement “is not a passing trend and needs to be seen as the long-term reform strategy for public education.”

For its report, Fordham hired experts in each subject to review the standards against certain criteria. Much as book or film critics have different tastes, so do reviewers of standards reach different conclusions.

Fordham’s reviewer in the area of English/language arts, for example, gave standards higher marks if they emphasize phonics, stress the use of conventional English, teach research skills and place a high value on literary classics. They were marked down if they expressed the view that literature is subject to “an infinite number of interpretations [that] are equally valid” or require students to relate reading assignments to their own experiences.

California earned a grade of “A” for its standards in English, history, science and math. Within the state, however, the standards in science and math have been controversial.

Judy Anderson, president of the California Math Council, which represents math teachers in the state, said the Fordham review fails to recognize that the standards are highly impractical. She said fourth-graders, for example, are expected to master a total of 58 standards, ranging from number sense to algebra.

In the course of a school year, she said, a teacher would have only two hours and 20 minutes for each one. She said that means it is virtually impossible to help children understand the concepts that underlie mathematics.

“I want rigor, yes, but I want it in a way that doesn’t destroy children,” Anderson said. “I think now we’re destroying children and I don’t think that’s right.”