Standards in Education Today or… We’ve got to be here anyway, lets teach!

A year-long effort to lay out the first national standards for schoolchildren in the USA got a full-scale airing Wednesday, as groups developing the measures posted detailed drafts of math and English standards online By Greg Toppo USA TODAY, March 11, 2010

A year-long effort to lay out the first national standards for schoolchildren in the USA got a full-scale airing Wednesday, as groups developing the measures posted detailed drafts of math and English standards online By Greg Toppo USA TODAY, March 11, 2010

Standards… a brief history: It seems we have been picking on schools and teachers forever, and we probably have. The organized approach started much later. It turns out in the early 1990’s. Diane Ravitch in her book, National Standards in American Education: A Citizen's Guide essentially started the standards movement.

Her rational was simple… Americans...expect strict standards to govern construction of buildings, bridges, highways, and tunnels; shoddy work would put lives at risk. They expect stringent standards to protect their drinking water, the food they eat, and the air they breathe....Standards are created because they improve the activity of life. (p. 89)

Please don’t… Our current crop of presidential candidates might argue with some of these ideas so please don’t think I’m trying to be political. Clean air and water is a good thing, how we get it and keep it is political. Wholesome safe food is better for everyone, whose responsibility it is might also be political. Good education is generally considered positive, how we achieve it is often political.

For your reading pleasure… I suggest: The Fall and Rise of Standards-Based Education By Robert J. Marzano and John S. Kendall Cited here: http://www.mcrel.org/pdf/standards/5962ir_fallandrise.pdf And on our Angel site in the class 4 folder.

Essentially this: In about 1989, Bush (1) and many of the nation’s governors, including Bill Clinton, participated in an education summit. They waxed political, and philosophical about education and achievement and decided that students should achieve. And demonstrate that achievement.

Achieve what? That’s where the academic standards movement started. Our country, sometimes acting a bit nutso, set forth to create a system of national accountability for state standards. That is, each state created standards and then created achievement tests to ascertain their success.

True success? You could be sure of success if your standards were weak or the tests were easy. This program, I’m simplifying here, let us to a federal program called No Child Left Behind. Fifty state standards and fifty state tests all reported to the feds so that they could see if you made sufficient progress towards your goals.

State Standards, National Goals NCLB set performance, or achievement standards that were based on proficiency in tested subjects. These goals were set very high and may or may not be accurate in determining how a state is doing with their schools.

"How Many Schools Have Not Made Adequate Yearly Progress Under the No Child Left Behind Act?" Center on Education Policy, March 2010. One-third of public schools (32%) did not make Adequate Yearly Progress in the 2008-2009 school year. The percentage of public schools not making AYP varied significantly, from 6% in Wisconsin to 77% in Florida. "If the current AYP-based accountability system is not replaced, in some states nearly all schools could be labeled as failing by school year 2012-13," the report says. Many of the differences among states are most likely due to state variations in standards, tests, cut scores for proficient performance on those tests, and methods for calculating AYP rather than to the quality of their schools, according to the CEP.

"How Many Schools Have Not Made Adequate Yearly Progress Under the No Child Left Behind Act?" Center on Education Policy, March 2010. One-third of public schools (32%) did not make Adequate Yearly Progress in the 2008-2009 school year. The percentage of public schools not making AYP varied significantly, from 6% in Wisconsin to 77% in Florida. "If the current AYP-based accountability system is not replaced, in some states nearly all schools could be labeled as failing by school year 2012-13," the report says. Many of the differences among states are most likely due to state variations in standards, tests, cut scores for proficient performance on those tests, and methods for calculating AYP rather than to the quality of their schools, according to the CEP.

So what’s my complaint? 50 states spending money independently. 50 sets of standards developed essentially in isolation 50 sets of state tests, often bought from a testing company. One set of AYP standards based on ???? Using this to judge a school’s performance.

If this were water quality…. We would have a list of states that had water that we should avoid. If this were auto mileage standards, we would all buy our cars where they were lax and cars would be cheaper. etc

Enter Common Core Standards http://www.corestandards.org/

Already adopted by 44 states

This is a real start… If all states are on the same page with standards, we then need some way to deliver them to all students.

Education is three things… What we teach How we teach it What we do if students don’t learn it

Or… Curriculum Instruction Response to proper assessment

Assessment is wasted… If I’m the best math teacher in the world, shouldn’t I get the most difficult math students? My student’s achievement scores will be lower than the norm. Even if they learn a lot. Wouldn’t I use every assessment to guide instruction for every student? Most standardized test scores are given for other reasons.

In most testing: students don’t benefit. Instruction is not guided by it. They don’t result in increasing student achievement.

We need testing to guide instruction… NWEA – has a program like this and I’m sure there are others. Adaptive testing is primarily formative, although the results could be aggregated to provide some general information about a school district. These tests are really designed to guide instruction, not to test the school’s proficiency.

So what’s this got to do with standards? Standards actually can help us answer that first question? What to teach? If we believe in academic core standards then we should build every curriculum, grade level and lesson around them. If we really believe in them then we should make sure that they are the basis of all that we do.

Instead… Most schools have a curriculum, that was written before the standards, and a set of standards. The two are often compared, aligned and discussed but that may not be enough. A lot of people complain about teaching to the “test.” Shouldn’t they teach to the “standards?”

Some citations National Academy of Education Whitepaper: http://www.naeducation.org/Standards_Assessments_Accountability_White_Paper.pdf Common Core Standards, State initiative: http://www.corestandards.org/ The Fall and Rise of Standards-Based Education By Robert J. Marzano and John S. Kendall http://www.mcrel.org/pdf/standards/5962ir_fallandrise.pdf

Some more citations Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) http://www.nwea.org/ Education World http://www.educationworld.com/standards/national/

Arnie Duncan and Standards…

Thanks…