Here is Part 2: A brief history A Brief History of Educational Standards in America The idea of a rich educational experience finds its roots deep in American history. The Founders of this country believed an “informed citizenry” was necessary for good government. In the early 1800s, Horace Mann continued this legacy by arguing for widespread public education. Today, Horace Mann is known as the “Father of the Common School Movement.” In the late 1800s, politicians and social leaders looked to the schools to solve pressing social needs brought on by industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. Many leading education theorists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century —including John Dewey, William H. Kilpatrick, G. Stanley Hall, and others—developed or promoted progressive solutions to these pressing social needs. For the first half of the 20th Century, progressive theories—such as child-centered pedagogy and practical/work-related curricula—dominated much of the education landscape. In October of 1957, the United States was awakened from its educational malaise when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik, the first space satellite, into orbit. This one event signaled America’s educational decline and brought attention to the need for a return to rich content—at least in the fields of math, science, and foreign languages. But these reforms were quickly lost in the cultural turmoil of the 1960s and early 1970s, and schools once again offered a smorgasbord of academically week classes. Students were earning academic credit in courses titled “personal relationships,” “what’s happening,” and “girl talk,” and they were receiving academic credit for extra-curricular activities such as “student government,” “mass media,” and “cheerleading.” In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education published a landmark study on American education titled A Nation at Risk, which warned that the country’s economic, political, and cultural future was threatened by our weak education system. The report stated the now famous lines, Our nation is at risk, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people…If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. A Nation at Risk signaled a turning point in American Education and brought about a renewed focus on what Americans should know and be able to do. E.D. Hirsch’s 1987 book, Cultural Literacy, argued that schools should focus on the basics and pass along “core knowledge” that every educated American should know. But many in the education establishment resisted these content-based reforms and continued to push a progressive agenda for America’s schools. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and the end of the Cold War, international trade boomed, and many countries had greater opportunities to participate in the global marketplace. Globalization led to international comparisons across a variety of social indicators—including education. Many of the Asian countries—with whom we were now competing—seemed to moving further and further ahead of the United States. One of the obvious features of the education in these countries was the existence of clear national education standards. Many reformers pushed the idea that if the United States was going to compete in the international marketplace, the quality of education in the entire country would have to improve. They also concluded that such improvement would only occur if students were held to high academic standards. In 1989, President George Bush Sr. hosted an education summit for the nation’s governors on academic standards and assessment. A charismatic governor from Arkansas named Bill Clinton took the lead in crafting a set of goals for increasing academic achievement in America. And when Clinton defeated Bush for the presidency three years later, the new president used these goals to craft his signature education policy know as Goals 2000. Goals 2000 provided money for each state to develop its own standards based on a national template. Critics of this initiative claimed that this effort violated the longstanding principle established by the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that education is the responsibility of the states. But the Clinton administration countered that the national standards were meant to be only a template for the states to follow and that each state was ultimately responsible for its own standards. Interestingly, Goals 2000 also authorized the creation of an approval board which would certify that states standards had indeed matched the national template. This approval board, however, never materialized because in the 1994 midterm election, Republicans gained the majority in Congress and quickly abolished it. Even without the federal board, the effort to create state standards based on a national template continued, and in the mid-1990s professional subject-specific organizations released national standards for history, English, and math. The general public assumed that these standards would represent the basic knowledge and skills that students would need to know in a particular subject, but they soon discovered that these professional organizations had used this federally funded project to push unproven and, in a few cases, radical ideas within academic fields. Public opposition to these national standards spread quickly. Most states avoided the controversy of the national standards by creating their own unique standards. If there was one thing in common across state standards it was their emphasis on less controversial skills—such as “critical thinking,” “cooperative learning,” and “shared understanding”—rather than more concrete statements about specific ideas, people, and books that students should read. In 2001, President George W. Bush pushed his education policy—known as No Child Left Behind (or NCLB)—which—like those before it—promised to increase student achievement by encouraging states to set high standards and to develop assessments based on those standards. But unlike the initiatives before it, NCLB required states to test all students in particular subjects and at particular grade levels in order to receive federal funding. Looking back, most education experts—on both right and left—concluded that NCLB had failed to deliver real and lasting success. NCLB created an environment where “teaching to the test” became status quo. And what made matter worse is that from state-to-state, the tests were all different. Under NCLB, each state had its own academic standards that it was expected to meet. And because federal money was based on each state meeting its own standards, there was little incentive for states to keep the academic bar high. In an effort to show higher proficiency in student achievement, states began lowering proficiency levels in what Secretary Duncan referred to as a “race to the bottom.” By the end of the decade, many in the education community were looking for an alternative to the “separate-and-unequal” approach to standards of NCLB. Common Core In 2007, two national trade organizations—the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers—started work on a common set of curriculum standards in English language arts and mathematics. In December of 2008, these two groups produced a document on national education standards that would guide the Obama Administration during its transition into office. Two months later, the Secretary of Education announced a federal education grant program known as “Race to the Top” (the name is an obvious nod to the failures of No Child Left Behind). This program included money from the 2009 “Stimulus Bill,” which was to be used by states to improve academic standards and assessments. In order to receive Race to the Top grants, state had to commit to “a set of content standards that define what students must know and be able to do and that are substantially identical across all states in a consortium.” In 2011, the Obama administration made the decision to adopt common standards even easier. Most states were still obligated to meet onerous NCLB requirements. The U.S. Department of Education promised NCLB waivers to states that adopted a common set of college- and career- ready standards and assessments. And while the U.S. Department of Education did not require states to adopt the Common Core specifically, these standards were—and still are—the only standards that met the Education Department’s criteria. Forty-five states and the District of Columbia adopted the Common Core standards. Minnesota adopted the English language arts standards, but it rejected the math. Initially, only Alaska and Texas rejected Common Core, but in the end, Virginia and Nebraska did too.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 01:14:17 +0000
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