No National Standards: Strength or Weakness for Schools in US?

July 8th, 2011 at 07:10am Under Education report

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This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

What American students are expected to learn has long been different from state to state. We talked last time about the tradition of local control of schools. To some people, the lack of national academic standards is an important limit on federal powers. But others say all it does is limit American competitiveness in a world that is becoming more educated.

Now, state governors and chief school officers are leading a movement toward what are known as the “common core state standards.” These list content in math and English language arts that students are expected to learn each year from kindergarten to high school.

In the past year, most of the fifty states have adopted these standards. That speed is partly explained by President Obama’s Race to the Top competition. Accepting the standards helped states that competed last year for federal money for school reform efforts.

Patrick Murray has been an elected member of the school governing board in Bradford, Maine, for four years. The public school system is small, just one thousand two hundred students from five towns. In April, Maine became the forty-second state to approve the common core standards.

Mr. Murray says he does not trust supporters of these standards. “They say this is a state-led effort,” he says, but he thinks the goal is national control of education.

PATRICK MURRAY: “Any school that receives federal or state money is going to be required to use the common core standards.”

He says many states have adopted the common core standards only because they were offered federal money.

PATRICK MURRAY: “My opinion is when you have federal mandates and federal money involved, it’s no longer state-led.”

Mr. Murray says national academic standards would violate the United States Constitution. He believes the federal government should have no role in education — none.

Patience Blythe disagrees. Ms. Blythe has taught for five years. She recently moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Before that she was a science teacher in Texas — one of the few states not to adopt the common core standards.

Ms. Blythe says national standards could improve the results of American students on international science tests.

PATIENCE BLYTHE: “Not everything has to be a state issue. There could be a benefit from some more federal involvement in our education system, that we could address a lot of the inequalities that we have.”

She also disagrees with those who say the standards could limit the ability of teachers to be creative.

PATIENCE BLYTHE: “The reality is the standards give you keys and tools to understand what the objectives are, and understand what the questions on whatever state assessment you’re going to take are going to cover. I can be as creative as I want to, especially if I have a good team of teachers to work with, and that we can work together and bounce ideas off each other.”

And that’s the VOA Special English Education Report. You can find last week’s report on the debate over national standards at voaspecialenglish.com. And tell us what you think of this issue. You can also write to us on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English. I’m Christopher Cruise.

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Should All US Students Learn the Same Thing?

July 2nd, 2011 at 07:52pm Under Education report

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This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

More than forty of the fifty American states have approved what are known as the common core state standards. These are lists of content that students are supposed to learn at each grade level from kindergarten to high school.

State governors and schools chiefs led the effort to develop the standards. The project involved teachers, administrators, experts and public comments. The final standards were released last June.

Acceptance is voluntary. But acceptance helped states that entered President Obama’s four-billion-dollar “Race to the Top” competition for school reform.

The standards are for English language arts and math. More subjects may come later.

Supporters say the standards provide clear goals to prepare students to succeed in college and in jobs. But critics of national standards say the idea goes against one of America’s oldest traditions — local control of education.

Political conservatives generally oppose federal intervention in schools. Yet it was a Republican president, George W. Bush, who expanded testing requirements to show that public schools are making yearly progress.

Still, opponents of national standards call them “one-size-fits-all.” They say the idea does not make sense for a country as large and diverse as the United States.

One of those opponents is Bill Evers at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California. He was an assistant education secretary under President Bush.

BILL EVERS: “We are having Washington, DC, having control and final say over, and supervision over and direction over, what is happening in the classrooms of America. Most changes, most positive influences have bubbled up from below.

“So it’s closing the door on innovation by locking in a national, uniform bureaucratic system. But the states don’t have a problem in setting their curriculum — they’ve been doing it ever since there’ve been public schools.”

Richard Riley was education secretary to President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. Mr. Riley says the federal government is not forcing the common core standards on states.

RICHARD RILEY: “Conservatives would be concerned if we had federal-mandated common core standards. That’s not what we have. It’s a state-driven measure. High standards, challenging work for young people across the country. To be challenged to do and be the same, and not one way in Texas and another way in South Carolina.”

Mr. Riley says when he served in the nineteen nineties, he pushed states to develop their own statewide standards. But some of those standards were not very strong, he says, so he believes national standards are needed.

But Bill Evers says technology now makes it easier to develop individual learning plans to meet the different needs of students.

BILL EVERS: “If we put a bureaucratic hand on this, we will stifle the capacity for modern technology to give us a better shot at the students learning the material.”

He says schools should worry less about a common curriculum and more about improving teacher quality.

And that’s the VOA Special English Education Report. We’ll have more about this debate next week. You can find a link to the common core standards at voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Christopher Cruise.

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