Unlike most other developed countries, the US does not have national academic standards outlining what each student must learn to graduate from high school. In fact, it is the opposite, with each of the 50 states setting the bar wherever it wants – and, in many states, that is too low.
When standards in one state are lower than those in another, longstanding inequities are perpetuated every September as new groups of kindergarteners take their first steps into school. With US 15-year-olds ranked 25th among 30 industrialised nations on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s international mathematics exam and 24th in science, the time has come to put aside ideology in favour of the next generation’s ability to compete globally.
Unfortunately, President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind act is a big part of the problem. Although it has played a vital role in increasing accountability for student learning, the bill has had unintended consequences. When it was signed into law in 2001, a number of states already had standards for local school districts, but many did not.
To get the bill passed, its sponsors allowed states to come up with their own standards and to develop tests to assess student mastery of those standards. But since NCLB threatened draconian intervention and loss of funding if targets were not met, states had incentives to forgo more rigorous standards in favour of ones districts were more likely to meet. Thus our current dilemma.
What is the country to do? President Barack Obama and Arne Duncan, his secretary of education, are talking to state governors about creating a set of voluntary national standards. We believe that to ensure the global competitiveness of the US workforce, any set of standards must focus on rigorous content knowledge in reading, maths and science, as well as on students’ abilities to apply that knowledge to critical thinking and problem solving. One viable option is to adapt the OECD international benchmarks for 15-year-olds to US needs and retrofit them for younger children.
One viable option is to adapt the OECD international benchmarks for 15-year-olds to US needs and retrofit them for younger children
For voluntary standards to take hold, states must have meaningful reasons to embrace them. One way is to make adopting them a prerequisite for accessing investment capital from Mr Duncan’s $5bn discretionary fund – part of the $100bn in education spending included in the president’s economic stimulus package. The federal Department of Education could also pay for the development and scoring of common assessments, thereby freeing the significant amount of money tied up in the overheads needed to maintain 50 different standards and testing regimes. These state resources could then be redirected toward innovations to help students meet the rigorous new standards, leading to a cycle of improvement.
Mr Obama has set a goal for the US to have the world’s highest proportion of college graduates by 2020. Having slipped from first to 16th since 1995, we are a long way from that. Agreeing to stiff national standards for college readiness is one important step towards the goal.
Eight years ago, no one thought building agreement for national standards was possible, which is why they were not a part of the NCLB compromise. Is it possible now? Only if a broad coalition of stakeholders demands them.
Pressure from many quarters could evolve into a movement for change that could force the US’s political leaders to break away from the old arguments that historically have distracted us from keeping our national promise of public education as the “great equaliser” of access to unlimited opportunities. The creation and adoption of voluntary national standards will raise the educational sights of our next generation and guarantee America’s economic competitiveness for the long term.
Stacey Childress and David Thomas are on the faculty of Harvard Business School. This article is adapted from their book with Denis Doyle, ‘Leading for Equity: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Montgomery County Public Schools’, to be published in July by the Harvard Education Press
