larger view

 There is $53 billion in President Obama's stimulus bill that is slated for education, and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and California Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell await their share of the money with great anticipation. 

There is apparently a small fraction of that amount that holds special interest and will be a source of endless gratitude among California's teachers for the new administration. Called "Race to the Top" , this fund is completely under the control of under Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who has already signalled through meetings with educators and others that he wants the money to be used to write more challenging standards across the country and to produce better ways than 'fill-in-the-bubble' tests to measure them.

So: is there anything wrong with California's current curriculum standards? They have been described by some in glowing terms: "laudable" says the authors of the Public Policy Institute of California's School Resources and Academic Standards in California: Lessons from the Schoolhouse, (http://www.ppic.org/content... "these standards are among the highest in the nation—with test score goals equivalent to requiring that 70 percent of every California school’s students achieve above the national median." 

So how do educators at the local level feel about our Standards?

"They found that the superintendents they interviewed were strongly supportive of the new standards regimen, chiefly because standards give them more direct authority over what actually goes on in their classrooms.  However, the 2,000-plus teachers they surveyed were more ambivalent—supportive of standards but also concerned about the gap between the ideal of high state standards and the reality of low, present-day achievement levels at many schools. 

Not surprisingly, neither superintendents nor teachers thought that the resources provided to school districts and classrooms were sufficient to achieve the high standards set by Sacramento.  Teachers pointed specifically to staffing shortages, especially in areas such as student counseling and health services.  And, following a growing national concern for more culture in the classroom, elementary school teachers in particular indicated their concern for what they viewed as inadequate staffing to teach art, music, and drama.  The readiness of teachers to teach the content required by the standards was another worry, the authors found:  Superintendents said that if given extra money and complete freedom to spend it, they would increase the number of hours their teachers spend in professional development. 

One consequence of setting high standards for teacher and student performance is a more focused spotlight on the larger problems of school governance.  At this point in the history of K–12 education, a great deal of the money and power rests in Sacramento.  Court cases and popular initiatives have given the state almost complete control over the finances of public schools.  The new, high academic standards are now also the exclusive domain of the state. 

This centralization and standardization is occurring while teachers and superintendents struggle with the challenges of raising performance in low-income schools, which remain furthest from the 70th percentile goal.  As long as Sacramento continues to call the shots on money and curriculum, individual teachers will be required to stick to the textbooks and teaching styles that will generate improved performance on standardized tests.  But at the local level, flexibility, not just uniformity, is what superintendents and teachers need, to allocate resources within their district where they perceive the needs to be greatest."

This conclusion is echoed by a Rand Education study, "Pain and Gain," funded by the National Science Foundation which said, "This study suggests that school improvement efforts might be more effective if they were responsive to local conditions and customized to address the specific causes of failure and the capacity of the school in question." (http://www.rand.org/pubs/mo... ).

They add, "principals reported similar school improvement efforts focusing on aligning standards, curriculum, and assessments; providing extra instruction to low-performing students; and using test results for instructional planning. Teachers enacted these initiatives in their classrooms and generally felt the changes benefited students. However, teachers also reported narrowing the curriculum toward tested topics and focusing on students near the proficient cutoff score, and some complained of lowered morale among their peers and lack of alignment between tested goals and their local curriculum materials. Administrators were generally more positive toward the reform than teachers, but both identified similar factors that hindered their efforts to improve student performance. These hindrances included inadequate resources and lack of instructional time, but they also included students’ lack of basic skills and inadequate support from parents."

Thus, while the local level bosses (superintendents and principals) are significantly more positive about Standards, largely because they increase control over teacher actions, teachers have mixed views. They agree that standards are good in that they provide a goal to shoot for that everyone can see and is measurable, but on the other hand they dilute instruction and are inadequately supported - with funds and support from home.

So: should teacher discomfort be enough reason to re-write the Standards themselves?

If it meant that re-writing would diminish teacher accountability, most people (teachers included, it seems) would say, "Absolutely not."

But if accountability can be maintained, but instruction - and bottom line: meaningful, real, rigorous education - can be improved, then "Absolutely!"

An editorial in the Silicon Valley Mercury News says:

"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, O'Connell and others often praise California's "world-class" K-12 standards. They are rigorous, but that chamber of commerce shorthand also glosses over three basic flaws:

•  The standards force teachers to cover too many subjects superficially. We frequently heard this criticism — that the standards are "one inch deep and a mile wide" — during a Silicon Valley Education Foundation summit on algebra last year. Teachers complained that they didn't have time to teach important concepts in depth.
• They don't progress logically from one grade to the next, building on previous knowledge. They are not, in the words of educators, vertically aligned. The feds have cited this flaw in denying California a waiver under the federal No Child Left Behind law.
•  The standards also don't align with the expectations of California's colleges and universities — one reason so many high school graduates end up taking remedial courses their freshman year."

( http://www.mercurynews.com/... )

These three flaws, it seems to me, are enough to warrant the re-write. Depth of knowledge, according to the Asian model (and let's not forget that many Asian countries are doing much better than we in multiple measurements of education quality) is more important than breadth. The "give a man a fish or teach a man to fish" maxim is applicable here.

Grade-to-grade coherence is notably absent in the California Standards: the feds have already dinged us for it. How can one believe that correcting this flaw is not an improvement? And most importantly, maintaining this alignment all the way to the college level can hardly be questioned. The CSU system has been complaining for years about how high school students come unprepared for college and are enrolled in remedial classes. As embarassing as that might be for the student, the parent who is paying the tuition should be doubly upset, as the remedial classes they are paying for should have been covered, for free, in high school!

But who will rejoice the loudest if the Standards get re-written in California?

Perhaps not the education bosses - who have been reluctant to change things, traditionally, but also have a tool in hand that gives them greater control over teachers so why risk losing that with a different tool?

Undoubtedly, teachers will be enormously pleased. Despite the criticism the Teacher's Unions have incurred over the years, note that they have, over the years, done the following:

1) Produced a set of recommendations on how to improve teacher quality  (http://cta.org/NR/rdonlyres...

which contrasts sharply with the public view that all the union does is protect and hide poor teachers.

2) Produced criteria for the reconstruction of school finance which included: 

→ Provide flexibility but with essential protections for students and accountability 

that assures funds are spent in the intended schools. 

→ Account for the special needs and costs of all students and districts. 

→ Be aligned with current academic content standards. 

→ Be stable and have long range consistent targets.

http://cta.org/NR/rdonlyres...

which is in contrast to the public view that the union sets out only to protect teacher benefits.

But importantly, the union also has said the following about the Standards and Accountability philosophy of No Child Left Behind:

"No Child Left Behind cemented as failed education legacy of President Bush 

For years, educators have been living and working with the unintended and harmful consequences of No Child Left Behind, which judges schools and children based solely on standardized test scores.  President Barack Obama is calling to fully fund the law and move away from the test, label and punish regime of the last several years -- a welcomed change from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's endorsement last year of the penalty phase of NCLB.

Despite the fact that the overwhelmingly majority of our school districts are improving, the governor backed the penalty phase of No Child Left Behind, subjecting the districts that need help the most to punitive measures under the law."

http://cta.org/issues/esea/

Test, label and punish. I think that phrase says it all.

It's about time we moved past that regimen.

The only question that remains is that, when we get the federal money this time and local control is finally renewed and supported, will we assign the re-write to politicians or their hired guns, to the educational bosses, who have been identified with control issues as much as educational ones, or do we let the teachers do it?

Given their ability to look beyond their noses, and stay concerned with actual education issues, I'd say we would be making a huge mistake if they weren't heavily involved.