and Frank Levy and Richard Murnane
To: The President of the United States
From: D. N. Forser, Chief of Staff
Re: Educational Standards
Date: April 3, 1997
Fifteen years ago a Department of Education report warned of "a rising tide of mediocrity" sweeping over America's schools. The intervening years have brought little measurable progress. If the diagnosis is mediocrity, the prescription, many have argued lately, must be to raise the quality of the product. The remedy of the hour has become strict standards that every school, every classroom, every student must meet. You have responded to pressure for such a remedy by supporting standardized tests in reading and mathematics, which most in the educational community accept as a relatively uncontroversial way of measuring student and school performance. But beyond this consensus -- when one gets into the realm of what subjects children should study and how these subjects should be taught -- experts disagree over how best to improve our school system.
Do we want uniform national standards in our schools which cover much more than math and reading? Do we only want state standards? Or community standards? Or no standards at all? These are the questions you need to think through.
Some argue, as do Frank Levy and Richard Murnane in their memo to you here, that tough standards are the only way to make sure that students obtain the necessary skills to succeed in today's high-tech work force. Others believe that standards can make things worse, and their case is both philosophical and pedagogical, as Theodore Sizer, who has spent his career looking at what goes on in the classroom, argues in his books and in his memo to you.
Parents are of two minds (at least) over standards. They want them -- but not if it means that Suzie can't graduate with her class because she's flunked her mandatory standards' exam. What if -- and it's a defensible estimate -- 40 percent or more of the kids in their local schools failed the standards exams? Parents would be up in arms. And the leader who talked them into standards would take the heat.
Still, if standards are not the way out of educational mediocrity, what is? If you fail to support some form of standards, the public will expect something from you. And, Mr./Ms. President, the fact is that we don't have much else. The federal role in education is so small that you really can't do much more than use the bully pulpit. You can either call for tough national standards, or leave education primarily in the hands of local government.
Here, then, are your options. Think them over and make an Executive Decision. It's your call.
A: Enacting serious academic standards is the only way to improve student performance and to force parents to realize that their children's education is inadequate. (Please read a memo by Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane containing an argument in favor of Option A.)
B: Education, with some government oversight, should be left primarily in the hands of those closest to children -- their parents and teachers. (Please read a memo by Theodore R. Sizer containing an argument in favor of Option B.)
Read the results of this poll, including the comments of the Presidents who decided this issue.
Option A
Support Strict Educational Standards
Of all the school-reform initiatives now being proposed, only those that
include clear educational standards have the potential to raise student
achievement on a broad scale. To appreciate why, let's begin with a recent
story from Massachusetts.
In September, 1996, the Massachusetts State Department of Education released
the results of the Massachusetts Educational Assessment Program (MEAP). The
widely publicized scores revealed that three years into a well-funded
educational-reform program Massachusetts students had made little progress in
either mathematics or reading. The scores seemed to be an indictment of the
schools. At about the same time a statewide poll commissioned by Mass Insight,
a business-sponsored policy group, found that 73 percent of Massachusetts
public-school parents gave their own child's public school a grade of A or B. In this poll, parents believed the Commonwealth's schools were weak, but that
the weakness lay only in schools other than those that their own children attended.
What is true for Massachusetts is true for the nation. Year after year the
national Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll shows that most parents believe U.S.
schools are inadequate -- except for the schools their children attend. This is
clearly bad news for educational reform. Raising student achievement is very
hard work. Few principals and teachers will take this work on if parents are
already satisfied.
Yet parents are satisfied not because their children's education is adequate
but rather because they are simply unaware of the kind of education their
children need to succeed in the world.
Test scores show that most schools are a little better than they were fifteen
years ago. So what's the problem? The problem is that employer requirements
have risen much faster than schools have improved. In the late 1970s large
numbers of jobs still paid good wages to people who could not read or do
mathematics at a ninth-grade level. Today most of those jobs are gone.
If schools gave tests that measured student skills against employer
requirements, parents would see the growing gap and start demanding remedies.
But few schools give such tests, and so parents judge schools by other
yardsticks, beginning with the education they themselves received. By that
yardstick most of today's schools look good. When parents visit their
children's schools they usually see an education in process that is slightly
better than the one they remember (a little more math, some computer work), and
they are more or less satisfied. The troubles begin when their children try to
do college-level work or try to qualify for jobs that pay more than $7.50 an
hour. This happens only after high-school graduation, when the parents have
lost their standing to push for higher achievement in grades K-12.
The solution to this problem begins with serious academic standards and
assessments that lay out the skills young people need to get a start in today's
economy. The assessments should be given no later than the eleventh grade, to
permit failing students to recoup. Schools should have complementary standards
and assessments in elementary and junior-high school, to let parents know where
their children -- and their children's schools -- stand.
A fair number of states are already moving along this road: Kentucky, Michigan,
South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, Maryland, and Massachusetts to name a few.
As these states have realized, standards and assessments are a good place to
start, but they are not magic. Inside schools standards must be tied to a good
curriculum and long-term investments, in order to provide teachers with the skills to
teach effectively in keeping with the new standards. Outside schools employers
must recognize attainment of the standards as one of the necessary
qualifications of a good employee. Without that understanding and expectation
on the part of the employer, many students will see striving to meet the
standards as an empty exercise.
Standards are no substitute for greater parent choice, better teacher
education, and numerous other education reforms. But they can give these
reforms some focus. "Better schools" is now a term with many meanings -- more
student discipline, a longer school year, access to the Internet. Faced with
finite resources, schools will make choices. Standards can give parents the
information they need to tilt the choices toward the badly needed production of
student skills.
-- Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane, authors of
Teaching the New Basic Skills: Principles for Educating Children to Thrive in a
Changing Economy.
Option B
Leave Most Standards up to Schools and Parents
Most Americans can readily agree on some basic and crucial educational standards -- resourceful reading, clear writing and speaking, computational mathematics. Many would add "civic understanding" to that list, by which they mean the ability of a child to accurately answer questions about the workings of democracy. I applaud your recognition of the need for raising our national standards for reading and basic mathematics, as you boldly made clear in your 1997 State of the Union address. I urge you to speak equally boldly against enacting national standards beyond these relatively uncontroversial "basics."
The shape of a serious education, especially at the secondary level, is inevitably a matter of philosophy, taste, and politics. What I choose to believe is not necessarily what another person with my experience will believe, and our respectful agreement to disagree lies at the heart both of scholarship and of democracy. High-standard intellectual work cannot easily be bottled. Its expression takes many forms, and our culture itself shifts its conception of what exactly our students should study. One day's political correctness is not another's. Given a high educational standard's importance and its inherently controversial nature (about which well-informed and reasonable people can disagree), the decisions about what children learn should be kept very close to the people directly affected -- primarily families and the teachers of their children.
You and your advisers appear to feel that without common standards -- and the penalties that emerge when they are not met -- Americans are not going to improve their schools. But there is little evidence that a system of common standards leads to improvement. For years many states and districts have issued curriculum guides and mandates for their implementation. Distinguished national groups have repeatedly weighed in with detailed recommendations. No children in the world are subject to more formal testing than are American children. We have had National Assessment of Educational Progress results for thirty years, SAT reports for longer, and a blizzard of other tests that has been blanketing hundreds of school authorities with results for decades. Most states and districts have long had the power and obligation to intervene when schools have been patently ineffective.
Has all of this information and authority made a difference? Not really. The biggest lesson that such data provides us is that poor kids score lower than do rich kids. We also know that most rich kids have cleaner, better equipped, more richly staffed, and safer schools than do most poor kids. Have we acted decisively on those findings? Rarely. (The last great effort was the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.) What has been noticeable about higher government during the past twenty years has been its lack of interest in acting on obvious problems and its toleration of schools and school districts that quietly ignore specific government mandates. Depending on "the top" to act upon collected evidence hasn't worked well at all. Why persist with such an unsatisfactory approach to improving schools? Why trumpet national standards when state standards and district standards have so demonstrably not worked?
Some will say that we really haven't ever seriously tried to enforce national standards. However, there is little evidence for central governments' willingness to provide resources to reach them. Washington and the state capitals are in a shrinking mode. By contrast, remarkable energy and courage are found these days at the grass-roots level, in schools and in neighborhoods. Listen to the voices there, Mr./Ms. President. They sing of new sorts of schools. They realize that if you want to improve the schools you have to change them, however difficult and unpopular and costly the task may be.
Mr./Ms. President, if you want a Model T to go seventy miles an hour, you cannot just order it to do so, threaten the driver if it fails to meet that speed, and expect the car's owner to figure out how to get it to go faster while he or she is required to continue driving it daily to and from work. If you want better speed you have to redesign and then rebuild the engine. The best of the teaching force understands that obvious point, as do thoughtful parents. Your support of charter schools -- though tentative -- suggests that you understand that too. Attend to those who call for a fresh start in the shape of schools, charter or otherwise. Give them muscle and stability. Encourage responsible diversity among the schools. Give families choice among them. Above all, trust the locals. On whom could you depend more than those who see our children every day?
Instead of enacting national standards government should publish a mass of excellent examples of "standards," providing opportunities for citizens to learn about many different kinds. Government should assure that the required curriculum decisions are reached together by parents and teachers, the people primarily affected, and that schools are able sensitively to assess whether the locally-concluded standards are met. These assessments, in turn, should be made a part of an accessible public record. Government should walk a fine line between being an advocate for high-standard school work and for diverse and flexible standards. At the same time, if any school falls obviously short on tests for reading, writing, and computational mathematics the state can intervene. Any school which meets an exacting standard in these regards should expect substantial freedom in charting the rest of its course.
"Standards" talk is easy talk, and it is safe talk as long as making standards real remains other peoples' work. But action that goes beyond such safe talk to the realities of our neighborhoods is what we desperately need. Only out of such messy, contentious, trusting, and imaginative work can high standards emerge where we need them, in the minds and hearts of young citizens. And so, Mr./Ms. President, trust parents, teachers, and neighborhoods more and trust any "system" less. Recognize that democracy flourishes in an atmosphere of open ideas -- yes, even conflicting ideas about the substance of high standards. Let families choose among schools and let each school vie for its students with standards worthy of a confident democracy. We are dealing here with young citizens' minds and hearts. The hand of the state must be supportive but very light. To be less would abridge one of every citizen's most fundamental rights.
-- Theodore R. Sizer, founder of the Coalition for Essential Schools and author of several books, including Horace's Compromise.
Read the results of this poll, including the comments of the Presidents who decided this issue.
Copyright © 1997 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved.
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