Published: January 5, 2006
National Standards
'50 Standards for 50 States' Is a Formula for Incoherence and Obfuscation
Nearly a decade ago, when Education Week launched Quality Counts to track the progress of the standards movement, there appeared to be a strong, bipartisan consensus around the idea of educational standards. This had been evident in the first Bush administration’s America 2000 program and the Clinton administration’s Goals 2000 program. What remained to be determined was if and how the federal government and the states would translate this consensus into a reasonable and workable plan of action.
Although none of the components of America 2000 was enacted into law, the legislation signaled recognition by the Republican Party that the federal government should promote higher levels of academic performance (a big step for a party that had traditionally opposed an active federal role in education). The succeeding Goals 2000 attempted to goad the states to join the drive for standards and accountability by awarding funds to create state standards and assessments. President Clinton then proposed, in his State of the Union Address in 1997, voluntary national tests in 4th grade reading and 8th grade mathematics, a promising idea that did not win congressional authorization.
In January 2002, President George W. Bush signed the federal No Child Left Behind legislation, which had passed both houses of Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support. The law required the states, in exchange for federal funding, to test all children in grades 3-8 in reading and mathematics; to disaggregate the results by race, ethnicity, gender, English-language proficiency, socioeconomic status, and disability; and to demonstrate that students in every category were advancing toward proficiency. Schools that did not meet their goals would have to offer supplementary tutoring and/or a choice...
This article is available to subscribers only.
To keep reading this article and more, subscribe now or purchase this article.
Subscribe to Education Week and Save
Get a full year and save up to 45%!
Viewed
Emailed
Recommended
Commented
- Program Coordinator
- Institute for Educational Advancement, South Pasadena, CA
- Chief Academic Officer
- Adams 14, Commerce City, CO
- Superintendent
- Pinellas County Schools, Pinellas County, FL
- Middle School Language Arts Teacher
- TEAM Schools, Newark, NJ
- Project Manager- (Hawaii)
- Pearson Education, HI
