School & District Management

State Ed. Leaders Debate National Standards

By Jessica L. Tonn — December 05, 2006 4 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

When the country’s chief state school officers met here last month to discuss education policy, they talked a lot about national academic standards.

Gene Wilhoit, the executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, talks to state education leaders at the council's fall conference in Little Rock, Ark., last month.

“I submit to you that in a system of education that serves such a highly diverse and transitory culture, . . . shared standards aren’t simply an option, but a mandatory conversation,” the Council of Chief State School Officers’ executive director, Gene Wilhoit, said in a speech at the conference’s opening session. He took over the helm at the CCSSO Nov. 1.

Mr. Wilhoit’s appeal followed similar comments made this year by Michael Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, researchers at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, and others. Such discussion, which comes as policymakers and educators compare education systems across the states and the world and prepare for the renewal of the federal No Child Left Behind Act next year, appears to be rekindling a push for national standards.

“Does anyone in this room honestly believe that this issue is not coming to a head, and if we ignore it, it will go away?” Mr. Wilhoit, a former state schools chief in Arkansas and Kentucky, asked the 28 state chiefs and roughly 130 other state officials, educators, and others in the crowd.

“I think we’re all very open to the discussion,” Elizabeth Burmaster, Wisconsin’s superintendent of public instruction and the CCSSO’s president, said in an interview last week.

The last concerted drive to set national standards for what students should know and be able to do in major subjects occurred in the early 1990’s, when the first Bush administration provided grants to develop voluntary national standards and tests. That effort ran into controversy over subject matter, the role of the federal government in setting curricula, and whether the standards should define the programs, staffing, and resources to support student achievement.

Some education experts are deeply skeptical that the issue of national standards has gained much traction since the last time it was discussed.

Andrew J. Rotherham, a co-director of Education Sector, a Washington-based think tank, told the chiefs at a panel discussion here that the national-standards discussion is no more than a “think-tank hothouse,” and that the coalition supporting the idea, at least in Washington, is actually losing steam.

Plus, he said, “[the states] don’t enforce their own [standards], why would they enforce ours?”

‘Powerful Voice’

That the state chiefs are willing to talk about the issue at all is a welcome surprise, meanwhile, to some advocates of national standards.

“They could make a tremendous contribution to the discussion,” Cynthia G. Brown, the director of education policy at the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based research and advocacy group, and the former director of the CCSSO’s Resource Center on Educational Equity, said about the chiefs. “If they were to support the notion of national standards, they would be a powerful voice.”

Where that discussion will go, however, remains unclear.

“One option is that we’ll have this conversation and [decide that national standards aren’t] the best way to go,” Mr. Wilhoit said during an interview in Little Rock.

During a breakout session at the Nov. 17-19 conference, opinions on the issue were about as varied as the states represented.

Some chiefs proposed aligning standards with the skills sought by the business community. Some proposed developing a national pre-K-16 or pre-K-20 agenda. Some suggested focusing on national standards for student outcomes and leaving states and districts the freedom to decide how to attain them.

Most acknowledged, though, that national standards would have to be part of a broader policy plan that would include assessment and accountability, data systems, and teacher education, among other measures.

“The reason we’re birthing these creative ideas—and people may have different reasons—is a convergence of opinion in this country that [the current system] isn’t OK,” Ms. Burmaster said. She would like to see a “national agenda for children,” which would include health and dental care, nutrition, and early-childhood education, on the same scale as President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty.

But some chiefs were reluctant to jump on the standards bandwagon.

“If [the chiefs] think that national standards will get rid of rules and regulations, they’re wrong,” Minnesota Commissioner of Education Alice Seagren said in an interview last week. “The rules and regulations will come with them.”

And, she said, “we’re not excited about walking away from all the work we’ve done [to raise standards in Minnesota]” in order to comply with a possible national plan.

Mandatory vs. Voluntary

Despite their differences, the chiefs agreed on a few points.

“I think everyone agreed that they didn’t want a situation where the U.S. Congress has to vote on standards,” Michael J. Petrilli, the vice president for national programs and policy at the Washington-based Fordham Foundation and a former official in the U.S. Department of Education during the current Bush administration, said to a group of state chiefs at the breakout session in Little Rock.

And no one wanted to be forced into compliance, either.

The standards would have to be voluntary initially, according to Ms. Brown of the Center for American Progress, for them to be politically practical.

“Once you get a significant number of states buying into it, the others will fall in line,” she said.

A version of this article appeared in the December 06, 2006 edition of Education Week as State Ed. Leaders Debate National Standards

Events

Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and other jobs in K-12 education at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.
Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

School & District Management Teachers Hate All Those Meetings. Can Principals Find a Workaround?
Principals can't do away with every meeting, but they can reduce some and make others more effective.
4 min read
Image of a staff meeting.
E+/Getty
School & District Management Q&A When This Principal Talks About Mental Health, People Listen. Here's Why
The NASSP Advocacy Champion of the year said he used stories from his school and community to speak with his state’s legislators.
6 min read
Chris Young, a principal from Vermont, poses for a photo in front of a Senate office building in Washington, D.C.
Chris Young, a principal from Vermont, stands in front of a Senate office building in Washington on March 13, 2024. Young was among the secondary principals to meet with legislators urging them to keep federal funding for schools stable.
Olina Banerji/Education Week
School & District Management Teacher Layoffs Are Mounting. How Districts Can Soften the Blow
Layoffs are coming in districts large and small. Here's how district leaders can handle them.
8 min read
Pencil Eraser Erasing Drawn Figure
AndreyPopov/iStock/Getty
School & District Management Opinion 5 Strategies to Combat Student Disengagement
When principals get serious about building a more inclusive school community, it doesn’t just benefit students, but teachers as well.
Michelle Singh
5 min read
Illustration of a bright vibrant school where students feel welcomed. In the background the sky is filled with enthusiastic raised hands.
Vanessa Solis/Education Week via Canva