“Sizing Up State Standards 2008”
Criticizing the federal No Child Left Behind Act as having “derailed the standards movement by overemphasizing testing,” the Washington-based American Federation of Teachers last week issued its own evaluation of states’ course-subject standards. The teachers’ union analyzed information on standards for English, mathematics, science, and social studies posted as of October 2007 on the Web sites of all states and the District of Columbia.
Virginia scored 100 percent on the AFT’s scale of strong standards, and 15 other states received scores from 75 percent to 99 percent.
But the analysis found that 35 states have inferior standards, including seven that lack clear standards for any grade or subject.
