Standards & Accountability

Making the Case for Common Standards

By Catherine Gewertz — December 18, 2009 1 min read
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A new brief from the Alliance for Excellent Education offers me an opportunity to share a handy little primer on the common-standards movement, and to say a sort of farewell.

It’s not a real hard-line farewell, since I’m still at EdWeek. But I won’t be writing this blog anymore. I’ll be taking many of the issues I covered here over to the Curriculum Matters blog. For the blog, the newspaper, and the Web site, I’ll still be writing about high school issues, but I’ll also be covering common standards and assessments. I hope you migrate over to Curriculum Matters with me, and that you keep a close watch on our coverage of these issues at such an important policy time.

You can start by taking a look at the alliance’s new brief. It recaps the history of previous attempts to hammer out national standards, and builds an argument in support of the current movement to do so. This push by 48 states has friends in high places (think a big federal agency and a famous columned house painted white), but also has its share of skeptics and detractors. All the more reason to pay close attention as it takes shape.

A version of this news article first appeared in the High School Connections blog.