A New York Times editorial on the stimulus bill this week makes a pitch for national academic standards amid recommendations, like this one among some think tanks and policy groups.
Education Secretary Arne “Duncan’s main goal should be to replace a wildly uneven patchwork of standards with a coherent system of national standards and tests that would allow parents to know, at last, how their schools compare with schools elsewhere in the country,” the Times writes.
Of course even if everyone agreed to creating national standards in core subjects, it would take years of debate to figure out what content and skills to include (or not), and how to compel states and districts to follow them.
