Date sent: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 02:16:45 -0600 (CST)
From: LindaP (Texas)
Subject: Student standards - Tucker

>
>Subject: Student standards - Tucker
>
>June 2, 1993
>
> 
>Student-Achievement Standards
> By
>Robert R. Spillane
>It is education's dirty little secret. Whatever school administrators,
>teachers, and
>educational-policy experts have said over the past 30 years about the "high
>standards'' we
>have for student achievement, the fact is that the standards we have had have
>been either
>too vague or too malleable to be meaningful. In most cases, we have been able
>to adjust
>the "standard'' to suit whatever we have perceived as the "special''
>circumstances of each
>student. In an effort to "meet the needs'' of every student, we have made the
>very concept
>of achievement standards meaningless for most students.
>The tests we use betray our discomfort with real standards. Standardized
>tests usually do
>not measure what schools are purportedly trying to teach. These tests are
>based not on
>standards of achievement but on what a range of students in a certain grade
>know at a
>given point in time. The Scholastic Aptitude Test, which was held until quite
>recently to
>measure "aptitude'' rather than achievement, is often used to compare school
>systems or
>states. Such comparisons are inaccurate for a number of reasons, the most
>obvious being
>that the percentages of students who take them vary substantially among
>states and
>school systems. There are tests that actually do measure student achievement
>against
>standards, but these (for example, the Advanced Placement exams) are usually
>given to a
>very small percentage of students. Nevertheless, assessments like the A.P.
>provide a
>model of what assessments based on clear standards might look like.
>The lack of student-achievement standards (lack of clear expected outcomes
>for students)
>has meant that we have defined our needs and our success in terms of inputs.
>A Nation at
>Risk's recommendations are a good example of this focus on inputs. Its call
>for "four years
>of English ... three years of mathematics ... three years of science ...
>three years of social
>studies ... one-half year of computer science'' typifies the inputs focus.
>More seat time has
>no necessary correlation with more learning. State education departments look
>at all kinds
>of inputs and sometimes at student achievement, but only at a very minimal
>level (that is,
>basic competency).
>It is important to recognize that most of the countries around the world with
>whom we are
>competing and will be competing in the future do have achievement standards.
>They may
>have different standards for students who are going to universities than for
>those who are
>not, but in both cases standards are high. And, in these countries, student
>achievement is
>assessed against these standards.
>There are a number of reasons why we in the United States do not have
>student-achievement standards. For one thing, we closely guard local control,
>resisting
>national and state interference in each locality's right to educate its own
>children however
>it wants. As long as a school system can satisfy the people in its community
>it is seen to
>be doing its job, whatever levels of achievement its students meet. Another
>reason is that
>many who work in schools do not want standards to which they are expected to
>hold all
>their students. The dirty little secret here is that many of us believe that
>some types of
>students cannot meet high standards. While it is true that the United States
>has more racial
>and cultural diversity in our schools than any other developed country, many
>of the
>students whom we would exempt from meeting high standards do not come from
>racial or
>cultural minorities. At the same time, many from these minorities do achieve
>at high levels.
>By not having clearly stated standards, we are able to avoid facing up to
>these facts by
>exempting from standards--ad hoc--any student who, for whatever reason, is
>not
>achieving.
>At the heart of all the reasons and arguments against standards is an
>overwhelming
>emphasis on differences. If schools define their central mission as "meeting
>each student's
>needs,'' then there can be no common standards of achievement, because
>differences in
>students' needs are potentially infinite. American parents often seem more
>concerned that
>their children like their teachers and enjoy their schools and have plenty of
>free time than
>that they achieve academically at high levels. They want schools to meet
>their children's
>needs, and they consider their children (each of their children) unique. This
>often means
>that one of their children is "good at math'' or foreign languages and
>achieves at high
>levels in those areas while another may not be "good,'' and can't be expected
>to achieve, in
>these areas. When differences dominate, innate ability is considered more
>important than
>hard work, and standards for all students make little sense.
>Standards must be based on the idea that there are things all students (with
>exceptions for
>students with particular handicaps) should know and be able to do. In this
>regard,
>similarities are more important than differences. All kinds of variation is
>possible in how
>children acquire this learning and in how schools convey it; this is where
>real differences
>are accommodated. It is even possible, though probably difficult and
>expensive, to have
>variation in how students demonstrate what they have learned. But there is a
>great deal
>that every student should know and be able to do. Students and schools and
>communities
>can and should be judged on how well students are meeting standards that all
>students are
>expected to meet.
>The reason we are all talking about standards right now is that there has
>been a great deal
>of national pressure over the past few years to actually increase the
>achievement of all our
>students in all academic subjects. This means not just the students in inner
>cities and
>isolated rural areas, not just minority and low-socioeconomic-group students
>whose
>achievement we have bewailed for years (but excused because of their "special
>needs'') but
>all our regular, average students who have seemed to us to be doing well.
>What most of
>the public has now learned, and many have called their representatives in
>Congress about,
>is that the abilities of the frontline workforce in many competitor countries
>are
>substantially higher than they are in the United States, that these countries
>are educating
>everybody to higher levels than we are, and that one of the main differences
>between us
>and them is standards: They have them and we don't. The international
>argument is
>summed up in the title of a book published by the National Center on
>Education and the
>Economy: "America's Choice: High Skills or Low Wages.''
>What the national movement for student-achievement standards is saying is
>that
>outputs--what students actually know and are able to do--are more important
>than inputs,
>and that the first step toward judging outputs is establishing standards for
>students'
>academic achievement. This movement is firmly established on the national
>level. Last
>year, a Congressional staff person who has worked with education policy for
>25 years
>called the shift in focus from inputs to outputs a "sea change.'' Another
>indication of
>national commitment to a focus on standards is that both the Bush and the
>Clinton
>administrations have called for national standards and assessments. While
>those of us
>who have worked in education for 20 or 30 years have seen many trends come
>and go (and
>several come around again once or twice), I believe that this one is not just
>a trend but
>what T.S. Kuhn called a "paradigm shift''--a whole new way of looking at
>education with a
>whole new set of expectations about what schools and students ought to be
>doing and
>showing.
>To mean anything, standards must have two qualities: They must be high and
>they must
>be clear. They must be world-class, meaning that they demand of our students
>at least as
>much as is demanded of students in competitor countries, and they must be
>understandable to teachers, parents, and everyone else, because the entire
>community
>must be involved in insuring that students meet them.
>The standards must also be measurable, but not by the kinds of tests we are
>used to.
>Instead, we need to develop assessment systems that ask students to
>demonstrate their
>deep understanding of what they have learned and of their ability to apply
>it. This is not
>an arcane idea; many of our competitor nations do this. It is contrary to
>received opinion in
>the education business, but I am convinced that high standards and good
>authentic
>assessments can and will drive strong curricula and good instruction.
>Certainly, standards
>must precede anything else. We cannot substantially increase achievement
>until we have a
>clear idea of what achievement we expect. Once the standards are clear, it
>would be best to
>develop assessments, curriculum, and instructional-staff development in
>tandem.
>However, good, strong, authentic assessment alone can improve instruction.
>The kind of
>assessment I mean is the kind that, if teachers teach to the test all year,
>it is good
>instruction.
>Much of the opposition to standards comes from those who believe they are
>defending
>the rights of the educationally disadvantaged. They argue that these students
>are not now
>meeting even minimal standards and that having higher standards for them
>without first
>improving the quality of education these students receive would have a
>negative effect on
>their achievement. I disagree. For one thing, having high and clear standards
>that
>everyone is aware of (including parents and guardians as well as politicians)
>will increase
>pressure to improve instruction for the educationally disadvantaged. For
>another, if we
>wait until all the inputs are in place, we will never get to the outputs--the
>standards. I
>remember the great psychologist Kenneth Clark referring to a program that
>would exempt
>some students from meeting standards as "Jim Crow education''--and he was
>right.
>It is actually surprising to me that anyone opposes high and clear standards
>for student
>achievement. After all, we have standards for performance of all kinds of
>employees--including teachers and administrators. Yet we believe students are
>too
>different from each other for there to be standards for them.
>Nationally, there has been a great deal of talk and a fair amount of action
>on standards.
>The several federally funded projects in each of the disciplines are
>proceeding apace, as is
>the National Standards Project led by Lauren Resnick and Marc Tucker. The
>Educational
>Testing Service is developing "Pacesetter'' exams which, on the model of the
>Advanced
>Placement test but at an achievement level expected of all students, will
>include
>curriculum-based exams in several disciplines. Several states have also
>embarked on
>standard-setting, but I have not yet been very impressed with their results.
>I believe that local school systems need to be more involved in developing
>standards and
>assessments. School systems are where education actually happens, and where
>standards
>will be meaningful. Students in actual schools will either meet or not meet
>actual standards.
>Leadership in the standards movement should come from local school leaders as
>well as
>from national figures. For one thing, we--local school leaders--have a real
>stake in the
>movement, because we are the ones who will be held responsible if our
>students do not
>meet the high standards. For another thing, we have a clearer understanding
>of what can
>be done in real schools with real students in real communities. The national
>and state
>projects will force us to keep the standards high, but we need to be players
>in the national
>movement.
>In Fairfax County, Va., we are developing high and clear achievement
>standards for all
>students, and we are lucky to have funding from the Mobil Foundation to do
>so. Everyone
>involved with instruction in our school system and everyone who lives in our
>community
>is getting an opportunity to comment on these developing standards. Once the
>standards
>are in place, they will drive assessment, curriculum, and staff development
>in the Fairfax
>County public schools and possibly many other aspects of the school system.
>For
>instance, one area of school-system operation that may be affected by
>standards is
>organization. If the focus is on outputs (what students know and are able to
>do) rather
>than on inputs (how many years of a subject students must "take,'' for
>example), then
>schools may have more flexibility as to how students meet standards while
>being
>stringently expected to insure they do meet them. This will mean that the
>relationships
>between individual schools and central school-system offices (and, possibly,
>between
>teachers and principals) will be different than they are now.
>Our standards-setting project--the Fairfax Framework for Student
>Success--will be a
>national model and will affect national standard setting, just as national
>standard setting
>has affected the Fairfax framework. In Fairfax County and elsewhere in the
>United States,
>the focus on standards and the shift from inputs to outputs is going to make
>a very big
>difference in our young people's achievement and our national
>competitiveness. It will
>make an especially big difference in the lives of those students now
>achieving at the
>lowest levels. A poor and distraught child suffers an obvious impediment to
>learning, but
>if we, as educators, take the position that the child is incapable of
>learning until those
>social or emotional needs are met, we may doom the child never to learn. To
>believe that no
>child can achieve high standards unless all his or her emotional needs are
>met first
>contributes to the "lowered-expectations syndrome'' that depresses student
>achievement.
>In actuality, academic achievement could be the only tangible success in an
>otherwise
>defeating existence as well as the only way out of that existence. We must
>seriously expect
>high achievement of all students.
>Our dirty little secret is out, and all of us who work in schools need to
>acknowledge it and
>work to change the situation it describes. High and clear standards for all
>students will
>help every student. I call on teachers, administrators, and school boards to
>get behind the
>national-achievement-standards movement and to provide more leadership for
>that
>movement. The time has come for those in public education to create the
>vision of our
>young people's future and to do what needs to be done to make that vision a
>reality.
>
>Robert R. Spillane is the superintendent of the Fairfax County, Va., public
>schools.