Will the real standards-based education please stand up?

Leadership, Jan-Feb, 2003 by Ron Brandt

America's public schools are firmly committed to standards-based education. Is this commitment entirely sound, or are some aspects of it questionable? The editor of Leadership invited Doug Reeves and me to explore any disagreements we may have.

First let's clarify the topic. The many meanings of "standards-based" education include:

* Standardization of what is to be taught and learned. In the last decade, numerous state and national groups have carefully defined what they think students should know and be able to do, and nearly all states have adopted these "content standards." At their best, standards convey our professional vision of good teaching and learning.

* Instruction that is clearly focused on what students are supposed to learn. In standards-based classrooms, both teacher and students know what is expected, teaching strategies are appropriate to the standards being taught, and assessment provisions (determined before instruction) are focused on whether the standards have been met.

* The expectation that all students are to learn the specified content at acceptable levels. More than two decades of research and thought have established that difficult-to-teach students will achieve if teachers believe in them, demonstrate their beliefs, and use research based practices.

* Tests intended to assess the content standards. Because standards are considered relatively meaningless unless externally measured, nearly all states require tests designed to provide an objective assessment of how well the standards have been learned.

* Accountability provisions based on scores on the tests. State and national policies now provide incentives and interventions intended to ensure more uniform achievement.

Each of these aspects of standards has its benefits and drawbacks.

Curriculum standards

Because most standards express worthy aspirations, people often say, "The standards are fine. It's how they're used that's the problem." Well, not entirely. For example, as the California mathematics standards illustrate, the adoption process is highly political, allowing ideologues to impose their prefer ences on an entire state (Jacob, 2001).

And when standards specify detailed content to be taught at each grade, rather than more general outcomes, they become a kind of required curriculum, squeezing out innovation. For example, a social studies teacher in Virginia could not even consider following the principle of "less is more" advocated by the Coalition of Essential Schools.

Instruction

The concept of standards-based instruction makes sense to me, as it apparently does to most administrators and consultants. However, a recent survey (Barnes, 2002) found that a national sample of fourth and eighth grade teachers "do not accept the premises" of standards-based education (Finn, 2002). The teachers said they thought schools should be child-centered rather than teacher-centered and that learning to learn was more important than specific facts and skills.

This actually may reflect the ambiguity of "standards-based." Although everyone undoubtedly agrees that teachers should be clear about their purposes and that their practices should be consistent with those purposes, they may not agree what the purposes (standards) should be.

High expectations enforced by tests and accountability

To many politicians and members of the public, "standards-based" means simply that students are required to meet "rigorous" standards. So they applaud familiar practices that combine testing and grading: teach a large body of content, give a test that samples the content, and set an arbitrary "cut score" that determines who will pass and who will fail.

The problem with this version of standards is that brief tests composed of mostly multiple-choice items cannot adequately assess a large number of complex standards, so it obscures the very idea of standards-based instruction. The problem is growing worse because, with declining revenues, states that had some extended-response items (which are expensive to score) can no longer afford them (Hoff, 2002).

The use of inadequate tests and cut scores is particularly harmful when official policies attribute low scores solely to defects in the schools rather than to community conditions in high-poverty areas. The idea of "low performing schools," now the focus of so much state and federal activity, is complicated; of course the students in such schools are entitled to a high quality education and of course such schools can and should be improved.

But as economist Richard Rothstein (2002) writes, "By setting goals that are impossible for schools to fulfill (for example, that they will repair the nation's inequitable income distribution by giving workforce entrants a more remunerative set of skills, or that they will close the gap in achievement between children from different racial groups and economic classes), we position public schools for inevitable failure."

A better way

So what should be happening instead? Briefly, adopted standards should be treated as "default," but not exclusive, aims. Parents should choose among multiple approaches, some of which might have different standards. Each school should define its special mission and engage in data-based self improvement (NSSE, 1997), setting annual targets and gathering and analyzing evidence of progress. Results on state tests, though not definitive, should be an important part of that evidence. Schools should receive equitable resources and those with large numbers of low-scoring students should get special attention, with targets and strategies for improvement determined by professional judgment.