Goals 2000 revisited: Goal #1

Whatever became of Goals 2000: The Education of America Act of 1994? That landmark legislation defined eight comprehensive, exemplary goals for the nation's schools to be realized fully by the year 2000. With the millennium having recently passed, now is an appropriate time to revisit the national goals to determine the extent to which we have, as a society, accomplished them.

The government established a National Education Goals Panel (NEGP) in 1994 to oversee, monitor, and evaluate progress toward accomplishment of the goals. The National Education Goals Report: Building a Nation of Learners (NEGP 1998) was the latest summary of state and national progress in goal achievement. While the data included in this report reveal some moderate progress, NEGP (1998, 1) had to acknowledge, "The nation is far from where it should be if we expect to achieve National Education Goals by the end of the decade. Progress has been uneven, and performance has actually slipped in some areas."

Responsibility for the actual implementation of the eight national goals was turned over to the individual states, once again putting the country in the midst of a massive educational reform movement. This latest effort to reform U.S. education has focused heavily on higher standards, increased accountability, and mandated regular assessment of student achievement. Given this accountability focus, it should not be a difficult task to evaluate the extent to which each of the eight national goals has been realized by the year 2001. However, as each goal deals with a distinct, separate topic, each goal requires its own measurement plan and data analysis.

Assessing GOAL # 1

Perhaps the simplest and least controversial of the goals is the first: Goal #1. "By the year 2000 all children in America will start school ready to learn." This goal appears to be concerned with the nation's youngest students, those about to embark on 13 long years of compulsory public schooling. In most cases, the focus is on kindergarten, that special year intended to provide a period of comfortable transition for young children from home to the formal graded structure of first grade. The goal states that every child in the United States will be prepared and ready for that first school experience. It could also be interpreted to mean that no child will come to school until he or she is "ready to learn."

So how close are we to achieving this goal? Have we even made substantial improvement in the three areas associated with Goal #1: a decrease in infants born with certain health risks, an increase in immunizations of two-year olds, and an increase in the percentage of families reading to their preschool children (NEGP 1998)? Furthermore, though these objectives are important factors in the well-- being of our infant and preschool population, they do not directly address, nor do they attempt to measure, specific readiness for school as stated in Goal #1.

When we focus on the actual expectation expressed in Goal #1, we have no clear evidence that we are anywhere near its achievement. Despite the past six years' effort to raise standards, ensure accountability, and assess progress, accomplishment of the first national goal cannot be documented. There is ample evidence that far too many children are still starting school unprepared for the demands of that first important year. We need a more focused, targeted way to evaluate this goal. As stated, Goal #1 is so ambiguous that it is practically unmeasurable.

A serious large-scale evaluation requires a clearly stated purpose and target, specific assessment instruments appropriate to the purpose and target, and a quantitative data collection and reporting plan. NEGP recognized the difficulties in assessing Goal #1. As Shepard, Kagan, and Wurtz (1998, 3) expressed, "From the start, Goal 1 proved problematic to measure. The Panel could find no good data or methods to measure children's status when they started school." To address the problem, the government established yet another group to develop guidelines for early childhood assessment-the Goal 1 Early Childhood Assessments Resource Group (ECARG). Though NEGP developed principles and recommendations, it appears to have side-- stepped the issue when reporting on progress toward Goal 1, focusing instead on such measurable factors as prenatal health, immunization counts, and parental reports of how often they read to their children. Apparently, no effort was made to assess the "readiness" of children entering kindergarten in 1998.

"All"

There are four major problems with the terminology of the Goal #1 statement. The first problem is the word "all." Hopefully, NEGP intended the words "all children" to be read conditionally. Though most children do start kindergarten at least moderately ready to learn what the program expects of them, a substantial portion of children at the appropriate chronological age to enter kindergarten are not as "ready" for the standard program as might be desired. For example, consider the population of children with disabilities whose readiness levels at any given age may differ markedly from the average. Consider also children who come from disadvantaged homes, poverty, homelessness, alternative cultures, non-English-speaking backgrounds, and foster or broken homes as well as those suffering from a chronic illness. Through no fault of their own, these children may experience difficulty handling the high standards of today's kindergarten program.