In the world of education, the concept of national standards began as whisper, quickly turned into a full-fledged discussion, and now seems destined to become a rallying cry. In an interview with C-SPAN, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that national standards will be one of the Obama Administration’s priorities. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten recently made the case in her Washington Post article that “the time has come for a serious consideration of national academic standards.” David Hoff of Education Week announced on his blog that at the National Governors Association’s (NGA) winter meeting, governors approved a statement (not yet released to the public) charging state leaders with the responsibility of heading a national effort to define common standards of what all students should know.

I guess a move towards national standards was inevitable given that one of the many criticisms of Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which is currently under scrutiny and in the process of being reauthorized (hallelujah!), is that the law holds different states accountable to vastly different expectations. So under NCLB, a state with lower standards gets a pat on the back when its students meet low expectations, while a state with high standards gets penalized when its students miss the mark. (See Fordham Institute’s interesting study of accountability under NCLB here) It just doesn’t make sense. As Weingarten aptly asks: “Should fate, as determined by a student’s Zip code, dictate how much algebra he or she is taught?”

Of course not! So if the powers that be are all pointing to the need for national standards, my questions to them are as follows: What should these standards be? Who gets to decide? How will teachers know how to align curriculum, instruction, and assessment with these new standards in ways effective enough to enable all students to have a shot at reaching them? Should we have standards in all subjects, or just the biggies (English, Math, Science)? What do we do with schools whose students don’t meet the standards?

There have already been some preliminary attempts by the higher ups to answer some of these questions. For example, as to the question of what these standards should be, Arne Duncan mentioned international benchmarking in his C-SPAN interview. Apparently, there’s actually an International Benchmarking Advisory Group comprised of education and policy leaders at local, national, and state levels who were invited by the NGA, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and Achieve Inc to research internationally benchmarked standards. The idea being that if the United States can pinpoint the content and skills that the highest achieving countries consider most important, and we then use these international benchmarks as standards that we could align our curriculum, instruction, and assessment with, then our students will have the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in today’s global market.

Unfortunately, the nuts and bolts of how all if this could actually happen are still up for discussion, but at least in theory, the argument sounds good to me. Despite my lingering questions, and there are many, I am willing to concede that national standards is an idea that makes sense. As Weingarten writes: “A national agreement about certain aspects of what every well-educated child in every American public school should learn won’t be easy to arrive at, but that is no reason to give up before we even try. High standards improve teaching and learning. If we really believe that all children can and should reach high levels of achievement, it only makes sense to define those benchmarks.”

takepart and read the International Benchmarking Advisory Group’s report called “Benchmarking For Success: Ensuring U.S. Students Receive a World-Class Education.”

(Photo: Hometown Invasion Tour’s flickr photostream)