For some decades now, the Standards Movement has produced no measurable improvements in American public education. It has worn many guises, has been repackaged innumerable times, but always with the same result...a declaration that it is time to start over and to purchase new books, materials and services from the developers of the next new redesigned one best way to educate children.
When No Child Left Behind was enacted, two responses captured the mood of most school practitioners. My own response was to argue that NCLB was ill-conceived, that it suffered internal contradictions that doomed it to failure, and that school leaders should resist it at every turn. There were those who agreed, but it seemed that we were few. There was another school of thought...those who believed that if we supported NCLB, bought the new books and the new trainings, filled out the new reports and executed the new mandates, the system would eventually collapse under its own weight and we would be none the worse for it. Well, it has indeed collapsed. (When Diane Ravitch came out against NCLB, that had to be the final nail.) But in Oregon alone, we have wasted millions of dollars and thousands of school days in a program that never showed any potential for success.
And now the move is toward national standards. And because the feds will attach money to them, the lemming-like states will line up and march toward to sea. Oregon? We'll scramble to be first. Incredible.
If the result of statewide standards in Oregon is wildly disparate achievement between two schools in the same Oregon district (Portland comes to mind), who in their right mind would imagine that national standards will create parity among schools in Mobile, Minneapolis and Manhattan? There is simply no reason to think so. On the other hand, there are billions of reasons to say so. There are new committees, new documents, new curriculum mapping projects, new staff development conferences, books and tapes. There are new textbooks to publish and sell, new formative assessments to develop. And sell, sell, sell. Shiny brochures will flood my office, all promising to move every student up to 'national standards'. Guaranteed.
National standards will be to the Publishing-Education-Technology complex what World War II was to American manufacturing interests. Profits falling from the sky. The goal? It seems to be to lead the world in the production of college graduates by the year 2020. President Obama seems to have endorsed the goal. Like the 2014 goal set by President Bush, it conveniently pushes any real accountability out beyond the life expectancy of the current administration.
2020? It used to stand or perfect vision. Now it stands for perfect deferral. Which of the big decision-makers will still be in their positions of authority when 2020 comes and the national standards movement bears no fruit? Not the President or Secretary Duncan. Not the Oregon Superintendent. Not the superintendents of the large districts who will jump on board and echo the promises of the Administration. Ten years from now? It's doubtful that they will still be paying into PERS. Some people will make careers and others will extend them by getting on board with National Standards, just as they did with NCLB. Most of them will be far beyond any accountability by 2020. And billions will have been spent. And a good percentage of those billions will have been wasted.
It was either Frank Smith or Richard Allington who said that no reading program had yet been invented that could prevent all students from learning to read. NCLB didn't put a complete halt to student achievement. Neither will the dive to National Standards. But like every commercial reading program yet published, it will dampen the results that would be possible without this noisy, time-consuming, distraction from the task of educating the next generation. It will line the pockets of gurus and produce very little added value. The opportunity costs will go unmeasured, but they will be tremendous.
Public education's addiction to fads and to empty 'visions' is its Achilles' heel. National Standards are just the latest delusion. In 2020 I'll open this blog for comments and you can explain how wrong I was...I promise.
