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National K-12 Standards
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It is amazing what a little crisis and little money can do. What seems to be a moving target for decades, is actually taking shape. 46 states have agreed to work on common academic standards in Math and English. This recession is an opportunity to move things forward, and I have hoped the Federal Government would do exactly this: push for national standards, and generally take more control over the K-12 education system of the country. Well, it did happen, so more kudos to Mrs. Obama and Mr. Duncan.
Let me be clear – the national standards on their own will not dramatically improve American education. We need a much deeper, a more radical reform. However, common standards in core subjects will make education a little less expensive, and just a little less confused. Developing 50 different math standards is clearly absurd. In addition, it will help clear the confusion created by No Child Left Behind law, which measures “adequate yearly progress” for each school and each state, but states started at different points. If you started with rigorous standards, you cannot progress as fast if at all. If you started with low standards, of course you can show much progress (sort of line Chinese GDP growth rates – so high because China was so very low before it started to grow).
Now let’s see what these standards are going to be – more like “21 century skills” or more like traditional content and skills based standards. It does not matter much, because all curriculum is still arbitrary.
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