Over
at Flypaper, Mike Petrilli is all excited about the seminar Fordham sponsored
today--especially the fact that at the conclusion of the program, a majority of
people in the audience raised their hands when asked if they thought we would
have a system of national standards in five years. This reminded me of Catholic
grade-school stories my husband tells, wherein Father Flanagan visits the 3rd
grade classroom to urge children to consider a life as a priest or nun. Who
wants to become a priest? Raise your hands--keeping in mind that it's the
highest possible goal you can have, kids. A quick look at the list of
presenters and panelists will tell you that using this hand-raising thing as a
poll would present some, um, sampling errors.

Not
that I'm opposed to national standards, as long as they are structured as voluntary
curriculum frameworks and benchmarks. Sequencing important content to keep
students following the same general path is a good idea. But--let's look at the
reasons Petrilli's turning cartwheels over the prospect:

There
are innumerable reasons that national standards and tests would be better for
the country than the fifty state patchwork we have today (numbers added by
TIASL):

#1)
greater comparability of schools across state lines

#2)
the opportunity to aim much higher than most states do 

#3)
the potential that it could create a national marketplace for instructional
materials, professional development, and teacher preparation, and on and on.

#4)
the leaders of the common standards initiative are interested in getting to
common tests—and to use these standards and tests to drive instructional change
at the classroom level.

So--notice
anything missing in this list of reasons to endorse national standards? To whom
do benefits, control and power flow in Petrilli's vision? Well--data analysts,
commercial education publishers, test developers and those who would re-shape
instruction and teacher preparation, or sell professional development. I don't
see anything about direct advantages for students, especially those in challenging
contexts. "Aiming higher" is something that can be done--and is done,
every day--in individual schools and classrooms, driven by goal-oriented
teachers and school leaders. And just how "high" is high enough to
honor top-scoring states, while leaving no state behind? Speaking of "comparability,"
every data lover's #1 goal.

Not
that Petrilli is overly sanguine:

What’s
the process for making decisions about what the common standards will entail?
With the NGA and CCSSO leading an ad-hoc group of “partners” (including
Achieve, ACT, and the College Board), it remains unclear who, at the end of the
day, will make judgments about the scope of the standards themselves. If these
folks think that they will find a way to avoid the math wars and the reading
wars, or the content vs. 21st Century Skills debate, they are kidding
themselves. I also fear that they don’t yet have a process in place that will
successfully adjudicate these pressures and come out with a solid product.

I'm
guessing that Petrilli could give them a short list of who should be
"adjudicating" these thorny issues to develop a solid product that
would please the NGA and CCSSO (politicians all) and Achieve, ACT and the College
Board (developers and monitors of standardized tests).  I'm wondering: might they need any other
partners or input, to make this expensive national initiative pay off for students and teachers?