States Set Low Bar for Student Achievement

From the AP:

Many states declare students to have grade-level mastery of reading and math when they do not, the Education Department reported Thursday.

The agency compared state achievement standards to the more challenging standards behind the federally funded National Assessment of Educational Progress.

The federal government can’t impose a set of standards, because education is largely up to states.

But Duncan noted he is offering millions of dollars in grants to encourage states to accept a set of standards being developed by the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers. The grants come from the federal stimulus law, which set aside $5 billion to push Obama’s vision of educational reform.

The head of the department’s Institute of Education Sciences said the biggest concern should be the wide disparity in standards among the states. A student who is proficient in one state might not be proficient in another, the report said.

“Why are these performance standards so far apart, and why are expectations set so widely from one place to another?” IES director John Easton said.

House Education Committee chairman George Miller said a child’s education should not be determined by zip code.

This dovetails with a post I wrote for The League of Ordinary Gentlemen several months ago. In the post I argued that a national curriculum was vital to the future success of our school systems for several reasons. One is that it gives families more mobility because it takes concern for their children’s educational progress out of the equation. A national curriculum also greatly increases the opportunity for collaboration and makes the best use of advancements in communication technology. Lastly, a national curriculum would obviously eliminate the variances in standards from district to district and state to state.

As a conservative I know I am not supposed to advocate for federal control over anything besides the military. I find this impossible to reconcile with education policy. While of course we must be vigilant that PC silliness is not injected into the curriculum in an effort to have something that is nationally acceptable, we can still create programs that ensure every American has a core of basic knowledge when they end their careers as students.