Episode 110: National Standards in Education — Navigating Challenges and Opportunities for Consistency in K-12

Are national standards in education the key to consistency or a political quagmire? This episode of K-12 Education Untangled promises to challenge your views on the delicate balance between federal oversight and local control. Join me as I dissect the benefits and pitfalls of the Common Core State Standards, particularly through the lens of families who face frequent relocations due to professions in the military, academia, or healthcare. How can we ensure every student, regardless of their state, receives a rigorous and coherent education?

Together, I unravel the history and ongoing debates around national standards. You'll explore the complexities of aligning assessments with these standards and the potential for a voluntary national test. Discover why the pursuit of a unified educational framework remains controversial and what it means for the future of American education. Whether you're a parent, educator, or simply passionate about K-12 education, this episode offers crucial insights and actionable strategies to better support our children’s educational journey. Tune in and get ready to untangle the intricacies of national standards in education.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:55

Welcome to another episode of K-12 Education Untangled. My name is Dr Kim J Fields, former corporate manager turned education researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school educators and administrators, as well as experiencing the microaggressions that I faced as an African-American mom raising my two kids, who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. Once I gained the information and the insights that I needed, I was then equipped to be able to successfully support my children in their educational progress. Support my children in their educational progress. This podcast is at the intersection between education, research and parental actions. If you're looking to find out more about the current trends, issues and themes in education that could affect you or your children, and you want to know the specific actions you can take to support and advocate for your children, and you want to know the specific actions you can take to support and advocate for your children, then you're in the right place. Thanks for tuning in today. I know that staying informed about K-12 education topics is important to you, so keep listening.

Speaker 1: 2:26

In this episode, I'll be discussing the push for national standards and why this issue remains controversial. How do you feel about having national standards that lay the foundation for what every child should have mastered by the time they finish high school? Are you for common standards or against them? If you're a family whose job requires you to move from one state to another, whether that's for military, academia, health care, etc. Due to upward mobility, would you feel appreciative that the curriculum in the state that you're moving to is on par with the curriculum from your child's current schooling situation? That, indeed, is the goal of establishing national standards. Unfortunately, the aim is not always on target. Let's untangle this.

Speaker 1: 3:27

Education and politics have been intertwined for at least the last six decades. The case of national academic standards is no exception. The question is at what level is the role of politics appropriate? Is it a federal role? Is it a local or state role? Is it a local or state role? Is there even a societal consensus about the skills and knowledge that every student in America should be expected to master? The move toward national standards has been ongoing for the past 30 years. It seems that a nationwide push for academic standards won't work if it comes from the federal government, so the government has left it to the states to develop common assessments for determining standards for everyone.

Speaker 1: 4:20

The description national standard didn't go over so well, so the label common standards seemed to be more soothing, thus the name Common Core State Standards. The additional focus of the Common Standards was on establishing guidelines in math and English language arts. History and science courses seemed to be more controversial due to their content, although sometimes science is covered in the common standards. One of the issues in leaving it up to the states to build a core of standards is the variance in the content of those standards. Although there is no guarantee that voluntary national content standards would be any better than standards currently used in states, but there could be an argument for why voluntary national content standards might be better. First, national content standards would help ensure that all students are expected to have an opportunity to learn rigorous content in all academic subjects. As of a few years ago, there was a wide variation across states and the content that students were expected to master. Second, a common set of national content standards would allow for improvements in the quality of standards. Those standards developed at the national level would perhaps be done with greater expertise and, ideally closer scrutiny than what some states could provide. Standards would also tend to be more coherent and rigorous than several current state standards. Third, developing a voluntary national content standards would provide consistency and cohesiveness, both of which are lacking in many state content standards. Assessments are a big part of the development of content standards because the assessments would be used to align to content standards with state assessments. The development of voluntary national standards would lead to the creation of a voluntary national test which, hopefully, would be better aligned to the national content standards. These voluntary national standards would not necessarily be prescriptive of every single item to be taught in schools, but rather they could represent a rigorous core of content, key subjects that states could modify At least. The push for national standards would help to create a coherent core of knowledge for American students.

Speaker 1: 7:07

The reason for the push for national standards is due to disparities in state education requirements. The disparities in what schools expect of students, as well as what they teach them, are profound and they play out daily in this nation's classrooms. Meeting standards in one state does not equate to meeting the same standards in another state. National education standards would give all schools targets and clarify what should be taught. National standards would provide a common definition of what academic proficiency means and what it doesn't mean, rather than having 50 different definitions. National standards would also take away the temptation by states to lower their standards or dumb down their tests to meet federal targets. National standards might also help to propel the US economic competitiveness, so that high school graduates across the country would be adequately prepared to compete in the global economy, irrespective of what state they came from. The majority of high-performing nations that the US competes with economically already set their own national standards, and most of those standards are higher than the standards in many of our states. Some would argue that national standards ignore the fact that this nation is in a post-industrial era and that it is in an information era in which schools should provide each child with a high-quality personalized education that encourages students to make the best of their diverse individual gifts best of their diverse individual gifts.

Speaker 1: 8:56

The initial response to the Common Core state standards was quick adoption by 46 states and the District of Columbia in 2012. The other four states adopted their own college and career readiness standards by 2015. Although that initial response was extraordinary, it was quickly followed by a steady decline in public support. By the fall of 2017, 11 states had announced a major Common Core replacement or rewrite. The major constituent in the opposition to Common Core state standards was grounded in politics.

Speaker 1: 9:33

So what has been the impact of these common standards on student learning? More to the point, did states' adoption of these rigorous standards result in increases in student achievement in reading and math, both overall and for specific subgroups? The short answer is that, despite several earlier studies comparing reading and math scores for fourth and eighth graders before and after Common Core state standards, the research indicates that the impact of standards on student achievement is still quite thin and doesn't yet contain convincing evidence on the impact of the common standards. This is partly due to various research design challenges in these studies and research study limitations. One particular 2022 study revealed that significant negative effects were noted for grade 4 reading, as well as for grade 8 reading, grade 4 math and grade 8 math after the adoption of more rigorous standards that has been the foundation for the latest standards-based reform did not really move the needle on student achievement during the last seven years after adoption of those standards, and that would be as recent as 2020. In order for the standards to produce meaningful gains in student achievement, the standards need to produce changes in teacher knowledge and instructional practice. What happened in most cases was that the standards-based reforms failed to provide teachers with sufficient learning opportunity and supports, which led to modest changes in instructional practice and therefore had minimal impact on student achievement.

Speaker 1: 11:33

The main thing to keep in mind about standards-based reform is that it doesn't address the issues of achievement or equity. Standards address curriculum issues in the classroom. However, a student's home and neighborhood environment, as well as their family lifestyle, affect his or her academic achievement. The Common Core State Standards represent the latest iteration of academic performance criteria for students. The focus is primarily on reading and English language arts. The standards dictate the knowledge and skills that students are expected to acquire each grade level in order to determine how prepared high school graduates are for college careers and life after school. The Common Core State Standards are similar to national standards, but they are not legally mandated. They are, however, incentivized through financial aid from federal government, and this creates a significant impact on public schools at the national scale.

Speaker 1: 12:49

The theory of culturally relevant education comes into conflict with the policy of national standards, because culturally relevant education emphasizes catering to diversity. National standards address standardization of education being the same for all, which does not take into consideration the learning needs of Black, hispanic and other racial minorities, as well as educational language learners and disabled students. It's interesting that, while student populations in the United States have diversified rapidly, the use of standard space reform as a way of eliminating inequity has resulted in homogenizing the curriculum even as classrooms have become more diverse become more diverse. One of the downsides of the standards-based reform agenda is that it makes it nearly impossible for educators to give all students the varied attention and resources that are needed to engage them in meaningful learning processes. In this regard, parents want real supports for their children, which include supports that help students learn, grow and reach their full potential, versus just pushing more standards and tests on their children. While standards might make the school curriculum more consistent, most parents didn't see standards as sufficient enough to change the quality of the school. Perhaps the issue is not so much with standards-based reform as it is with supports-based reform. These supports-based resources include things like guaranteeing access to high-quality early education for all students, mandatory kindergarten with assurances that all students are achieving at grade level by third grade, access to student-centered learning and personalized academic, social and health plans to keep students on a college path, and equitable resources and policies that keep students in engaging high-quality education settings. Supports-based resources are particularly important for low-income Black and Latino students and, just for your information, latinos represent this nation's fastest-growing demographic.

Speaker 1: 15:11

Some educators and policy advocates are extending the call for common standards by suggesting a supports-based reform and pushing a more progressive education agenda called Rebuild America. These educators and policymakers suggest that the emphasis on high-stakes testing is turning public schools into uncreative and joyless institutions. The group pushing this also includes city leaders, educational researchers, presidents of both national teachers unions and parents. So how does this discussion about the push for national standards apply to you? Here are the action steps you can take regarding this topic. The main action step for you regarding the topic of national standards is that there will continue to be iterations of the standards that address the foundational concepts that students should have mastered by the time they graduate from high school. The iterations will also include associated assessments that evaluate academic skills acquisition. The other action step that you can take remains a constant staying active in your child's schooling experience by participating in classroom and or school activities pertaining to curriculum and equity. Your participation is vital. Here are this episode's takeaways the reason for the push for national standards is due to disparities in state education requirements.

Speaker 1: 17:00

The disparities and what schools expect of students, as well as what they teach them, are profound, and they play out daily in this nation's classrooms. Meeting standards in one state does not equate to meeting the same standards in another state. The initial response to the Common Core State Standards was quick adoption by 46 states and the District of Columbia in 2012. The other four states adopted their own college and career readiness standards by 2015,. Although that initial response was extraordinary, it was quickly followed by a steady decline in public support. By the fall of 2017, 11 states had announced a major Common Core rewrite or replacement.

Speaker 1: 17:50

The Common Core state standards represent the latest iteration of academic performance criteria for students. The focus is primarily on reading and English language arts. The standards dictate the knowledge and skills that students are expected to acquire at each grade level in order to determine how prepared high school graduates will be in college careers and life after school. The main thing to keep in mind about standards-based reform is that it doesn't address the issues of achievement and equity. Standards address curriculum issues in the classroom. However, a student's home and neighborhood environment, as well as their family lifestyle, affect his or her academic achievement.

Speaker 1: 18:50

What are your thoughts about the push for national standards. What are your thoughts about the push for national standards? Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment on my podcast website, k12educationuntangledbuzzsproutcom. Did you enjoy this episode? Do me a favor and text your friends or family right now about my show. Let them know that you have a podcast recommendation that you want them to listen to, and encourage them to listen to my show and get back to you and let you know what they thought about it. Thanks for tuning in and listening to this episode. I hope you'll come back for more K-12 educational discussions with even more exciting topics to untangle. Until next time, aim to learn something new every day. You.