Discuss: Nat'l Standards

Education reformer Deborah Meier is against national standards because she thinks they'll lead to a national test. "Instead of fifty ridiculous tests, we'll have one ridiculous test. Standards should be as local as possible. [Policymakers] are the wrong people engaged in the debate [over national standards]—I don’t care what they think, I care what the math professionals think." Meier wants to sustain a lively debate about what’s taught, and sees national standards as crushing inquiry and creativity.

Arkansas education commissioner Ken James is in favor of state-led national standards, and says to make these work, we need to determine what the next generation of assessments will be. "It doesn’t make any sense to have 50 different sets of standards, that across this country, kids are expected to know and be able to do different things, state-to-state" says James.

"This is a dilemma in education where they’re both right," says AFT President Randi Weingarten. "Common standards are important because there are core things kids should know and be able to do, and it's totally unfair if you learn completely different things, at different schools. Debbie’s right that there needs to be far more discourse about this—there are no silver bullets, but we have to start somewhere. If you start with some notion of what's key and core, then you'll have the debate that Debbie's calling for."

Comments taken from the May 1, 2009 Education Writers Association (EWA) panel, Is the Obama Administration On the Right Track?