Every cause has an effect!
Abstract: American education needs to be fixed, but national standards and testing are not the way to do it. The problems that need fixing are too deeply ingrained in the power and incentive structure of the public education system, and the renewed focus on national standards threatens to distract from the fundamental issues. Besides, federal control over education has been growing since the 1960s as both standards and achievement have deteriorated. Heritage Foundation education policy experts Lindsey Burke and Jennifer Marshall explain why centralized standard-setting will likely result in the standardization of mediocrity, not excellence.
National education standards and assessments are getting renewed attention from the Obama Administration as the missing ingredient in American education reform. Proponents of national standards argue that establishing “fewer, higher, and clearer” benchmarks and aligned assessments will empower parents with information about what their children should know and which skills they should possess and that they will hold schools accountable for producing those results. National standards and testing, they say, will ensure that all children are ready for college or the workforce and will advance the educational standing of the United States.
On the one hand, such a critique of the status quo is well founded. Parental empowerment is essential and currently lacking. The monopoly that is the public education system must be more accountable to parents and taxpayers. Too many students leave high school without basic knowledge or skills. American education should be more competitive, particularly given the amount of money that taxpayers invest.
On the other hand, national standards and testing are unlikely to overcome these deficiencies. These problems are too deeply ingrained in the power and incentive structure of the public education system. A national standards debate threatens to distract from these fundamental issues. Centralized standard-setting would force parents and other taxpayers to relinquish one of their most powerful tools for school improvement: control of the academic content, standards, and testing through their state and local policymakers. Moreover, it is unclear that national standards would establish a target of excellence rather than standardization, a uniform tendency toward mediocrity and information that is more useful to bureaucrats who distribute funding than it is to parents who are seeking to direct their children’s education.
Common national standards and testing will not deliver on proponents’ promises. Rather than addressing the misalignment of power and incentives from which many public education problems arise, national standards and testing would further complicate these same problems. An effort by the Clinton Administration to produce national standards and tests during the 1990s was roundly rejected because of strong opposition among Members of Congress, state leaders, and others.[1] This renewed push for common national standards and assessments should be similarly resisted.
Instead, federal policy can improve the alignment of power and incentives in public education by enhancing transparency of existing accountability tools and providing flexibility in program funding for states to do the same. State policy should advance systemic reforms that better align power and incentives with educational outcomes, including enhanced accountability and parental empowerment through educational choice. By pursuing this combination of reforms, Americans can better address the core issues that continue to inhibit meaningful education reform.
From a “Common Core” to National Standards
The Obama Administration’s current push for national education standards builds on an initiative led by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). In September 2009, the groups’ Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) released college and career readiness standards for math and English language arts.[2] In March 2010, CCSSI published grade-by-grade benchmarks for each of these two subject areas.
From the beginning, proponents of the Common Core State Standards Initiative have maintained that the standards are voluntary and outside of the realm of the federal government. But federal funding has been linked to their adoption from the early stages. The February 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)—the “stimulus bill”—included $4.35 billion in discretionary funding for the Secretary of Education, known as Race to the Top. One of the requirements for states to qualify for this competitive grant funding was to have signed on to the CCSSI. Failing to adopt common standards and assessments puts a state at a significant disadvantage in the Race to the Top competition.[3]
In the context of state budget shortfalls, the prospect of funding was enticing enough for most states to sign on to the common standards—sight unseen.[4] Initially, only Texas and Alaska resisted. Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott stated that the common standards movement amounted to a “desire for a federal takeover of public education.”[5] Now, additional states, including Massachusetts, Iowa, Kansas, and Virginia, are expressing concerns about the common standards initiative.[6]
Meanwhile, the Obama Administration announced in February 2010 that it intends to make receipt of Title I funding contingent on the adoption of common standards. Nearly every school district participates in the $14.5 billion Title I program, which provides federal funds for low-income students.[7] Furthermore, the Obama Administration has announced a grant competition for the creation of common assessments among states that would replace state assessments.[8]
Federal pressure to adopt national standards and assessments has elicited concerns across the political spectrum. During a House Education and Labor Committee hearing, Representative Glen Thompson (R–PA) observed that “the Common Core is being transformed from a voluntary, state-based initiative to a set of federal academic standards with corresponding federal tests.”[9]National School Boards Association Executive Director Anne L. Bryant voiced similar concerns in a recent statement:
While the goal of high academic standards is laudable and school boards strongly support it, this amounts to an unnecessary over-reach by the federal government to coerce states to adopt a particular approach or be shut out of future funding for key programs…. This new condition on funding for key federal programs also opens the door for the federal government to call for even more conditions, such as the use of national tests for accountability purposes.[10]
Misconceptions About the Promise of National Standards and Testing?
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