The National Governers Association released a statement last week endorsing the nationalization of primary and secondary education standards by evaluating student performance on international tests.
Several education groups ‘mdash; including the Council of the Great City Schools, the National Association of Secondary School Principals and the American Federation of Teachers ‘mdash; have agreed that the federal government should devise a definition of what American students should be required to know in each grade.
Despite these recent endorsements, establishing the standards and winning public support for them will be difficult, according to one long-time advocate of such standards.
‘The United States does not have an obvious mechanism for doing them,’ said Chester E. Finn Jr., the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington-based think tank. ‘As a result, everything is improvisational and has drawbacks.’
In addition, some educators are concerned that a national school policy would undermine teachers’ judgment of curriculum and teaching methods.
‘What I’m mostly concerned about … is doing on a national level what we’re doing too much of on the state and local levels,’ said Deborah Meier, a former New York City principal and a senior scholar at New York University. ‘We’re governing by distance authority.’