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Standards
"All questions of the grading of the child and his promotion
should be determined by reference to the same standard."
-- John Dewey
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Illinois, 1936
Whose Standards?
"I looked up 'standard' in the dictionary.
There were eleven different definitions."
-- Dave Winer
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You would think that when schools talk about standards, as in adopting
"standards-based" math, or observing "high academic standards",
it would be clear what they are talking about.
In general, schools talking about their "rigorous" "high standards" are as
believable as Microsoft talking about "easy-to-use" software.
These schools need to cite exactly which supposedly "rigorous"
standard they are observing.
A widespread deception is to adopt a so-called "standard" drawn up
by such progressivist, constructivist groups as the
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) or the
National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). These are no more the
agreed-upon "standard" for schools than the platform of one of the national
political parties. But when your school talks about "standards-based math"
what they really mean is that they observe the fuzzy math theories
in vogue with the NCTM.
We hasten to add that truly rigorous standards really do exist.
Among the better known are the
Core Knowledge Sequence, the curriculum
of the National Heritage Academies, or the
Hillsdale Academy Reference Guide.
The Making of "Weak" Standards
When you see the beautifully printed schools standards of many states including Illinois,
it's hard to fathom how they can be considered "weak." Chock-full of
grids, tables and elaborate enumerations of bullet points, tallying dozens of pages,
and festooned with colorful headings and encodings,
they certainly don't look wimpy.
Prof. E. D. Hirsch helps to explain what is wrong, in this excerpt (p. 115) from his book,
The Knowledge Deficit:
... the thick documents that purport to be "state standards"
and "district curricula" are so generalized that they provide no real
guidance to teachers. ... Typically in the United States, state and district
guidelines offer schools no definite information about grade-by-grade content. ...
Let's look at one state's guidelines for language arts. ... This state's
curriculum guide is quite typical. It is a 103-page document organized
into a dozen broad categories, all of which apply to all the grades
from Kindergarten through grade twelve.
The general categories have process rubrics like
"Students shall demonstrate knowledge and understanding of media as a mode of communication,"
"Students shall employ a wide variety of strategies as they write, using the
writing process appropriately," and
"Students shall apply a wide range of strategies to read and comprehend
written materials."
Then, in the more "detailed" amplifications of these categories for
the early grades, we find directives like, "Distinguish the purpose
of various types of media presentations, using informational or
entertainment presentations," "Use a variety of planning
strategies/organizers," and "Draft information collected during
reading and/or research into writing." For later grades, the detailed
amplifications are directives like, "Write research reports that
include a thesis and use a variety of sources" and "Read a variety of
literature, including historical fiction, autobiography, and
realistic fiction." The whole document is composed of similarly
empty admonitions.
This illustrated the main shortcoming of these process-oriented, formalistic guidelines --
they offer no real guidance. ... [They] guarantee an incoherent education with
huge gaps and boring repetitions. ...
Gaps and repetitions are the reality of American students' school
experience ... These gaps and repetitions occur
unwittingly, not through the fecklessness of guideline makers nor the
incompetence of teachers, but under the influence of very inadequate process theories. ...
For students, the vagueness of the local guidelines produces an
educational experience that is sparse, repetitious, incoherent,
and fragmented. For teachers, the incoherence produces an intensely
unsatisfactory professional experience, which induces a large percentage of
them to leave the profession each year.
"National Standards"
There are no national official standards for what is to be taught in schools,
nor should there be.
"At every hour of every day, I can tell you on which page of which book each schoolchild in Italy is studying."
-- Benito Mussolini
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Under our system of government,
standards are set at the state and district level.
If an educrat at your local school tells you that they
observe "national standards" for math,
or "social studies," or whatever, they are most likely referring to
so-called "standards" developed by independent, private organizations
such as the NCTM, NCTE, or NCSS. These organizations are often
dominated by educrat theoreticians, so their "standards" typically enshrine
constructivist theory and reduced academic content.
They have NO standing in the law!
Should There Be National Standards?
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Education Standards Are Not the Answer
by Andrew Coulson, Washington Post, April 5, 2007.
"Standards advocates mistakenly assume that high external standards
produce excellence, but in fact it is the competitive pursuit of
excellence that produces high standards.
We understand this point implicitly in every field outside of
education. We didn't progress from four-inch black-and-white cathode
ray tubes to four-foot flat panels because the federal government
raised television standards. Apple did not increase the capacity of
its iPod from 5 to 80 gigabytes in five years because of some
bureaucratic mandate. And the Soviet Union did not collapse because
the targets for its five-year plans were insufficiently ambitious. ...
It is ironic that standards advocates exhort us to improve our
schools in response to competitive pressures from abroad, but then
discount the ability of the same competition and consumer choice to
drive improvement at home. It is the competitive pursuit of
excellence spurred by market forces that drives up standards, not the
other way around."
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National Standards: A Hopeless Cause
by Neal McCluskey, August 16, 2007.
"[I]sn't keeping states from weaseling out of real accountability
exactly why we need national standards?
In theory, yes, but even if we pass rigorous national standards, they
would have to be enforced, and enforcement is something Washington
has never done effectively. When push has come to shove, no
administration has ever been willing to really get tough with the
state leaders, education bureaucrats, teacher unions, and other
powerful interests who don't want to be held to high -- and difficult
to attain -- standards."
More on National Standards
There are more articles on the question of national standards on our page
about education and politics.
State Standards
One "standard" that most public schools are expected to
observe is that drawn up by their own state departments of education.
These vary widely in quality.
See "Dumbing-Down the State Tests"
in our page on Tests and Assessments.
Read on to see how our Illinois state "standards"
measure up.
Illinois Learning Standards
The "Illinois Learning Standards" are our state's official guidelines on
what students should "know and be able to do."
How to Get the Illinois Standards
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Illinois Learning Standards:
The complete set of standards, as well as substantial information
about them, are available at this location on the website of the
Illinois State Board of Education.
Other States
Are the State Standards Mandatory?
A FAQ
about the Illinois Learning Standards
(available on the ISBE website) attempts to answer this important question,
but mostly waffles:
ARE THE ILLINOIS LEARNING STANDARDS MANDATORY? The Illinois
Quality School Act (House Bill 2596) required the State Board of
Education to establish a set of academic standards within one year of
the effective date of HB2596 (signed by the Governor on August 6,
1996). Also, according to Section 5/2-3.63 of the Illinois School
code, schools must "set student learning objectives which meet or
exceed goals established by the State."
Wow, sounds tough! But no-o-o-o. This state report goes on
to provide the weasel words to evade that supposed mandate:
The Illinois Learning
Standards give schools an opportunity to judge the extent to which
their local objectives actually meet or exceed the state goals. Some
schools will opt to adopt some or all of the state standards; more
often, schools will compare their local objectives to state standards
and make any modification(s) necessary to assure that students who
achieve the school objectives also meet or exceed the state goals as
defined through the learning standards.
For a more authoritative answer, read the actual state regulations!
For the text of Illinois law that authorizes and enforces the learning
standards and state assessment, see this excerpt from the Illinois
School Code:
Illinois Loop: State Laws on Standards and Testing.
For more information, see
Illinois Loop: Illinois Laws and Rules
Assessing the Illinois Standards
Below are some reviews and comments on
the subject areas within these Illinois Learning Standards.
Reading and Language
Math
Science
History and Geography
- Illinois given a grade of "D" in world history!
From the Fordham Foundation's Review of State World History Standards, 2006:
"The standards cover the entire political history of the
world in half a page, much of it vague and unhelpful
(e.g., "Analyze world wide consequences of isolated
political events, including the events triggering the
Napoleonic Wars and World Wars I and II.") Worse,
much of the actual political content of history is overlooked
or treated superficially. ...
"These standards are by no means the worst of the worst,
and in places they're good. But unless they're updated
with significant amounts of historical detail, the standards
will keep Illinois students in the dark about the
broader world around them."
- Illinois given a grade of "F" in history!
Is Illinois serious about children learning history?
According to the Fordham Foundation the Illinois standards
for the teaching of history are so extremely bad that Fordham calls them
"useless" and gave them that grade of "F".
See the Fordham Foundation's Review of State History Standards:
The Fordham Foundation also says,
"The Illinois Learning Standards
for Social Science attempt to present all of what should be taught
and learned in history in six pages. Such economy of historical
content should not be construed as pedagogical thrift but rather
as an educational travesty. The lack of coherence and other
matters of historical soundness are striking. To be sure, these
standards are peppered with specific names, but none of it will
be of any use to teachers, students, and parents who are seeking
to determine what every child should know and be able to do in history."
(emphasis added)
- Illinois given a grade of "D" in geography!
Is Illinois serious about children learning geography? See the
Fordham Foundation's Review of State Geography Standards,
which gave that grade of "D" to Illinois.
Excerpts:
"Illinois' Geography Goal and four Learning Standards are
... not comprehensive. Of four geography standards, one relates
specifically to history. Some concepts and topics are either missing
or presented so nebulously as to leave evaluators scratching their
heads as to what is wanted from students, e.g., 'describe how
physical and human processes shape spatial patterns including
erosion, agriculture, and settlement' (B. -- Late Elementary).
Benchmarks, intended to bring specificity to the standards, are all
over the map. They are strongest at the elementary level. But at
higher levels, evaluators were often lost in their breadth,
open-endedness, and/or lack of clarity. So confusingly are they
presented that we were occasionally unable even to identify the
knowledge or skill being addressed. We believe that curriculum
developers and teachers will find the state's standards somewhat
useful in setting direction, but they will have to work hard to
organize a coherent curriculum from them."
- In a 1999 report, the American Federation of Teachers called the Illinois social studies standards
"vague" and "unrealistic".
The AFT said,
"The [Illinois] social studies standards ...
are vague about what students should know. The world history
standards include specific historical references but ask
students to cover a span of 1,000 years or more. It is unrealistic
to expect a common core of learning to develop based on such broad
standards."
The AFT three separate times described the Illinois standards as offering
"vague U.S. and world history", at the
elementary, middle and high school levels.
(In 2001, the AFT released
Making Standards Matter 2001 (PDF). Interestingly, despite
no significant change in Illinois standards since the previous AFT report,
suddenly the union scores the state better on various criteria.
The AFT does not explain the change
or provide any explanation for this revised conclusion.
Detailed text discussion is gone, and instead, states are given simple
yes/no symbols denoting achievement of various factors.)
- A few more examples from the Illinois standards:
"16.B.2d (US) Identify major political events and leaders within the
United States historical eras since the adoption of the Constitution,
including the westward expansion, Louisiana Purchase, Civil War, and
20th century wars as well as the roles of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham
Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt."
-- This astonishing "standard" only serves to highlight the preposterously vague nature
of the Illinois standards. Everything from the adoption of the Constitution through FDR
is implied in ONE item? Outrageous!
"16.A.3b Make inferences about historical events and eras using
historical maps and other historical sources.
16.A.4a Analyze and report historical events to determine cause-and-effect relationships.
16.A.4b Compare competing historical interpretations of an event.
16.A.5a Analyze historical and contemporary developments using
methods of historical inquiry (pose questions, collect and analyze
data, make and support inferences with evidence, report findings)."
-- These are so worthlessly abstract as to not count for anything. Consider:
- Events? Which events?
- Maps? Of where?
- Pose questions? How do students do this without knowledge of the topic at hand?
These fuzzy-wuzzy standards are a perfect illustration of why Illinois kids
can wind up not knowing much about anything in history.
- As an outstanding example of what a state standard can be, take a took at this report:
Virginia Revamps Its Social Studies and History Standards, Education Week, April 11, 2001.
- As another example, consider what has happened in Minnesota.
That state had a "standard" for social studies that was as vague and
unspecific as that of Illinois. But a grassroots movement in that state
took hold and was embraced by education reformers and political leaders.
The result is a
vastly improved social studies standard.
Click to read more!
Also see our page on social studies
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