David J. Hoff of Ed Week posted an article reporting that there appears to be increasing support among US government officials for a common set of standards for academic outcomes. For those of us who are concerned about effective instruction, this is very welcome news. To be sure, national standards would have to be conceptualized very carefully, ensuring that they describe important competencies (not recitation of bits). Given the way that states have manipulated local standards, it is important to identify those core areas where we want educated students to be capable of demonstrating facility.
Absent agreed-upon foci for teaching, American education is likely to continue to meander, wander, and be subjected to fads and whims. Agreement about common goals and specification of widely accepted indicators of those goals would go a long way to providing a measuring stick against which educational methods could be compared. Then, it would easier to determine what methods are relatively more effective.
Anyway, here’s Mr. Hoff’s lead:
Continue reading ‘National standards would help US education become more effective’
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