For quite some time there has been a quiet debate simmering around in education circles about the need for a set of national education standards to supplant the patchwork of state standards. The Fordham Foundation recently scored a couple of high profile converts in former Secretaries of Education Bill Bennet and Rod Paige. Now, I am no national education leader, just a father concerned about his daughters' education and those of the kids around me. I have thought for months about the issue of whether to support a national standards and the decision to do so has not been without some mental struggle. National standards present some particularly difficult obstacles for me, not the least of which have been legal (as a lawyer, many questions become legal), but also with matters of implementation.
Nevertheless, I am now a supporter of a national standard and I hope that with this post, others will understand why.
Rationale for Prior Opposition to National Standards
Like most people, I understand that historically education has been a matter of state and local concern. Although national politicians will speak about education, almost all of the debate until the late 1990's was based at the state and local level. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the home of Title I, was for me a civil rights and funding issue, not an education issue in the terms of what material is taught, how and when. Thus, along with so many other matters handled exclusively or nearly so on the state level, I simply accepted that education was best handled at those levels. As I learned throught my fraternity, "Merely because a practice is prevalent may be the poorest reason for continuing it." I failed to question the status quo on educational standards.
Second, as a constitutionalist, I also understood the division of labor and responsibilites among governmental levels, between what the federal government ought to be doing and what states ought to be doing. Since I tend to read the Constitution narrowly, there is no postive grant of authority in the Constitution for the federal government to be involved in education. To be certain, there is no prohibition either. Couple all this with my general dislike of Congress using the spending clause to put regulatory strings on the money it gives out for education and my concerns about the federal government getting involved in education become magnified.
Third, I worry about the centralization of administration. Already the federal government manages so much that I think the Framers would be appalled at the size of the federal bureaucratic beast. Alexis de Tocqueville warned us all about the danger of the centralization of administration to a democratic nation. With federal standards, I always worried about whether we were feeding the federal beast too much.
These worries tended to dominate my thinking about a set of federal standards. However, when I took each of these concerns out, turned them over in my head, I found that, if properly developed and implemented, all of my concerns would be overcome.
Why Accept National Standards Now
As I noted before, arriving at a decision to support national standards was not an easy process for me, but there were a few key factors in reaching this decision. Some of these influencers were simply realizations about factual situations and others were the result of thinking long and hard about what would be accomplished by embracing national standards.
First among the reasons for changing my mind was the simple realization of the hypocrisy of my position. For those of you who read my blog regularly, you will know that I am a big supporter of choice in education and many times I point out to detractors that remaining wedded to the old public school model simply fails to appreciate the opportunities for improving education available in choice models.
It seemed the height of hypocrisy to argue with one breath that remaining wedded to traditional public schools lacked vision and openmindedness, while at the same time remaining wedded myself to the notion that education was and should always be a state and local matter. Thus, the very charges of lack of critical thinking about school choice I leveled against choice critics were directly applicable to my own thinking.
Second, when thinking about national standards, America, for nearly all intents and purposes, is almost at that point. Long before No Child Left Behind, there was Goals 2000, and other programs that have slowly, through the federal spending power, brought more and more federal regulations to bear on state and local school operation. While NCLB is the latest large expansion of the federal role in education, it was far from the first and probably won't be the last.
Whether we like it or not, whether we intended it or not, the fact of the matter is, we have national standards now. Many of the standards are "voluntary" meaning that a state has the power to reject the standards at the risk of losing their federal money. But for now, it is safe to say that making the jump from the current regime of "voluntary standards" to a mandatory set would not be a big leap at all.
Third, and probably most important, we no longer live in a national society were state education standards are enough. With a society as mobile as ours, having a set of national education standards, properly implemented, can reduce the inequities between states and provide for more mobility among the populace without the worries of wildly differing education standards.
When local and state control of education began, our society was still largely agrarian. Most people were born, lived, raised their own family and died all in the same state, often even the same county. Local schools could tailor programs and education beyond the basics to accomodate local needs. Local control was also closer to the people a school system served, and thus could be more responsive to community needs.
A regime of local control served the nation well, even into the 1940's and 1950's. But with the beginning of the Cold War and the growth of federal involvement in education, came the a new society, one in which education as a national issue took on more import. But at the same time the national interest in education took root, we started to develop a much more mobile society and the old rules no longer applied.
Today, it is not unusual for families with school age children to move 2, 3, or more times while those kids are in elementary or secondary school. In fact, with one daughter approaching school age and a toddler, my wife and I have seriously considered moving to Austin, TX, Charlotte, NC, Orlando, FL, Columbus, OH and less seriously San Francisco, CA, Sydney, Australia and London. Previously such mobility among families with school age children was relegated to military families and a very small minority outside the military. Today, with the fluidity of the job market and the relative ease of moving, it is far more likely that the place where children are born is not going to be the place they will graduate high school.
The impact of this highly mobile society is that education standards based on state and local concerns will begin to shortchange the mobile family. With sometimes wildly disparate standards from one state to the next, it is possible for students to repeat certain material because it is taught at different times in didfferent places or miss certain critical material due to a move.
One national standard, enforced across state boundaries can prevent children from missing or repeating infromation merely because their family moved. Some may decry the impact of our mobile society for all sorts of reasons, but the fact remains that we as a society move a great deal from place to place, and we should not allow schools and schooling to dictate, where, how and why we move.
In addition to ensuring students do not miss information, a national standard can also help parents make comparisons about the quality of schools across state lines. When moving from state to state, it is often difficult to compare schools in one state let alone compare the schools of one state to those of another. A national standard can simplify this comparative process for parents.
Finally, even in a society as mobile as ours, there appears to be a growing consensus about what should be taught in schools. From reading and math skills to history, social sciences, physical sciences, the arts, literature and the like, many people can agree on generalities to be taught. Of course, there will be quibbles over what texts to use and there can and will be some variation, which is good and proper. But one standard can be implemented in many ways thus there is some flexibility.
Concerns About Implementation
My support for a national standard does not come without some reservations. As we all know, the devil is usually in the details, and on this score for me, the details really matter. I can see two concerns for me, one legal and one practical.
From a legal standpoint, I worry about challenges to a national standard on constitutional grounds. There is no explicit power for the Congress to pass a national standard on its own, it must be couched with the provision of federal funds. I have never liked this method of Congressional regulation, but there may not be another avenue. With a national standard imposed, I can envision more lawsuits on this issue. With a Supreme Court less supportive of a broad, expansive reading of Congressional power, I am not sure how successful tying standards to funds will be going foward. A national standard is different than even NCLB, since to make it a truly national standard, there cannot be an opt out method.
I believe, however, that eventually the legal matters will be cleared up. The practical implementation is of greater concern. Alexis de Tocqueville worried about the centralization of laws and administration and its impact on democracy. While a centralization of laws, he felt was a concern, it was not nearly as troubling for him as the centralization of administration. Centralization of administration means that the federal government would be responsible for the law and administering the test/enforcing the standard. In a nation with as many schools as this one has, such a program is not only expensive, but impractical.
A national standard need not and should not mean the end of state and local school administration. States and localities will still have to administer the tests for national standards. Furthermore, just because there is a national standard does not mean that the standard is the ceiling of what needs to be done. Rather, as a floor, a national standard can be added to by the states if they desire.
Having a national standard will actually make administering the standard easier. First, there would not be a need for multiple tests, one state and one national since one test can address both needs. Second, costs will be lowered in relation to testing since the conflict of state and federal laws are resolved in favor of one rule. Third, local school boards and state school administration can focus on matters relating to facilities, services, labor instead of curricula matters and developing tests. Such a shift in focus, one would hope, would lead to a better use of resources.
Preventing a centralization of administration for education should be paramount in the minds of those building a national standard. Having an education bureaucracy too far removed from the people it serves is dnagerous and not having flexibility in administration, which is a hallmark of federal regulation, would in the long run damage schools.
Lastly, local administrative flexibility in how the standard is administered is vastly different than having local administrative flexibility in what the standard is. This may seem like splitting hairs, and to a certain extent I am splitting hairs. But taking the decision over what the standard is away from local administration means that local school boards can better focus on the needs of their students in attaining that standard, rather than spending so much time defining the standard.
Conclusion
While I am now endorsing the idea of a national standard, there are implementation concerns that need to be worked out to appeal further to people like me. i don't want to see a significantly larger federal education bureaucracy, nor the complete disposal of local school administration.
But in a society as mobile as ours, a national standard cannot but help improve school accountibility, and the ability for people to judge school systems against each other, no matter where the school is located. As many people on all sides of the education debate note, we are living in the 21st Century and it is time to take our schools out of the 19th Century. Recognizing the need for a national standard in our very large, but also very small, nation is but one step, but nonetheless a vital step, for advancing our schools into the 21st Century.
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