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August 17, 2009
An Interview with Diane Ravitch
John Merrow: The Obama Administration and nearly every state have now endorsed national or common standards. Is this a good thing? Or is now the time to get worried, the logic being that, when 'everyone' is for something, the rest of us should watch out?
I have favored common standards for a long time. When I worked for Bush I in the early 1990s, I helped to launch federally funded projects to develop voluntary national standards in the arts, English, history, geography, civics, economics, science, and other essential school subjects. Some of the projects were successful; others were not. The whole enterprise foundered because a) it was not authorized by Congress, and b) it came to fruition during the transition between two administrations and had no oversight, no process of review and improvement. So, yes, I believe the concept is important.
However, I worry about today's undertaking, first, because it will focus only on reading and mathematics, nothing else; and second, because I don't know whether the effort will become a bureaucratic nightmare. But I won't prejudge the outcome. I will hope for the best, and hope that today's standardistas learned some lessons from what happened nearly two decades ago. Related:
Posted by Jim Zellmer at August 17, 2009 2:33 AM
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