AFT: So You Say You Want National Standards?

Can someone with the office username send around the Ed Daily Article via e-mail? Thanks. -Jon

So You Say You Want National Standards...

March 16, 2007 02:27 PM

Then you'd better cough up some money for Education Daily (or try the free two-week registration) so you can read Stephen Sawchuk's March 9 article, "Voluntary national standards raise technical questions."

The headline is understated, but the article makes it clear that getting a bill through Congress would be just the beginning of the hard work for advocates of national standards.

One obstacle is aligning tests to national standards. The AFT reported last year that just 11 states had managed to create tests aligned to strong state standards. Using NAEP frameworks as the basis of national standards -- part of some proposals -- may create additional problems. Sawchuk quotes an official from Missouri, who explained the difficulty the state had in trying to align its tests with NAEP frameworks: "It's not intended to cover every one of the grade-level objectives. We'd be testing kids for a week to try to catch all of that."

Another obstacle, even if tests are aligned with the national standards, is establishing cut scores for proficiency levels for each state. Researcher Robert Linn told Sawchuk, "There would still be the major issue of what the academic achievement levels are, which at present are just all over the map." Again, some have proposed NAEP as a model, but a Louisiana official said the state's attempt to link NAEP and its assessment relied on "a procedure that was not technically sophisticated because of the lack of our ability to link those two tests toegether in a psychometric or statistical sense."

Some of these problems have to be tackled whether tests and standards are national, state or local. The AFT has a proposal that lands between the state and national levels. We call for NCLB reauthorization to include grants for voluntary consortia of states to develop common academic standards, curriculum and assessments. The technical and political problems don't disappear altogether with our proposal, but they might be somewhat easier to handle than with national standards.

Posted by John on March 16, 2007 02:27 PM