Opinion: A Turning Point on Education Reform

(March 11) -- If the nation's education system finally makes a meaningful turn for the better, March 10 may very well mark the turning point.

On Wednesday, two influential organizations of state leaders -- the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers -- released drafts of new "common core" academic standards for American schools, covering English and math from kindergarten through 12th grade. The standards are intended -- if states embrace them, teachers teach them and children study hard -- to prepare tomorrow's young people to be "college- and career-ready" by the end of high school and to help the U.S. become more internationally competitive.

A closely related development will soon occur, when Education Secretary Arne Duncan unveils a program that will let states compete for up to $350 million in federal funds to develop new tests "aligned" with the new standards.

Of course, plenty could go wrong. And it wouldn't be the first time an education-reform initiative went sour or yielded meager results. But I'm bullish about the first of these developments and hopeful about the second.

The new draft standards are surprisingly good. They're clear, coherent and ambitious. Schools and kids that attain them would be better off -- more likely to succeed in college and in contemporary jobs, better prepared to enter the global economy -- than most are today.

They also respect basic skills, mathematical computation, the conventions of the English language (grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc.), good literature and America's "founding documents" such as the Declaration of Independence.

Better still, they emerged from a voluntary coming-together of (most) states, not from Uncle Sam, and they'll remain voluntary for states to adopt or not, after each determines whether they represent an improvement over what it's now using.

If they're wise, most states will choose to make the change, since most today have academic standards that range from mediocre to awful. The last time my own institute evaluated them, only 20 states got "honors" grades from our experts in English/language arts, and a mere six did so in math. The overwhelming majority earned C's or worse.

Standards, of course, are barely the beginning of an education overhaul. They describe a destination -- the skills, competencies and knowledge that we would like our children to acquire in school. But in and of themselves, they don't cause anyone to learn anything. To gain traction in the real world, they must be accompanied by solid curriculum, expert teaching, well-constructed tests and an intelligent "accountability system" light years better than what the No Child Left Behind Act has inflicted upon us.

That's a heavy lift and will take years to get into place. It also portends big changes in the delivery of schooling to millions of young Americans. It may, for example, lead to the creation of statewide curricula and somewhat greater uniformity in what sixth-graders across, say, Oklahoma study in math class in February.

But it will bring lots of flexibility, too, as states can add to these standards, as can individual districts, school and teachers.

Yes, this initiative could come off the tracks. The federal government could try to tie too many strings or conditions to what is now a state-led project. The long-term structure and management of a very complicated venture is still unclear. Nobody has laid eyes on the new tests. And states or districts may pledge allegiance to the new standards but not implement them well. Plenty of pitfalls lie ahead.

But so does a huge opportunity to re-boot American primary-secondary education for the 21st century. I hope we don't shun it.

Chester E. Finn Jr., former assistant secretary at the Department of Education, is president of the
Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based, nonprofit think tank dedicated to advancing educational excellence in America's K-12 schools.