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But the report also introduced the idea of“national delivery standards,” something thatreceived a lot of attention and was the focusof great disagreement. The premise was this: Ifstudents were to be held accountable for meetingthe standards as measured by the tests, assurancewas needed that instruction would give studentsthe “opportunity to learn” the content.The Clinton administration’s Goals 2000legislation was the next foray into nationalstandards. In 1994, the National EducationStandards and Assessment Council wasauthorized, as recommended in the NationalCouncil on Education Standards and Tests report,but never established. Again, much debate andcontroversy ensued.The Clinton administration proposed creationof voluntary national tests in fourth-grade readingand eighth-grade math. The National AssessmentGoverning Board (NAGB), which oversees NAEP,was to manage execution of the tests. Much workwas done, including developing a “framework” toguide test construction and constructing actualtest items. Hearings on the issue were held aroundthe country, but the effort eventually dissolveddue to lack of funding.6 National Education StandardsAlso in 1994, amendments to the Elementaryand Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965required states to establish content standards,tests to measure student achievement in thesestandards, and performance standards. Standardswere still popular, and federal involvement wasacceptable — but only as far as saying what hadto happen in the states, rather than in somenational or federal entity.The nation’s governors and business leaderscreated the nonprofit organization Achieve towork with states in carrying out a standards-basedreform agenda. Achieve has become an importantorganization, both in helping states improvetheir standards and in gaining collaborationaround shared objectives. Given its agenda andexperience, Achieve is likely to play a significantrole in any further movement toward commonnational standards.In 2001, through the NCLB Act, the federalgovernment took previous efforts a giant stepfurther. It began using the cut-points on stateachievement tests, which represented attainmentof “proficiency,” as the cornerstone of a test-basedaccountability and sanctions system for states. Atthis writing, the country is on the precipice of aturning point with the NCLB-reauthorizationquestion looming over Congress and theObama administration.

The Current ConversationAbout National StandardsAlthough the nation has been up the standardshill and down the other side over the pasttwo decades, some strong voices urge still anothertrip up the hill. Movement toward collaboratingon standards setting is gaining traction, and somethoughtful efforts have taken place to examine theproblems and possibilities.These are briefly referenced below and will bementioned again later: Some well-known leaders — including formerNorth Carolina Governor James Hunt, formerIBM board chairman Louis V. Gerstner Jr.,former Colorado Governor Roy Romer, andothers — have long been strong advocates,arguing that the nation is in crisiswithout standards. Former Secretaries of Education WilliamJ. Bennett and Rod Paige have argued thatnational standards and a national testare needed. In 2006, Chester Finn Jr., Liam Julian, andMichael Petrilli issued To Dream the ImpossibleDream, published by the Thomas B. FordhamFoundation, with a dozen well-regardedcontributors. This thoughtful effort laid out“Four Approaches to National Standards andTests for America’s Schools” and provided arange of levels of developments and nationalinterventions (more detail is provided later).In fall 2008, the Fordham Foundation held adebate on national standards.2 Education Daily, July 18, 2008.3 Education Week, June 10, 2008.4 Education Week, June 10, 2008. Education Sector sponsored “A Debate onNational Education Standards” in 2006. Theproceedings are summarized in “Five ExpertsSquare Off,” ES Review, fall 2006. In 2007, the Nelson A. Rockefeller Instituteof Government held a conference thatproduced the transcript publishedin Intergovernmental Approaches forStrengthening K-12 Accountability Systems. A July 2008 edition of Education Daily states:“A group of big city school superintendentsaddressed Congress on Thursday to retainaccountability provisions in a reauthorizationof NCLB, and counseled a move toward growthmodels and national standards. Arne Duncan,CEO of Chicago Public Schools, urged legislatorsto ‘set a uniform achievement standard but allowstates flexibility in meeting it.’”2 In 2007, U.S. Secretary of Education MargaretSpellings argued that “the debate over nationalstandards would become an exercise in lowestcommon-denominator politics” and would notnecessarily improve the content of schooling.3 In 2007, the National Conference of StateLegislatures voted to reject the idea of commonstandards, saying, “We need rigorous statestandards that are anchored in real-worlddemands.”4 In October 2008, the James B. Hunt Institutefor Educational Leadership and Policy set out a“Blueprint for Education Leadership.”National Education Standards 7

The National Research Council of the NationalAcademies held a series of workshops toanalyze prospects, procedures, alternatives,and problems related to national standards.The most in-depth effort to grapple with bothoverall objectives and details of the problems,the workshops produced the 2008 summaryreport Common Standards for K-12 Education?Considering the Evidence.5Although many statements seem to supporttaking action, most are sparse on the detailsof what to do and how to do it, as backed bysolid analysis. However, the above-mentioneddocuments provide excellent starting points forthe discussion on national action relatedto standards. By March 2009, the National GovernorsAssociation, the National Association ofSecondary School Principals, the Councilof Great City Schools, and the AmericanFederation of Teachers (AFT) all publiclysupported national standards.65 National Research Council, Common Standards for K-12 Education?: Considering the Evidence, Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2008.6 David Hoff, Education Week, March 4, 2009.8 National Education Standards

What Does SettingNational Standards Mean?Concepts for imposing national educationstandards range from a general propositionthat all schools help students achieve somecommon degree of learning, to a moresophisticated proposal that “content standards”be established and evaluated in periodic surveys,such as those carried out by the AFT and by theFordham Foundation.The rigor and quality of existing state standardsvary greatly, and states have different mindsetsabout what content standards are intended to do.One state may see standards as an expression ofhigh aspirations for how much students shouldknow. Another state may view standards as a wayto make realistic judgments about what is possiblefor students to know, given that state’s experiencewith its schools. Still another state, seeing testsdesigned to measure school effectiveness andto trigger sanctions, may set modest standardsto ensure perceived success. These and otherdifferences in thought and approach surelycontribute to the wide differences revealed inevaluations of the states.Once a state determines what the standardsshould do, it must decide how demanding tomake them. Before doing this, those creatingstandards must understand how wide thedistribution of achievement is in that state’sschools in any one grade. For example, wherethe spread of achievement is wider — perhaps asmuch as three grade levels from the bottom tier tothe top — setting a single performance standardbecomes problematic.Some serious advocates of national standardshave thought principally in terms of a morerigorous curriculum. This mirrors the modeladvocated by Diane Ravitch and the NCTM inthe late 1980s.7Many advocates of national standards wantsuch content standards, and a standardized testbased on those standards. Others prefer to jumpto the proposition that a good national test isneeded, period. The most general belief is that a“good” set of content standards can be fashionedand that it is possible to determine the level ofstudent performance from standardized testing.This may be achievable, but given the nation’sunwillingness to invest in high-quality assessmentsthat go beyond filling in the bubbles, this ideafaces many hurdles.Lauren Resnick, a leading authority onstandards and assessments, summed it up thisway: “The tests are not aligned to their ownstate standards in all but a very few cases. Most of the state tests do not test the high level,intellectual demands that we were after when weset up the standards.”7Those who focus primarily on a standardizedtest do so because it provides test scores fora sanctions-based accountability system ina way that simply describing course contentdoes not. For example, in the aforementionedRockefeller Institute of Government conference,the morning agenda was “Models for SettingAcademic Standards” and the afternoon agendawas “Approaches to Testing Oversight andAccountability” — yet, most of the morningsession addressed testing, and the afternoon wasall about testing.Another key question is whether nationalstandards should be voluntary. Should theyserve merely as useful models or as mandatoryprinciples, enforced through the Elementary andSecondary Education Act or other legislation?Before the country can seriously consider nationalstandards, it must seriously address these difficultquestions around the topic. Lauren Resnick, “Five Experts Square Off,” Education Sector Debates, 2006.National Education Standards 9

Some Recent DevelopmentsThe education system is largely a publicorganism operating in the public sector:created, funded, controlled, and administered bya local government, under a state constitutionand state laws, with some financial support andrequirements under federal law. Governmentaland law agencies impose existing standards bydefining a curriculum’s content, administeringtests to see if students know the content, andapplying incentives or sanctions accordingly.Before NCLB, many states provided bothincentives and sections based on tests. WhenNCLB was passed, the new law simply used thecut-points designated as representing “proficiency”on these tests as a basis for applying sanctions.However, after the law passed, states were free tochange their cut-points.Much of the discontent with NCLB has beenover the large variation in these state-set cutpoints. Although many states have set what areconsidered low cut-points, former Secretary ofEducation Spellings has stated that creating anationwide cut-point will only perpetuate theproblem, likely establishing a single standard thatis too low.Considerable discussion has taken placearound how to establish collaboration outside thefederal government to set education standards,how to shape that effort, and how ambitiousto make it. In 2006, the Thomas B. FordhamFoundation published To Dream the ImpossibleDream: Four Approaches to National Standardsand Tests for America’s Schools. The 44-page workincluded contributions from a dozen well-knownpeople in the field, including Chester E. FinnJr., Liam Julian, and Michael J. Petrilli. A wellattended forum followed in Washington, D.C.10 National Education StandardsThe four approaches offered and discussed areas follows:1. The Whole Enchilada. The federal governmentimposes standards on the states, and standardsare used for accountability. The FordhamFoundation concluded that this approach wasnot politically feasible. On the merits of thisapproach, forum participants had varied views.2. If You Build It, They Will Come. This isa voluntary version of the first model, withthe federal government or a private groupdeveloping standards and providing incentives.Contributors judged this approach “maybe”politically feasible.3. Let’s All Hold Hands. Through this approach,states are encouraged to join one another indeveloping common standards, possibly with thefederal government providing incentives, but nomore. Contributors also judged this approach“maybe” politically feasible.4. Sunshine and Shame. Called the “leastambitious model,” this approach ensures thatstate standards and tests are “more transparent”by making them easier to compare with oneanother and with NAEP. Contributorsconsidered this approach feasible.Some of the same people gathered in Chicagoin 2007 with Richard Nathan and the Nelson A.Rockefeller Institute of Government to consider theaforementioned “Intergovernmental Approachesfor Strengthening K-12 Accountability Systems.”The edited and published transcript includes aframework paper written by Allison Armour-Garbof the Rockefeller Institute and distributed toconference participants.

Discussions among the 37 participants werebroad and far ranging, but informed morethan they concluded. The Rockefeller Institutepromised to use the proceedings for a furthereffort and to produce a new paper.Any effort to move forward on nationalstandards will benefit greatly from recent workof the National Research Council (NRC) of theNational Academies. The United States has nomore respected source of scientific knowledgeand research than the NRC, which conducted aseries of workshops and summarized the results inits 2008 publication Common Standards for K-12Education?: Considering the Evidence.The following is a list of topics covered in theNRC publication, which will be revisited later inthis report: the degree of variability in content andperformance standards and in “paradoxes,”including views from five states a description and consideration of availableoptions analysis of the quality of content standards andof their impact on teaching and learning estimated costs political and legal considerations perspectives of researchers and elected officialson implementation of common standardsIt is hard to read the NRC report carefullyand not come away with an understanding of theimportant questions, needs, and considerations offeasibility and desirability around standards.In a November 2008 paper titled The Roleof Assessment in Federal Education Programs,commissioned by the Center on EducationPolicy, W. James Popham provides a “serviceableframework for rethinking an appropriate federalrole in U.S. educational testing.”Popham addresses what role the federalgovernment should have, what the measurementmissions of tests should be, and five gradientsof federal involvement, ranging from zero tototal federal control. With an academic careerin educational measurement, Popham for yearshas been analyzing and regularly writing andpublishing on what has been happening duringthe standards-based reform and test-basedaccountability period. His paper includes a reviewof the federal role over the past 50 years.The organization Achieve has made the longestcollaborative effort, with the widest reach. Achieveis the result of a joint endeavor among the nation’sgovernors, chief state school officers, and CEOs oflarge corporations, informed by earlier efforts thatcreated the National Education Goals Panel.Another base of experience is the New EnglandCommon Assessment Program (NECAP),through which New Hampshire, Rhode Island,and Vermont are implementing a commonstandards-and-assessment program. A principalincentive for these three small Northeast states isthe considerable amount of money they can savethrough collaboration. While the cost of havingseparate standards has not yet motivated theremaining states, the recession of 2008 – 2009may help push more of them to work together.Achieve, the National Governors Associa

National Education Standards 3 Introduction T he education reform movement did not begin with a call for national or federal action, but for action among schools, districts, and states. That call, sounded by recommendations in the 1983 A Nation At Risk report, came from the National Commission on Education Excellence (NCEE) — at a time