Posted by
Waski_the_Squirrel on Monday, June 02, 2008 9:22:11 PM
National education standards are out of local control. Some would argue that that is the point. Fordham Foundation has spent a lot of time proving that state standards are weak. I won't argue that point. It's true.
The danger with national standards is that the "little people" like my readers and me don't have any control over them. They are too far away and too removed. Only large or powerful groups will have any influence.
There is no guarantee that the national standards will be any better than what the states have created. Witness the controversy over the national standards created for math by NCTM. The difference will be that the standards would have teeth and none of us will be able to do a thing about them.
This brings back the other danger of national standards. The little people can't influence them, but powerful or determined groups can. California is a case in point. Textbooks are subjected to a laundry list of requirements. Diane Ravitch did a better job than I can in describing this phenomena in California and many other states in her book
The Language Police.
What caused me to post this today is a spate of bills in the California legislature. These are bills inspired by special interest groups. They are bills that require special attention to various ethnic groups be put into history books. This includes the Hmong, which is already law, Italians, American Indians, and who knows how many others. Now, in California, this is rather hard to fight. I know because three cowards refused to vote against legislation they opposed. Instead,
they abstained.
At the national level, it would be impossible to fight this legislation. The curriculum could become so stuffed with special interest legislation that it would be a mockery.
At the state level, the little people can still control legislation. At the federal level, we lose any control. NCLB was a step in this direction. Let's resist any further steps.
Tomorrow I'll finish up with what schools should look like.