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Rating the Standards by Lynn Olson
In 1998, three different rankings of state standards documents--by the American Federation of Teachers, the Council for Basic Education, and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation--reached conclusions that were in some ways dramatically different. For example, Michigan received an F for its English and mathematics standards from one review and a B-plus from another. Soon, both journalists and scholars were dissecting exactly where and why the standards ratings diverged. And it began to look as if no one could agree on what makes a good standard. The opposite is true, an analysis done for Education Week concludes. While the reports disagree about some things--such as whether the use of calculators is a good idea--there are also broad areas of agreement. A handful of states, for example, received high ratings for their standards in specific subjects across the three reports. Focusing on such similarities in the three rankings, rather than their differences, could offer useful guideposts for states as they look to strengthen their standards. For Quality Counts '99, Education Week decided to do just that: examine the areas of agreement in an effort to move the standards discussion forward. To help with that work, Education Week turned to Achieve Inc., a nonprofit organization based in Cambridge, Mass., that was created in 1996 to promote states' work on standards, assessments, and accountability. ("Achieve Looks at Standards Reports.") Achieve staff members Matthew Gandal, the author of the AFT reports from 1995 to 1997 before he joined Achieve, and Jennifer Vranek began the analysis by asking two basic questions: What states received generally high scores from all three groups? And what states did poorly across the board? By focusing on those smaller subsets of states, Achieve was able to derive some helpful lessons for those who believe that setting clear and demanding expectations for students matters.
This article is based on Achieve's analysis. The examples cited are drawn from the three rankings: the Fordham Foundation evaluations of state standards for English, math, science, and history (1997-98), the "Making Standards Matter, 1998" report from the AFT, and the 1998 "Great Expectations" report from the CBE (which rated English standards in grades 4 and 12 and math standards in grades 8 and 12 only). The CBE and the 1997 AFT grades for English and math standards were included in Quality Counts '98. Achieve concluded that strong standards--across the three reports--had several features in common. "Regardless of the philosophy of the states," says Vranek, a policy analyst at Achieve, "if they've followed these principles, they've usually done really well in the ratings. And if they haven't, they've done poorly."
Standards must define content knowledge and skills for all students that are explicit, measurable, and show an increasing level of difficulty through the grades. If standards are not explicit, teachers can't use them to build a curriculum, and students won't know what they should learn. If standards are not measurable, it is impossible to tell whether students have reached them. Arizona's science standards, which both Fordham and the AFT praised highly, meet that test. For example, they require high school students to "describe the basic cellular processes of photosynthesis, respiration, protein synthesis, and cell division [and] compare the purpose and process of mitosis with the purpose and process of meiosis." North Carolina's math standards are also explicit and detailed: Fifth graders should be able to "draw circles with a compass and identify radius, diameter, chord, center, and circumference." In Algebra 1, students should be able to "solve a quadratic equation when one member is in factored form and the other member is zero." Those standards, Achieve notes, clearly identify the content knowledge and skills that students must acquire, and they can be measured through classroom or state assessments. Standards should also show a clear progression of content and skills through the grades. That lesson was made clear by the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, which found that U.S. 8th graders, compared with those in other countries, spent much of their time reviewing and repeating what they had learned previously, instead of moving on. California's new English standards, which received high marks from all three groups, provide an example of how to require students to learn increasingly difficult content. Standards for "literary response and analysis" appear in each grade, but they are not repeated verbatim. Instead, the standards expect students at different grade levels to read and comprehend text with increasing skill. For example:
But Achieve found that many states' English standards are not so explicit. For example, states commonly ask students to write and edit their work with grade-appropriate language conventions--without providing any guidance about what those conventions are. The English standards from New Jersey, which received low marks from both the AFT and Fordham and a B-minus from the CBE, are vague and often content-free. By the end of high school, students are expected to be able to "understand the study of literature and theories of literary criticism" and "understand how our literary heritage is marked by distinct literary movements and is part of a global literary tradition." Here's another example, this one a social studies standard from Delaware: "Identify major people and events from 300 A.D. to 1500 A.D." Such standards do little to give teachers and parents an idea of what the state considers most important for students to know.
Standards should combine content knowledge and skills into coherent and logical statements. States that emphasized skills at the expense of content and treated the two separately generally received poor marks across the three reports. States that synthesized those learning activities and emphasized higher-level thinking generally won praise. North Carolina's math standards, for example, were highly regarded by both the AFT and Fordham. The state's expectations for high school geometry ask students to "investigate and use the properties of angles, arcs, chords, tangents, and secants to solve problems involving circles. Problems will include finding the area of a sector and applications in architecture, art, construction, and other areas." Compare that standard--which places the development of skills in the context of learning about mathematical content--with one for the same grade from Rhode Island: "Use sophisticated as well as basic problem-solving approaches to investigate, understand, and develop conjectures about mathematical concepts." Delaware's science standards include sample activities that illustrate how scientific content is acquired through observation and investigation. For example, 8th graders should know that "almost all events in the Universe involve the transformation of energy from one form to another with the release of heat," and that "the total amount of energy remains constant." A sample activity suggests that students "measure and qualitatively compare the heat changes involved in different kinds of energy transformations (e.g., temperature increases from different sizes of incandescent and fluorescent lights, temperature increases when different colored objects are exposed to the sun, temperature increases when a cup of metal balls is vigorously shaken or a nail hammered)." Virginia's history standards call for students to learn content and acquire the ability to evaluate, compare, and contrast historical themes and ideas. One standard for a U.S. history course asks high school students to "analyze and explain the importance of World War I in terms of:
Merely adopting voluntary national standards is not enough. Most states, for example, profess to have used the standards set by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics as a starting point for their work. But both states that did well and poorly on the ratings systems claimed to have followed the NCTM guidelines. States that emulated the NCTM model without specifying in greater detail the content and skills that students should learn failed to meet the AFT's criteria for standards that are clear and specific and received C's or F's from Fordham. States that isolated problem-solving from content and skills standards also received low marks from Fordham and the AFT. Oklahoma's math standards, for example, exhort high school students to "apply algebraic processes to become creative mathematical problem-solvers in real-life situations." Idaho's math standards for grades K-6 call on students to "recognize, extend, and generate patterns" or "solve multistep problems." None of these standards fosters students' problem-solving skills as part of learning meaningful content. In contrast, states that used the NCTM philosophy--such as the emphasis on reasoning, problem-solving, and communications skills--as a base but fleshed out the content that students should learn managed to do well across all three ratings systems. That was true even though the Fordham report is quite critical of the NCTM standards. "Even states that embraced NCTM did well on Fordham if they had detailed content underneath this framework," says Vranek. "If you did enough of the good stuff, you really are going to fare well in these reports." She also notes that proposed changes to the NCTM standards emphasize more content and a clearer progression of knowledge and skills as students get older. The three ratings systems were sharply divided, however, about whether the concept of solving problems through "real world" applications is a good idea. The Fordham Foundation's report vigorously attacked the notion that problems must emanate from real life. But states that required real-world applications still did well if they reflected many of the other qualities listed above. For example, Georgia's standards received a B from Fordham and also met the AFT's criteria for good standards, even though Fordham said the standards "lack sufficient attention to reason, overemphasize the use of technology, and carry the message in all courses that mathematics is pre-eminently for direct practical use." Other examples of states that pay attention to real-world problem-solving but did well in the Fordham report include Alabama, Mississippi, and North Carolina. States have also relied on voluntary national standards in science, with varying degrees of success. But voluntary national standards in English, social studies, and history appear to have had less of an effect. In those subjects, states seem to be looking more toward exemplary or model standards from other states in writing their standards documents. Gandal, the director of standards and assessment for Achieve, remarks that the controversy surrounding both the English and history standards at the national level may have dissuaded states from using them as models. In 1994, the U.S. Department of Education withdrew funding for work on the English standards because officials believed they lacked specificity.The standards in U.S. and world history were roundly attacked when they first appeared, primarily for downplaying--at least in the view of the critics--important figures and events in Western civilization. Those standards were later revised. Another problem in the social studies area, Gandal says, is that separate standards in history, geography, economics, and civics have left the states with a "mountain of material that is hard to make sense of." Vranek agrees. "States are having trouble finding the balance between these various disciplines," she says. But in general, she says, state standards that neglected history did not fare well with either Fordham or the AFT.
There are no "perfect" standards. Good standards are judged subjectively, and the ratings reports must draw a line somewhere. No one formula is used for judging standards. In some cases, appraisers arrived at different grades because they were looking at different documents. Some of the standards evaluators--such as Fordham--were simply tougher graders than others. "Why do some of the same documents get different grades, in some cases?" Gandal asks. "It's where these groups decided to draw the line or put the bar. And it's not always easy to explain or compare." Achieve has begun working with states to benchmark their standards and assessments against those from other countries, the frameworks used by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and other states as a way to make such judgments more objective. In analyzing the three ratings systems, Achieve found that whether states chose to write their standards for clusters of grades or in a grade-by-grade format proved less decisive in the ratings than some have presumed. "States that organize their standards grade by grade and thoroughly ground their standards in content usually do the best job of specifying what students should learn and when they should learn it," the AFT report argues. But, it adds, "this is not to say that standards must be grade by grade to meet our criteria." Of the states that were highly praised by the AFT, the CBE, and/or Fordham in one or more subjects, many wrote standards for groups of grades, rather than for each grade, including Arizona, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Ohio, Oregon, and New York. Other states that received high marks in one or more subjects have grade-by-grade standards, including California, Texas, and Virginia. And some states that wrote grade-by-grade standards did not always measure up in perceived quality, including Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Gandal also points out that as states have gained more experience in writing standards, the expectations for what makes a good standard have risen. In 1995, the first year the AFT published its ratings, Colorado's standards were cited as a national model. But today, Colorado is in the middle of the pack, as other states have revised their standards or drafted them for the first time. States should not look on their standards as static, Gandal suggests, but should continue to upgrade them.
The concept of "rigor" is still elusive. Even though states and those who evaluate state standards believe that rigor is important, they have trouble defining it.
In particular, he contends, "until you look at the state tests and the work required to do well on them--and the passing scores that are used--I don't think anybody can tell a state whether it's got rigorous expectations for its kids." The quality and rigor of standards and assessments should be looked at as a package, Gandal says. That's one reason Achieve is working with states to determine how well their standards are aligned with their assessments and to benchmark both against national and international models. The AFT also looks at whether a state's assessments are aligned with its standards, "because the assessments are what ultimately determine how rigorously a given set of standards is applied." But the teachers' union wasn't able to collect and analyze state tests to determine whether they really reflect a state's standards. Instead, it had to rely on the word of state officials. The Third International Mathematics and Science Study--a cross-national comparison of countries' curricula, textbooks, teacher practices, and student achievement--also raises a number of issues that states need to consider in setting their standards, but that are not now being addressed. For example, in other countries, students master the basics in elementary school and then move on to more advanced content and skills, instead of cycling back through the same material--a pattern that occurs with alarming frequency in the United States. Many other countries also focus on a much smaller set of knowledge and skills, which students learn in greater depth. U.S. schools have a tendency to overstuff the curriculum. Many national and state standards documents have yet to answer the question: How much is too much? Finally, the TIMSS project found that American students did comparatively less well as they advanced through school, raising the question of what is an appropriately challenging set of exit standards for students. Many state exit exams that are given to students in 10th grade, for example, are now based on 8th grade standards. In other cases, states have set standards for specific high school courses but do not require all students to take those courses. A series of reports by the AFT has highlighted the differences in end-of-school standards between the United States and other industrialized nations. But states have not yet figured out how to apply those lessons to their own circumstances. Achieve is now trying to build on the ratings of state standards done by the AFT, the CBE, and the Fordham Foundation, based on the areas of agreement described above. The organization also is trying to work with states on issues that have not been adequately addressed either in the ratings reports or by the states themselves, such as the rigor of state standards and assessments, the expectations for students who are graduating from high school, and the tendency to cover too much material. Achieve's efforts to benchmark state standards and assessments in Michigan and North Carolina against those in other states and nations were well received by officials in those states. And Achieve is now prepared to help other states that are interested in tackling such issues. "States really want to know how high they're setting the bar," Gandal says. "But the question cannot be answered only by looking at your standards, or even at what other states in this country are doing. Any solid attempt to build an accountability system has to take into account what students all over the world are expected to know before they leave the system."
From the AFT: "Making Standards Matter, 1998." From the CBE: "Great Expectations," January 1998. From the Fordham Foundation: appraisals of state standards in
English, history, geography, math, and science.
Read the "Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics," from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1989.
Read more about the "Third International Mathematics and Science Study."
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Vol. 18, number 17, page 107-109 |
lmost every state has adopted academic standards as a cornerstone of its school reform drive. But how good are they? 
