So far, twenty-seven states have adopted the national standards for what students should learn each year from kindergarten through high school. This represents a historic shift away from local control over schools. Many more states are set to follow suit in the coming weeks.
Part of the motivation might lie in the fact that schools who adopt the national standards by August 2nd earn points toward winning funds from the Obama administration's Race to the Top competition which will be awarded in September.
Do you think national standards are the right direction for our educational system? Or should state and local education departments retain control over curriculum goals?
Personally, I believe that national standards make a lot of sense. Nationwide, our students should be following similar learning paths toward a high school diploma. I don't see any reason why the instructional road-map toward graduation can't be standardized on a broader level.
Comments
National standards are a must but without versatile teachers such standards will be difficult to implement. Not many people know this but the universities (from where our teachers come from) have been watering down courses or altogether eliminating them to make room for research. This is happening to the lab part of the science courses more than others but all are affected nonetheless. How much watering down? A course which used to consist of 60 lectures and 60 labs during the sixties and seventies has now been cut down to 30 lectures and only 8 to 10 mostly demonstration type labs with little or no hands-on component. Also know that this is not an introductory
undergraduate course but a professional and a graduate level course. In the face of this reality National Standards would never be lived up to because the teachers would not know what to teach and how to teach. In the end the same old reality will take over which is: if you do not understand something, skip it producing wider and wider gaps in a student’s awareness and knowledge base who will not know what to do with the bits and pieces of information he or she is being doled out. We must nonetheless try to implement the national standards and do that we must do two things: One, let the national standards be spelled out in a summary form so all, including parents, know what they are and two, get the teachers on a professional development track and have their certification procedure taken out of the internet type of e-learning and testing and putting it onto a more hands-on format. Teachers knowing educational psychology do not necessarily make good teachers, teachers with versatile and broad based knowledge do.
The comment says absolutely nothing about what is needed to improve teacher education. More of the gobledegook that always passes for teacher education by people who have taught so little.
From the time a person enter a teacher education program they should be involved with teaching first in a tutoring situation, observed by a professional;followed by small group instruction of 1-2 people at a time, increasing to larger groups.
Along with this should be good introduction to the content of the curriculum for the ages and grades they intend to teach.