Using a Flat Structure in a Hierarchical World: The Development of English Standards

Abstract

n November 17, 1992, a few days after Bill Clinton was elected president, a pulse of great expectation and good will beat steadily among the leaders of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). That huge professional association had just elected a new Executive Committee (EC), which looked forward to the challenge of engaging in significant decision making over the two-year term that lay ahead. At the EC's first meeting, it was apparent that developing the Standards Project for English Language Arts would be the dominant task of their tenure. Both NCTE's executive director, Miles Myers, and its new president, Jesse Perry, seemed perfectly suited to provide the drive and direction that such an overwhelming task would require. Myers had been one of the original leaders of the National Writing Project, so he was a strong believer in action groups for teachers; he was also a man of endless energy and powerful vision. Perry, a person of great personal charm and strength and the first African American male leader of NCTE, wanted to accomplish something extraordinary. The views of most NCTE EC members at the time were well known. They held clear-cut biases against monolithic structures, bubble tests, and top-down operations; registered a strong demand for equity and access in standard settings; and feared being co-opted by educational enterprises that might overwhelm them or somehow dirty their hands. For the leadership of NCTE, however, work on this sizable project had an appeal that overcame those fears. The project was systemic and huge; it could shape the future of English teaching if done well; it was richly funded by the U. S. Department of Education. The question that hovered above the decision to go forward with the project was one of process as much as product. NCTE's leadership accusingly attributed the success of the math Standards to excellent PR work