Welcome to Standardsville

Abstract

Mr. Jones, a secondary principal, feels it is time for a practitioner to provide the real reasons that standards will not work in this country. He lists a dozen such reasons and suggests some ways to get started on genuine reform. INTUITIVELY I have known that the term educational standards is an oxymoron. My feelings are based on years of sitting in classrooms with teachers who brought unique insights and styles into the classroom and with teachers who merely prepared us for taking tests. One type of teacher inspired me; the other, in the words of John Dewey, induced passivity. Until now, I did not feel compelled to share my feelings about Deep down I felt that this new reform idea, too, shall pass. Then I went to see the movie Pleasantville. The film recounts the experiences of two teenagers who find themselves trapped in a fictional Fifties town called Pleasantville - a community that prides itself on conformity and whose landscape is restricted to black and white. Throughout the movie a series of questions kept running through my mind: What if my community were Standardsville? What would a look like in Standardsville? Could a faceless state bureaucracy impose its will by paper standards? Would an army of state officials descend on schools to ferret out educators who tried to add any color to an already gray landscape of lectures, worksheets, and test preparation programs? Fortunately, I know the answers to all these questions. No single reform or state agency has ever had the ability to disturb the routines and structures of public schools. Why will the standards movement ultimately fail to affect the way schools do business in our country? The simple answer is that the United States is not Pleasantville. The more complex answer lies in the practical realities of schooling, which defy grand designs for change. Although many academics have already provided their lists of reasons for opposing standards, I felt it was time for a practitioner to provide the real reasons that standards will not work in this country. 1. Schools are systems. State legislatures and state boards of education keep assuming that schools are not systems. These well- intentioned policy makers pass mandates that focus on what teachers and students do from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. They forget about the issues a child faces before and after school. They do not understand how a staff and a community manage to resolve conflicts over heartfelt issues. Teachers and administrators know very well that, for any reform to succeed in schools, all components of the school system must be addressed at once. Bureaucrats will continue to be frustrated with any efforts at reform that do not include the village and the system. 2. We don't understand the I will not spend much space on this reason. The most recent issues of any education journal document the problems educators and scholars are having with the interpretation of their state's Suffice it to say, when schoolpeople do not understand a reform, it's dead on arrival. 3. Where are the standards? I know that every state superintendent of schools has implemented an elaborate process for the development and ratification of standards for his or her state. And I can guess that, in most states (if they are like Illinois), teachers and administrators have been permitted only a token presence in the development of the I can also guess that administrators have responded in one of two ways when the standards have arrived at their doors: 1) they have placed the standards in the learning resource center, or 2) they have sent teachers the following memo: Attached are the new state standards. At this point in time, the standards are far away from the classroom. 4. We already have Teachers already have They are called textbooks. For most teachers, the state standards will be viewed as an unnecessary duplication of what they already use. …