By
Donald C. Orlich
Under pressure from the U. S. Department of Education and select private foundations, state officials have rushed to “crank out” sets of standards for the K-12 public schools sector. Thousands of pages of standards have been developed. What follows is my analysis after examining several samples from the states.
An observation of the standards shows application of inappropriate technical specifications to human nature. Each published standard resembles a product specification. For example, most begin with a statement that “the student will ______” (just fill in the blank). Replace the student with battery and the specifications are “that the battery will light a three-watt bulb for two hours”.
Such technically oriented pronouncements of student achievement do not mention conditions under which the learning is to take place and completely ignore the needed educational prerequisites and materials required to learn. This dimension of the standards movement is plainly dehumanizing the educational process. Students are now simply objects to be manipulated. I suggest reading Martin Buber (1970) in which he vividly illustrates how your actions toward fellow human beings are shown in how you perceive them. If you view children, adolescents or early adults only as objects rather than as humans to be nurtured, then schooling takes on a mechanistic dimension.
An unintentional result of not realizing a dehumanizing factor is that schools are now, more than ever, considered assembly lines of knowledge. Students are products. Such industrial metaphors are completely inappropriate for delicate human services. Yet, these same technical specifications are praised as the means for reaching that often cited cliché–world-class standards.
Analyses of the many sets of reform standards that have emerged in the United States reveal none that are based on empirical testing prior to implementation. The standards are constructed via a committee of representative teachers, researchers, university scholars, or interested citizens. In this sense, the standards are simply dogmatic and authoritarian pronouncements of what children in elementary, middle and secondary schools “should” master.
Further, none of the standards were analyzed to determine their age or developmental appropriateness. An example of how absurd the setting of standards can be is in the state of Washington. The State Superintendent proudly announced in both print and words the following for fourth graders. “In determining the level, the committee was guided by what they believed a ‘well-taught, hard-working student’ should be able to do in the spring of the 4th grade.” (Bergeson, et. al., 2000)
This was claimed to be “thorough expert judgment.” (In higher education we call it “chewing the fat.”) Viewing this state’s standards there is no thread that ties the mélange together, nor is any prerequisite learning noted.
Let us review a tiny sample of the “best of the worst.”
Washington. Grade 5. “Compare the strength of one force to the strength of another force (e.g., a 5-Newton pull from a spring scale is like the weight of a 1-pound object.” The author of this column has implemented hands-on, minds on science programs for 33 years, has had over 20 NSF grants, and cannot define a “Newton”. Can you?
Grade 2. Adds decimals through the hundred-thousandths place.
Ohio. Grades 5–7. Explain how inverse operations are used to solve linear equations.
California. Grade 5. Identify the significance and leaders of the First Great Awakening, which marked a shift in religious ideas, practices and allegiances in the colonial period, the growth of religious toleration and free exercise of religion.
Arizona. Mathematics. In 2002, Gene V. Glass and Cheryl A. Edholm sent questionnaires to 54 managers in 10 different categories of industries in the greater Phoenix area to gather views on the relevance of that state’s math test. Their final thoughts: “The overall conclusion is undeniably one in which these managers regard the mathematics tested by Grade 10-AIMS mathematics test as irrelevant to the functioning of their employees.”
Nationally, groups such as the The American Federation of Teachers and the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Foundation graded most of the states’ standards as C’s, D’ and F’s. The Fordham writers concluded that the standards are “unteachable”.
It is time to let our teachers do the job of teaching and dump the excess baggage of standards.
I do agree with much of this writer’s observations but doubt that standards will ever be dumped. Incremental improvements could be made by reducing the number of standards. My experience with the mathematics EALR’s in Washington was that for any grade there are too many requirements to meet in a school year. Paring the academic learning requirements to those which are truly “essential” would be a good first step.